Thanks to the usual vagaries of independent film distribution, The Apostle, a $5 million labor of love written and directed by Robert Duvall, opened in Canadian theatres some months after its premiere in the United States. But now that it’s here, Canadians can join their American counterparts in pondering the question: Who do men say […]
Amistad
Spielberg’s story of slaves recognizes the role of religion FEW WOULD deny that Hollywood movies exert a powerful homogenizing force on society. For whatever reason, filmmakers have traditionally toed a line that favors a secular, white point of view. Nowhere is this more apparent than in films about North American race relations: films such as […]
How much like robots are we?
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control proves, once again, that Errol Morris is one of the today’s most fascinating filmmakers. His newest documentary does not have the celebrity appeal of his Stephen Hawking bio A Brief History of Time, nor will it make headlines like The Thin Blue Line, which singlehandedly overturned an innocent man’s […]
Anastasia & FairyTale
In addition to the social and political havoc it caused, the First World War precipitated a sort of spiritual crisis. In a world rapidly giving in to industrialism and modernization, the war proved that science, far from saving the world, was just as likely to speed it along to its destruction. And with so many […]
The Devil’s Advocate & A Life less Ordinary
Blame it on Quentin Tarantino and the infamous pseudoquote from Ezekiel he wrote into Pulp Fiction. Trashy treatments of religious themes have been all the rage lately, and while there’s nothing wrong with conveying spiritual ideas in down-to-earth terms, the latest films to tell heavenly stories with earthly meanings have squandered their potential. Take The […]
Gattaca
Wealthy parents can already buy their children the best education, the best jobs and the best opportunities. Now suppose that they could buy them the best genes as well. Andrew Niccol takes the modern caste system to its genetically engineered extreme in Gattaca, an artfully designed look at a world set in “the not too […]