Images in vague

2009/06/30

Cinematheque’s retro sees the French New Wave as a history in progress

Terms of Endowment

2009/06/30

There’s more to Hung than meets the eye

My Sister’s Keeper

2009/06/26

Typically, director/co-writer Nick Cassavetes chronicles the devastation of childhood illness — and the ways that it bends a family close to breaking — with an acute sense of emotional manipulation.

The Girlfriend Experience

2009/06/25

Sasha Grey is hardly the first porn star to develop a profile in more legit areas of showbiz. But rather than cultivate it via Howard Stern Show appearances and cameos in gross-out comedies, she prefers a more artistically adventurous approach. Grey’s collaboration with Steven Soderbergh in The Girlfriend Experience is thus not so surprising given that she’s enough of a film freak to have considered using Anna Karina as her nom de porn.

The revolution will be no longer be televised

2009/06/24

Cable news has always excused its blather as an unavoidable side effect of a 24-hour news cycle. But when Tehran erupted into rebellion, the mainstream media were apparently weekending in the Hamptons. As mass demonstrations wracked Iran, cable news fixated on a ginned-up David Letterman and Sarah Palin feud.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009/06/24

No Michael Bay movie is without its share of WTF moments, be it the repeated desecration of human remains in Bad Boys II or a solid seven-tenths of Armageddon. Since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen boasts a much-expanded budget and running time than his first tribute to Hasbro’s shape-shifting toys, us mouth-breathing Bay loyalists rightly expect to come away from this with our brains screaming. But Bay’s latest summer monstrosity is a giant-robot-sized drag.

The T.O. Do List: June 22 2009

2009/06/22

Today: like you, we're beyond hungover after a weekend of North by Northeasting, Edgefesting and MMVAing. So, to help cleanse your soul, why not take in some introspective, emotionally fulfilling indie films at the ReelHeart Film Festival? Check out our festival preview.

Lady Terminator (a.k.a. Nasty Hunter)

2009/06/19

Turkish Star Wars has nothing on Lady Terminator, a brilliantly demented Indonesian Xerox of James Cameron’s canonical tech-noir that substitutes Jakarta for Los Angeles, a twittery pop tartlet for Sarah Connor and a possessed American grad student for Arnold.

Year One

2009/06/19

It’s doubtful that Harold Ramis and company were trying to conjure the ghost of Eddie Cantor with Year One, mostly because their target audience of mall kids doesn’t know who that is. But the film, which stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as outcast cavemen anachronistically shticking their way through the early chapters of the Bible, recalls nothing so much as the great vaudevillian’s Roman Scandals — right down to the aggressively un-PC bent of the humor.

Broken funny bone

2009/06/17

Crawling with dead/dying patients, worried/grieving relatives and physically/emotionally exhausted employees, hospitals aren’t exactly a barrel of monkeys.

Victoria Day

2009/06/17

As a sensitively rendered study of teenage wildlife, Victoria Day is not exactly novel. Nor could it be, considering the amount of time and money that filmmakers spend exploring the tumultuous lives of adolescents, especially the ones who hook up with vampires.

Imagine That

2009/06/12

There’s no easy way to get around it: Imagine That is a film about child abuse. Specifically, it's the unfunny exploit-your-child’s-telekinetic-powers kind of abuse, which — despite the film’s frothy Beatles soundtrack and eventual family-values messaging — leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Films in Brief

2009/06/11

EYE WEEKLY's Adam Nayman selects 10 must-see selections at this year's Worldwide Short Film Festival

An animated relationship

2009/06/10

In his Worldwide Short Film Festival entry, The Spine, Chris Landreth distills the complexity of a dysfunctional relationship into 10 colourful minutes

God Hates Fangs

2009/06/10

Vampires have really been sinking their teeth into pop culture lately. The Twilight series lords over bookstores and multiplexes, talk abounds of a new Buffy flick, and this fall Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson is launching The Vampire Diaries, a teen drama about a girl torn between two sorta dead brothers. But first the summer TV season is being rescued from the Speidi-encrusted dregs of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! by the return of Alan Ball’s sex-crazed, Southern Gothic horror-soap True Blood.

Away We Go

2009/06/10

Even the least discerning and most pliant indie hipsters may have cringed at the poster for Away We Go. That cutesy, post-Juno graphic-design cocktail of photo, illustration and hand-drawn type was more than enough to indicate the movie’s target demographic even if star John Krasinski wasn’t pictured looking like a guy who sells merch at a Fleet Foxes show.

Land of the Lost

2009/06/05

Dispensing fears of all-out suckage early on via the introduction of an inscrutably hilarious running gag based around the soundtrack for A Chorus Line and peaking with a scene in which its Sid-and-Marty-Kroft-inspired time-travelling-heroes enter the Altered State of Drugachusetts, Land of the Lost has to be counted as a mildly pleasant surprise. It’s the exception that proves the rule about expensive special-effects comedies.

Jon & Kate plus hate

2009/06/03

The ugliness is never-ending when Big Brother is always watching

Waterlife

2009/06/03

Kevin McMahon's eco-doc streses the importance of our Great Lakes without resorting to the usual scare tactics

Up

2009/05/29

Pixar’s first full-fledged 3D venture boasts almost none of the usual stereoscopic gimmickry that abounds in movies like Monsters Vs. Aliens — just a careful awareness of depth, texture and detail.

Pete Docter

2009/05/27

Ever since Toy Story debuted in 1995, Pixar has had one incredible run of successful movies in Hollywood. Pete Docter has been with the company from the beginning, most notably co-writing the Toy Story movies and directing Up — the tale of a curmudgeonly old man, an excitable a young boy and a flying house that just opened the Cannes Film Festival and hits theatres this Friday. The director recently spoke with EYE WEEKLY by phone to discuss Up and Pixar’s unique creative environment.

Random acts of senseless comedy

2009/05/27

Hotbox takes short absurd sketches from inbox to idiot box

Another one in the Cannes

2009/05/27

A smiling Austrian misanthrope, an inventive Canadian and a not-bad Tarantino flick are among the highlights at this year's festival

Power to the pupil

2009/05/26

The Student Film Showcase is an annual programme of shorts produced in Canadian colleges and universities, some of which have gone on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. The 2009 edition will be held tomorrow (May 27) at AMC Yonge-Dundas; here's a look at some of the highlights.

Cannes Report #8: c'est tout, folks

2009/05/25

Our man in Cannes is in synaptic shock and down one kidney after watching 44 films in 10 days. Fortunately, the festival held its closing awards ceremony last night to remind him of the week that was. Here are les winners, plus a sneak peak at Heath Ledger's final onscreen bow in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassu.