OFCS members don’t just write film reviews. Here are several articles you might find interesting.
Best of Lists
The Best Canadian Films of the Decade so Far
- Excerpt: The list of great Canadian films for 2010-2014 includes ‘Stories We Tell’, ‘Incendies’, ‘Mommy’ and more!
Same Title, Different Movie
- Excerpt: Sometimes it’s easy to get confused when two movies are called the same thing. Here’s a run down of some of the times when two very different movies share the same title.
Top 8 Unexpected Action Heroes
- Excerpt: To celebrate the release of The Gunman starring Sean Penn, I take a look at 8 other unexpected action heroes.
Interviews
Colleen Atwood on Designing Costumes for “Into the Woods”
Dan Fogelman of “Danny Collins”
Holliday Grainger – Cinderella
Kenneth Branagh – Cinderella
Michael Winterbottom – The Face of an Angel
Robert Kenner of “Merchants of Doubt”
Sai Bennett and Genevieve Gaunt – The Face of an Angel
Tom Berenger on “Lonesome Dove Church”
Festivals: General Coverage
The Best and Worst of the 2015 SXSW Film Festival
- Excerpt: Your correspondent has returned from Austin, with a belly full of BBQ and a head full of leftover images and snatches of dialogue from the 21 narrative and documentary films I took in over my week in Texas. Here are a few thoughts on each, along with the best and worst films I saw there.
How SXSW Became a Haven for Mainstream Studio Comedies
- Excerpt: “Austin really opens up its heart and just allows us to entertain you,” Paul Feig explained to the sold-out crowd at the Paramount Theater, which cheered wildly in response. That sound, of wild, raucous laughter at the festival’s biggest venue goes a long way towards explaining how SXSW has become an unlikely but essential destination on the whistle-stop publicity tour for a certain kind of studio comedy.
Festivals: Individual Reviews
7 Chinese Brothers, Kings of Nowhere, and Limbo
The Boy, 6 Years, and A Poem is a Naked Person
GTFO
- Excerpt: While requiring some willingness to look past the amateurish filmmaking (serious question, and not just confined to this film: is there a shortage of lavalier microphones that I’m not aware of?), Shannon Sun-Higginson’s documentary examination of sexism in the video game industry is as thoughtful and enlightening as it is timely. Examples of said sexism are predictably infuriating, but Sun-Higginson doesn’t just leave it there; she thankfully asks why this culture is this way, and comes up with some welcome, well-considered answers.
The Nightmare, God Bless the Child, and Sailing a Sinking Sea
Raiders!
- Excerpt: A charming valentine to movies, to being a kid, and to not being told what you can and can’t do.
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
- Excerpt: Director Alex Gibney, fascinated by the rather disproportionate public grieving for Apple mastermind Steve Jobs, set about to unravel the man and his many contradictions in this piercing, searching, and provocative documentary. His attempt to question the mythology occasionally borders on mean-spirited, but the picture is ultimately a long overdue reminder to the cult of Mac that this oddly elevated saint was, in fact, a man — a salesman and a businessman whose walk often didn’t match his “corporate values” talk.
Trainwreck
- Excerpt: The problem isn’t the comedy (though a few bits drag on a beat or two too long, and there’s an unfortunate overdose of celebrity cameo-based humor); it’s the dramatic stuff, which simply doesn’t mingle with the gags as smoothly as it should.
Video Essays, Reviews and More
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] “Hotel Terminus” is a vigorous document made by a filmmaker (Marcel Ophuls) so hungry for satisfaction that every image and interview sequence spits with a personal sense of boiling outrage.
I Stand Alone
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] …as much a philosophical denunciation of humanity as it is a thought-provoking treatise on mental illness as a socially communicable disease.
Essays
25 Years Later: Imagining the Dark, Depressing ‘Pretty Woman’ That Could Have Been
- Excerpt: Pretty Woman has become a legendary example of how a movie can come out of the studio, writing-by-committee system bearing very little resemblance to the script it once was.
In Search of Laurel and Hardy’s Lost Feature Film
- Excerpt: An essay on the 1930 film “The Rogue Song”
In Search of Orson Welles’ Lost Moby Dick Film
- Excerpt: An essay on Orson Welles’ unfinished film version of “Moby Dick”
The Missing Frankenstein Film, 100 Years Later
- Excerpt: An essay on the long-lost 1915 film “Life Without Soul,” which was the second film version of “Frankenstein”
The Thin Blue Line,’ ‘The Jinx,’ and Why We Love True Crime Documentaries
- Excerpt: We tend to treat films and mini-series as escapism, perhaps as education. But these are films that might save a life — either of someone in jail who shouldn’t be, or of someone who might step into the path of those who should be.
Reviews of Short Films
BlinkyTM
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Irish Short Film Review
Bromance
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: British Short Film Review
Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
James Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: We’re told that the Island of Lemurs crew managed to capture the very first baby lemur ever filmed, and the little fellow is positively otherworldy looking. The film also captures on camera one of the world’s most rare and seldom-seen lemurs, a Greater Bamboo Lemur that hasn’t been spotted in Madagascar for 50 years.
Jafar
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Greek Short Film Review
Mur
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: French-Belgian Short Film Review
Os Sonâmbulos
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Short Film Review
Other Articles
Eclipse em Portugal
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
James Wilder: Award-Winning Actor
Betty Jo Tucker @ Movie Addict Headquarters
- Excerpt: This podcast features James Wilder, who talks about his new film, 3 Holes and a Smoking Gun.
The Morning After: Mar. 23, 2015
- Excerpt: Short reviews of “Hamlet,” “The Ghost and the Darkness” and “The Divergent Series: Insurgent”
Two Ottawa Films Compete for CineCoup
- Excerpt: A quick look at the local projects ‘Lucidity’ and ‘Edith’ competing in this year’s CineCoup Film Accelerator.