2033 - Orphan Black: season two

It's impossible to talk about Orphan Black without talking about Tatiana's performance.  Without exception she is not only the star of the show - she is the show.  She slips so effortlessly into the various characters that despite your efforts you often forget that it's all the same person.  Tat obviously has an amazing career ahead of her, but it's hard to think she'll ever have a playground to play in like she does on this series - exhausting as it must be.
This season continued the greatness of the first season and helped to build deeper into the mythos of this world and it's rules.  It was nice for me to see some actor friends show up in supporting roles, and even greater to see characters like Helena really get a chance to shine here.  I love the additional layers that the show started to uncover this season and it went a long way towards convincing me just how much more story there is to tell with this series.  If it's not the best series in Canada at the moment, it's easily the most interesting - and definitely putting ourselves on the map in terms of original content creation.

1696 - Young People Fucking

This is a film that I find myself continuing to come back to.  I've got several friends and colleagues that are in this, and that tends to make me enjoy it all the more.  I'm a big fan of ensemble films and I think I'm going to be watching a string of them in the next little bit just to get my headspace back around that sub-genre of film.
For those who haven't seen this film yet the title kind of says it all.  It juxtaposes several story lines that take place over the course of a sexual encounter and does so with a really lovely raw honesty and a sense of humour.  The film is filled to the brink with great performances from a phenomenal ensemble cast.  When people complain about how cliched Canadian films are they aren't talking about this one.
It's on netflix, so if you haven't seen it you should remedy that.  It's pretty godmn great.

1687 - Foolproof

I always like to look through Netflix's Canadian category to catch up on homegrown cinema that I might have missed.  This film was 2003 and so it was just before Ryan Reynolds broke out huge.  Kristin Booth is fantastic here as well, and still a Toronto girl - bless her!
As far as Canadian films go this one is a winner.  It's not your typical Canadian fare at all (if that's a bad thing for you) as it fits in nicely with heist films from the other side of the border.  A group of friends plan imaginary heists for fun, but then find themselves in trouble when one of their plans is stolen and then they're forced to work with a crime lord or risk exposing themselves. 
It's a great little heist film with really solid production values and story turns.  It's a shame that it didn't do so well as this is the film of film that needs to be made more in Canada.  And it's the kind that more Canadians need to try and watch - luckily for you now it's on Netflix and you've got no excuse.  Watch it.  Now.

1613 - At Home By Myself... With You

I was fortunate to sit with Kristin Booth sometime ago at a mutual friend's birthday party, and she was as charming and lovely in real life as she is in this film.  She stars as a woman who has several phobias, the most crippling being that she can't leave her apartment.  But when she meets a new man across the hall she makes a list of everything she's scared of, and goes at trying to get over them. 
It's a very cute film, and Booth and Aaron Abrams are really quite lovely together.  People that don't like quirky films would be best to avoid this - from it's fairytale narration, to animated sequences, and character's characteristics, it could be something that really grates at the wrong person.  Not me :) 
Clearly shot on a shoestring budget it never quite feels like that - more like everything is a choice.  It feels cinematic despite it's limitations that might take the story elsewhere.  This is a film that you could really pick to shreds if you wanted to be more nihilistic about it all, but it's not meant to be that, it's a cute little fairytale and it works really well as that.  It's pretty widely available and has just been added to netflix here in Canada, so no excuse not to check it out!
At Home By Myself ... With You

1565 - Defendor

A friend of mine is a reader for several of the different funding agencies here in Canada, and he mentioned having read and liked an early draft of this.  That combined with a bunch of actors, both famous and local, that I love - my only regret was I didn't get a chance to support this while it was still in the theatre. 
It's the story of a mentally challenged man (fetal-alcohol syndrome) who is convinced that a man named Captain Industry killed his prostitute mother when he was a child, and so he's become a vigilante known as the Defendor (NOT Defender!).  What surprised me most about this film was that it would have been so easy to just go with the dark comedy, but there's some goddamn heartbreaking moments here - some real harsh stuff.  It's stylized, but there feels like there's an honesty to how it all transpires throughout.  There's a lot going on but somehow the tone of this film works for it completely.  It's not cheesy, it's not shlocky.  It takes some superhero genre stuff and plays with it in an interesting way that fits emotionally and dramatically as well for a guy that's real.  Woody Harrelson is simply fantastic in this role, funny, endearing, heartbreaking.  It's a film worth seeing regardless, but if absolutely nothing else it's a film worth seeing for his performance.  For anyone who trashes Canadian cinema, give it a check out - if we made more films like this we would certainly be in a better situation with our film industry.  It's dark, yet accessible, dark and yet I think it would play well to a wide audience.  Go.  See.  It.
DefendorDefendor [Blu-ray]Defendor [Blu-ray]  Defendor [Blu-ray]