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VIFF 2020 Interview: Clark Backo on her starring role in “Happy Place” | Awesome Friday!
Clark Backo is a star on the rise. Known for her roles in Letterkennyand Supernatural, she makes the jump to lead actor in Happy Place, the new adaption of Pamela Sinha’s play. I spoke with Clark on Zoom about her experiences making Happy Place. Full Interview at Awesome Friday: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/09/viff-interview-clark-backo-on-starring-role-in-happy-place/
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VIFF 2020 Interview: Director Helen Shaver on her film “Happy Place” | Awesome Friday!
Helen Shaver is kind of a big deal. This year alone, she has directed episodes of Westworld, Snowpiercer, and Lovecraft Country. She is a veteran of prestige TV and directed a made-for-TV movie in 1999 that won an Emmy. Her new film Happy Place, streaming as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, is her first feature film. I was able to sit down with her on Zoom to speak about Happy Place, what it’s like working with Canadian legends, and the universality of the experience of trauma and mental health issues. Spoiler alert: she was a delight to talk to. Full Interview at Awesome Friday:…
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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 Walsh, Sheila McCarthy, and Pamela Sinha (who also wrote the screenplay) on board in supporting roles. Each of them brings something extra to the role, with Walsh as the acerbic Mildred, McCarthy as a hyper-competitive Joyce, and Sinha as Rosemary, a woman so terrified of…
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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 Matrix to one another and the assistant coach of the team trying way too hard to sell his idea of running legendary NBA Coach Phil Jackson’s triangle offence. Each of these stories is both mundane and completely absurd. You may wonder how, but if you…
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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 journey to get there is a little rough around the edges. That’s not to say there aren’t bright spots. Adam Beach shines as Lisa’s uncle, a survivor of the residential schools and staunch advocate for First Nations rights. The film itself is also an unabashedly…
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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 pandemic, VIFF 2020 is being conducted as an online-primary festival. While some movies and events will take place in select theaters with all of safety precautions necessary in place, the majority of the festival’s lineup will be available to stream online for BC residents via…
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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 via a spectacularly choreographed match against his in-character nemesis, RJ City. Seriously, watching Arquette fun into traffic –actual, literal, Tijuana traffic– to get his ass kicked is one of the film’s most ridiculous and balletic sequences. For all his presentation as a goofball, it’s incredibly…
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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 with Moses via Zoom to speak about her movie, the process of getting it made, and about making a movie looking at a darker type of female relationship. Full Interview at Awesome Friday: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/09/fantasia-interview-amelia-moses-on-her-film-bleed-with-me/
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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 former, it mostly sticks to the latter. It might be for you, but it was not for me. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-fried-barry-is-excessive-but-is-it-bold-or-juvenile/
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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 team has captured what a little, dingy Canadian bar feels like. Will this film be for everyone? I don’t quite think so. Plays adapted to the screen like this are an actor’s playground but break the rule of show, don’t tell by design, and while I can’t…
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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 them, whether that is amazing effects, the cast having a great time, or them being perfectly of their place and time, but something causes them to connect with audiences profoundly. Sam Raimi’s trilogy of Evil Dead movies are, all three of them, this type of movie. The Evil…
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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 grew up on a small island– really captures that small island town feel of everyone knowing everyone. Chris Sheffield is doing good work here as Harry, the black sheep estranged from his family and most of the island. But, once things start going south, he…
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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/
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.
