The Big Short
Who knew the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis could be so much fun on…
Paul Taylor: Creative Domain
A fascinating look at the creative process. This documentary follows the great contemporary dance choreographer…
Brooklyn
Based on the book of the same name (which I have not read), this charming,…
Kilo Two Bravo
Based on a true story, this British film, set in 2006 Afghanistan, follows a British…
Trumbo
Bryan Cranston is terrific as Dalton Trumbo, a very successful Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s,…
James White
A very indie feel to this story of an emotionally troubled but for the most…
I Smile Back
Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman is, for the most part, the only reason to see…
Hitchcock/
Truffaut
An entertaining and very interesting look at the work of Alfred Hitchcock primarily through the…
Youth
I wasn’t a big fan of director Paolo Sorrentino’s last film, the Oscar (best foreign…
Carol
I wanted to like this film more than I did since Cate Blanchett is a great…
The Night Before
I enjoy – some to most of the time – Seth Rogen’s brand of humour,…
Creed
The young, cocky son of one of the best – and deceased – boxers of…
Theeb
A simple but lovely (and beautifully filmed) tale of a young Bedouin boy - Theeb…
Grandma
Lily Tomlin is delightful as a curmudgeonly grandma doing her best to help her granddaughter…
Black Mass
Johnny Depp, while unrecognizable in wig and makeup, is terrific (and scary) as the Boston…
Pawn Sacrifice
Topher Grace gives an impressive performance as chess master Bobby Fischer in this docudrama highlighting…
Labyrinth of Lies
Based on actual events, this German film is set in post-war Germany (circa late 1950s…
Bridge of Spies
When Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg work together, you know the outcome will be good. This…
Mavis!
How can anyone not appreciate the incredible voice and good cheer of gospel and blues…
99 Homes
An underrated and not widely distributed film set amidst the 2008 US housing crash. Andrew Garfield (known…
Hyena Road
Paul Gross does some good work as he stars in this so-so tale of intertwined…
Room
Brie Larson and her young co-star (Jacob Tremblay playing a 5-year-old boy) are wonderful as…
Steve Jobs
I have no idea what in this movie is based on fact and what is…
Beeba Boys
Director Deepa Mehta's perhaps weakest film to date (that I’ve seen, anyway), but I give…
Remember
I liked this film more for its subject matter, the ending and stars (Christopher Plummer…
Suffragette
I enjoy and appreciate Carey Mulligan in pretty much everything she does, and she is…
My Internship in Canada
A sweet, funny, sometimes silly film from Quebec that is intended – only somewhat successfully…
Spectre
Like all Bond films, this one deserves to be seen on the big (or biggest)…
Burnt
If you like Bradley Cooper, you'll probably be ok (or more than ok for some…
Sicario
One of the most tense movies I’ve ever sat through – two hours of edge-of-your-seat…
Spotlight
One of my favourites of the last while, this is the true story of the…
The Martian
Matt Damon is, once again (of course), heroic, this time as a science geek (literally)…
I Am Chris Farley
A loving documentary about the late comedian Chris Farley (of Second City, SNL and movie…
No Escape
Owen Wilson was, to my surprise, effective in a non-comedic role as a businessman who…
Everest
Based on the true and tragic story of eight mountain climbers who perished on a…
Hitman: Agent 47
Entirely ridiculous, implausible, silly, etc., yes, but I thoroughly enjoyed this story of a genetically…
The Kindergarten Teacher
A disturbing but engrossing story of a kindergarten teacher in Israel obsessed with protecting one…
Court
A hit on the film festival circuit, this is a slow- paced but fascinating and…
Assassination
An enjoyable, if confusing, South Korean film that involves double agents, prison breakouts, deadly politics,…
Truth
Yes, there is a top-notch cast --- Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, Topher Grace, Bruce Greenwood…
Miss Sharon Jones!
A moving documentary tribute to the musicality and humanity of Sharon Jones, an American R&B…
American Ultra
Whoever thought up this comedy (with a bit of drama) about a couple of stoners…
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Billy Crudup stars as a real-life professor of psychology at Stanford who, in the early…
Stranger
A weird but interesting tale from (and set in) Kazakhstan during the time of Stalin’s…
The Look of Silence
Fascinating, engrossing but disturbing documentary dealing with responsibility for the 1965 Indonesian genocide in which…
Straight Outta Compton
Fictionalized account of the birth of popular (gangsta) rap and the rise and fall of…
Cartel Land
Hard-hitting documentary on the destruction caused by the drug cartels that straddle the US –…
Amy
I didn’t know much about singer Amy Winehouse prior to seeing this fascinating and sad…
Trainwreck
Before seeing this movie my exposure to the comedienne/actress Amy Schumer was quite limited. But…
Best of Enemies
American conservative William F. Buckley was up against leftist public intellectual Gore Vidal on ABC…
Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation
What is there to complain about: Tom Cruise looking like he is having the time of…
Infinitely Polar Bear
Mark Ruffalo makes this film work as he plays a bi-polar dad struggling to keep…
Terminator Genisys
Does it really matter what I say? If you’ve seen, at the least, the original…
Irrational Man
For me, Woody Allen’s films in the last number of years have been much more…
The Tribe
One of the bleakest but most unique films I’ve ever seen, this story of power…
Big Game
Yes, the plot is absolutely far-fetched. – Samuel L. Jackson, playing the president of the…
A Hard Day
A decent cops-on-the-take story from South Korea that has no heroes, lots of villains, plenty…
The Gift
An effective story of suspense that builds slowly but effectively to reveal the real selves…
Ricki and the Flash
Meryl Streep can do just about everything, so if the film had stuck mostly to…
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Part of Swedish director Roy Andersson’ trilogy on the theme of being a human being,…
Guidance
Great premise – out of work actor pretends to be a guidance counsellor, gets a…
Diamond Tongues
A low-budget darkly humorous tale of a young Toronto actress whose bitterness towards those who…
Inside Out
An imagined behind-the-scenes look at the emotional life of a 12-year-old girl as only the…
Slow West
Billed as a Western, it has the look of a Western (set in late 19th century…
Love & Mercy
The (fictionalized) story is based on the difficult life of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson,…
The Overnight
If an edgy film includes one that can make you cringe (a bit or a…
The Wolfpack
Quite the true story: the childhoods of a number of brothers and sister are spent…
Eden
A French film less about plot than about an era – the one of electronic…
Deli Man
What can you say about this documentary about Jewish Delis in America (and Canada) other…
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
A charmingly quirky tale of an awkward high school student who is pushed, by his…
Deep Web
A fascinating story – covering the U.S. government’s (allegedly illegal) hunt for the mastermind behind…
Ex Machina
This quiet but gripping tale of artificial intelligence had me hooked from the beginning to…
Phoenix
An emotionally powerful tale, set in 1945 Germany of a concentration camp survivor, who because…
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A 40-minute documentary focussing on the Claude Lanzmann, director of the ground-breaking 1985 film, Shoah, about…
Spy
I think the critics (generally) thought more of this film than I did, but if…
Suicide
A decent action flick and psychological thriller from Israel that includes a person with big…
Danny Collins
I didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, but this schmaltzy tale of…
Woman in Gold
Based on a true story of an Austrian-American woman fighting to retrieve from the Austrian…
While We’re Young
A childless, self-absorbed 40-something couple (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts), surrounded by, and growing apart…
On the Rim of the Sky
Part of the 2015 Hot Docs documentary film festival, this is lovely (scenically and subject…
White God
Yes, if you treat our animal friends – in this case, dogs – with disrespect,…
Kumiko, Treasure Hunter
Lowly office worker with a boring life in Japan is obsessed with her videotape copy…
The Gunman
Billed as an action thriller, Sean Pean, playing an aging hitman trying, not very successfully,…
The Salt of the Earth
This documentary is part focus on internationally renowned photographer Sebastio Salgada, part travelogue, but an…
Going Clear: Scientology and Prison of Belief
Fascinating documentary about the Church (!) of Scientology, including the lengths to which it will…
Mad Max: Fury Road
No, Mad Max (in the form of Tom Hardy) is not the real star of…
This is Where I Leave You
When their father passes away, sons and daughters are called to the family home for…
Dancing Arabs (A Borrowed Identity)
A charming (fictional) and heart-breaking tale of a Palestinian teenager who earns the opportunity study…
Welcome to Me
The always impressive Kristen Wiig takes on a dark role in this tale of a…
Wet Bum
Very low key, small town coming of age tale about a painfully shy teen girl…
Frame by Frame
Another Hot Docs picture, this one about the very dangerous lives of Afghan photojournalists plying…
Good Kill
I was looking forward to this story – seen mainly from the perspective of a…
Clouds of Sils Maria
The impressive Juliette Binoche plays an older actress convinced to take a role in a…
Filth
I saw this film on Netflix, so I’m glad I didn’t shell out the dough…
Preggoland
I liked the theme – a woman’s world changes (including how others look at her)…
Leviathan
It’s hard to believe that this was Russia’s entry for an Academy Award nomination, given…
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Can a two-hour movie, set entirely in a drab room (somewhere in Israel), and involving…
Red Army
I haven’t followed hockey (professional or otherwise) much since my teenage years, but I found…
The Backward Class
A charming and uplifting documentary highlighting the success of India’s first class of “untouchables” to…
Timbuktu
What happens when religious fundamentalists (jihadists, in this case) invade a peaceful Malian city is…
The Wrecking Crew
A delightful documentary about the unsung (no pun intended) heroes of the U.S. music industry…
Still Alice
Julianne Moore’s terrific performance as a middle age woman confronting early onset Alzheimer’s disease makes…
Two Days, One Night
Marion Cotillard is superb as a woman put in a terrible bind – either her…
Mr. Turner
A grunting painter/artist (J.M.W. Turner, wonderfully played by Timothy Spall) who takes advantage of his…
Blackhat
I generally look forward to Michael Mann’s films (Thief, Collateral, The Insider, Heat, etc.), so…
A Most Violent Year
A good, but not great, tale of an ambitious businessman (played by Oscar Isaac) NYC…
Oscar Shorts – Live Action
Always a great package. This year’s lot includes stories about an Afghan teen finding her…
Cake
Jennifer Anniston is compelling in the role of woman suffering from chronic pain and her…
Siddharth
What would you do if you lived in a poor country (India, in this case)…
What We Do In the Shadows
This mockumentary follows a collection of modern day vampires as they room together and search…
The Duff
While the performers are ok, and I generally appreciate tales of outsiders, this film didn’t…
Seymour: An Introduction
Ethan Hawke directed this quiet documentary about Seymour Bernstein, a NYC-based and much respected pianist…
The Babadook
Without any (or much) violence, this story of an Australian boy’s fear of a monster…
Wild Tales
From Argentina, this a package of six films sharing the theme of vengeance (only sometimes…
’71
Jack O’Connell plays a British soldier (of few words) sent to Belfast in 1971 who…
Monsoon
I’m not sure I learned much about India from this documentary – other than how…
The Interview
I admit that I fell asleep during large portions of this movie, but what I…
Focus
I like Will Smith’s work, and I like that that film looks gorgeous on the…
Merchants of Doubt
A decent documentary about how the p.r. industry creates, on behalf of their clients, public…
Run All Night
A familiar story for Liam Neeson: man troubled by his past, on the run from…
The Imitation Game
This drama tells the tale of real life mathematicians/cryptographers, led by Alan Turing (played by…
Get on Up
Chadwick Boseman is excellent as the imitable musician James Brown. The tale takes us from…
Foxcatcher
I’m glad I did not read the reviews, or search out the true story on…
Citizenfour
A very impressive documentary focussing on the eight days that the filmmaker and a few…
American Sniper
Based on a true story, Bradley Cooper is fine (both as an actor and, I’m…
Selma
An important story, well-told and filmed, about Rev Martin Luther King’s (very well acted by…
Big Eyes
Based on the true story of the American painter Margaret Keane who, in the 1950s,…
Wild
Reese Witherspoon is believable and very good as a woman who takes on a solo…
Interstellar
Ok, so I’m not so clear on just how certain cosmological concepts – such as…
Fury
Brad Pitt is, of course, well suited to play the heroic type and he performs…
Winter Sleep
Yes, I know this film won the Palm D’Or at Cannes last year, and yes,…
Zero Motivation
Some good laughs and knowing moments in this story of female Israeli soldiers serving at…
The Calling
Susan Sarandon is impressive as a detective in small town Ontario who is faced with…
Life of Crime
Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins and Isla Fisher are all entertaining in this story of a…
Dear White People
A very cleverly written story about race (and gender and sexual orientation) battles – both…
The Theory of Everything
Based on a book by the first wife of famous physicist Stephen Hawking of their…
Rosewater
Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show fame) directorial (and screenwriter) debut, this is an important…
Inherent Vice
Having not read any of Thomas Pynchon’s novels, I cannot compare this film version to…
Maps to the Stars
By about the half-way mark in David Cronenberg’s new film I was fed up with…
Jersey Boys
A big disappointment for me as I am a fan of Clint Eastwood’s other directorial…