Exclusive
Trending
Today’s cold, rainy, windy weather was ideal for festgoing, so I put on my hat, scarf and mittens (yep, on April 30th!) and headed out early for a day full of films at the Lightbox. Anticipating that many other movie lovers would opt for the same activity today, I...
Before we get into today’s screenings, I have a question about the Lightbox 1 balcony. Namely: does anyone know why that balcony is always kept closed until just before the film starts? And sometimes, kept closed throughout a screening? Those are some of the best seats in the house,...
With snacks packed and my screening schedule tucked into my knapsack (picking what to see and when literally took me a week!), it was time to get Hot Docs 2017 underway. YAY! The first official day of the festival also turned out to be the warmest of the year...
The festival officially gets underway tomorrow, and these are the last of my pre-fest reviews. Coverage of my day-to-day misadventures begins on Friday. Until then, rest up, fuel up and get ready for 10 days of wall-to-wall docs! Birth of a Family (5/8) This somewhat uneven film follows four...
I’m not sure if it’s just that I somehow managed to attend pre-fest screenings for only the really great docs, or if the caliber of films I’ve seen so far is actually an indicator that Hot Docs 2017 is going to be overflowing with exceptional offerings, but here are...
Let’s be honest: not every documentary is going to be a winner. Film is subjective, and one man’s treasure can be soundly trashed by another. These docs proved disappointing for me in one way or another… which doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t love them. It’s just that I really...
In a perfect world, every documentary I see at Hot Docs would be amazing, but we know that’s virtually impossible. Still, before the fest even starts, I’ve watched a whole bunch of awesome films that make me excited about what the rest of the fest will hold. Here are six...
This is, hands down, my favourite time of year, when I and thousands of people just like me can spend days on end doing nothing but watching one documentary after another. It’s amazing! This year is Hot Docs’ 24th, and it’ll feature 230 films from 58 different countries. A...
It is an unabashedly unapologetic, ridiculously fun, high-octane, automotive extravaganza that, from the get-go, fires on all cylinders and never really slows down long enough for you to catch your breath. I mean, usually, by the time a film franchise somehow manages to crawl its way to an eighth...
Anyone who’s ever seen one of those movies – or, for that matter, anyone who’s ever tried to kill a big spider, only to miss and have it seemingly vanish after it scurries behind or under a piece of furniture – will therefore no doubt be familiar with the...
That was my reaction when the closing credits began to roll on what so many people touted as writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s return to form after a string of cinematic duds – an admittedly atmospheric but endlessly confusing and largely pointless thriller that was basically devoid of an ending....
Set in the early 1960s, the film follows a trio of black women working in NASA’s computing division. Or, more accurately, as NASA computing division (back before machines did all the thinking, people did the computing and were called “computers). Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) is a mathematical genius,...
