A Movie Fit For A Woman King
The Woman King centers around the victories and losses of the Agojie in 1823 when slave trading had reached its peak in West Africa.
Movies & Films Reviews
Thor: Love and Thunder Gives Us Much To Love
“Thor: God of Thunder” is a very-impressive title, indeed. In Norse mythology this hammer-wielding god was also associated with storms, lightning, strength, fertility and sacred groves.
Discovering Romance While Escaping Danger
The Lost City: great film if you are looking for comic relief. The script is original, and the cinematography of the island is very beautiful
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody is a 134-minute chronicle of the formative years of Queen, and a loosely based bio on the late Freddie Mercury. It is directed by Brian Singer and stars Ramie Malek, Lucy Boynton and Gwilym Lee. First Thoughts … It’s all the greatest hits of Queen … how can you not love this. The …
Indian Horse
Indian Horse will be screened at the Atlin BC Globe Theatre on Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 7 PM as part of the Atlin Arts & Music Festival.
It’s so bad, it’s good
In honour of James Franco’s upcoming film release of The Disaster Artist, I figured I had to take a look back at where this film actually started, and that meant watching The Room (2003). The Disaster Artist is a dramatization of The Room. The Room is written, directed, produced and stars Tommy Wiseau and is …
Quietly Connecting
“For the first – I don’t know how many hundred thousand – years of human life, (when we were out on the Savanna learning about the forest) silence was essential to our survival. So, silence is our natural milieu, and the farther we get away from silence the more we lose our humanity.” — Maggie …
The Hitman’s Bodyguard
The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a buddy cop action movie written by Tom O’Connor and directed by Patrick Hughes (the same inspired genius who brought us Expendables 3 and The Making of Expendables 3.) The 118 minute flick hosts a star studded cast, including Gary Oldman, Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek. First Thoughts: …
Trainwreck
A flawed character struggles to unravel the threads of a pivotal event, though hobbled by some impediment – amnesia, maybe, or being stranded in a foreign country where everyone speaks an unfamiliar language. It’s a dramatic device of my favourite genre, but suspense thrillers are few and far between these days. In The Girl on …
Amazon Princess in the Midst of WWI
DC’s latest and greatest blockbuster Wonder Woman: Rise of the Warrior is directed by Patty Jenkins and written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs. This movie is 141 minutes long and has been full of buzz and controversy. Is this movie brimming with female empowerment that will rattle the course of western society? …
A Rag-Tag Team of Do-Gooders
The Marvel Cinematic Universe strikes again with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, released April 19. Written and Directed by James Gunn with an additional writing credit to Dan Abnett, this sequel runs for an hour and 36 minutes and spans several solar systems as we take a closer look at Marvel’s rag tag team …
Free Fire
Free Fire is a new run at old-school shoot out movies, it is an R rated flick written by Amy Jump and directed by Ben Wheatley. This 90 minute romp has an all-star cast including Enzo Cilenti, Armie Hammer and Cillian Murphy. First Thoughts: Fun, just a heck of a lot of fun. This movie …
The Problem with ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’
The film Hell or High Water is a modern western written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David Mackenzie. This hour and forty two minute flick stars Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster. Initial impressions… wow, just wow. It is rare these days to see a movie that truly gives characters time to develop …
Power Couple
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when it comes to Pride and Prejudice, once is not enough. For acolytes, Jane Austen’s best-selling novel of the early 19th century invites reading again and again – and again. The same applies to the miniseries produced by BBC in 1995 and available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. …
King of Chicago
The mayor of Chicago is mad as a hatter, but the trains run on time. Having been mayor for a couple of decades, Tom Kane is the ultimate power player; he has a lot to say about which councillors get elected and he wields that power like a mace to get them on board with …
Live by these words and don’t see the movie
Warcraft: The Beginning is an epic fantasy film that released on digital download September 13, 2016. It’s based on a popular series of video games by Blizzard Entertainment. This two hour movie is directed by Duncan Jones and written by Duncan Jones and Charles Leavitt. Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the fantasy …
Yukon Stories
Arctic Secrets Directed by Allan Code, a Whitehorse based filmmaker, Arctic Secrets is a symphony of immensely strong and surprisingly fragile elements that comprise the wilderness of the Yukon Territory. Stunning imagery abounds in this visual adventure through its waters, mountains, and forests. Focusing mainly on the more arctic regions of the territory, Code and …
So Close, But Still a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Rogue One is the first of Disney’s anthology stories set within the Star Wars universe. This flick comes in at two hours and 14 minutes and is directed by Gareth Edwards. For those of you unaware, Rogue One takes place after Revenge of the Sith and before A New Hope, detailing the story of how …
Epiphanies
“It’s like everybody knows the story,” muses a reporter to her colleague. “Except us.” The journalists of “Spotlight,” a legendary investigative unit at the Boston Globe, won a Pulitzer for a series of revelatory articles on the cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church, published in 2002. But as one of the characters ruefully …
Laughter, Tears, Curtain
It was the short, sharp shock heard round the world – eventually. But in the world of Topsy-Turvy, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado is being staged for the very first time, and there’s a lot at stake. Before Topsy-Turvy, released in 1999 and available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library, Mike Leigh was a respected …
What to do on Sunday Night
In the 2016 film Captain Fantastic, Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen – The Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence), is a father with meticulous survivalist and socialist ideals. He lives live an isolated off-the-grid life in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with his six children. The 2015 documentary Sonita chronicles the heart-wrenching story …
Welcome to the Party, Pal
“The story is ridiculous – ludicrous.” That’s director John McTiernan blithely dismissing the plot of one of the most successful thrillers of the past 30 years. Reservations about the plot aside, McTiernan had something particular in mind for this movie: it should be a joyful thrill ride. The result was Die Hard, and it’s a …
Finding the Right Flick
Suicide Squad is DC Comics’ latest attempt to capture comic book magic on the silver screen. This flick comes in just over two hours and is written and directed by David Ayer. Full disclosure: I am a fan of the Suicide Squad comics and though I have not collected them in some time I am …
Future Past
Young Alex DeLarge and his gang of droogs aren’t choosy about whose lives they wreak mindless havoc on. From the down-at-the-heels to the well-heeled, the young thugs attack indiscriminately, mercilessly and irrationally. One thing leads to another and Alex is charged with murder and sentenced to prison. He’s selected for the fictional Ludivico technique, a …
Deadly Fascination, or, Better Living with du Pont
Panama Papers got you down? Still feeling the chill of tax season? A dose of the 2014 film Foxcatcher, based on a true story and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, might be just the thing to remind you to be thankful that you didn’t have the misfortune of being born rich and …
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Ah, Salander
Did Stieg Larsson know his character Lisbeth Salander was destined to achieve the iconic status of a Marvel superhero? Maybe not. In the 2011 American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library, director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian elegantly adapt Larsson’s sprawling Swedish noir to …
Living Blues Legends
Director Daniel Cross visits the southern United States with his latest documentary I am The Blues (2016), highlighting living blues legends in the heart of American music origins. As it became more ingrained into the South’s economy during the antebellum years in the early to late 1800s, the cultivation of cotton brought a heavy concentration …
Wonder Dog
In 1918, a young American soldier emerged from the ruins of a military kennel with a frantic, famished German Shepherd and her five newborn pups. Their survival on the battlefield in France was almost miraculous; Lee Duncan, their saviour, kept two of the puppies and named them after dolls worn as lucky talismans – Nanette …
All for One
They stayed in the game … They’re the most-famous musicians you’ve never heard of. Merry Clayton’s performance in the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is the exemplar of the memorable riff by the unknown singer at the back of the band – it’s their parts you hum. From manufactured girl groups, to David Bowie; and from the …
Love, Ambivalently
Many beloved Christmas films had inauspicious debuts. It’s a Wonderful Life lost money for the studio when it was released in 1946, but television viewings turned it into a bona fide classic 30 years after its release. Similarly, Love Actually has unexpectedly become a Christmas staple in some quarters. Admittedly, I belong in that group, …
Soldiering on in the Cold War
No gadgets, guns or trophy girl in sight – John le Carré’s spy universe is stripped of glamour, but all the more fascinating for his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the inner circle that fought for nebulous ground in the Cold War. The film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, released in 2011 and available …
Swordplay and Flaming Arrows
Winter is coming. You might say that’s our motto above the 60th parallel, but they’re also words to live by in Winterfell, the northernmost kingdom of imaginary Westeros. The Game of Thrones saga has unexpectedly surpassed cult status, but its mythology may have special appeal for northerners and not just for its keen sense of …
A Comedy That is Actually Warm and Funny
Another comedy that’s not really a comedy – that’s been my reaction to many contemporary films that seem to centre on the sad-clown school of funny, balanced heavily on the side of making me sad, and not in the fun way. So I wasn’t hopeful about Enough Said, a romantic comedy released in 2013 and …
The beauty and the decay of life around the planet
Since being presented the Palme D’Or and Best Director credits at the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) respectively, German filmmaker Wim Wenders continues to be intrigued by the human condition has ceased to allow his intrigue of the human condition to weaken. Wenders’ more recent films Buena Vista …
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Down Highway 61
Near the end of his memoir, Chronicles, Volume I, Bob Dylan recalls the seismic effect of hearing Robert Johnson’s album, King of the Delta Blues Singers, for the first time, in the early 1960s. “From the first note, the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds from the guitar could …
Lucy Come Home
Living on a knife’s edge isn’t as exciting as it sounds. It can actually be downright tedious, and that’s what Wendy and Lucy captures — the daily grind of staying upright in a treacherous situation. On the way to Alaska with her dog Lucy, Wendy’s car breaks down and it becomes apparent that this trip …
The Very Bad Thing
Life isn’t fair. Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Swartz were, or are, all geniuses on the frontlines of the digital revolution, but only one of them met with the wrath of the American justice system. Aaron Swartz didn’t aspire to be a zillionaire; he was a passionate advocate for keeping knowledge free and accessible on …
Alexander Supertramp Was Here
In the North, peril can strike anyone in the summer, or the winter. But when Christopher McCandless died at the age of 24 in August, in an abandoned bus near Denali Park in Alaska, apparently of starvation, the response was intensely mixed: bewilderment, contempt, and for some, awe. Many people have known someone bright, charismatic, …
Cannibalism: What’s the Big Deal?
In early-1993 my mom took my sister and I to see Alive, a film about an Argentinian rugby team that must survive a plane crash in the Andes. But the film was rated R and I was 11, so my mom had to do some research. She phoned our family friend, Hector MacKenzie, who worked …
No Singing, No Dancing, No Silly Cartoons
Walt Disney’s magic touch on celluloid created indelible memories for many moviegoers, but it induced tears of rage in P.L. Travers (born Helen Goff) at the Hollywood premiere of Mary Poppins in 1964. At least that’s what she said. Saving Mr. Banks, released in 2014 and available at the Whitehorse Public Library, revolves around the …
The War At Home
An article that appeared in the Washington Post just before Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States, about a butler who had served over 30 years in the White House, inspired screenwriter Danny Strong to write a historical epic viewed from that perspective. The screenplay that resulted was fi lmed as Lee Daniels’ …
On Richard Linklater
In the wake of Boyhood’s lackluster haul at the recently held Academy Awards — it won only one Oscar, despite six nominations — I’ve been thinking about the film’s writer/director Richard Linklater. Boyhood was a momentous task in which Linklater gathered the same group of actors together for a few days each year, for a …
What Incurable Optimists Can Do
They did impossible things because they were too young to know they couldn’t, and in the late 18th century nothing seemed more unlikely than convincing the powerbrokers of England to abandon the slave trade. Amazing Grace, a British-American production released in 2007 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, is a dramatic account …
The Tramp of My Heart
Actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin had the soul of a poet and the heart of a clown. He lived by his own moral code and sometimes his common decency led to his downfall. He made true enemies when he refused to play quietly; and his comic genius led him to places he didn’t know existed. …
Heart and Soul
Soul music calls to Jimmy Rabbitte, an Irish lad living in Dublin in the mid-1980s, and it’s telling him to put together a local band. That’s not so easy when people around him are listening to everything but Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But with his powers of persuasion, Jimmy prevails and soon …
It’s a Mad, Mad World
It might have been on John Lennon’s mind when he wrote “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (so speculates Beatles biographer Bob Spitz). It was directed by a cast member of Beyond the Fringe, a popular satirical revue from the early 1960s, and sitar guru Ravi Shankar composed the score. With that kind of 1960s pedigree, …
Thumbs Up Captain !
Superhero movies have become increasingly popular, and film studios seem to be pumping them out as quickly as they can. Unfortunately, not all of these movies are cinematic masterpieces. Sadly, some are downright dreadful. Rather than evoking joy and whimsy, they result in a nauseating pain in your stomach and a deep-seat feeling of regret …
We’re all works-in-progress
Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re related. That’s the reality for Maggie and Rose Feller, the central characters in the 2005 film In Her Shoes, a comedy-drama available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is a freewheeling party girl who doesn’t seem to ha ve much on her mind except men and clothes …
Zuckerberg’s Cool Idea
Facebook marked its 10th anniversary this February, a few months before its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, turns 30. It’s not every 19-year-old that changes the world. The success and background drama of Facebook inspired the 2010 film, The Social Network, available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. While the film recounts true-life events, it’s not a …
Looking Inside the Hearts and Minds of Human Clones
Somewhere in England, students congregate daily on the pastoral grounds of the Hailsham boarding school watching soccer, gossiping, and daydreaming about the future. They playfully crowd around a teacher as she approaches the entrance, but she shrinks from their contact and scurries inside. The teacher’s reaction is a common one, although mystifying to the students. …
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The Amazingly Consistent Downward Trajectory of M. Night Shyamalan’s Films, 1999 – 2010
Before I turned my attention to carousing in the early 2000s, I watched a lot of movies, and as a young film buff I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I stumbled upon the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Here was a website with a seemingly endless stream of information, reviews and statistics on nearly every …
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Notes on The Dude
There are Lebowski-Fests and books about the Dude’s laidback ethos. Its popularity isn’t surprising, after all, the Dude abides.
Top 10 movies: A walk on the mild side
(Part 2 of 2) Last week I began listing my favourite movies of all time. I only got to six of them and they all tended to be “guy movies”. There’s violence and there is male bonding and all of the things we stereotypical males enjoy. Yes, there are some excellent movies out there that …
One guy’s opinion of the best movies: Part 1 of 2
(Part 1 of 2) My brother and I were on a road trip and, to pass the time away, we tried to list the Top 10 movies of all time. Three hours passed gloriously, even though we never did agree on the definitive list. Sharing a home for the first 18 years of our lives …
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All Apologies
What do you do if your family is “the most apologized-to family in Canada?” If you’re Mitch Miyagawa, local writer and filmmaker, you create a documentary about it. Miyagawa’s documentary, A Sorry State, chronicles his family’s experience of receiving three official government apologies for historical injustices: one issued to his First Nations stepmother for the …
You Can’t Fight in Here, This is the War Room
Between 1964 and 1971 director Stanley Kubrick released three movies, each significantly altering the course of film history. The first of these films was Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Produced in the shadow of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove openly mocks the possibility of mutually …
So You Want to Be a Filmmaker?
I was lucky enough to see the two winning entries from the recently held Yukon 48 competition, in which filmmakers had exactly two days to shoot and edit a movie. Gordy by Traoloch O Murchu is about a man living in the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Told with stark, snow-swept vistas and unflinching voiceovers, …
Films That Make You Thirsty
Julia Child, the late, great American cookbook writer and chef, was profoundly moved by her first French meal when she and her husband arrived by ship, in Rouen, France, in November of 1948. She wrote: “We began our lunch with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell. Rouen is famous for its duck dishes, but, …
Speaking Truth to James Cameron
I’ve been hiding from most people these days. Not from the usual retreat into my hermitage as I’m generally wont to do – oh no. I’ve become somewhat of a pariah. Here’s the thing – I didn’t like Avatar. Maybe you’ve heard of it? From the man that gave us the 90’s cutting edge Terminator …
Middle row, centre: Red: Inspired by Two Key Predecessors
Many movies dealing with the CIA seem to draw from two seminal films for their inspiration. One is the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey, (later remade in 2004, with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep). The other is Three Days of the Condor, filmed in 1975 with Robert …
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Professional Thumbs
The year is 1985. A young Anthony sits crossed-legged in front of the television. The flickering images flashing across his eyes barely register in his stunned mind. Leonard Maltin just gave Ghostbusters a bad review. Indeed, this is a story of great trauma from my childhood. A highly-positioned critic just pooped on what I, as …
