Eye candy helps Keeping Up with the Joneses
Movie review: Keeping Up with the Joneses
Superbad director Greg Mottola uses action and espionage to pimp out a minivan of a comic premise that seeks to cross the median income divide
Life, death and Andrew Huculiak
People: Interview with Andrew Huculiak
Getting metaphysical with the first-time director of Violent means dipping a big toe into the cold, dark waters of existentialism and cozying up with Kierkegaard
By Katherine Monk
(October 19, 2016) VANCOUVER – A gentle drizzle falls outside, and the faint smell of woolly dampness mingles with the scent of fresh pie. It’s a typical fall day in Vancouver -- wet, dark, and cool -- the perfect backdrop for an interview with Andrew Huculiak.
Huculiak is the director behind Violent, easily one of the best first features in Canadian film history, but up until now, it was also one of the most difficult to access.
Shot two years ago in Norway with a unilingual Norwegian cast, Violent was invited to Cannes, picked up top prizes at The Vancouver International Film Festival and was shortlisted as Canada’s best foreign film Oscar submission. By all accounts and measures, it should have hit theatres nationwide.
Yet, it’s only now, two ...
Violent finds eerie beauty in the abyss
Movie review: Violent
Andrew Huculiak's debut feature is a stunning mediation on the meaning of life that owes as much to Alfred Hitchcock as it does to Terrence Malick in its bid to open our eyes to existence
An okay film, Unless you read the book
Movie review: Unless
This disappointing film adaptation of Carol Shields' final novel turns a meditation on who we are into a melodramatic puzzle with a conventional solution
The Accountant keeps it in the black
Movie Review: The Accountant
Ben Affleck finally finds the role he was born to play: An autistic savant who can execute both foes and a forensic audit with emotional cool and professional reserve
New CBC sitcom exposes The Convenience Truth
People: Interview with Andrea Bang
The Vancouver star of Kim's Convenience says the first Canadian sitcom to feature Asian leads is about transcending ethnic stereotypes through human universals
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only did the team win the required games to advance, they pushed back the network premiere of her new show, Kim’s Convenience.
The new CBC comedy based on Ins Choi’s award-winning Fringe play airs tonight on the National Broadcaster, but it was originally slated to air last Tuesday – in the heat of the Blue Jays’ wildcard bid. The network wisely aired the ballgame instead, but Bang wasn’t depressed about the delay.
It gave her another week to mentally prepare while promos whetted the public appetite for a family comedy set in a Toronto convenience store.
“You don't want to compete with the Toronto Blue Jays,” says Bang, sitting down for a chat on a rainy day in Vancouver.
“I ...
The Birth of a Nation delivers blood-soaked tropes
Movie review: The Birth of a Nation
Nate Parker adopts the language of his oppressor to create a familiar, formulaic and frequently flat drama designed to celebrate the spirit of an entirely original rebel
John Mann’s Unforgettable Spirit captured on camera
#VIFF16: Pete McCormack on Spirit Unforgettable
The Spirit of the West frontman was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2014, spurring his good friend, fellow musician and film director Pete McCormack to follow him with a camera in a bid to document the one-way trip
Ed Gass-Donnelly hides a message up his sleeve
#VIFF16: Interview with Ed Gass-Donnelly
The Toronto-based director takes a pry bar to the basement door of family secrets in Lavender, a psychological thriller starring Abbie Cornish, Dermot Mulroney and Justin Long
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – The man who made The Last Exorcism Part II is marked. Ed Gass-Donnelly rolls up his right sleeve in the firelight, and reveals two words written in deep indigo capital letters: “Find Beauty.”
“I’m not doing this to pay the bills,” says the Toronto-born director of Lavender, a psychological thriller unspooling at the Vancouver International Film Festival this week as part of the Altered States program.
“I have to remind myself of that… after making [The Last Exorcism Part II] I think I found new perspective,” he says, sitting back in a leather couch at the Sutton Place lounge.
“I appreciated the experience of coming out on 3000 screens. It was like ‘WOW!’ – 3000 screens at once is what you ...
Cozy, crazy: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Movie review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Tim Burton returns to his haunted wheelhouse with a melancholy kid's tale about gifted outsiders searching for a sense of family and belonging as the world blows apart
