Palestinians, especially according to European colonists in the Apartheid State, are a collective with a political mind. This runs in contrast with films that actually give Palestinians a voice like Firas Khoury’s Alam. The film’s elevator pitch is that its protagonist, Tamer (Mahmood Bakri), starts out as an apolitical person. The teen then wakes up to politics because of a new female student in town, Maysaa’ (Sereen Khass). The film, as films go, is more complex than that, as it shows Tamer’s multiple influences. In one of the scenes, a neighbour tells Tamer not to listen to his dad, Alam‘s ..read more

A female Afghan MP, Zefnoon Safi, looks out the window of her comfortable hotel room in Calgary, Alberta. She watches a flock of birds fly away, an image viewers might associate with a freedom humans don’t have. She is one of a few female Afghan politicians and journalists who had to leave Afghanistan after its government fell. The country, now under the hands of the Taliban, reinstated laws banning women from many forms of employment. As documentaries do, this one uses contemporary and archive footage in covering maybe two decades of Afghan history. Two decades seem like a blink of an eye for ..read more

Prepare to unravel more mysteries of The Big Door Prize! The Big Door Prize is the critically acclaimed series from Emmy Award-winning creator and Torontonian David West Read (Schitt’s Creek). Based on M.O. Walsh’s novel, The Big Door Prize‘s second season follows the residents of Deerfield. This tima around, the Morpho machine gets them ready and anxious for the mysterious “next stage”. As everyone’s potentials are exchanged for visions, new relationships form and new questions are asked. Dusty (Chris O’dowd) and Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) decide to take time apart while Trina (Djouliet Amara ..read more

Sometimes love takes a little more than a leap to make it come to fruition… He’s a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right? From real life stunt man and director David Leitch, the blockbu ..read more

A favourite from festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival, Radu Jude’s new film Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World is a masterclass of multitasking. The film incorporates clips from Communist Era Romanian film Angela Moves On. There, that titular taxi driver (Dorina Lazăr) eats on the road and drives by a highway that still kills drivers today. The film’s present day protagonist is Angela Raducani (Ilinca Manolache). Angela tries to fix her grandmother’s grave which a cemetery bungles, inadvertently breaking tradition. To take her mind off that situation, she side g ..read more

Vampire films come in all forms, from comedies to horror and even romance.  The creatures themselves come in all shapes and sizes as well, from little children to the grotesque, barely human monster. The titular character of Abigail is one of the former, and as for the film, there is no doubt it’s a horror, with a little comedy thrown in to help keep the mood light around the gory moments. It’s a fun little film that will keep you entertained, even if it is more than a little predictable. Abigail follows the story of seven criminals hired to kidnap the ballerina daughter of a local crimin ..read more

Food service workers and farmers are essential workers and, in a perfect world, the world will treat them as such. Food, Inc. 2 shows that North American capitalism ‘perfects’ and tweaks a lot of things except for compensating workers properly. People watching this movie aren’t brand new to this information, as it shows a food service worker having to calculate her expenses. It’s more shocking to see farmers having to get consultant jobs instead of having farming as their sole income source. Zack Smith from Winnebago County, Iowa inherited his land from generations of farmers like him. He has ..read more

Ah, Inside Out, the classic 2015 Pixar movie that took us inside the mind of a tween girl named Riley. And what did we find there? A team of hardworking emotions that guided her through life. Starring Amy Poehler as Joy (as in the emotion, not just the woman’s name) and a bevy of talented comic actors, such as Mindy Kaling as Disgust, the original Inside Out was a hit that brought in hundreds of millions at the box office. So, it’s not surprising that Pixar is returning to Riley’s brain for a second installment. Only this time, everyone’s favourite hockey player from Minnesota is going through ..read more

The Ernie Game (1967) is set in Montreal in the middle of the winter. The film follows Ernie Turner (Alexis Kanner), who gets involved with two different women. One is a seamstress who is his ex-girlfriend Gail (Jackie Burroughs). The other is Donna (Judith Gault) who is a single mother and a copywriter. At the beginning of the film Ernie is sneaking out of a room he rents because he can’t pay the rent and doesn’t have a job. He then either lives off of Gail or Donna. He’s an aspiring writer but can’t seem to get started writing anything. Out of options, he eventually turns to petty crime. Wha ..read more

A film with a title like Saturday Night at the Baths will give its audiences certain expectations. Somehow, this film subverts such expectations by depicting a heterosexual sex scene evoking Varda but you know, less good. We can file this film under the ‘product of its time’ microgenre as a queer film with a heterosexual centre. I’ll get to why this couple is on screen and why we care. See, the man in the relationship, Michael (Frank Aberdeen) accepts a job as a piano player in a 1970s gay bathhouse. The couple, then, strikes a friendship with one of the bathhouse workers, Scotti (Don Scotti ..read more