Films That Matter
Star Pick with Kurt Angle
It was an absolute pleasure to meet and get a quick interview with the great Kurt Angle this past summer in Ottawa. First making a name for himself on the amateur wrestling circuit, it all culminated with a gold medal win (with a broken neck, no less) at the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Georgia. The ultimate achievement for most amateur athletes, this was not the end for Angle, but only the beginning. Just a mere two years later, he had signed on to the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE or World Wresting Entertainment), a leap that would soon find him taking professional wrestling by storm. Making his television debut in November of 1999, he was a natural, not only at the wrestling, but also on the mike.
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Three’s Company
10 Cloverfield LaneMarch 18, 201610 Cloverfield Lane is an unusual quasi-sequel to the 2008 handheld found-footage Godzilla-like monster movie Cloverfield. I watched the original in theatres back when I was at University, and it struck me as a rather exciting, large scaled horror movie. The gargantuan scope of that picture is interestingly scaled back to the complete opposite in this loose spin-off.
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Star Pick with Stephen Harper
The Enigma that is Man and MachineThe Imitation GameMarch 15, 2016One of the more critically acclaimed films to come out of 2014 was the World War 2 drama The Imitation Game, which follows Alan Turing, a mathematical prodigy who builds a machine that can break the Enigma – a German device that decodes their secret military messages. Someone who wholeheartedly agreed with the praise this movie received is former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – who proclaimed that it was easily his favourite film of 2014.
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A Gringo Walks Into a Cantina…
Ride the Pink HorseMarch 11, 2016His name, Lucky Gagin . . . or Robert Montgomery for those of you who are looking for the actor portraying this anti-hero. Montgomery, the iconic star, also tried his hand at directing (for the second time), with this rather unorthodox film-noir, Ride the Pink Horse. Our lead walks off a bus and into the city of San Pablo, a Mexican border town that is getting ready to host an annual fiesta.
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Do Look Now
Don't Look NowMarch 8, 2016The horror genre has many incarnations. The two that seem to be most popular as of this point are the slasher flick (i.e. Saw) or the based-on-true-events-style ghost story – à la Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring and so on. From time to time we may see a more traditional, even Victorian-style ghost story such as Crimson Peak or The Woman in Black, but the film I am reviewing today is much harder to pigeonhole, as it is part searing psychological drama, which is then mixed with Gothic horror and a touch of thriller. It is Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 slow-burner of a picture, Don’t Look Now.
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A Journey of Discovery
IdaMarch 6, 2016The Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film from 2015 transports us back to 1960's Poland, where a young nun named Ida (also the name of the movie) will soon be taking her vows. Prior to doing so, the inexperienced girl takes a trip to visit the only family she has left living, an aunt named Wanda that she has never met.
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You’ll Fall for Niagara
NiagaraMarch 4, 2016It is rather unusual to see a film-noir made in glorious Technicolor – though this is exactly what the 1953 crime thriller Niagara is. Director Henry Hathaway swaps the moody shades of black and white for strikingly vivid colours as we watch two couples cross paths in stunning 1950's Niagara Falls, Ontario (the film was almost completely shot on location).
