In film school, the good instructors will tell you to make films about things you know. It’s advice often ignored by young cineastes and the endless stream of student films about drug deals gone wrong and other malfeasance is a testament to this lesson lost. Clearly, Aubrey Nealon paid attention in class. His first feature, [...]

For a Canadian movie, a story about a group of friends who travel to a secluded cabin in an attempt to revitalize their lives through bizarre games of sexual dysfunction sounds like, well, just another Canadian movie. But in the hands of director Dylan Akio Smith, whose first feature, The Cabin Movie, screens at this [...]

Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 is an astonishing work of visual beauty so it’s fitting that the film be discussed in the context of a magazine dedicated to fashion and style. Bursting with vivid textures, the film is a bubbling cauldron of mood and atmosphere. Even audiences with only a casual appreciation for film craft are [...]

Seeing an Errol Morris film for the first time is one of the great pleasures of watching movies. Morris, if not the finest documentary filmmaker working today, is certainly the most significant innovator in the genre of the last 30 years. Yet for so long many of the director’s films, including his three earliest and [...]

In Neil LaBute’s 1997 debut film In the Company of Men, the lead character, Chad, states his objective in a chilling line: “Let’s hurt somebody.” With his wrenching story of two middle managers who set out to humiliate a female co-worker, LaBute entered into the ranks of America’s leading provocative filmmakers. Par for the course, [...]

It wasn’t long ago that terrorism in America was the stuff of middle-class college kids looking to save the world. In his brilliant documentary Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, filmmaker Robert Stone recounts the exploits of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army—a small group of leftist radicals who fought “for the cause” by robbing banks, [...]

It’s funny to think how so much of what’s good in American cinema today came down to two roommates who happened to hit it off. A bold statement, for sure, but not when you realize those roommates were Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne. Since they penned their first feature ten years ago, their collaboration has [...]

The independent film scene in Vancouver, like in all places, has been buzzing ever since DV filmmaking reared its head and promised to revolutionize the art form. While the claims of upheaval may have been overstated, it’s clear that a new generation of Vancouver filmmakers is emerging. More likely to have trained in the private [...]