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‘Youngblood’ Is a Sincere, if Familiar, Hockey Drama | Northern Reel
Sports are one of the prime frameworks upon which to build a cinematic story. Sports, at their core, are pure expressions of the human struggle to improve oneself and overcome struggles born from both within and without. They’re simple to understand but complicated to master, but just as often, the true answer is for a
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‘Montreal, My Beautiful’ Is a Beautiful Film About Learning to Live Life Unencumbered | Northern Reel
It starts with a language class. Journeys of self-discovery often start with small steps. In the case of Feng Xia (Joan Chen), it begins when her daughter Joy (Pei Yao Xu), about to graduate high school and leave the nest, points out that she won’t be around to translate forever. Feng Xia has been a
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‘Hair of the Bear’ Plays Cat and Mouse in a Manitoba Winter | Northern Reel
Canada is a land of extremes. Our whole nation offers rugged outdoor adventure, but there are many places where merely existing can be a struggle against nature. Eastern Manitoba, in the dead of winter, is one of those places. A stark, beautiful, frozen landscape where knowing how to work with the elements is mandatory just to sustain yourself.
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‘Sweetness’ Sings a Song of Obsession | Northern Reel
Each of us only gets to be a teenager once. Our bodies coursing with hormones and our minds rapidly filling with new information, this is a time that can be chaotic emotionally as we navigate the world while developing into the people we’re going to be. This chaos, which is formative, is obviously difficult to
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‘In Cold Light’ Is an Excellently Performed, Average Film | Northern Reel
In Cold Light’s best scene is a confrontation between Maika Monroe’s Ava and her father, Troy Kotsur’s Will. She, fresh out of prison and on the run from a crooked cop chasing her for a crime she didn’t commit, and he, bitter and resentful at his family being torn asunder, have the conversation that they
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‘La Grazia’ Highlights Two Masters | Awesome Friday!
How do we measure our legacy? This is the question at the heart of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, the story of an Italian President facing down his last six months in office, and pondering what his legacy might be. Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo) is a man of great repute. A steady, even-tempered president
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‘This Too Shall Pass’ Takes a Nostalgic, Heartfelt Journey to Ottawa | Northern Reel
A staple of filmmaking, the coming-of-age story works because, regardless of circumstances, we can all relate to the story being told. Whether we’re young and needing affirmation, or old and needing reminding, a story of a young person going on a quest and finding themselves in the process is one we can all see ourselves in. The execution is tricky; it’s easy to fall too far into familiar cliches without bringing anything new, but when one of these stories lands, it can be among the most satisfying. This Too Shall Pass narrowly avoids this trap by engaging with it directly.…
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‘Whistle’ is a Call to Horror Fans but Perhaps No One Else | Movies We Texted About
There are many subgenres of horror, but one of the most reliable is the “kids eff around and find out”. It’s a reliable setup that doesn’t require much work from filmmakers or the audience to make for a good time at the movies, even if the film we’re talking about isn’t that good to begin with. Whistle is the latest release in this subgroup.
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In the Heat of the Night | The LAMBCast
The MOTM for February was chosen from the Pool of Academy Award Winning films. Best Picture was the Genre for this month and Dave Anderson of the “Free Kittens Movie Guide” suggested this detective thriller as the choice for our discussion. Of course the movie is more than just a procedural, as it tackles racism
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‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ is One of the Funniest and Most Heartfelt Films of the Year | Northern Reel
Comedy is hard, and not all comedy is for everyone. Everyone has their own sensibilities, and these don’t always jibe with the sensibilities of those writing and delivering the jokes. A film like this one, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, attempts to thread the needle between being incredibly specific and incredibly broad, targeting
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‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Runs Loops Around the AI Apocalypse | Exclaim!
The time loop movie has become a fixture of the science fiction genre, to the point where it feels like most avenues that can be explored through this device already been. Director Gore Verbinski and screenwriter Matthew Robinson challenge this premise with their latest film, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
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“Cold Storage” Makes for a Decent Winter Off-Season Watch | ForReel
Cold Storage is very much in this third category. An science fiction action comedy in which a deadly alien fungus rages out of control in a self storage facility where an unsuspecting Georgina Campbell and Joe Keery work. The storage facility was previously a government base, and Liam Neeson shows up as the government agent tasked with containing the situation because he’s the one who put the fungus there in cold storage in the first place.
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Islands: Sam Riley Shines in this Sun-Drenched Mystery | That Shelf
“I’m not running away. I like it here.” This is Tom, a tennis pro living on a sweltering resort island, caught walking a knife-edge between denial and self-reflection. It’s never made clear exactly what Tom (Sam Riley) is running from in director Jan-Ole Gerster’s newest film, Islands, but that is by design. We don’t need to know what he is specifically avoiding because he is quite clearly running from everything.
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The Hilarious, Heartfelt ‘Wonder Man’ Is Something Entirely New for Marvel |Exclaim!
Wonder Man is unlike anything that we have seen in the MCU to date. A meta story about heroes, Hollywood, self-expression and finding your truth, that is, in a word, excellent.
I am a Rotten Tomatoes-approved, freelance film & television critic and podcast host from Vancouver, Canada! I am a co-founder of the Cascadia Film & Television Critics Association and a voting member of the International Film Society Critics, Pandora International Critics, and the Online Film & Television Association.
I maintain bylines at Exclaim!, Awesome Friday!, That Shelf, ForReel, Movies We Texted About, KeithLovesMovies, and I can be heard regularly on the Contra Zoom Podcast and The LAMBCast.
