“Dance the winds will touch your feet, just dance and dance feel the beat, dance the last atom cutting a knot, just dance and dance until you cannot” — Miroslava Odalovic I sometimes have dreams about being in a place with gorgeous colors and heightened emotions and a feeling of weightlessness. I was thinking about [...]

Our society has often been called “death-denying,” one in which grief is suppressed and the inevitability of death ignored. Author John Fowles said, “Death’s rather like a certain kind of lecturer. You don’t really hear what is being said until you’re in the first row.” The children at a primary school in Montreal are definitely [...]

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery The ability to see events from different perspectives is one of the most important elements of a successful relationship, whether it involves a married couple, a parent and child, or a group of nations. Warring [...]

Written and directed by independent filmmaker David Spaltro, Things I Don’t Understand is a thought-provoking drama of young people on the edge, seeking desperately to grab a foothold. Like other recent films, it asks the hard questions: Who am I, why am I here, what is the meaning of life, and what happens when we [...]

In Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, you will not find sexual addictions, murderous cults, criminal sociopaths, not even a single vampire. You will, however, find a compelling story of one boy’s incredible bonding with a high-spirited half-thoroughbred who becomes trapped in the nightmare of the First World War. Based on the 1982 children’s novel by Michael [...]

If Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, his first film since You Can Count on Me, establishes anything it is that unless we can acknowledge responsibility and forgive ourselves for any real or perceived wrongdoing, we are caught in an endless cycle of denial and recrimination, potentially causing great damage to ourselves and others by internalizing our guilt. [...]

Set in Elandsdoorn, a rural township in the province of Mpumalanga, South Africa, director Oliver Schmitz has painted an indelible portrait of a twelve-year-old girl’s resilience in the face of poverty, ignorance, and disease. The film, Life, Above All, was South Africa’s entry in the Oscar’s Best Foreign Film Category and appropriately received a ten-minute [...]

Love is about holding on to someone, but it is also about knowing when to let go. This theme defines Jean-Marc Vallée’s Café de flore, his second film since the 2005 hit C.R.A.Z.Y., and one of the most poignant films in recent memory. Not only does Café de flore repeat Vallée’s earlier success, but goes [...]

When viewing the primal landscape of the beautiful country of Rwanda, it is hard to imagine that only a short time ago the land was awash with the blood of 800,000 people. No film more fully captures the residual pain resulting from the 1994 genocide than Munyurangabo, an intimate and deeply moving first feature from [...]

Loosely based on director Mike Mills’ own experience as the son of a gay father who came out in his seventies, Beginners is the story of sexual and emotional repression, thwarted relationships, and fresh starts. Hal (Christopher Plummer), at age 75, tells his 38-year-old son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), that he is gay and has been [...]

Character growth seems like a lost art in many films these days but I’m happy to say that self-discovery plays a prominent role in The Descendants, Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways seven years ago. Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, George Clooney is Matt King, a well-to-do real estate lawyer, who lives [...]

Based on an actual racial incident in Gothenburg, Sweden in which a group of black teenagers carried out a series of thefts of other children’s personal belongings for a period of two years, Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s Play is about using psychological game playing rather than name-calling, threats, or overt violence to bully your target. [...]

It is estimated that there are between 21.4 and 32.1 illegal immigrants or 10-15% of the total of all immigrants in the world. How to deal with illegal immigration has been a source of controversy in most Western countries and raises many complex political, economic and social issues. Le Havre, however, the latest film by [...]

A middle-aged truck driver’s long years of hauling lumber from Asuncion, Paraguay to Buenos Aires is etched on his grizzled face. Looking as if he hasn’t shaved in weeks, maybe months, his body language displays a passive solitude, as if he has become reconciled to a world of emptiness. Winner of the Camera d’Or for [...]

Hidden inside a birthday cake and smuggled out of the country, the 75-minute “effort”, This is Not a Film, tells us all we need to know about the cruelty of the Iranian dictatorship and the courage of film director Jafar Panahi. Panahi, who has given the world such masterpieces as The White Balloon, The Circle, [...]

Daniel Cormack’s ten-minute short, Amelia and Michael, has little dialogue but draws us in with its compelling use of gestures, facial expressions, and subtle glances to establish an unsettling mood. Featuring outstanding performances from Natasha Powell and Anthony Head as an estranged couple named Amelia and Michael, the film is a compelling experience of two [...]

“Most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.” — Rainer Maria Rilke Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a fascinating journey back in time. In this [...]

“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” – Rainer Maria Rilke As we know, high school can be a difficult and challenging place for even the most socially adaptive student. For those who are different in one way or another, it can [...]

No theme in drama touches the heart more than the separation of lovers. In classic dramas from Romeo and Juliet to Wuthering Heights, we empathize with the feelings of sadness and loss that estrangement brings and can relate them to our own experience. Some stories of separation, however, lack deeply-drawn characters and do not have [...]

Under normal circumstances, adolescence is a difficult field to navigate, but for an undersized, child-like boy with dysfunctional parents, it can be a minefield of isolation. Based on the novel, “The Book of Intimate Grammar” by David Grossman, Israeli director Nir Bergman’s powerful film Intimate Grammar is the heartbreaking story of a boy stuck in [...]