FILM

Gabe muses about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind turning 20 years old and reviews some films in the latest Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

Unlike myself, who was seemingly entrapped in a helpless limbo of awkward exchanges with my friend, Makoto reverses time to void Chiaki’s romantic confession to Makoto, as Chiaki’s confessions end up lost in a web of alternate timelines.

Gabe shares some observation about how people read and watch films in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

Gabe counts down his most and least anticipated films of 2024 in the first Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo of the year.

Gabe ends this year optimistically in the latest Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

The pineapple, familiar to him but unfamiliar and spoken at random to her, becomes a question that was left hanging in the air between people, an undercurrent of unspoken words that were meant to be inwardly contained and never to be directly processed.

One of the most important and central elements of ecofiction, that human accountability is intrinsically part of an artwork’s ethical positioning, is a topic central to the works of famed filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.

Gabe goes to bat for indie studios in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

I settled on James Cagney, who was playing Lon Chaney in Man of a Thousand Faces: The Lon Chaney Story. Lon Chaney was a famous actor and makeup artist on vaudeville and in silent films in the early 1900s. He was a CODA (long before the term CODA had been coined).

Gabe shares a lovely tribute to his mom in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

Vacations are exhausting. And what’s most exasperating about German writer/director Maren Ade’s Everyone Else (2009) is that there’s no escaping the claustrophobic world she’s created. The volatile coupling of Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr), holed up together at Chris’ parents’ Sardinian villa, defies any expectations for a customary on-screen getaway.

Gabe goes to bat for creatives during these uncertain times with AI in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

Phantom of the Paradise rewired me. Electrified me. This movie is, in the words of Jessica Harper’s character Phoenix, “special to me.”

When I was growing up, White Jesus was everywhere, but I never thought of him as a real person. He was like Zeus or John Henry or Captain Kirk—iconic figures operating outside my daily life, moving in worlds so far away they were impossible.

Gabe loves going to the movies and we do, too, in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

Gabe returns this month with Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

The vampires of this film skew younger than usual, the clan having been built up by Lothos with unlucky high school students who remain ready to party and have fun. As they are reborn into their new world of darkness, they maintain some of their personalities and memories of who they were before, still wanting to flirt and play basketball and DJ their senior dance and drop in on their friends for a bite. These vampires are more relatable than they are terrifying.

Perhaps this is the anthem of Commando as a whole. Don’t think, don’t ask questions, just shut up, watch, and enjoy.

In fact, substance runs aplenty in Elvis cinema if you only know where to look. The films often challenge authority and prove downright fascinating in their portrayal of class dynamics, gender, and sexuality.

To prepare his cast before making the film The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones had them read The Stranger by Albert Camus since the theme of alienation is central to both that book and the film they were about to shoot. Before he commenced filming the movie Heat, director Michael Mann gave the cast copies of the book No Beast So Fierce by former convicted felon turned author Edward Bunker about a recently paroled convict and his attempt to go straight. In my senior year of college, before we began rehearsals of the one-act play I wrote “Show Me Your Tong Po,” I invited the cast over to my house to watch Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor for similar reasons as those directors.

How shattering it is to be told by someone you consider a friend that they no longer have room for you in their life. I’m sure you see where this is going. Perhaps this isn’t even your first Banshees break-up piece that you’ve read.

Each of these characters in Starting Out in the Evening has their own needs and desires, but they unselfishly interact with each other, learning from each other the importance of sharing life. For people who like a meaty intellectual story, there is much here to enjoy. No less than Roger Ebert said that Langella's performance was Oscar worthy. That the Oscars ignored it only confirms that movies of the mind and emotional depth play second fiddle to movies of entertaining merriment. 

Gabe revisits films which he previously gave poor ratings to in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

The 1996 cult classic The Craft sets out to be a feminist movie, but like many movies of the late 90s, it loses steam about an hour into the movie, when its main characters, a group of teenage girls, turn on each other and it becomes a movie about what happens when teenagers, shoved together in the hothouse of high school, get too close to one another.

In an age of hollow CGI studio fare, endless superhero battles, and an increasing loss of artisanal talent in film, stop-motion animation provides a unique place for filmmakers and craftspeople to explore their craft and tell stories that feel earnest and unique.

Gabe discusses film resolutions in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

The denizens of the United States have long been accused of being culturally deprived. We are starving, lacking an appreciation of the fine art of mime, Goethe and weinershnitzel. Nothing proves this point as well as the jeremiads delivered on the movie Teen Wolf, first released in 1985, starring a young Michael J. Fox. I offer this apology (in the formal sense), laying forth the visionary nature of the film.

Gabe thinks 2022 was a good year for cinema in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.

I avoided Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” for years, knowing that it was about the individual experience of being in the military. I knew it was about the Vietnam War and the ensuing cruelty. I knew it was split into two parts, the first part depicting Marine Corps training and the second part in Vietnam itself. And I knew, having served two years in the Singapore Armed Forces, that those topics are rarely things I’m in the mood to watch.