HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED
MOVIES
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
A quiet, intimate and emotionally powerful Canadian tale — played out for the most part…
The Irishman
I watched this excellent 3.5-hour film in the theatre before it started streaming on Netflix…
Pain and Glory
There’s little if any work of director and writer Pedro Almodovar that I don’t appreciate,…
Parasite
South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s very, very dark comedy — which took the top…
Human Nature
A very smart and entertaining documentary about our brave new world of gene editing, focusing…
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
I didn’t know much about the life of this wonderful and hugely talented singer, other…
The Cave
(Seen at TIFF) Syrian director Feras Fayyad and his incredible team have crafted a documentary…
For Sama
Another impressive documentary that presents us with both some of the worst and the best…
American Factory
(Also streaming on Netflix.) An excellent documentary about the nature of work and workers, the…
The Peanut Butter Falcon
A charmer of a story about a 20-year-old with Down’s syndrome who, because he has…
The Farewell
A heartfelt, human, touching and effective story written and directed by Lulu Wang (her first…
Pavarotti
I did not know much about the life of Luciano Pavarotti before watching this lovely…
Echo in the Canyon
An interesting and entertaining documentary looking back at the incredibly rich and influential music scene…
Gaza
This is a powerful documentary look at life within the Gaza Strip, focussing on the…
Ask Dr. Ruth
While the world famous sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, is private about many aspects of…
Miles Davis: The Birth of the Cool
Jazz legend Miles Davis had talent and audacity galore, along with a troubled soul that…
Knock Down the House
(Also on Netflix.) A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at four first time female Democratic candidates in…
Amazing Grace
In the summer of 1972, the incredibly talented singer Aretha Franklin joined the Reverend (and…
Carmine Street Guitars
Rick Kelly, from his cluttered Greenwich Village store, together with a young female apprentice, custom…
Coriolanus: Stratford Festival on Film
In 2018 director Barry Avrich set up his cameras at a live performance at Stratford…
Apollo 11
A fascinating documentary view of the 1969 Apollo 11 space mission — this year celebrating…
Oscar Shorts: Live Action
Each year, for a few years now, the five Oscar-nominated live action short films are…
End Game
This short (40-minute) film — Oscar nomination for documentary feature — is a profound and…
Capernaum
An amazing and heart-breaking performance from a non-professional very young actor (discovered on the streets…
Roma
From the cinematography to the sound to the acting, this is one excellent film. In…
Ben is Back
You’ve probably heard of this plotline: young adult becomes addicted to drugs, parents try to…
Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary Story of Ben Ferencz
It may sound like a cliché, but this gripping, educational (in the best sense of…
The Hate U Give
Based on a best-selling book, this is a powerful and moving story centred on a…
Can You Ever Forgive Me
A fantastic — and serious — performance by Melissa McCarthy anchors this based-on-a-true story of…
The Wife
Glenn Close dazzles as the wife of a self-satisfied American professor/writer (well played by Jonathan…
BlackKKlansman
Director (and one of the writers) Spike Lee at the top of his game. Based…
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
Joaquin Phoenix (with solid supporting roles by Jonah Hill and Jack Black) takes command of…
Three Identical Strangers
A fascinating, emotional and well put together documentary about identical triplets separated at birth in…
Leave No Trace
Ben Foster is excellent (as is an up-and-coming young actress, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, as his…
Hearts Beat Loud
A sweet and charming story, which Nick Offerman, and a young actress to watch out…
Won’t You Be My Neighbor
A very well-put together documentary (by filmmaker Morgan Neville, whose doc “20 Feet from Stardom,…
Beast
Once a socially awkward 20-something woman (superbly played by Jessie Buckley) on the island of…
The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret
More than a follow-up to documentary filmmaker/director Barry Avrich’s (full disclosure: he’s my brother-in-law) Unauthorized: The…
Isle of Dogs
Another unique and imaginative offering from the creative mind of director and co-writer Wes Anderson.…
Foxtrot
Israel’s entry for this year’s Oscars, this is an emotionally tough, but rewarding, story of…
The Insult
A Best Foreign-Language Oscar nominee (from Lebanon) this year, the story is set in contemporary…
In the Fade
Diane Kruger is amazing (she won the best actress prize at Cannes for this role)…
The Shape of Water
Top-notch acting from Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Michael Shannon and Octavia Spencer make this a…
Sweet Virginia
A tense and highly effective US low budget film noir, set in a small Alaskan…
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
It’s a dark comedy and it’s a drama, but a very human story, powered by…
Lady Bird
Saoirse Ronan (who was wonderful in the film Brooklyn, but don’t ask me how to pronounce her…
Blade Runner 2049
An excellent follow-up (directed by the great Denis Villenueve, of Arrival, and Sicario fame) to the original Blade…
The Florida Project
An impressive, engaging and delightful, yet melancholy, visit with several six-year-olds — we get to…
Human Flow
The ads for this documentary (by the celebrated Chinese artist Ai Weiwei) about the tens…
Long Time Running
A sweet, fun, and sad documentary which covers the Tragically Hip on its 2016 cross-Canada…
The White Helmets
All of the words written about the human destruction taking place in Syria cannot, unfortunately,…
Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened
A thoroughly charming and very sweet (tinged with melancholy) documentary about the making, and the…
La La Land
Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling make this modern-day musical, set in a version of L.A.…
Lion
This based-on-a-true-story (which was based on a book) film deserves its label as a crowd…
Manchester By the Sea
One of my favourites of the year. Casey Affleck and the rest of the cast…
50 Feet From Syria | My Dream, My Right
These two documentary films were part of the Syria: A Living History exhibit. The first one chronicles…
Moonlight
Powerful, beautiful and sad are words that appropriately describe this film — based on a…
The Commune
Thomas Vinterberg (who directed the excellent films The Celebration, and The Hunt) drew on his…
Little Men
A quiet, sweet and poignant film, centred around two NYC 13-year-olds (one an introvert, one…
Life, Animated
Fascinating and very moving documentary about a boy, diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder at the age…
Gleason
Speaking of inspirational and emotional stories, this is the true and amazing tale of Steve…
Weiner
Fascinating documentary about the NYC mayoralty campaign run by ex-US Representative, Anthony Weiner, who rose…
The Innocents
One of the most impressive and disturbing films I’ve seen this year. Set in occupied…
The Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Quirky (I think the critics have been using the word “offbeat”), funny, sweet and very…
El Clan
A tense, effective and very-well acted (by Guillermo Francella in particular as The Clan’s patriarch)…
Zootopia
I had a lot of fun visiting the wonderful city of Zootopia and watching the…
Oscar Shorts: Live Action
The packaging of five short films — fiction — competing for the Oscar for short…
The Club
Set in a small seaside town in Chile, this is quiet, dark and challenging story…
Son of Saul
Star Wars, this ain’t. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this is a powerful…
Anomalisa
Wow! A stop-action animation film that made the relationship between a middle-age man in, at…
Mustang
This wonderful, sad and haunting Turkish film (set in a small village in the north…
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…
Theeb
A simple but lovely (and beautifully filmed) tale of a young Bedouin boy – Theeb…
Sicario
One of the most tense movies I’ve ever sat through — two hours of edge-of-your-seat…
The Look of Silence
Fascinating, engrossing but disturbing documentary dealing with responsibility for the 1965 Indonesian genocide in which…
Inside Out
An imagined behind-the-scenes look at the emotional life of a 12-year-old girl as only the…
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…
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…
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…
Whiplash
Ok, so the plot may not be fresh or entirely plausible — the tough as…
Boyhood
Wonderful storytelling, interesting characters, and the fascinating perspective of watching a child — the focus…
Chef
A delightful film about a talented chef (John Favreau), laid off from his job at…
The Lunchbox
An absolutely charming and moving story, set in modern day Mumbai, about love, loneliness, and…
Gabrielle
A lovely and well-acted story from, and set in, Quebec about a developmentally challenged young…
Oscar Shorts — Live Action
A very enjoyable package of the Oscar nominated short films for 2014 (Live Action), with…
The Wolf of Wall Street
No, this is not a primer on what went wrong on Wall St., but it…
American Hustle
Very loosely based on actual events, this is a very enjoyable story of con men…
Short Term 12
A quiet but engrossing and entertaining film with a focus on people more than events,…
Philomena
Delightful tale (based on a true story) of an older Irish woman who, with the…
Narco Cultura
A fascinating and sad documentary juxtaposing the rise of narco music (i.e. music glorifying drug…
Captain Phillips
The director of this film, Paul Greenglass, is known for his use of hand-held cameras…
Cold Eyes
This was one of my favourite films at his year’s TIFF. Set in Seoul, it’s…
Bethlehem
One of my favourites so far this year, this is a gripping story of an…
Prisoners
Impressive and suspenseful tale of taking the law into your own hands when you feel…
12 Years a Slave
Based on the remarkable true story of a free black man in the 1840s who…
Dallas Buyers Club
Based on a true story, Matthew McConaughey is terrific as a victim of AIDS who,…
Blue Is the Warmest Color
Even at three hours in length my attention for this Palme d’Or winning French film…
The Hunt
Intense, gripping and very well-acted Danish film that is deceptively quiet (for the most part).…
Fruitvale Station
On New Year’s Eve 2008/09, a 22-year-old black named Oscar Grant III was, while restrained,…
Before Midnight
The director has, for his third film in a series (each spaced about nine years…
20 Feet from Stardom
A lovely, informative and touching documentary about some of the people (mostly women) who make…
The Central Park Five
This very well-made documentary tells a powerful story of how several youths were falsely accused…
The Gatekeepers
Six living former heads of Israel’s internal security service speak on their times in office,…
Camp 14: Total Control Zone
This South Korean/German production (yes, subtitles) tells the true tale of a North Korean man…
Saving Face
Short (40-minutes or so) documentary about women in Pakistan who are doused with acid and…
The Intouchables
This French film (with subtitles) is inspired by the true story of an improbable friendship…