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I think at some point in the next few days, I’m going to devote an entire entry to the inexplicable phenomenon of audience members STILL using their smartphones during festival screenings. It’s astounding, not to mention rude and inconsiderate in terms of both the offender’s fellow filmgoers, but also...
It’s strange how, completely by chance, you can wind up seeing a bunch of films back to back that complement each other perfectly in terms of tone, content or both. That happened to me today. First up was (Dis)Honesty (8/8), a thoroughly fascinating documentary about how, why and when...
Huzzah! The first official day of film-going at the festival finally arrived and, after a long walk to the Bader – where I joined a couple of my fest-going pals in line – it was time to get Hot Docs 2015 underway. I’d been looking forward to my first...
It’s almost time for the festival proper to get underway, and I managed to see another half-dozen films before the doors officially open on April 23rd. The Closer We Get (6/8) Sometimes, when a director makes his or her family members (and their dysfunction) the subjects of a documentary,...
Hallelujah! It’s Hot Docs time again! It has become, quite honestly, my favorite season. This year, the festival (April 23 – May 3) will screen more than 200 documentaries from around the world – among them, 47 world premieres – across a dozen different programs that span everything from late-night...
To spare your eyes, I won’t actually do that (much). But, man, when it comes to bang for your action-film-loving, movie-going buck, the payoff doesn’t get much bigger than with this seventh installment of the increasingly outrageous street-racing franchise. How can I put this into context? Okay, you know...
Here’s the thing: if you assume your audience already knows the story – in this case, that of Moses (Christian Bale) and the freeing of the Hebrews from slavery at the hands of Pharaoh Ramses the Great (Joel Edgerton) – then you’d better make sure your version knocks every...
In fact, the paper-thin yawner of a plot might be summed up thusly: Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) and his smart-ass teenaged son (Skyler Gisondo) travel to England and run around the British Museum, trying to restore the Tablet of Ahkmenrah before it disintegrates, while the museum figurines from the...
Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, sometime in the near future, the film presents a semi-dystopian society where the police force is largely made up of robots. They’re law-enforcement machines, almost indestructible and capable of doling out swift, emotionless, fearless justice. Voiced by Blomkamp’s frequent collaborator, Sharlto Copley (whose movements...
Though it could easily have become a vanity project about war (think: last year’s less-than-compelling Monuments Men) for its marquee star, Brad Pitt, this is, instead a seemingly “small” story about five guys trying to stay alive amid brutally harsh conditions and incredibly close quarters. And, though there’s certainly...
Honestly, even at nearly two-and-a-half hours long, there’s nary a wasted second or throwaway scene or drawn-out sequence that could have been snipped in director David Fincher’s dark and enthralling big-screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller. Every moment matters, and all of them are fantastically complex, compelling and completely...
Scarlett Johansson stars as the titular American living in Taipei, who finds herself bestowed with superhuman abilities after a stash of über-potent synthetic drugs she’s being forced to transport in her abdomen bursts open. In a matter of minutes, she morphs from terrified victim to one-woman vengeance machine, intent...
