Take this waltz

How can a documentary ever satisfactorily tell us the truth? No matter what the topic of debate is, how can the filmmakers relay to us the supposed truth of a situation without any form of bias or creative control poking through? Hell, what is truth? Yes, such heady philosophical notions and questions are present in each moment of Sarah Polley’s newest film Stories We Tell, a documentary of sorts, in that it’s structured around real lives and real people.

For better or worse, films don’t exist in a vacuum. If literature derives from itself, and, according to Marshall McLuhan, the content in any new medium is always the same as in the old, then films don’t exactly have a wealth of opportunities to be original. You can always compare a film to one that …

Take This Waltz Directed by Sarah Polley Written by Sarah Polley Canada, 2011 Take This Waltz is an excellent example of a movie with actors talented enough to make its flaws seem less vexing than they might have been otherwise. Sarah Polley, the writer-director of this mildly quirky domestic drama, is a surer hand behind …

Take This Waltz Directed by Sarah Polley Written by Sarah Polley Canada, 2011 Actress, writer, producer, director, Sarah Polley can apparently do it all. Ever since her touching, memorable performance in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, she has earned her place within the film industry on both sides of the Canadian-American borders. Her work is …

The thing that the Atlantic Film Festival always has going for it is that they show a lot of Canadian films. This means that we get to see a lot of films by promising new Canadian filmmakers that wouldn’t necessarily make it into the cinema. Especially in Halifax, where the cinema selection can be rather …

Every year in January or February I put together a predicted list of my favourite films of the year. Not only am I usually completely wrong, but about half of my predicted picks never even see a release. It is, nonetheless, a fun little project and is a good exercise in getting a sense of …