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Jay Stone and Katherine Monk movie reviews and profiles. Movies new to streaming / DVD.
Reviews of Canadian movies and filmmaker profiles by Katherine Monk and Jay Stone.

3.5Score

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 ...
2.5Score

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 ...
3Score

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
3.5Score

Anthropoid ignores war movie expectations

Movie review: Anthropoid Sean Ellis's Second World War thriller about the real-life assassination attempt on Nazi henchman Reinhard Heydrich adopts a slightly random, and disarmingly intimate approach to both heroism and history
2.5/5Score

Star Trek Beyond falls Below the Bar

Movie review: Star Trek Beyond Justin Lin revs the Enterprise's perpetually over-heated engines but Star Trek Beyond orbits a familiar universe without reflection
4Score

Honest emotion makes Gleason a must-see

Movie review: Gleason Sports movies demand a whole lot of heart, but this documentary about a former NFL'er diagnosed with ALS captures the whole body of the human experience
3.5Score

Just the end of the world another soap on steroids

Movie review: Juste la fin du monde The latest effort from Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan plays to the auteur's favourite themes: moms, gay sons and simmering family dramas that will not be denied - or else!