Tag: Region: Canada

  • Queens of the Qing Dynasty

    Queens of the Qing Dynasty

    This essay was originally published at Metrograph.

  • TIFF 2012 – Day 4

    TIFF 2012 – Day 4

    Like Someone in Love (Kiarostami), Far from Vietnam, Tower (Radwanski), and August and After (Dorsky).

  • TIFF 2012 – Day 1

    TIFF 2012 – Day 1

    In Another Country (Hong), Laurence Anyways (Dolan), Argo (Affleck), and Tabu (Gomes).

  • Wavelengths: Tamalpais and Hotel Roccalba

    Wavelengths: Tamalpais and Hotel Roccalba

    Short responses to Chris Kennedy’s Tamalpais and Josef Dabernig’s Hotel Roccalba.

  • 2009 SFIFF Diary 1

    2009 SFIFF Diary 1

    Atom Egoyan’s Adoration and Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard.

  • Films of the ’80s

    Films of the ’80s

    While watching Les Bons Debarras, I was struck by how familiar it felt. I was eight when the film was released — near enough to the age of Manon (Charlotte Laurier) that I was able immediately to recognize that particular era of childhood, even if her experience of it is so much different from my own.

  • 2007 TIFF Day 6

    2007 TIFF Day 6

    Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light, Bernard Emond’s Contre Toute Esperance, and Celine Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres.

  • Strange Waters

    Strange Waters

    I asked Bruce about “Strange Waters” yesterday, and his answer was a tense, beautiful sermon.

  • Childstar (2004)

    Childstar (2004)

    I decided to see Childstar mostly for the opportunity to hear McKellar introduce it — I’ve been a big fan since first seeing him in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica — and his introduction set up the best laugh of the morning.

  • La Villa Strangiato

    La Villa Strangiato

    “Listen to this song,” he told us. “It’s the coolest.” Robbie was something of an authority on such things, and so I listened. Intently. Sitting stone upright on Dave’s bed. And Robbie was right. It was most definitely the coolest. This wicked keyboard sound introduced a simple, shuffling drumline.

  • Calendar (1993)

    Calendar (1993)

    Made for German television and with a budget of only $100,000, Calendar is one of the most compelling and stylistically inventive films I’ve seen this year.

  • Grace, Too

    Grace, Too

    It’s something about that bass line and the way that Gord Downie unleashes the line, “Armed with will and determination / And grace, too,” that rips me up.

  • The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

    The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

    There’s a scene in The Sweet Hereafter in which Mitchell Stephens — a big city ambulance chaser played to perfection by Ian Holm — sits in a cramped airplane seat, telling the passenger beside him a story from when his daughter, Chloe, was a child.