Rarely do you come across a documentary ad simultaneously devastating and full of hope. Directed by John Kastner and produced by the National Film Board of Canada, Out Of Mind, Out of Sight is the first film to actually look at the patients and staff of the Brockville Mental Health Centre – a hospital for […]
Tag: Calgary International Film Festival
CIFF Review: Xavier Dolan’s Mommy Falls Just Short!
Xavier Dolan’s fifth film, Mommy, tells a tale of tough love with some fresh ideas – like shifting aspect ratios to underscore mood, tone and point-of-view. It’s an ambitious, intense film that won this year’s Cannes Jury Prize, but may have been blessed with an underwhelming selection in competition.
CIFF Review: Whiplash – Yes, It’s That Good!
Although one of the joys of covering a film festival is the cool movies that you might never otherwise see, there are always a few that you have to see even when you know they will being getting some kind of mainstream release. Whiplash – which won both the Jury and Audience prizes at this […]
CIFF Review: The Honour Keeper (Lajwanti)
Honour Keeper is yet another CIFF discovery – a delicate flower of a film by a first time director that unfolds to reveal itself in its own time and its own way. First time feature director/writer Pushpendra Singh has taken a Rajathani folk tale and placed in a setting that could be mistaken for centuries ago, […]
CIFF Review: Little Spartan!
Little Spartan is a strange little film from first-time director Dragos-Bogdan Iuga, who also scripted. It is a film that shot over sixteen years (talk about ambitious!) as Iuga follows the life of millionaire/billionaire (both terms are used in the film) little person Gabriel Dita. Ostensibly, it is about the efforts of Gabi to make a fictionalized […]
CIFF Review: Backcountry: The Horrors of Nature!
Brad and Jenn are off on a long weekend of enjoying nature – he’s taking her to see a treasured spot from his past – when they unwittingly encroach on the territory of black bear. Based on a true story, Backcountry is Canadian director Adam MacDonald’s first feature. If quality counts, it won’t be his […]
CIFF Review: Heaven Adores You!
Documentaries about musical icons tend to be either too worshipful, or too determined to find the warts part of a warts and all biography. Heaven Adores You looks at the late Elliott Smith and his music in a way that, while it leans a tiny bit toward the former, doesn’t hesitate to include Smith’s flaws. […]
CIFF Review: Li’l Quinquin – Absurdist Comedy From 2-Time Cannes Grand Prix Winner!
Bruno Dumont won the Cannes Grand Prix twice – for dramas Flanders and Humanité – so of course his next film would be a 197-minute absurdist comedy about a Gallic Dennis The Menace and a series of brutal murders in a small French coastal town.
CIFF Review: Project M (Projet-M) – Micro-Budget, Gravity Class!
One of the best movies I’ve seen this year is a French-Canadian sci-fi movie called Project M (Projet-M) – shot for about the cost of a small house and originally set up as a web series. Four astronauts on a 1,000-day mission aboard a space station find themselves at a loss when, 900 days in, […]
CIFF Review: God Help the Girl Is Beyond Twee – And That’s Good!
The CIFF screening of God Help the Girl was the Canadian Premiere – it won the Special Jury Prize, world cinema at Sundance earlier this year. It’s the story a girl recovering from an eating disorder who runs away from a psychiatric hospital and forms a pop band with two new friends. It’s the first […]