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On Star Wars Then & Now | Awesome Friday!
[…] Star Wars was the culmination of George Lucas’ influences but the films that influenced the people making Star Wars movies today are Star Wars. Whether this is the fault of the filmmakers themselves or the new corporate ownership whose primary business is merchandise, I don’t know. Judging by the reshoots and edits you can plainly see in Rogue Oneespecially […]
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The Best of the Rest of the Films of 2016 | Awesome Friday!
2016 was a good year for film; anyone who tells you differently didn’t see many movies. I’ve already posted my best films of 2016, but plenty more films didn’t make my best-of list that you should make the time to see. So then, let’s look at the not-quite best of 2016, presented here in alphabetical order. […]
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The Best Films of 2016 | Awesome Friday!
…it has been an excellent year for cinema. So much so that when it came time to figure out my top ten films of the year, I couldn’t get the list lower than 12 (and I narrowed it down from nearly twice that number). So, in an effort to get going again, let’s close out […]
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The Best of the Rest of the Films of 2015 | Awesome Friday!
2015 was a good year! I already told you my ten favourite films from 2015, but those ten were hard to choose. My first pass over the list of movies I saw resulted in 25 candidates for the top ten, 15 of which were ultimately cut. So rather than make a worst-of list as I […]
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The Best Films of 2015 | Awesome Friday!
Films that are fantastic but didn’t quite make the list include Trainwreck, Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Brooklyn, It Follows, The Martian, The Hateful Eight and (again) so many others. Ultimately, it was tough to narrow it down to just ten films because while it was easy […]
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The Best Films of 2014 | Awesome Friday!
All in all, I saw over 75 movies released in 2014. Not a huge percentage when you think about it but certainly more than the average person. So with all that in mind here are my favourite dozen movies from 2014. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2014/12/matts-2014-the-best-dozen/
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VIFF 2014: The Face of an Angel | Awesome Friday!
A few years ago, a young British woman was murdered in Sienna, Italy. The case gained worldwide attention as the girls’ American roommate and friend were accused, tried, and convicted of the crime and then later acquitted on appeal. The Face of an Angel is a fictionalization of this case. Sort of. Rather than going for […]
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VIFF 2014: Foxcatcher | Awesome Friday!
It’s when he doesn’t speak that is most effective, though, in the pauses between lines or the scenes where he barely speaks at all, Carell brings something else to the character, and we’re able to see from his first scene that there’s something not quite right there, something broken, angry, and malevolent. The reasons for […]
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VIFF 2014: Black Fly | Awesome Friday!
The film does have some issues for me, the main one being a few things were pretty predictable, but these are very much overshadowed by the performances, particularly that of Matthew MacCaull as Noel. He disappears into the character and is genuinely menacing, especially in scenes where he’s just sharing a beer with someone asking […]
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VIFF 2014: Pulp: a Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets | Awesome Friday!
Pulp: a Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets is an easy film to recommend. If you’re a fan of the band, then you should definitely want to check out the story of the band’s final concert –played in their hometown of Sheffield– and if you’re not a fan of the band, then you should check out […]
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VIFF 2014: Miss and the Doctors | Awesome Friday!
As the story starts, two brothers, both doctors, run a practice together in Paris. They’re both so devoted to their work that they’ve both remained bachelors. Enter Judith, a beautiful young mother they meet due to her daughter needing a house call, and they both fall in love. Each of the brothers is given enough […]
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VIFF 2014: Maps to the Stars | Awesome Friday!
Strangely, it feels like there could have been a legitimately great film here. If it has just been the story of Havana Segrand going insane working on a remake of her mother’s film, or if it has just been the story of a young girl with a troubled past trying to reconnect with her estranged […]
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VIFF 2014: 1987 | Awesome Friday!
It’s a funny movie, but as with many comedies, the laughs slow down considerably when the third act rolls around and needs to teach us something. That’s not a bad thing per se, but there’s not that much it’s going to teach you if you’ve seen other teen comedies. The nice thing is that there […]
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VIFF 2014: Mr Turner | Awesome Friday!
I’ve said before that one of the things I love about movies is those few occasions when I get to witness one of the great performances of our time, when an actor disappears into a role completely, and I can forget even the most familiar of faces as belonging to an actor I’ve seen before […]
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The Best Films of 2013 | Awesome Friday!
2013 was a good year for the movies. It had its ups and downs, but in the end there was a pretty good crop of films and more than a few great ones. I’ve already revisited the films I was most looking forward to, and now it is time to look at the films I liked […]
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.
