"The DVD Shelf" Columnist Marianne Darragh is a Whitehorse-based writer who enjoys reviewing movies available at the Whitehorse Public Library.
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The DVD Shelf Review
Issue: 2017-07-12, PHOTO: Universal Pictures
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... Read more
Issue: 2017-02-22, PHOTO: IMDb
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... Read more
Issue: 2017-01-11, PHOTO: IMDb
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... Read more
Issue: 2016-12-21, PHOTO: amazon.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2016-10-12, PHOTO: IMDB.com
About arrivals and departures
The epic saga of immigration is brought to human scale in Brooklyn, a critically acclaimed film based on the novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby. Released in 2015 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public... Read more
Issue: 2016-10-06
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. Read more
Issue: 2016-09-08, PHOTO: IMDb.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2016-08-04, PHOTO: IMDb.com
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, ... Read more
Issue: 2016-03-10, PHOTO: wikimediacommons.org
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-12-24, PHOTO: IMDb.com
Power Struggles
Vampires – is there anything they can’t do? Durable symbols of an underworld that may or may not exist, they show up in the popular culture adept at drama, mystery, romance, horror or comedy. All those theatrical balls are juggled at once in Being... Read more
Issue: 2015-12-17, PHOTO: IMDb.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-12-10 PHOTO: IMDb.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-11-26 PHOTO: Promotional
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. Read more
Issue: 2015-10-01 PHOTO: hbocanada.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-09-24 PHOTO: Promotional
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. Read more
Issue: 2015-09-03 PHOTO: wikipedia commons.com
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... Read more
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-07-09 Photo: wikimedia.com
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... Read more
Issue: 2015-05-28 PHOTO: IMDb.com
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:... Read more
Issue: 2015-04-30 PHOTO: eonline.com
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. Read more