SCREEN | Black and White – A 'Test Pattern' of Sexual Violence

"I never want you to leave."

Kino Lorber

A fresh new filmmaking voice in newcomer Shatara Michelle Ford makes her quietly devastating debut. Her first film, Test Pattern, is a fiercely powerful relationship drama about the struggles of navigating sexual violence as a young Black woman in an interracial relationship. It expertly confronts all of our preconceptions about victimhood.

SCREEN | Jason Segel Takes Care of 'Our Friend'

"Don't be afraid to give yourself to somebody."

Gravitas Ventures / Elevation Pictures

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite's relationship dramedy Our Friend documents the adult friendship history of a real-life married couple, Nicole and Matt (Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck), and their college friend Dane (Jason Segel) over many years and after one of them gets sick with terminal cancer and is about to die. It's both a heartwarming and heartbreaking story of true friendship.

SCREEN | Being Vietnamese – 'No Crying at the Dinner Table'

"So let us listen. That's all."

Travelling Distribution

I have never seen anything so effectively document exactly what it feels like growing up in a Vietnamese-Canadian household than Toronto-born (now Montreal-based) filmmaker Carol Nguyen's award-winning documentary short film, No Crying at the Dinner Table. In the fifteen-minute short, she interviews her parents and sister as they therapeutically describe internalized past traumas around death and their lives as refugees, artfully intercut with intimate b-roll footage of them performing personal daily rituals revealing their vulnerabilities.

SCREEN | Quietly Loud – Riz Ahmed Hears the 'Sound of Metal'

"All the fear is gone."

Amazon Studios / Pacific Northwest Pictures

British-Pakistani actor/rapper Riz Ahmed offers another pulsingly dramatic turn as a troubled musician—this time a drummer (Ruben) going deaf—in director Darius Marder's indie drama Sound of Metal. Music provides a detour to a story about an addict's recovery over a further obstacle as he learns to adapt to his new community.

REEL | A Buddy Comedy for the Ages – Take 'The Climb'

"He misses you."

Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media

Starring, written, and produced by real-life best friends Michael Angelo Covino (who also directs) and Kyle Marvin, The Climb is an indie comedy—expanded from their eight-minute short film—about a particularly tumultuous but enduring lifelong friendship between two middle-aged men set across several years of laughter, heartbreak, and betrayal. It's surprisingly ambitious, uproarious, and one of the most original American-made comedies in years.

SCREEN | Seoul Searching – Finding 'Gyopo' x VAFF 2020

"Like how do I make you feel?"

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

Toronto video artist Samuel Kiehoon Lee has created a very creative and energetic portrait of young Korean foreign nationals (known as the gyopo diaspora), mostly artists, now living and loving in Seoul. Captured over a single day and night, the loose anthology of small character stories weaves in and out of the lives of various South Korean expatriates with a familiar artistry to its contemporary tales of lost identity.

REEL | Frontier Capitalism – Kelly Reichardt Milks 'First Cow'

"Some people can't imagine being stolen from."

A24 / MK2 Mile End

Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt returns to her beloved Oregon in her latest feature, a slow Western about two travellers during the nineteenth-century Old West. Based on the book The Half-Life, written by author and regular collaborator Jon Raymond (who co-wrote the script with Reichardt), First Cow tenderly eases into its story of food and friendship wrapped in frontier capitalism.

SCREEN | A Collage of Memories – 'Wintopia' x DOXA 2020

"Life is more complex than any camera can record."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Unfinished films can often be fascinating artifacts of artists' ultimately incomplete creative endeavours. In the NFB documentary Wintopia, radio producer Mira Burt-Wintonick captures herself remembering her father, famed Montreal documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick, while trying to finish his lost "Utopia" project and also grappling with her own mixed feelings in creating a moving collage of memories of both their works at the very same time.

GENRE | 'The Vast of Night' Sounds Off on Prime Video

"There's something in the sky. Stay in the house!"

Amazon Studios

There's such a deliberately controlled pace immediately felt in freshman director Andrew Patterson's electrifying '50s-era retro sci-fi indie drama. Unfolding in real-time with soaring long-takes for what feels like a series of continuous shots to its camerawork, the micro-budget film The Vast of Night (shot over only seventeen days) is a superb lo-fi contained narrative that uses analogue imagery to perfectly put you into the mood of the unnerving slow burn story of paranormal sightings.

SCREEN | Beanie Feldstein Learns 'How to Build A Girl'

"You rip it up and start again."

IFC Films / Film4

Starlet Beanie Feldstein offers another lively star-making turn as an artistic British teen enamoured with the world of music journalism in the film adaptation based on the loose memoir How to Build A Girl by author Caitlin Moran, who also wrote the script.

GENRE | 'Porno' Theatre – Teens Battle A Sex Demon

"Is this an art film?"

Fangoria / Cinestate

First-time director Keola Racela tackles sexual dysfunction in his teen horror film set entirely in a movie theatre run by a group of young Christian employees somewhere in 1992 small-town USA. Porno's relatively straightforward, all-in-one-night premise artfully unfolds in real-time after a crazed, unholy sex demon (Katelyn Pearce) is unleashed through a reel of film that turns out to be a creepy, satanic pornographic movie.

SCREEN | Hugh Jackman Teaches A 'Bad Education' on HBO

"I would kill somebody for a carb right now."

HBO Films

Bad Education dramatizes the biggest public school theft in American history, set in the Roslyn school district of Long Island, NY, when it was uncovered in 2002. Part crime drama and part high school investigation, director Cory Finley deftly tackles small-town corruption in the engaging HBO original film about ethics and morality.

SCREEN | To Be Alive – 'Beastie Boys Story' Keeps It Ill on Apple TV+

"I'd rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever."

Photo credit | Taylor Rainbolt

Simply titled a Beastie Boys Story, this filmed event dubbed "A Live Spike Jonze Documentary" experience serves as both a musical retrospective of the famed Brooklyn hip-hop trio's illustrious thirty-year career (also a companion to their Beastie Boys Book) and loving remembrance tribute for departed member Adam Yauch (aka MCA), who died of cancer in 2012.

GENRE | Alexandra Daddario Slashes 'We Summon the Darkness'

"Here's to a night that we're going to remember for years to come."

Lionsgate / Saban Films

Indie filmmaker Marc Meyers' surprisingly fresh take on the 1980s slasher comedy subgenre is a devilishly fun, twisty ride. It's impressive how well shot, directed, and laid out We Summon the Darkness' seemingly standard heavy metal meets satanic panic horror flick premise ultimately is.

SCREEN | 'Swallow'–ing Compulsions of Domestic Control

"Do I make you happy?"

IFC Films / MK2 Mile End

First-time filmmaker Carlo Mirabella-Davis crafts a truly arresting picture starring the absolutely captivating Haley Bennett as a troubled, domesticated '50s-type kept housewife who cannot stop swallowing small household objects in the provocative feminist drama. Swallow is a gorgeously rendered yet haunting portrait of regaining power through compulsion.

SCREEN | Pete Davidson Charms 'Big Time Adolescence'

"We don't cry in this house. We do drugs in this house."

LD Entertainment / American High

Infamous Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson brings an abundance of low-key charm to the small-time fun of his slacker loser character Zeke in Big Time Adolescence. Essentially, the cool guy stoner from high school who never really grew up, Davidson forms a sweet brotherly bond to his ex-girlfriend's sixteen-year-old little brother, the likeable Griffin Gluck as Mo, for good and (mostly) ill.

SCREEN | Anna Akana Travels to 'Go Back to China'

"It was always my dream to have all my children under one roof."

Gravitas Ventures

YouTube star Anna Akana tackles her first feature lead role in the cross-cultural Chinese-American family comedy Go Back to China. Filmmaker Emily Ting balances her dysfunctional multi-generational relationships with common Asian themes of obligation or providing and individual creative pursuits.

SCREEN | Nick Kroll Follows His 'Olympic Dreams'

"You made me feel so warm."

IFC Films

Shot completely on location inside the Athletes Village without a crew during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, married filmmaking couple Jeremy Teicher and Alexi Pappas have basically made a semi-improvised hangout movie set in an ultra-exclusive setting. With unprecedented access from the IOC through an artist-in-residence program, Olympic Dreams artfully captures the spirit and in-between moments of the games.

REEL | 92nd Annual Oscars x 2019 Ballot

Picture: 1917 (Winner: Parasite)
Director: Sam Mendes, 1917 (Winner: Bong Joon-ho, Parasite)
Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Actress: Renée Zellweger, Judy
Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood
Supporting Actress: Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Original Screenplay: Bong Joon-ho & Han Jin-won, Parasite
Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
Animated Feature: Toy Story 4

TREAT | New in Town x Mello Donut Shop x Chinatown

Chinatown—(January 12, 2020) The new and modern, Korean-owned Mello Donut Shop—from the same proprietor of the well-loved but short-lived Uyu Ice Cream shop, opened up next door to Umaluma Gelato at the tail end of last year, to an already exciting reception.