I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the best movies and television to watch this weekend, including the hypnotic “Stellar,” now streaming on Crave, the documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe” and the legal drama “The Burial.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 38:45)
I joined CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres. Today we talk about the legal drama “The Burial,” the documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe,” the killer “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” and the hypnotic “Stellar.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Renee Rogers to talk about the legal drama “The Burial,” the documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe,” the killer “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” and the hypnotic “Stellar.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the legal drama “The Burial,” the documentary “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe,” the killer “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” and the hypnotic “Stellar.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Stellar,” a new film starring Elle-Máija Tailfeathers and Braeden Clarke, now on VOD and streaming on Crave, is about making a connection as a storm—or is it the end of the world?—brews outside.
Set in a Northern Ontario dive bar, the story revolves around two Indigenous strangers, She (Tailfeathers) and He (Clarke), as a storm rages outside. They meet, make a connection, unperturbed by the weather. They get to know one another, trading stories in Ojibwe and English, of lost loves, community and their deepest held feelings, as the bartender (Rossif Sutherland) grows agitated by the unsettling thunder and lightening.
Others come and go, including two Aunties (Billy Merasty and Tina Keeper) who ask if He and She know their way home, metaphorically. Then there’s a windbag professor (R.H. Thomson), in love with the sound of his own voice, who proclaims, “Knowledge is out foundation.”
“Your knowledge. Not required,” He replies.
Outside, the erupting storm is portrayed as another passing apocalypse in the timeline of Indigenous life. He and She are the calm in the face of the storm, resilient with an eye to the future. “I feel like the weather outside,” She says, “changing, challenging.” They are connected to nature, to their heritage, and to one another.
Strong visuals tell “Stellar’s” tale. Anishinaabe director Darlene Naponse blends the lyrical beauty of the love story inside the bar with cut-a-ways of the pollution and waste that mar the world beyond the bar’s walls. Her experimental, figurative treatment of the material creates a powerful, poetic allegory of Indigenous strength amid the storm of life, wrapped in a touching love story.
Mystical and metaphorical, “Stellar” is experimental in its storytelling, but hypnotic in its effect.
Richard joins CP24 to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including “No Time to Die,” the return of James Bond to the big screen, the dystopian “Night Raiders” and the Netflix slasher film “There’s Someone Inside Your House.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CTV NewsChannel morning show host Lois Lee chat up the weekend’s big releases including “No Time to Die,” the return of James Bond to the big screen, the dystopian “Night Raiders” and the Netflix slasher film “There’s Someone Inside Your House.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres, VOD and streaming services including “No Time to Die,” the much anticipated return of James Bond to the big screen, the “Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark,” the dystopian “Night Raiders” and the Netflix slasher film “There’s Someone Inside Your House.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Night Raiders,” a new drama from Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet and now playing in theatres, draws on the historical horrors of the Sixties Scoop and Residential Schools to create an unforgettable, dystopian scenario set in the near future.
Set in a war-ravaged North America, society has crumbled and cities are now run by the military. All children are property of the state. Forcibly removed from their families, these children are housed in state “education academies.” Laws are enforced by killer drones and heavily armed soldiers, who execute parents for hiding their children.
Cree mother Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) hides her daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) in the woods successfully until an injury forces them to go to the occupied city for medical treatment.
Cut to one year later. Waseese is now in a reeducation facility as Niska joins with a group of indigenous rebels called the Night Raiders, with the hope of freeing Waseese and the other inmates of the “children’s academy.”
“Night Raiders” effectively paints a somber portrait of totalitarian future, packed with foreboding and danger. The story is fictional but resonates with echoes of the ugly truths of colonization and forced assimilation. Goulet allows the viewer to make the comparisons between the real-life atrocities and the fictional elements of the story. There are no pages of exposition, just evocative images. Show me don’t tell me. The basis in truth of the underlying themes brings the story a weight often missing in the dystopian genre.
“Night Raiders” is at its best when it walks its own path. The allegory at its heart is strong and heartbreaking and gives the movie its gut punch. Less effective are the more traditional elements that feel like they snuck in from other sci fi stories.
Still, it packs historical relevance against a story of the resilience of the Cree people, while establishing Tailfeathers as a new kind of action hero—kind yet fearless—and avoiding most of the easy cliches of other apocalyptic movies.
