As the sad box-office numbers for Michael Moore’s latest political documentary come in, it saddens me. Maybe it’s Trump fatigue — a depressed population doing their best to forget their mistake — but if there’s any time to listen up when Moore discusses America’s pompous leader, it’s now. Americans elected him, and Michael Moore is…

With the vast number of features, documentaries, and shorts on display this year, I couldn’t see everything. Trust me, I tried. But contained here are the short films I did catch from some of the best up-and-coming filmmakers around.   Same Nightmare Directed By: Spencer MacKay Go to any film premiere, check out any of…

If you’d have told me during FIN announcements in August that one of my favourite festival films would be a schlock horror film with Nicolas Cage, I’d have cringed. But here we are, a day removed, and Mandy stands as a visual stunning, horrifically entertaining midnight movie, and one of Cage’s best performances in a…

Through Black Spruce presents the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous in a calculated, dramatic fashion. A woman goes on a journey to find her lookalike sister, who disappeared without a trace in Toronto. At the same time, her uncle deals with the repercussions of his missing niece and her boyfriend, a drug dealer whose…

This modern noir story of an intelligent, aimless 30-something who goes on the hunt to locate a missing woman he met by chance is flush with character. The only problem is the film spends more time trying to look breezy and self-assured that it forgets to actually have crucial elements of a film contained inside…

Legal dramas rise and fall on their ability to capture the hearts of the audience. The Children Act — a film about a judge who orders a blood transfusion for a 17-year-old boy whose religious forbids it — is part family drama and part about morality. In the face of great struggles, a boy just…

The reason films of old are so revered is because you could feel the pain, tension and romance in each and every frame. In black-and-white, without bells and whistles, performances and chemistry had to dance and shine instead, forcing the viewer to get sucked into the story. It’s been a lot of years, and too…

When you make a documentary about the volatile kitchen environment, sexism in the workplace and the difficulties woman face fitting in, there’s no shortage of raw content. And yet, the film felt like an ideal idea completely undercooked, with little conflict, tension or even inspiration within the run-time. Only half of the seven highly successful…

Rupert Everett’s career has been a series of unfortunate — and undeserved — events. When the actor, born and bred for leading man stardom, came out as gay, suddenly the roles dried up and Everett became but a footnote in the Hollywood lexicon. He has acted in his time since his 90’s heyday, but in…