Writer’s Note: This review first appeared during FIN, the Halifax film festival in September 2018. It is being re-run to coincide with Mouthpiece’s theatrical run. Elegant director Patricia Rozema has delivered another unique, human portrait with Mouthpiece. The film portrays Cassandra as two women whose competing voices pull her in two different directions as she…

High Life is the kind of concept-driven arts piece film that will cater to the film snobs and existentialists in all of us. It’s a dreary. visually striking film that meanders along at a snail’s pace, and squanders a plot that could have been interesting. In a future world where felons are sent to space…

Documentarian John Chester’s incredible documentary about his move with his wife Molly to develop a sustainable farm is truly mystical. They work to build a better life together for themselves and their animals on 200 acres outside L.A., which in itself presents problems. Winner of the audience award at both the AFI and Palm Springs…

This debut film from hilarious actress Olivia Wilde is the most genuine, quick-witted and wickedly hilarious movie of the year. It’s quite literally the funniest movie since Superbad, and is going to be a comedy classic. Co-leads Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are so dynamic — so incredibly talented — that each second their on-screen…

There’s something about love on-screen that hits the idealist, hopeless romantic in me. It’s not hard to please me in this genre, and yet, this latest entry in the young-adult romance canon just scratches the surface of what it could have been. The Sun Is Also A Star is a romance based on a best-selling…

At first glance, Long Shot seems to be another in a long line of moderately humorous films about a man-child getting the girl. And partially, it is. It both contains the heartfelt emotions of a conventional romantic comedy and the adult one-liners and cultural crassness of Seth Rogen one-liners. Yet, Long Shot manages to be…

The Intruder is slow-burning, summer movie proof that one single performance can lift an entire film up. When a young married couple buy a remote, countryside mansion on several acres from a single widower, they get more than they bargained for when he has trouble letting go. The Intruder has been done a dozen times,…

The truth is, I’d watch Diane Keaton in basically anything. So it was no surprise to me that her latest effort was immediately on my radar. Poms is the film equivalent of a bowl of ice cream. There are very few flavours people will pass up, and Poms goes down easy and every provides a…

The marriage of Canadian songbirds Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk is explored in excruciating detail in this documentary, and there’s been no more affecting film so far this year. Maida, of Our Lady Peace, and Kreviazuk got married in 1999 and have three sons. They’ve been candid about their relationship struggles before, but in I’m…

If a screenwriting pair is going to re-imagine a well-regarded cult comedy, the least they could do is create something better than this gender-swapped remake. The Hustle takes two actresses at the top of their game and gives them a weak, limp script to work with. While sporadically gut-busting, this Dirty Rotten Scoundrels retread ultimately…