Someone Else's Movie

With his new documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance streaming on NFB.ca and opening in Winnipeg on July 30th, filmmaker Noam Gonick takes a moment to celebrate Uli Edel’s 1989 adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr’s landmark novel Last Exit to Brooklyn. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to help someone drag a great movie back into the world.

With his timely new thriller 40 Acres now playing in theaters across the US and Canada, writer-director RT Thorne takes a moment to throw some love at Blood Simple, the bravura neo-noir that introduced the world to Joel and Ethan Coen – and to Frances McDormand, and Carter Burwell, and Barry Sonnenfeld. Your genial host Norm Wilner is always happy to dig into a classic, and this is certainly that.

It’s Canada Day, so writer-director Nik Sexton – whose new East Coast drama Skeet is heading to the Galway International Film Festival on July 11th – stops in to talk about Incendies, the Oscar-nominated 2010 drama that put Denis Villeneuve on the map. Your genial host Norm Wilner would like you to know he recorded this episode well before Villeneuve landed the Bond gig.

With her splendid first feature Do I Know You from Somewhere? arriving on VOD this Friday, New Brunswick director Arianna Martinez steps up for Gore Verbinski’s Gothic creeper A Cure for Wellness – the one with Dane DeHaan and the eels. Your genial host Norm Wilner is willing to hear her out.

With his darkly comic Self Driver now available on digital and on demand, writer-director Michael Pierro is here to celebrate Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 masterwork The Conversation – and pay tribute to its incredible star, Gene Hackman. Your genial host Norm Wilner has some thoughts about that too.

Director Rob Michaels – whose charming Canadian culture-clash comedy Please, After You is now available on digital and on demand – is here to share his favorite comedy: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the 2008 comedy where Jason Segel proved he had the goods to be a romcom leading man. He just had to write it first. Your genial host Norm Wilner also gets to talk about Muppets this week.

This week, director Chloe Robichaud – whose charming, spiky new comedy Two Women is now playing in Toronto and Montreal, and expandng to Vancouver on Friday – celebrates Jean-Marc Vallee’s 2011 masterwork Cafe de Flore, in which the late director shuffled and remixed two different love stories in two different time periods like the brilliant DJ he was. Your genial host Norm Wilner got a little choked up on this one.

This week, director Kourtney Roy – whose creepy first feature Kryptic is now available on digital and on demand – shares her thoughts on District 9, Neill Blomkamp’s breakout 2009 sci-fi action social satire starring Sharlto Copley as a spineless government functionary who gets dragged into an alien uprising in Johannesburg. Your genial host Norm Wilner is willing to get a little messy on this.

This week, director Daniel Robbins – whose new comedy Bad Shabbos is now playing in the US and opening this Thursday in Toronto and Vancouver – steps up for Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, the pitch-black 1942 farce starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as married actors in occupied Warsaw who take on the Nazis … and still manage to get laughs. Your genial host Norm Wilner has been waiting forever talk about this one.

This week, actor Keeya King – currently starring in the new thriller Guess Who, on Hollywood Suite in Canada and Tubi in the US – shares her love for Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut Lady Bird, which found comedy and pathos in the everyday drama of Saoirse Ronan’s Sacramento teenager. Your genial host Norm Wilner knows a thing or two about being an obnoxious teen, so this should be fun.