Six years in the making, Loving Vincent expands the boundaries of filmmaking. Shot as a live-action movie with actors and then hand-painted, frame by frame, by a team of 125 artists, this is an animated drama of uncommon vitality and creativity. Scheduled to open in Toronto on October 6, it’s a visually stunning and innovative production […]
Category: Film
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The Only Living Boy In New York
Love and romance are complicated, all the more so when a father and a son are sleeping with the same woman. Marc Webb’s The Only Living Boy In New York, which opens in Canada on August 25, ventures into that fraught terrain, first on tip toes and then in full flight. The film, set in New […]
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Ingrid Goes West
Matt Spicer’s deliciously biting comedy, Ingrid Goes West, which opens in Canada on August 18, pokes gleeful fun at the Instagram generation fixated by the allure of social media and who are only concerned with how to get more followers on instagram. It’s set in Venice, California, a supposedly hip place, and revolves around an […]
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Menashe: First Yiddish Film In 70 Years
Joshua Weinstein has gone where no American movie director has ventured in about 70 years. He has made a film that unfolds almost entirely in Yiddish, with a sprinkling of English and Spanish thrown in. Menashe, which opens in Canadian theatres on August 11, was filmed in Borough Park, a Hassidic neighborhood in New York City. Menashe, […]
Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a prominent film actress and director in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. In a 48-year career, which began in Britain in 1931, she appeared in 59 movies and directed eight others. As an actress, she was something of a femme fatale, projecting a gutsy persona and playing tough yet vulnerable characters. […]
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The Journey
The “troubles” in Northern Ireland, which for decades violently pitted Protestants against Catholics, were finally resolved when their respective leaders, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, agreed to form a national coalition government. The manner in which these hardened politicians created the conditions for this historic rapprochement unfolds in Nick Hamm’s absorbing film, The Journey, which […]
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13 Minutes
One of the most serious assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life took place on November 8, 1939, when a time bomb assembled by Georg Elser exploded in a fabled beer hall in Munich, just two months after the outbreak of World War II. Elser, a factory worker and carpenter from southern Germany, was a Communist sympathizer […]
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Portrait of Elsa Dorfman
Elsa Dorfman, an American portrait photographer whose subjects run the gamut from Allen Ginsberg to W.H. Auden, was once under-appreciated. Today, she’s sufficiently important enough in photographic circles to rate rave reviews from peers and clients alike. Certainly, filmmaker Errol Morris thinks highly of her, judging by his biopic, The B-Side, which opens in Canada […]
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Don’t Cry When I’m Gone
Slawomir Grunberg’s documentary, Don’t Cry When I’m Gone, eulogizes Wanda Sieradzka, a Jewish woman whose life was a mirror reflection of the turmoil that engulfed Poland after Germany’s 1939 invasion and occupation. Premiered at the Polin Museum in Warsaw last year, this absorbing film has since made the rounds of movie festivals and various forums. […]
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The Lovers
In the very first scene of Azazel Jacobs’ quiet and quirky movie, The Lovers, which opens in Canada on May 19, an unmarried middle-aged woman, Lucy (Melora Walters), cries as her married lover, Michael (Tracy Letts), tries to console her. Michael’s wife, Mary (Debra Winger), is having an affair, too. Her paramour, Robert (Aidan Gillen), is […]