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VIFF 2020: ‘Happy Place’ Is a Powerful Story About Living With Trauma | Awesome Friday!
Backo is captivating here, and she works through Samira’s pain by gradually connecting with her fellow patients at the clinic. Her performance runs the gamut of human emotion and requires her to go to some very vulnerable places, and she does so with aplomb. The rest of the ensemble is good, with Canadian icons Mary […]
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VIFF 2020: ‘Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game’ is a slice of nostalgia | Awesome Friday!
True to the film’s name, we never actually see the basketball game. It instead focuses on the rest of the late 1990s night in the school. It follows a theatre group grappling with their staging of King Lear being shut down, as well as the players on the team struggling to explain the existentialism of The […]
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VIFF 2020: ‘Monkey Beach’ offers gorgeous looks at both scenery and culture | Awesome Friday!
[…] the film struggles because the performances and pacing are uneven in the first two acts. I can’t speak to why exactly, but it feels rushed. Then, in the third act, in which the main character, Lisa, finally accepts who she is and what she needs to do, the film really picks up, but the […]
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VIFF 2020: Most Anticipated Movies | ForReel
At last, we have once again arrived at VIFF. This will be my third year covering the Vancouver International Film Festival, and even though attending this year will be very different from how I’ve experienced VIFF before, there is still a lot I’m excited share about the festival. Because of the state of the global […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘You Cannot Kill David Arquette’ is a sweet, silly, and entertaining documentary | Awesome Friday!
Each step in his journey is eye-opening and engaging, from the backyard wrestling show he takes part in (and gets decimated) to the Mexican street wrestling he takes part in to prove he has what it takes to earn his own Lucha libre mask to his final redemption has he joins the independent wrestling circuit […]
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Interview: Amelia Moses on her film “Bleed With Me” | Awesome Friday!
Bleed With Me is the first feature from Canadian director Amelia Moses. This slow-burn psychological horror film is rife with tension and atmosphere. As I said in my review earlier this week, this film is the type that should land Moses firmly on your radar for whatever she does next. I had the opportunity to sit down […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘Patrick’ is a sweet story of coming into one’s own | Awesome Friday!
Patrick is a simple story about a man coming to grips with his new normal and whether he even wants it to be his new normal. It is sweet and poignant, with a fantastic central performance and a hilarious fight scene. Naked, of course. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/09/fantasia-review-patrick-is-a-sweet-story-of-coming-into-ones-own/
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Fantasia 2020: ‘Fried Barry’ is excessive, but is it bold or juvenile? | Awesome Friday!
For all its excess, there are a few bright spots, including a mental health facility breakout scene that is both ridiculous and exciting, but even they succumb at least somewhat to the excess of it all. Fried Barry tries to walk the line between bold and juvenile, and while it occasionally succeeds at being on the […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘The Oak Room’ weaves stories within stories to great effect | Awesome Friday!
Each scene is beautifully shot as well. Each shot is captured in a wide aspect ratio that lets you admire details from around the rooms where the scenes occur. I know it sounds weird to call tiny, dingy, northern Canadian bars beautiful, but between the neon Molson signs and cheesy wall decorations, the production design […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘Hail to the Deadites’ is an opportunity missed | Awesome Friday!
Some B movies go nowhere, and others become cult classics. People love this latter category of film. People go out of their way to see them in special screenings and to collect memorabilia. What makes these films resonate is a question worth examining. Not only do they have to have a certain je ne sais quoi about […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘The Block Island Sound’ is suitably creepy | Awesome Friday!
The Block Island Sound is a gorgeously shot horror film. Almost every exterior shot is beautiful and takes full advantage of the location. The score and sound design are also top-notch, with much of the tension being ratcheted up by the auditory experience. It is also well cast and –and I say this as someone who […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘Sleep’ blurs the lines between dreams and reality | Awesome Friday!
A confident first feature from director Michael Venus, the film is anchored by a phenomenal central performance by Gro Swantje Kohlhof as Mona navigates her own trauma, her mother’s, and, in many ways, the trauma of the German people. Schlaf is atmospheric, dark, moody, and unsettling, and one to add to your watch list. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-sleep-blurs-the-lines-between-dreams-and-reality/
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My Three Favourite Christopher Nolan Films | Awesome Friday!
We can still get our dose of Christopher Nolan’s trademark brand of incredible practical action and obsession with time, though. The man has made eleven films to date, and most of them have one or the other or both. So to help get you through, here are my three favourite Christopher Nolan films Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/home-video-matts-three-favourite-christopher-nolan-films/
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Fantasia 2020: ‘Hunted’ covers some well-worn revenge ground | Awesome Friday!
The rape-revenge story is a well-worn film story. The bad man seems nice. The bad man gets the woman alone. The bad man reveals himself as bad man. Violence ensues. Hunted attempts to take a supernatural twist on this story, following our victim deep into a forest that will eventually become her ally. Or so the pitch […]
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Fantasia 2020: ‘A Mermaid in Paris’ is a fun, heartfelt fantasy | Awesome Friday!
A Mermaid in Paris is, shockingly, from this last group. A man, Gaspar (Nicolas Duvauchelle), finds the wounded mermaid Lula (Marilyn Lima) on the banks of the Seine one night and proceeds to nurse her back to health. In the process, they fall in love. It’s not exactly a new setup, but when you filter this […]
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.
