May 20, 2009: Taken I hadn’t necessarily planned to see Taken, but I liked the trailers, and as it turned out I ended up sitting and watching it. It’s bittersweet to see Liam Neeson hard at work on his craft here, not long before he lost his wife Nathasha Richardson to a skiing accident this […]
May 15, 2009: Billy Elliott Billy Elliott is a British film about a young boy who discovers an interest in ballet dancing, and struggles against the odds and against the wishes of his working-class family and community, to pursue his dream of dancing. I had seen this film before but wasn’t particularly struck by it. […]
May 9, 2009: Cat Ladies “They don’t call you ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ to give you a compliment”, says one of the women profiled in Cat Ladies, a documentary which attempts to address just what it is that makes some women (it is acknowledged that it happens to men but far more rarely) so passionate about […]
May 9, 2009: Statistics Statistics is a short film, though at nearly half an hour it’s longer than others recently reviewed here. It brings us a slice of life in a Norwegian call centre, with employees calling and asking people all manner of survey questions, depending on what statistics their clients (corporations and governments) are […]
May 9, 2009: Love at the Twilight Motel Love at the Twilight Motel is a documentary I saw at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto. It is a look at what goes on in the cheap by-the-hour motels in the Little Havana area of Miami, with a particular motel being profiled (but renamed for […]
May 3, 2009: And the Band Played On And the Band Played On is a 1993 HBO made-for-cable movie which portrays the early years of the struggle to get on top of the AIDS epidemic in the face of minimal funding, difficulty with scientific proofs, and homophobia within governmental administrations. Primarily focused on the situation […]
May 3, 2009: Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez is a documentary which examines the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. It follows the lives of a few specific families, and a scientist/activist, as the communities in Prince William Sound have dealt with […]
May 3, 2009: Greetings from Mackenzie, B.C. This is a short film about the demise of a town due to the closure of the local logging businesses. The workers nail their hard hats to a remaining tree, covering its surface and providing for a striking visual, although I found myself wondering what was the point? […]
May 2, 2009: Invisible City I saw Invisible City (preceded by the short film Code of Silence) as part of the Hot Docs documentary film festival. It chronicles 3 years in the lives of two boys in the Regent Park public housing development near downtown Toronto. Both are being raised by their single mothers, struggling […]
May 2, 2009: Code of Silence Code of Silence is a short film examining the unspoken agreement in inner-city communities not to talk to the police to help crime investigations. In only a few minutes, the point is strongly made that these communities are merely reacting to their observation of past events, and know that […]