-
China behind the headlines: Lou Ye and the vitality of Chinese independent cinema
Canadians are daily inundated with news reports concerning the “rise of China,” as visions of that country’s latest economic mega-project flood our television screens. Universities and governments have flocked to China, both literally and figuratively, producing mountains of discourse concerning the new “global superpower” and how Canada should interact with it. Yet how can an…
-
Borderless Cinema: Edward Yang’s YiYi
Inaugurating “Borderless Cinema,” our new series profiling lesser-known gems of world cinema, this essay reviews “YiYi”, written and directed by Edward Yang. Starring Nien-Jen Wu, Elaine Jin, and Issei Ogata. Running time 173 minutes. Available on DVD via Criterion Collection. Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (A One and a Two) is the final work of one…
-
Hope at life’s end: Michael Haneke’s Amour
Reviewed in this Essay: Amour. Written and Directed by Michael Haneke. Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuele Riva, and Isabelle Huppert. Running time: 127 minutes. Mainstream cinema often treats death with cosmic reverence or ignores it altogether, but Michael Haneke’s Amour forces its viewers to confront mortality, as intimately and physically as possible. The film is nominated for five Academy…
-
Slavery, cinema, and sensitivity: Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained
Reviewed in this essay: Django Unchained. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Running time 165 minutes. Now playing in Toronto theaters. In recent weeks, moviegoers have been treated to two radically different films about American slavery, each of them trying to unpack the burden of that violent…
-
Forgoing truth for drama: Kathryn Bigelow’s not-so-true story Zero Dark Thirty
Reviewed in this essay: Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, and Kyle Chandler. Running Time: 157 minutes. Opening in Toronto Jan. 11. Kathryn Bigelow’s Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) succeeded as a straightforward study of military bomb disarmers. Although the film was set during the…
-
Man-boy fury: A review of Tim and Eric’s The Comedy
Reviewed in this essay: The Comedy, written by Rick Alverson, Robert Donne, and Colm O’leary. Directed by Rick Alverson. Starring Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and James Murphy. Running Time: 94 minutes. Available for Download on Itunes immediately. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are the two most interesting comedians working in America today. Best known for their sketch…
-
Confoundingly Wonderful: Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths”
Reviewed in this essay: Seven Psychopaths, written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson. Running time: 110 minutes. The trailers for Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s third film, Seven Psychopaths, are wonderfully misleading: they present the film as a quirky gangster comedy about a dog kidnapping gone wrong. They are…
-
Visions of Conservative Triumph: Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises
Reviewed in this essay: The Dark Knight Rises, directed by Christopher Nolan. Running Time: 164 minutes. With a quarter of a billion dollar budget, nearly three hours of screen time, and creative carte blanche, one could not but hope for a masterpiece from Christopher Nolan’s long awaited The Dark Knight Rises. One is sad to…
-
TRB Podcast: John Fraser and The Secret of the Crown on the Eh List
[audio:fraser.mp3] On Thursday, April 26th noted Canadian journalist, author, and Master of Massey College John Fraser talked about his new book The Secret of the Crown: Canada’s Affair with Royalty at the Barbara Frum branch of the Toronto Public Library. The talk was part of the TPL’s Eh List series of speaking events, at which…
-
Our Neoliberal Inheritance: Visions of Crisis in Detropia
Reviewed in this essay: Detropia, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Running Time: 94 minutes. Screened at Toronto Hot Docs Film Festival. Toronto general release in September. 91 minutes. All non-fiction seeks to use a close engagement with a specific subject as a lens to tell a story about larger, abstract issues. Filmmakers have no choice:…
-
From Monarchist Nostalgia to Postcolonial Reality: Reading John Fraser’s The Secret of the Crown
Reviewed in this essay: John Fraser’s The Secret of the Crown (Anansi, 2012) Whatever else one can say about John Fraser’s newest book, it is certainly an invaluable opportunity to learn about a certain form of Canadian monarchism that has, it seems, gained a new lease on life. Fraser argues that with the spectacular popularity of…
-
A World Sans Salvation: Oren Moverman’s Rampart
Reviewed in this essay: Rampart, directed by Oren Moverman, written by Moverman and James Ellroy. Starring Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buschemi, and Ned Beatty. Running Time: 108 minutes. Now playing at the Carleton Cinema. There are two ways to think about director Oren Moverman’s film Rampart: it is…