Moving On

This post is just a quick note to say that I am retiring Cinemablographer. You have probably noticed that this blog has not been active since last summer, but I just want to make the news official.

 

I started this blog ten years ago as a place to cover Canadian films and independent cinema, and while I really loved getting to meet filmmakers, write about their movies, and spotlight their creativity I am moving on from this blog mainly to purse freelance work and work/life balance, among other reasons. Thank you to everyone I met along the way, both in person and online, and to everyone whose contribution made this such a rewarding experience—one I never expected when the blog first began. Thank you to every film rep, festival, theatre, and helping hand that opened a door along the way. I hope we continue to work together as new opportunities arise.

 

The review and interview archives will continue to be updated infrequently, as will my page at Rotten Tomatoes, but you can continue to read my work at other sites including POV, That Shelf, my irregular freelance gigs, and hopefully other outlets to come. Please feel free to drop my a line on Twitter and I hope to see you at the movies!

 

-Pat Mullen

Working Man's Blues

Working Man

(USA, 108 min.)

Written and directed by Robert Jury

Starring: Peter Gerety, Billy Brown, Talia Shire, Michael Brunlieb

It’s always a thrill to see a great character actor land a lead role and make the most of it. Peter Gerety is one of those reliable stalwarts that cinephiles and casual moviegoers recognize, but probably struggle to name. Small but memorable parts in works like The Wire, A Most Violent Year, and Charlie Wilson’s War prove that a good character actor elevates the stars of a film while offering something memorable with brief screentime.

 

2019 in Review: The Best Films of the Year So Far

Rocketman, Hotel Mumbai, nîpawistamâsowin, Genesis, Knock Down the House, and Apollo 11
are some of 2019's best films.

2019 is a year to savour artisanal offerings and home-cooked meals. The only major studio movie of the year that’s even worth talking about, let along seeing, is the Elton John biopic Rocketman. Instead, the movies are all about the small stuff this year: festival fare, independent works, and documentaries.

Interview: Chatting with 'A Colony' director Geneviève Dulude-De Celles

Emilie Bierre stars in A Colony

New interview! I had the pleasure of talking with Geneviève Dulude-De Celles for the TFCA recently about her new film A Colony, which won Best Film at the Canadian Screen Awards earlier this year. It was a pleasure to catch up with the auteur in the making, learning about her process, and hearing about what we can all do to create a culture of cinephilia that will inspire audiences to crave Canadian films.

First Clips from Louise Archambault's 'And the Birds Rained Down'

Sorry for being MIA lately! We're kicking into production on the Fall issue of POV so I've been a bit busy. Part of the fun has been shaking down potential Canadian docs to cover...and while I can't say much about that, 2019 looks to be an improvement for Canadian dramas. One standout so far promises to be Louise Archambault's adaptation of Jocelyne Saucier's acclaimed novel And the Birds Rained Down (Il pleuvait des oiseaux). The film stars Andrée Lachapelle, Gilbert Sicotte, Rémy Girard, Ève Landry, Éric Robidoux, and Louise Portal in this slice of life drama from the director of Gabrielle. (The novel gained popularity when it appeared in CBC's 2015 Canada Reads contest, defended by Martha Wainwright, where it lost to Kim Thúy's Ru, defended by TIFF's Cameron Bailey.)

'Mouthpiece' Takes Audiences Inside Women's Double Lives

Mouthpiece

(Canada, 91 min.)

Dir. Patricia Rozema, Writ. Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava, Patricia Rozema

Starring: Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava, Maev Beaty, Jake Epstein, Paula Boudreau

Courtesy of TIFF

Patricia Rozema delivers another winner with Mouthpiece. The film might be her most ambitious and auteurist picture since her 1987 breakthrough feature I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. It’s an exciting reminder of why she’s one of the best voices in Canadian film. After the literary romp of Mansfield Park and the breathtaking dystopian vision of Into the Forest, Rozema looks inward with Mouthpiece, tightening the scope while pushing the boundaries. The film stars Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, who join Rozema in adapting their play Mouthpiece, as Cassandra, a woman torn between her two selves when she learns of the sudden death of her mother, Elaine.

Interview: Chatting with 'Late Night' Director Nisha Ganatra

Director Nisha Ganatra with Late Night star/writer Mindy Kaling

New interview! I recently had the privilege to chat with Vancouver-born director Nisha Ganatra ahead of the release of her new film Late Night. The film is a whip-smart workplace comedy that stars Emma Thompson as a floundering late night talk show host who insists upon a "diversity hire," played by Mindy Kaling, to freshen up her material. Ganatra talks about her working relationship with Mindy Kaling, pushing for diversity in film and television, and drawing upon her experience as the odd one out on the set to make Late Night one of the year's most topical films.

Read the full interview here at Sharp!

"The the Truth, But Tell It Slant"

Wild Nights With Emily

(USA, 85 min.)

Written and directed by Madeleine Olnek

Starring: Molly Shannon, Amy Seimetz, Susan Ziegler, Brett Gelman

Molly Shannon stars as Emily Dickinson in Wild Nights With Emily
Greenwich Entertainment

All these years we’ve been idolizing Emily Dickinson as a woman of quiet passion. English classes peruse her poems through the lens of loneliness and the melancholy tone of unrequited love. Emily, it turns out, was a demon in the sack with her sister in law.

'Photograph': Watching Love Develop

Photograph

(India/Germany/USA, 110 min.)

Written and directed by Ritesh Batra

Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra

Amazon Pictures / Mongrel Media

Ritesh Batra is quietly becoming a master of the understated love story. After the crowd-pleasingly brilliant The Lunchbox and the poignantly stirring Our Souls at Night, Batra delivers another bittersweet two-hander with Photograph. The film brings Batra back to Mumbai after a few western indies—besides Our Souls at Night, Batra directed the forgettable adaptation of Julian Barnes’ regrettable Booker Prize winner The Sense of an Ending—and one might call it a return to his roots. Photograph is another romantic two-hander and Batra reclaims the magic of The Lunchbox as the love story draws upon the divides of class, religion, and gender that give the love story a deeper sting.

Cardinal Takes the Lead

Falls Around Her

(Canada, 100 min.)

Written and directed by Darlene Naponse

Starring: Tantoo Cardinal, Tina Keeper, Gail Maurice, Rob Stewart, Johnny Issaluk

Tantoo Cardinal is one of Canada’s great character actors and she finally gets her due with Falls Around Her. She has over 100 credits to her name in a career that’s spanned forty years and featured an Oscar winner for Best Picture that remains one of the defining films of the 1990s. While Dances with Wolves remains the biggest entry of Cardinal’s résumé, too few of Cardinal’s roles have offered much by way of screen time or narrative arcs, but they’re always memorable highlights of the films in which she appears. It’s astounding that her performance as Mary in Falls Around Her is the first lead role of her career. It’s the cherry on top of a recent hot streak that includes small but notable roles in films like Wind River, Through Black Spruce, and The Grizzlies.

'Diane': Why Am I Here?

Diane

(USA, 95 min.)

Written and directed by Kent Jones

Starring: Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Deirdre O’Connell, Phyllis Somerville

Diane might not be the best film to see with your mom on Mother’s Day. Sure, it’s a well-intentioned portrait of a devoted mother who indefatigably does all she can for her son and family, but it’s a bleak reminder that your mom will soon be buried under flowers rather than receiving them. Film critic turned director Kent Jones (Hitchcock/Truffaut) makes his feature dramatic debut with Diane and while he scores a respectable performance from Mary Kay Place, his film is a lethargic misfire. One depressing scene follows another while tinkling piano music strains on the soundtrack and Place sits sullenly with a beleaguered look on her face. The film’s existential questions ultimately inspire one to sit up in the movie theatre and wonder, “Why am I here?”

'Ordinary Days' and the Rule of Three

Ordinary Days

(Canada, 82 min.)

Dir. Kris Booth, Jordan Canning, Renuka Jeyapalan; Writ. Ramona Barckert

Starring: Jacqueline Byers, Michael Xavier, Torri Higginson, Richard Clarkin, Joris Jarsky, Mena Massoud

The Rashômon school of filmmaking gets a new angle in Ordinary Days. This intriguing and suspenseful film plays with perspectives and narratives as three points of view come together in a fractured narrative that sees one story through the eyes of three characters. There is an extra layer to the level of interpretation since a unique director realizes each character’s story. The entirety of the script comes from the mind of a single screenwriter, Ramona Barckert, so the film poses an intriguing exercise in authorship as the directors, like the bandit, the bride, and the woodcutter, interpret a single event differently. What results is a puzzle whose pieces are assorted shades and styles, yet mostly fit together.

'Non-Fiction' and High Art

Non-Fiction (Doubles vies)

(France, 108 min.)

Written and directed by Olivier Assayas

Starring: Guillaume Canet, Juliette Binoche, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi, Christa Théret 

Courtesy of TIFF

Once, when I was taking a course on literary modernism, the professor asked the class a pressing question. “What is the line between high art and low art?” he queried, leaving a group of theory-versed undergraduate students surprisingly tongue-tied. The book under discussion was Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and, when unfortunately called upon by the professor, I sidestepped the answer by offering an anecdote. I said that being a thrifty student, I bought my books second-hand at various bookstores and while everything else on the reading list—Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf, etc.—appeared on the “literature” shelves, poor Rebecca and her front cover worthy of a Harlequin romance, was relegated to the general “Fiction” section. However, it was the one book on the list that got the cashier really excited. “My Cousin Rachel’s even better, dear,” was her reply.

'The Grizzlies': A Film that Roars

The Grizzlies

(Canada, 104 min.)

Dir. Miranda de Pencier; Writ. Moria Walley-Beckett, Graham Yosy

Starring: Ben Schnetzer, Paul Nutarariaq, Emerald MacDonald, Anna Lambe, Fred Bailey, Tantoo Cardinal, Booboo Stewart, Will Sasso

Photo by Shane Mahood
Mongrel Media

The fearless and inspiring The Grizzlies gives Canadian film the great sports drama that has long eluded it. As The Grizzlies gives its excellent young cast a chance to shine, roar, and spotlight their community, the film provides a significant call to action for the suicide crisis up North and an effective portrait of the complexity of north/south and Indigenous/settler relationships. The film begins with a heartbreaking image of an Inuit youth walking on the tundra, alone save for his faithful dog, as he takes his life. The image returns more than once in The Grizzlies as the film introduces audiences to a community in which literally everyone has lost a friend or family member to suicide.

Nocturnal Animals: 'Fausto' Re-Imagines Man and Myth

Fausto

(Canada/Mexico, 70 min.)

Written and directed by Andrea Bussmann

Starring: Alberto Núñez, Victor Pueyo, Gabino Rodríguez, Fernando Renjifo, Ziad Chakaroun

If Andrea Bussmann’s previous feature was a tale for those who dreamt, her latest work is a dream realized in its most cinematic form. Bussmann’s Fausto transports the Faust myth to beaches of Oaxaca, Mexico for a loose, free-flowing, and hypnotic meditation. It’s a fleeting film that ebbs and flows in elliptical pauses. Demanding, frustrating, fascinating, and rewarding, Fausto is a richly dense exercise in active viewing. Much like a dream that only makes sense when unpacked and savoured as a metaphorical whole, it’s also a beautifully evocative film that washes over you and enriches the mind.