Dumb Money

Dumb Money

The story behind the 2021 GameStop short squeeze is told in Dumb Money. Keith Gill (Paul Dano) is an amateur financial analyst, who posts about his stock investments on his YouTube channel Roaring Kitty and on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets. Keith makes a huge investment in GameStop stock, which is being short-sold by hedge fund…

The Fabelmans

The Fabelmans – TIFF 2022

A young man pursues a career in filmmaking as his family life disintegrates in The Fabelmans. Since being taken to see The Greatest Show on Earth as a child, Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) has had a growing love of filmmaking. Excused as a hobby by his computer engineer father, Burt (Paul Dano), Sammy finds support…

Featured image for review of The Batman on Sean Kelly on Movies

The Batman

The saga of the Dark Knight is rebooted as a brooding noir mystery with The Batman. For the last two years, reclusive millionaire Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) has been enacting vigilante justice as The Batman and he found an alley in Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Batman’s biggest challenge arises when a serial killer named…

Okja

Okja

A young Korean girl tries to save her pet superpig from the slaughterhouse in Okja. Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) becomes CEO of Mirando Corporation, taking over from her twin sister Nancy. Lucy’s first major announcement is the discovery of a new breed of superpig, which have been sent to 26 farms around the world, as part…

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man

A stranded man receives assistance from a very skillful corpse in Swiss Army Man. Hank (Paul Dano) is a man marooned on an island, who has just about lost hope. Just as he is about to hang himself, Hank notices a corpse of man named Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) lying on the beach. Hank soon comes…

The Door

The Door

Indie Spotlight is a series focusing on reviews of independent films After saving a wealthy Japanese gentleman from a mugging, Owen (Sam Kantor) is offered a job at one of the man’s family businesses.  Owen arrives at an old abandoned meat-packing plant and is told to put on a security uniform, sit at a desk,…

Prisoners

Prisoners

Acclaimed French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) makes his Hollywood debut with the thriller Prisoners.  Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his family heads over to the house of his friend Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) for Thanksgiving dinner.  Afterwards, it is noticed that both Keller and Franklin’s daughters have gone missing.  Franklin’s son makes note of an…

Looper

Looper

Ever since the release of the high school-set noir Brick in 2005, which I consider to be one of my all-time favourite films, I have considered Rian Johnson to be a director to keep an eye on.  For his third, and most ambitious, feature Looper, Johnson reunites with Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt for a sci-fi…

Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens

This is one of those films where everything that you need to know about it is in the title.  The film is pretty much done as a straight-forward western, except for the fact that the villains just happen to be alien invaders. I think it’s this western/sci-fi genre-bending that makes the film so fun to…

Meek’s Cutoff

Meek’s Cutoff

Meek’s Cutoff is the latest film by director Kelly Reichardt and it is currently playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of a retrospective on the director. The film is somewhat slow-paced western about a caravan of people in the 1800s, who are travelling across Oregon looking for a place to settle (or at least a…