The Best Movies to Watch From Canada on Kanopy
Written, directed, and scored by Viggo Mortensen, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a visually stunning, emotionally potent, but still impressively restrained period drama that flips the script on typical Westerns. On the surface, it looks like it could be one—there’s even a bad guy clad in black who slings guns outside a saloon—but the film […]
Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI […]
When vampires choose not to kill a human, it’s usually played up with so much drama, angst, and maybe a bit of romance. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person on the other hand takes this choice as a comedic one. It may be a tad ludicrous for a vampire to refuse to drink blood on […]
Surreal, off-putting, and extremely disturbing, Infinity Pool plays with the concepts of cloning and the death penalty to craft an examination on colonial tourism. It’s a thematically rich horror film, with hazy neon-lit sex scenes and absolutely terrible behavior, enabled by their wealth and advanced technology that could have been put to better use. Mia […]
If you’re hard working and well-situated enough, you get to chase and achieve and live out your dreams for your whole life. But if you’re lucky enough, you get to choose how you’ll leave. Swan Song is the journey Canadian ballet icon Karen Kain took to direct one last production of Swan Lake just before […]
The gorgeous grain of Falcon Lake’s lush 16mm cinematography instantly gives it an air of nostalgia, as if the movie is an intimate reflection on a precious formative summer. That effect is confirmed over the film’s runtime: it takes place from the perspective of Bastien (Joseph Engel), a 13-year-old French boy whose family is being […]
Surrounded has the bones of a revenge-style Western. It turns the table on the white cowboy hero and gives us (on paper, at least) complex leads in Mo and Tommy. Mo is a young Black woman whose experience as a Buffalo Solider lends her not only the skills of an expert gunslinger but also the […]
If the sheer intensity of The Novice’s storytelling can at times feel like it’s trying too hard to be in-your-face—rather than authentically disturbed—the ambition of Laura Hadaway’s direction is still quite the spectacle to behold. Where some of the film’s relationships don’t come off as complex as they should be, Hadaway and her team more […]
With a script that seems to have been written for a medieval fantasy, but set in a present-day Ivorian jail, Night of the Kings immediately situates itself between the realms of reality and imagination. Whether or not one thinks that certain details about the prison’s strange rituals have been lost in translation, the mysticism surrounding […]
I appreciate what Famous, the movie, tries to do with its small budget. To portray the wealthy and luxurious life Famous, the character, supposedly leads, the movie opts for clean minimalist designs and tasteful close-ups that don’t betray the scruffy studio it’s actually set in. And the music, produced by Friyie, provides a nice ambiance […]
A character study in the absolute purest sense, Anne at 13,000 Ft. doesn’t even have the kind of satisfying closure one would expect from any story, nor does it explain anything about its protagonist’s difficult, erratic behavior in the context of mental health. It’s an exercise in testing how much empathy a character can earn […]
Possessor announces a visionary new voice in Brandon Cronenberg, and is one to watch for the concept alone, brilliantly melding science fiction and horror into one. Cronenberg’s direction is reminiscent of a cross between Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, but has more than enough originality to stand well on its own. […]
Keira Knightley stars in this incredible true story of an Iraq War whistleblower who remains relatively little-known in the U.S. Katharine Gun was working for the communications office for the British government when she received a memo in the months leading to the war that showed that the U.S. requested illegal wiretapping assistance from the […]
A truly bizarre comedy that shoots far beyond the boundaries of what should probably be considered good taste, The Twentieth Century stands as one of the strangest movies ever made based on a historical figure. Adapted from the real Mackenzie King’s (Canada’s longest-serving prime minister) diaries, the film replaces any traces of reality with psychological […]
Hassan Fazili and Nargis Fazili are two filmmakers who, faced with death threats, escape their home in Afghanistan and start a journey to Europe that millions of others have taken over the past few years. But unlike most others, the Fazilis filmed everything on their way. The result is not only a portrayal of the […]
A simple movie about a Scottish country singer with a dream to go to Nashville, U.S.A and reach stardom. It starts with her leaving prison to return to her mom’s house, where her kid was being raised in her absence. Heavy stuff, but this girl is determined to let nothing get in the way of […]
Shot almost entirely in one take and on a tiny budget, and yet the central performance in this movie is still better than most big-budget dramas I’ve seen this year. Two indigenous women, one upper-class and the other impoverished, meet on the day that the rich one gets an IUD and the other one, pregnant, […]
An insightful and thoughtful Canadian coming-of-age drama, Giant Little Ones is about two seventeen-year-old best friends whose relationship changes after an incident one night. Spanning a quick 90 minutes, it manages to tell its story quickly and honestly, as it touches on themes of sexual identity not only for the teenagers but for their parents as well. […]
From The Babadook director Jennifer Kent comes another horror, although this one is more about the horrors of humanity. Set in 1825 Tasmania, The Nightingale follows Irish settler Clare as she seeks bloody revenge on the monsters who wronged her and her family. She teams up with an Aboriginal guide named Billy to accomplish her […]
This is a hilarious political comedy starring the ever-great Steve Buscemi. Set in the last days before Stalin’s death and the chaos that followed, it portrays the lack of trust and the random assassinations that characterized the Stalinist Soviet Union. Think of it as Veep meets Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator. Although to be fair, […]
This Canadian drama produced by Clint Eastwood is based on the true story of Saul Indian Horse, a famous indigenous hockey player who survived Canada’s residential school system. As recently as 1996, indigenous children were taken away from their families to attend brutal assimilation boarding schools. Indian Horse, by virtue of being based on true […]
When German forces occupy Paris in 1942, a close-knit Jewish family tearfully sends their two youngest sons, Jo and Maurice, to escape the city on foot, with promises that they will all eventually be reunited in the Free Zone in the South. Told from the perspective of Jo – and based on the 1973 memoir […]
There are moments in cinema when the character and actor are irrevocably linked– to think of one is to think of the other, to the point that the line is blurred between both. One such pair is Spock and Leonard Nimoy, and, after his death, it was inevitable that the documentary about Nimoy would also […]
There is a chance we will be known as the generation that perfected mixing the two mediums of movie and theater. Think Hateful 8, Horace & Pete, Wild Tales, and Fences! A movie not only packed with Broadway talent, it’s also based on a Pulitzer-winning play by August Wilson. The play element is both strong […]
Based on a true story, The Whistleblower is the biography of a once Nebraskan police officer who volunteers for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in post-war Bosnia. Once there, she uncovers a human trafficking scandal involving peacekeeping officials, and finds herself alone against a hostile system in a devastated country. Rachel Weisz plays the whistleblower in a powerful lead role, but […]
I’m Not There is an unusual biopic in that it never refers to its subject, Bob Dylan, by name. Instead, Todd Haynes’ portrait of the singer mimics his constant reinvention by casting six separate actors to play as many reincarnations of the same soul. It’s an ingenious spin on a usually stale genre, one that […]
This drama from France and Canada is about Matthieu, a 33-year-old from Paris who never knew his father. One morning he gets a call to go to Montreal, where he is told his dad has passed away and where a funeral will take place. To add to his confusion, upon arrival Matthieu is asked to […]
Without wish-granting mythical creatures like genies or fairies, it can seem that America has no one but themselves in life, and things can come only through one’s own efforts. Interstate 60 plays with that idea, with a fictional O.W. Grant (Gary Oldman) that supposedly grants wishes, though how it manifests depends on how much he […]
A slice-of-life true-story-based film on growing old and in love. When on his own land, Craig Morrison (played by James Cromwell) starts building a more convenient house for his ailing wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), he is faced with crippling bureaucracy. The state gives him the choice between stopping the construction or going to jail, while he […]
As a woman, it’s risky enough to trust a male gynecologist, but to have him seduce, manipulate, and experiment on you? That’s a horror all on its own, but Dead Ringers operates on several levels beyond the political. It’s also psychological and sexual, and because this is a Cronenberg film, it’s done with an unsettling […]
Many people have forgotten that representation and diversity in media isn’t meant just to fill a quota or to signal virtue– the push for it is in response to the way many of these stories were silenced, repressed, and shut out. Lilies might have been overlooked for quite a while, but its 2023 restoration has […]
At first glance, Atlantic City is indistinguishable from most other crime films. It’s led by a charming gangster (Burt Lancaster) who falls for a beautiful woman (Susan Sarandon) half his age. They look good together and spend their blood money lavishly. But this coolness is deceptive. It eventually gives way to desperation and delusion as […]
An arguably tough watch, The Accused fluctuates between crime and courtroom drama, eschewing any kind of sentimentality in its storytelling. No place for pity where trauma reigns: the fact that the film is based on a real case of as gang rape means little in a world were that’s still a daily occurrence. The Accused […]
Full of twists on classic horror themes, this hilarious and gory comedy will have your sides aching, and still you’ll want more. The plot centers on two rednecks who are trying to have a good time while fixing up a summer home. True to horror movie form, a group of college kids set up camp […]
In adapting hardboiled detective novel Falling Angels, writer-director Alan Parker mixes the story’s original noir with the New Orlean supernatural in 1987’s Angel Heart. The gamble mostly pays off. Mickey Rourke brilliantly brings hapless Harry Angel to a terrifying reveal, stoked by the mystery presented by an inscrutable Robert de Niro, while Lisa Bonet makes […]
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner and Patricia Clarkson. Lars and the Real Girl is a funny and thought-provoking look at the psychology of loneliness and the healing power of love. I rented this a few years back because of Ryan Gosling – he had just blown me away in Fracture so I […]
Watch this documentary and find yourself amazed at how much of Hollywood history was determined by one woman: legendary casting director Marion Dougherty. At a time when studios were casting actors based on “type,” Dougherty revolutionized the process with her preternatural ability to see the potential in budding actors like Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Robert […]
In an age where recent horror films mostly use the jump-scare as a crutch to make their CGI-spawned (not to mention generic) creatures seem scary, The Babadook portrays real scares, relatable characters and a moving story. Jennifer Kent (director and writer) sets this on the backdrop of heavily Lars von Trier-inspired cinematography, elevating The Babadook […]
