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Silvery screens - a list by cath

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Like Blue Velvet, Dexter and Twin Peaks before it, Durham County is exceptionally dark and disturbing but thoroughly engrossing. Beautifully and chillingly shot, and brilliantly acted by the top-notch cast, Durham County tells the story of homicide detective Mike Sweeney who moves his family from Toronto to suburban Durham County after his partner's murder and his wife's recovery from breast cancer.

Living across the street, unbeknownst to him, is his former best friend, the deadly charismatic Ray Prager and his family. Secrets rise to the surface and bodies begin turning up as Mike investigates a potential serial killer and Ray degenerates into a sociopath.

Updated Jul 31, 2009

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Me and You and Everyone We Know

2 people recommended this item

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I'll bet you've never heard of this movie! It was one of 2005's most critically acclaimed films, and won the Camera D'or for Best First Film at Cannes.

Say if Diablo Cody had not only written Juno, but directed and starred in it as well, you'd be coming close to Me and You and Everyone We Know territory. Miranda July, who wrote, directed and stars as Christine, who falls in love with Richard (John Hawkes), a divorcing father and shoe salesman.

How do hopeless people fall in love when they're hopeless? Watch this and find out. It's quietly confident, sunny, sweet and quirky, much in the vein of Juno but without the insanely hip dialogue. It's sweet central love story is tempered by some very audacious moments involving sex, but it's got so much charm it's hardly offensive enough to matter.

Oh and ))<>((.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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Sense & Sensibility (Special Edition)

3 people recommended this item

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Ang Lee directs this wonderful version of the Jane Austen classic.

Updated Aug 24, 2008

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The Complete (Lazy) Jane Austen

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Live Forever

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A fascinating documentary about the rise and fall of the Brit Pop music moment of the 90s. It may have barely made a blip in North America (I still cannot believe that Oasis is only known as "That Wonderwall band", but the genre made a lasting impact in the UK with much of the modern music being made there owes a huge debt to the bands of BritPop.

Live Forever takes it's name from the Oasis song and certainly asks and answers the question "Where were you while we were getting high?" With compelling interviews from some of the major players such as Blur's Damon Albarn, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Oasis's brothers Gallagher who come across as bitter, depressed and as cocksure as ever, in that order. Live Forever sheds a light on the things in the background of the media-propelled musical genre of Brit Pop. Certainly fascinating and not just to those like me, who were and are fans.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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Highway 61

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Ah, Canadian cinema. There's just something so personal and homemade about it. Many English-Canadians find it unwatchable, sadly.

Bruce McDonald is something of a maverick filmmaker and manages to make cool Canadian films like Hard Core Logo and Highway 61.

The basic story is a small-town barber (Don McKellar) and a smuggler (Valerie Buhagiar) strap a corpse to the roof of a 63 Ford Galaxy and drive from northern Ontario done to New Orleans. It's the middle film in McDonald's road trip trilogy (the other two being Roadkill and Hard Core Logo) so their journey is chockful of oddities and bizarreness. Did I mention they were being chased by the devil?

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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Canadiana

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Dog Day Afternoon

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I've never found movies from the 70s particularly appealing...all that machismo and political intrigue. But I absolutely loved Dog Day Afternoon. Back in 1975 this was shocking, thought-provoking and intense but today is pretty much exactly what we see at least once a week on the evening news. Part of the appeal of Dog Day Afternoon is that nostalgia or charming innocence of a time when things weren't quite so complicated.

And of course this was all based on a true story...a man robs a bank to finance his lover's sex change operation but it goes wrong and turns into a stand-off with police, complete with hostages and the man's unsuspecting family...and the cameras filming everything for live TV. That Al Pacino, a young tour de force actor at the time, would take on the role of Sonny is quite remarkable considering the role and the time period and that he'd been making his mark in such films as Serpico and the first two Godfathers.

It's dramatic, compelling and intense, with an incredible lead performance from Pacino as well as John Cazale and Charles Durning.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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Cabaret

2 people recommended this item

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Wilkommen! This is the remarkable story about life in 1931 Berlin from the perspective of a group of bonne vivants at the Kit Kat Club nightclub. At the centre of the tale is the American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), her lover Brian (Michael York) and the nightclub's Master of Ceremonies played by the scene-stealing Joel Grey.

As the economic, social and political situation in Germany deteriorates, the gang at the Kit Kat Club try to distract their patrons and themselves from what is happening. Cabaret won 8 Academy Awards in 1972. The songs are absolute classics and performed with the perfect amount of emotion, glee and sensuality, the costumes are dramatic and its easy to forget that this was made in the early 70s.

A love song to the decadent side to Berlin, it's a truly remarkable film.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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The Art of Buster Keaton

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The absolutely brilliant Buster Keaton never managed to achieve the iconic status of Charlie Chaplin, despite the similarities between the two performers. But that's ok, because it allows us all to slowly discover Keaton's subtle and unbelievable genius.

This set is for Keaton fans - it's got 11 of his feature films as well as selection of his shorts. It includes the classics The General, Steamboat Jr., Sherlock Jr., The Navigator and Three Ages.

The "Great Stone Face" made films with humour, breathtaking stunts (without any of the modern technology we now take for granted), and old-fashioned romance. The only thing missing from this collection that I can see is the CBC-TV movie he made shortly before his death in 1966 called The Railrodder, a delightful little movie gem I remember from my childhood.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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The Last King of Scotland

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2 people recommended this item

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It's got quite a misleading title (it's explained) and it's a fictional tale with a real life political/historical background. While Forest Whitaker deserves every accolade he received for his role, I'm perplexed why the cover has three images of him on the cover and none of James McAvoy, whose character propels the story. Hm?

The film follows young, aimless, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (McAvoy) into Uganda where a coincidental meeting with the country's future leader Idi Amin (Whitaker) finds him acting as the leader's offical doctor (and one of his many advisors). Through Garrigan's outsider eyes, we see how the incredibly charismatic, seductive and dangerous Amin becomes the country's dictator and how formerly independant Uganda dissolves into genecide and terror.

The film is visually stunning and horrific but in such a way that you cannot (and shouldn't) tear your eyes away from both the story and Whitaker's spectacular performance. McAvoy brings a convincingly multi-layered performance as the naive, callow youth who gets caught up in the power glut and exoticism of his circumstances and pays a dramatic price.

Updated Aug 28, 2008

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El Topo

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If you like your movies bizarre, challenging and beautiful, you must see El Topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

It's brutal violence, wry satire and hallucinatory imagery has to be seen to be believed. It's not a movie you'll ever forget once you see it.

Updated Aug 28, 2008