As an appropriate end to my yearlong venture through classic Canadian cinema, this month I watched Don McKellar’s 1998 apocalyptic dark comedy Last Night. In six hours time, the world will come to an end at the stroke of midnight. Patrick (Don McKellar) is content with facing the end alone in his apartment. However, he comes…
Before he moved to Hollywood with films like Sicario and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve made a film about one of the darkest moments of Canadian history with Polytechnique. On December 6, 1989, a lone gunman (Maxim Gaudette) walked into École Polytechnique in Montreal and shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before killing himself. This semi-fictionalized recreation of the…
This month I delve into the Canadian tax shelter era with the 1977 wilderness survival/horror film Rituals. Harry (Hal Holbrook), Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), Martin (Robin Gammell), Abel (Ken James), and D.J. (Gary Reineke) are five doctor friends, who go for a camping trip in an isolated stretch of wilderness. After the first night, the the men’s…
This month, I watched the 1994 dramedy Double Happiness, by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Mina Shum. Jade Li (Sandra Oh) is a young Hong Kong born woman living in Vancouver with her strict Chinese family. Jade’s parents (Stephen Chang and Alannah Ong) frown at her ambitions to be an actress and they would rather that she find a…
This month I watched 1989’s Roadkill, which is one of the earliest films from “Toronto New Wave” director Bruce McDonald. After rock band Children of Paradise disappear while on tour, promoter Roy Seth (Gerry Quigley) sends intern Ramona (Valerie Buhagiar) to track them down in Sudbury. However, Ramona soon loses track of the band and has to…
It’s a bit of a lighthearted pick for me this month, as I chose to watch Deepa Mehta’s 2002 Indo-Canadian romantic comedy Bollywood/Hollywood. Rahul Seth (Rahul Khanna) is a rich Indian man in Toronto, who is essentially blackmailed by his family to find an Indian girl to marry, or else his younger sister Twinky (Rishma Malik) can’t go through…
With it being Pride Month in Canada, culminating with this weekend’s Toronto Pride Parade, I figured that an appropriate selection for this month’s Blindspot would be Jean-Marc Vallée’s 2005 breakthrough film C.R.A.Z.Y. Born on Christmas Day to conservative Christian parents Gervais (Michel Côté) and Laurianne (Danielle Proulx), Zachary Beaulieu (Marc-André Grondin) is the second youngest of a family of…
This month I watched M. Butterfly, which is the only film directed by David Cronenberg that I had yet to see. René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) is a French diplomat stationed in Beijing, China during the 1960s. René meets and falls in love with Chinese opera singer Song Liling (John Lone). The affair lasts for many years, with René…
The month I delved into The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand’s Oscar-winning follow-up to 1986’s The Decline of the American Empire. Seventeen years after his womanizing ways brought an end to his marriage with Louise (Dorothée Berryman), Rémy (Rémy Girard) is terminally ill with cancer and bedridden in hospital. This results in Rémy’s estranged son Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau) to…
Sorry for being a bit late for this month’s Blindspot entry, which takes a look at Guy Maddin’s 2003 musical comedy The Saddest Music in the World. Set in Winnipeg during The Great Depression, baroness Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces an international competition to find the saddest music in the world. Eager to join is failing…
