Dakota Arsenault - Contra Zoom Pod

Reviews: The Royal Hotel from VIFF 2023

October 2, 2023

Kitty Green is back with another searing indictment on the hostility that men bring into the world and the danger, both real and imagined, that women must contend with on a day to day basis.

Reviews: Only The River Flows from VIFF 2023

September 29, 2023

To be a truly dedicated detective you must not only question everything you are finding, but you must also be constantly questioning yourself. Only The River Flows is the latest film from Beijing filmmaker Shujun Wei that causes you to second guess every discovery made.

Reviews: Mr. Dress-Up The Magic of Make-Believe from VIFF 2023

September 27, 2023

Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe, directed by Robert McCallum, is a new documentary that tells the history of the Mr. Dressup character and program along with details about Coombs’ life and family. Along the way we get plenty of celebrity interviews that extolled the virtues of the program for them and their children growing up.

253: 2023 VIFF Preview

September 26, 2023

The 2023 edition of the ⁠Vancouver International Film Festival⁠ runs from September 28-October 8th. We preview our most anticipated films that are playing. Joining…

Reviews: Fitting In from VIFF 2023

September 25, 2023

Molly McGlynn has crafted a semi-autobiographical coming of age story that deals with 16 year old Lindy, played by Maddie Ziegler (Music, West Side Story), who goes to get a prescription for birth control and learns that she suffers from MRKH Syndrome. MRKH is when a woman is born without a uterus and effectively has no vaginal canal, which means penetrative sex is either impossible to have or extraordinarily painful. It also means that with no uterus, you can never give birth, robbing a woman of the decision to procreate.

252: 2023 TIFF Wrap Up

September 19, 2023

We wrap up this year’s Toronto International Film Festival by talking about the big hits and misses, our favourite films and the award winners. Joining the show to help us break it all down is Jeff Bulmer, one half of the Classic Movies. Jeff also contributed some festival movie reviews to Contra Zoom.

Reviews: Working Class Goes To Hell from TIFF 2023

September 15, 2023

The new Serbian film Working Class Goes To Hell, directed by Mladen Djordjevic, is billed as a satirical horror film. It is about the ends that class consciousness can go to and to ensure our capitalist overlords stop taking advantage of the common man.

Reviews: Seagrass from TIFF 2023

September 14, 2023

Seagrass is a semi-autobiographical movie from director Meredith Hama-Brown. Judith, a Japanese-Canadian woman (played by Ally Maki), brings her family to group therapy camp so she can work on her strained relationship with her Caucasian husband Steve (Luke Roberts).

Bonus: Better Know a Contributor – Bil Antoniou

September 12, 2023

In lieu of a full episode this week, we bring you the ninth in our series of bonus episodes, ⁠⁠Better Know a Contributor⁠⁠, where we ask frequent guests of the show 10 Contra Zoom Pod movie questions so you can learn more about your favourite voices.

Reviews: Tautuktavuk (What We See) from TIFF 2023

September 11, 2023

Tautuktavuk (What We See), plays out like an Italian Neorealist film, something that is akin to the works of Vittorio de Sica and Roberto Rossellini. The film is set up as two elder sisters, Saqpinak played by one half of the directors Carol Kunnuk, and Uyarak played by the other director Lucy Tulugarjuk, separated in different parts of the country during the initial wave of COVID-19 lockdowns.