On March 15, Netflix released a third season of its feel-good makeover series Queer Eye. Based in Kansas City, the eight new episodes retread familiar ground: Five well-dressed gay men storm into the lives of some beleaguered individual and, through the power of a haircut, group hugs, and pep talks[Read More…]
Film and TV
Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ demonstrates surprising wisdom
Following in the footsteps of shows like Big Mouth and Chewing Gum, Sex Education explores sex and the lack of knowledge that so many young people have on the subject. The series’ protagonist, Otis (Asa Butterfield), is a sexually-repressed teenager whose sex therapist single mother Jean (Gillian Anderson) doesn’t shy from embarrassing[Read More…]
Awards season villains
In 2017, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land received a record 14 Oscar nominations. The film, which met with critical acclaim as well as enormous box office earnings, was an ode to the lush Hollywood musicals of the 1950s. But by the time that the Oscars race began, critics were tiring of[Read More…]
What we watched this winter break
Arriving home for winter break in the typical post-exam fugue tends to make the inevitable holiday burnout all the more severe. Everyone knows that those few weeks between semesters are best spent binge-watching movies in sweatpants and resisting the urge to hit refresh on MyCourses—at least that’s how we in[Read More…]
The comedy of “Vice” lies in its absurd truth
In a moment when Trump’s presidency is often perceived as a low point in American democracy, Adam McKay’s Vice shows how Trump is simply following in the footsteps of older, more tactful Republicans predecessors. Christian Bale depicts Dick Cheney with undisguised bias as a man of pure evil, even thanking Satan[Read More…]
The best and worst of 2018
Best Albums: 1. Be the Cowboy, Mitski Sad indie kids have traded their beanies for cowboy hats, wallowing in perhaps the most beautiful auditory manifestation of sadness to ever have graced the radio waves. Hive Mind, The Internet 2. Hive Mind, The Internet This summer, the Internet brought the[Read More…]
‘Island of the Hungry Ghosts’ exposes the inhumanity of immigration detention centres
When filmmaker Gabrielle Brady went to Christmas Island, a tiny speck of land in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she was expecting to just relax by the beach. Beyond observing the mass migration of forty million red crabs which scuttle from the depths of the jungle toward the coastline[Read More…]
Where does ‘Roma’ belong?
With new streaming platforms appearing left and right, the battle for viewers’ attention has become increasingly diffuse. And with more and more content to sift through on a daily basis right from the comfort of one’s couch, the movie theatre’s centrality in the cultural zeitgeist has taken a major hit. It has become a major source of debate: As movies assimilate further into the household, studios will cater their projects to that kind of viewing experience.
RIDM offers stunning portraits of humanity
The 2018 Rencontres Internationale du Documentaire de Montreal (RIDM) took viewers on an unconventional cinematic journey. In ReMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening the director takes a job as a teacher and basketball coach in small-town Alabama, while Distant Constellation sees Mizrahi visiting residents in a Turkish retirement home. Such themes may not be typical subject matter for the big screen, perhaps; but anything goes at RIDM, the documentary film festival which brings stories from every nook and cranny of the globe to theatres around Montreal.
‘Suspiria’ dances to a vicious conclusion
Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s remake, or ‘cover version,’ as he calls it, of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic, is a hard pivot from both its source material and Guadagnino’s previous film, Call Me By Your Name. Whereas those films isolated their characters to watch the play of emotions in specific environs—CMBYN[Read More…]