Stowaway suffers from a contrived script and poor character-building, but works considerably better when maximizing its budget in service of action spectacle. A three-person mission to Mars, one in which every detail down to the grammage of coffee mugs has been accounted for, discovers…
Together Together is a chemistry-rich, mature, and restrained effort of non-rom comedy. It’s never a promising sign when a film’s opening credits mimic a certain Woody Allen style, white Windsor font on a black background, a half-familiar jazz tune opening things up. But writer/director…
Bloodthirsty is bland amalgam of werewolf flick signifiers and horror film clichés that do little to establish any unique voice. Reviewing Eight for Silver at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, we pondered: “Why is it so hard to make a good werewolf movie?” Fast…
Hope is an emotionally brutal, bruising film about the tricky territory that comes between love and loss. Hope is the kind of film that, on paper at least, sounds like made-for-TV melodrama, its material ripe for big emotions and rampant sentimentality; and in the…
Boys from County Hell boasts a strong premise, but never entirely commits to either its horror or comedy elements. There’s a cairn out in a clearing in Six Mile Hill, and Eugene Moffat (Jack Rowan) and William Bogue (Fra Fee) take tourists out to…
Hopinka’s feature debut is a poetic and evocative film, one that seeks to quantify and articulate the symbiosis of humanity and earth. A prolific maker of short films and video installation works, Sky Hopinka’s maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore is his first…
Red Moon Tide offers impressive sonic and visual craft, but is somewhat undermined by its weaker narrative and character elements. An elegiac stillness envelops the population of a coastal town, the death of one of their own evoking a history where the laden myths…
Ride or Die is overlong, fails to believably sell its central relationship, and ill-advisedly resolves with a bit male gaze exploitation. Whatever the many other faults of Ryuichi Hiroki’s latest feature Ride or Die, it certainly can’t be accused of not practicing truth in…
Monday is a derivative, dull, and altogether flat effort that captures none of the carefree spirit it partially peddles. With an overly familiar and intentionally simple plot, one that, on its face, resembles Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, and boasting camerawork that lightly mimics the images…
For the Sake of Vicious doesn’t reinvent anything, but is a lean, nasty thriller that doubles as a remarkable calling card for the directing duo. Writer-directors Gabriel Carrer and Reese Evensehen are no strangers to the DIY Canadian horror scene, each having delivered a…
