Russell Crowe gives a nice try but gets no cigar in this maudlin rehash of a horrendous moment in history. Russell Crowe comes out swinging with his narrative fiction feature directorial debut but fouls out as this war story drops off the deep end into the irretrievably maudlin. Screenwriters Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios are
The Bells was a band known for signature vocal harmonies and the hit songs “White Dove” and “Stay Awhile”. In 1965 South African sisters Jackie and Anne Ralph were performing with their trio in small town Quebec when they first laid eyes on Cliff Edwards and his band. The electricity was palpable. The girl’s manager
Ex Machina is a film for our times. It’s a cautionary tale about the potential future trajectory of artificial intelligence and our fear of it. Computers and robots are facts of life today, but their level of sophistication in 2015 may seem awfully primitive in the future as AI gains more and more footholds. It
Ripped from the headlines, it is not as good as “Capote,” but close enough. Debut feature director Rupert Goold pulled one out of the hat with this amazingly entertaining dual of wits, and lies, between two men who are world class in the art of deception. At the heart of the film is the weakness
This pot-boiler takes the viewer by surprise after a slow start, but the start is too long and the surprise too short. In the midst of a jocular college reunion, the young, beautiful and mysterious guest Elly (Taraneh Alidousti) disappears without a trace. In the wake of her disappearance, her true story emerges to the
Writer director Andrew Cividino’s coming-of-age film Sleeping Giant has just been announced as Canada’s first feature film entry in competition at the Cannes Film Festival next month. It is part of Semaine de la Critique, the Directors’ Fortnight, competing for the prestigious Camera D’Or award. Sleeping Giant, made for just $60,000 was inspired by Cividino’s’
A B-movie that tried to be something better but stayed a B-movie. Writer/director Alex Garland’s sci-fi flick is the latest in a long line of slipshod Hollywood treatments of artificial intelligence. This tale starts with a pseudo “imitation game” in which Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) has been chosen to determine which is the real person and
Although it is very light on action and violence, A Most Violent Year features powerful performances in a slow-burning drama about a good man trying to make an honest living while everyone around him seems to be happy to cut corners anyway they can. Written and directed by J. C. Chandor (Margin Call and All
The werewolves you can accept, the humans you can tolerate, but the Christians? Directed and written by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, “Shadows” is a marvelous mash-up of every vampire trope invented in the last century with a few new ones thrown in. The four flat mates are the best of friends, and have been
A real life interpretation of the “Godfather” series that strips away the glamour and leaves only despair. Nominated for the Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Film Festival, writer/director Francesco Munzi’s familial crime drama looks deep into the heart of darkness. Based on the novel by Gioacchino Criaco with a screenplay co-written by