REEL PATRIOT LOVE
Celebrate this Canada Day by staying home and streaming the best on offer — from C to N
2020’s Canada Day will be like no other. Between social distancing and provinces still only partially open for business, celebratory options are thin. What’s more, outside of Alberta, most movie theatres won’t be open until July 3, at the earliest.
But if there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s how to live life online. Thus we present our patriotic list of Cancon viewing options, complete with streaming locations. Happy Canada Day!
IS FOR COAST TO COAST TO COAST
Apart from being the setting for more American movies than you can count, Vancouver has a thriving homegrown filmmaking community. Check out Julia Kwan’s 2014 doc Everything Will Be (NFB) on the changing face of Chinatown, or Mina Shum’s drama Meditation Park (Hoopla).
Head east 5,000 kms and 80 years back in time to catch The Viking (Secreteast.ca), a pre-Confederation Newfoundland-America co-production. Or for a Far North experience, try Maliglutit, a.k.a. Searchers (iTunes), Zacharias Kunuk’s Inuktitut take on John Ford’s original movie from 1956.
IS FOR AWAY FROM HER
I’m a huge fan of Sarah Polley’s 2012 doc, Stories We Tell (Hoopla, NFB), but let’s not forget six years earlier, when she burst on the directing scene with her feature debut, Away From Her (Hoopla), nominated for Oscars for its screenplay and star Julie Christie, and featuring a fantastic turn by Gordon Pinsent.
IS FOR INDEPENDENT
Have you heard of Joyce Wong’s 2016’s comedy-drama Wexford Plaza (iTunes), set in a strip mall? Or Level 16 (iTunes), a 2018 sci-fi thriller by Danishka Esterhazy? How about the documentary The Woman Who Loves Giraffes (Crave) from 2018? No? Well, they’re small but beautiful.
IS FOR ADETUYI
The Canadian filmmaking Adetuyi brothers — Alfons, Amos, Robert and Tom — have credits that include Beat the World, High Chicago and Stomp the Yard (iTunes). They’re also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to talented Black Canadian directors, a list that includes Stella Meghie (The Photograph, iTunes), Clement Virgo (The Book of Negroes, iTunes), Sudz Sutherland (Home Again, NFB) and many more.
IS FOR DON McKELLAR
Multi-hyphenate McKellar has credits in acting (Monkey Warfare, Cooking with Stella, both on iTunes), writing (The Red Violin, iTunes) and directing (Through Black Spruce on Crave, The Grand Seduction on iTunes), but if you want all three just watch Last Night (iTunes), which has an end-of-the-world vibe that should amuse and/or terrify in these times.
IS FOR INDIGENOUS
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond’s 2009 documentary Reel Injun explores the portrayal of Indigenous people by Hollywood. For some more current examples of actual Indigenous filmmaking, there’s Jeff Barnaby’s zombie horror Blood Quantum (iTunes) or The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (iTunes), the 2019 one-shot drama that was not Sam Mendes’s 1917, though it was just as powerful in its own way.
IS FOR ANTHROPOCENE
Jennifer Baichwal’s latest, subtitled The Human Epoch (Hoopla) provides a chilling yet oddly beautiful portrait of the changes we’re making to this planet. But her first take on the topic, 2006’s Manufactured Landscapes (NFB), remains a powerful doc in its own right.
IS FOR NEXT FLOOR
Denis Villeneuve’s 2008 short is not his best known work, but I have a soft spot for it, since its debut at Cannes marked the first time I met the personable, brilliant director. Since then, he’s wowed with such fare as Polytechnique (iTunes), Incendies (Kanopy), Sicario (Netflix), Arrival (Netflix) and Blade Runner 2049 (iTunes). His newest, Dune, if it opens on schedule in December (in cinemas!), could help make 2020 a banner year for Canadian-led movies.