Movie review: "Arrival" (2016)

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by Denis Veilleneuve
Based on Ted Chiang's short story Story of Your Life, Denis Villeneuve's Arrival follows up his 2015 hit Sicario with a different angle. Whereas Sicario was tense and brutal, Arrival is much more heady and idea-driven, but what the two films do have in common is their excellence - at a time when "hard" science fiction is becoming increasingly rare in multiplexes, a film of this quality is a real treat, and regardless of your taste in drama, there's likely to be something for everyone here. If any film is to herald the beginning of this year's awards season, this is about as great a start as could be hoped for.

Doctor Strange movie review

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by Scott Derrickson
(tl;dr? skip to the end for a few pros and cons)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is eight years old now, and it's expanded significantly since its debut in 2008 in just about every imaginable way. Films like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War have become sprawling behemoths of a million subplots, the Sokovia Accords have heightened the franchise's thematic ambitions, and the MCU has even lept off the big screen into the realms of Netflix and broadcast television, with cable soon to come. By this point, these movies have developed a recognisable formula, but while Doctor Strange fits all the trappings, it also brings the solid humour, characters, and action which makes these films a hit, and taps into a fresh vein of the source material in the process.

Movie review: "The Birth of a Nation"

dir. Nate Parker
When Nate Parker's passion project gained awards and rapturous applause at the Sundance Film Festival, it thrust him into a spotlight which has not been entirely beneficial to the film itself. While an artist should be separable from their art, there is a reason why Parker's past actions are mentioned so often in reviews of the film, as he's taken the writer-director-star role, and the content of the film sometimes makes the rape charges hard to ignore. If The Birth of a Nation were a great film, it might have been able to rise above these issues, and while it's well-shot and acted, Parker's severe limitations as a first-time director are consistently apparent, and his conventional, hagiographic script struggles to truly dig deep into its subject matter. There are surface pleasures here, but whether they're enough to satisfy will likely vary wildly.

What I saw at the 2016 Calgary International Film Festival

This year, I made an effort to watch several films at the 2016 Calgary International Film Festival. While I don't have the time to attend even close to every major film, I have managed to catch a few significant screenings, with a particular focus on films which have amassed buzz over the course of the festival circuit. Without further ado, here are my capsule reviews of each.

Hell or High Water movie review

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by David Mackenzie
After starring on the early seasons of FX's Sons of Anarchy, Taylor Sheridan made a name for himself as a screenwriter with his excellent script to last year's Sicario. With his directorial debut set to premiere at Cannes next year, he's one of the most promising talents in the industry right now, and this second film, directed by Starred Up director David Mackenzie, only confirms that. Hell or High Water is a riveting rural crime film with deep characters and a surprising sense of humour, and while it lacks some of the novelty which made Sicario so successful, it's slightly more engaging as a whole, and in a summer as dry as this one, a thriller which is both smart and entertaining is all the more of a breath of fresh air.

Kubo and the Two Strings film review

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by Travis Knight
Laika's work in stop motion has always been fairly prestigious. Films like Coraline and ParaNorman received no shortage of critical acclaim, their unconventional form of craft often being placed among such great studios as Ghibli and Pixar. In films like the aforementioned, the studio's craft often complemented the films' disturbing visuals, creating films which, while not strictly horror, were able to construct a fairly unsettling tone in the former and an effective genre homage in the latter. Kubo is in some ways a departure, taking the form of a sweeping epic journey more akin to a fantasy film than their earlier works, but this change in tone is revelatory, because Kubo and the Two Strings is the surest realization of their craft to date and stands a good chance of going down as their masterpiece.

Star Trek Beyond movie review

dir. by Justin Lin
The latest entry in the popular-but-divisive Star Trek reboot film series has been praised as a return to form after 2013's controversial Star Trek Into Darkness, and in many ways it's the closest these films have come to the tone and format of the original TV show. However, despite its many charming character moments and thoughtful tangents, Star Trek Beyond continues down the action-oriented route that this reboot series has become notorious for, and for all its moments-and there are plenty-its by-the-numbers plot and poorly-shot action never make this latest entry exciting enough to justify the wasted potential of its deeper elements.