Movie of the Week – Mommy
At the tender age of 25, Quebecois auteur Xavier Dolan has already written and directed no less than six feature films. His latest, Mommy, is his finest accomplishment, a stunning piece of work. It’s the story of a widowed mother who takes her troubled 15-year-old son out of a home with the intention of home schooling the boy but soon finds she is way out of her depth until a kindly neighbour steps in to help. Featuring three incredible lead performances and a display of audacious filmmaking from Dolan, Mommy is the must see movie of 2015.
A Second Chance
A Second Chance is a tense thriller from Denmark with one of the year’s most novel plots. When a cop’s infant son dies in the middle of the night, he steals the child of a heroin-addicted couple in an attempt to appease his suicidal wife. Needless to say, his plan doesn’t work out well and what results is a fiendish series of plot twists.
Insurgent
Insurgent is the second installment of the Divergent series, and if you thought the first movie made no sense, this one is guaranteed to turn your brain to mush. A fantastic cast including Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts can’t save this turkey.
Starring Ryan Reynolds as a factory worker who believes his cat is urging him to commit murder, The Voices certainly has an intriguing premise, but it’s one it fails to deliver on. Reynolds is great but the film is tonally confused and its cruel depiction of mental illness leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Sean Penn attempts to pull off a ‘Neeson’ by reinventing himself as an action star in The Gunman, a terribly derivative thriller full of hackneyed scenarios and laughable dialogue. This is one movie you shouldn’t have in your sights.
By Eric Hillis
