Review: "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret." Is So Good, it Transcends its Genre

By Ben Miller

I am not a woman.  I did not grow up with any sisters. My personal experience never crossed paths with Judy Blume books.  All that being said, Kelly Fremon Craig's (The Edge of Seventeen) film adaptation of Blume's classic bestseller Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. transcends any genre bias to you might bring to it. It's one of the best films of the year so far.

The film centers on Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson), a sixth-grader who moves to New Jersey from New York with her parents (Rachel McAdams, Benny Safdie).  Margaret is not only at a transitional period in life with the move, but on the brink of puberty and all that comes with it.  If that wasn't enough, Margaret finds herself on a quest to find God, stuck between the Christian and Jewish faiths...

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HotDocs Corner: 'The Stroll' Reclaims the Narrative

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

We are looking at some of the movies playing Canada's beloved HotDocs festival. First up is buzzy Sundance hit, The Stroll.

The conversation around Jennie Livingston's iconic 1990 documentary Paris is Burning has been happening for many years now. The conversation that its white cis director profited financially and professionally from the lives of its black and latinx trans subjects who got very little out of its production. Whatever one thinks of it, it's hard to deny that as much as a film like The Stroll is needed today, it was also needed back then, too. Co-directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker—two women directors who identify as transgender—The Stroll is the continued reclamation of trans stories on screen by those who have lived and breathed the life that it documents.

As you might expect, with this comes a lot of emotions to unpack. But Lovell and Drucker have crafted a film (the former’s first, the latter’s first feature after the 2021 series The Lady and the Dale) that reverberates for many more reasons than just representation.

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Evil Dead: The Original Trilogy Revisited

by Cláudio Alves

As tentpoles falter and prestige fare fails to perform, horror continues to prove a safe investment for Hollywood. You won't find me complaining about that last bit, for scary movies have long won my affection. And yet, while celebrating box office success, it's distasteful to meander in mercenary matters. Instead, let's consider a new sensation in Evil Dead Rises, the fifth film in the horror franchise Sam Raimi birthed at the dawn of the 80s. Indeed, while these deadite-infested movies have strayed away from detailing the adventures of Ash Williams – check out the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead for more of that – the original trilogy continues to have a special place in fans' hearts.

So, join me as I revisit Raimi's first ventures into gory horror, horror comedy, and medieval fantasia…

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Review: Virginie Efira is miraculous in "Other People's Children"

by Cláudio Alves

Watching Rebecca Zlotowski's Other People's Children, I was reminded of a discussion I once had with a professor. Despite the class focusing on theater, we talked about cinema and what stories deserve to have the camera pointed at them. In short, we debated the merits of dramatizing ordinary people. For me, there's plenty of interest in exploring individuals whose lives are entirely un-dramatic, maybe even anti-dramatic. Great art can be created by investigating the complexities of the simplest-seeming experiences. Just because something appears anodyne or common doesn't mean there aren't beguiling specificities or that we should be above it. My professor disagreed.

At the time, a great deal of the conversation centered around the films of Chantal Akerman, but Zlotowski's latest effort feels like an up-to-date if more conventional, example. Indeed, I imagine my former pedagogue would hate the thing if he ever set eyes on Other People's Children…

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Weekend Box Office: Mario Closes in on a Billion

By Ben Miller

For the third straight week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie ran away with the weekend box office, this time to the tune of $59.9 million.  That's good for the 7th-best third weekend in history.  The domestic total currently sits at $436 million with a matching number overseas.  At $870 million and climbing, expect it to become a billion dollar film (and probably franchise) in the upcoming weeks.  Couterprogramming did pretty good for the horror sequel Evil Dead Rise with a solid $24.5 million haul.  That's equivalent to its 2013 predecessor, which ended at around $54 million.  With a $19 million budget, it once again shows that horror is the most profitable of genres...

Weekend Box Office (actuals) April 21st-23rd 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 800 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE	SOMEWHERE IN QUEENS
1 THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE $59.9 (cum. $436) 4,350 screens	1 🔺 SOMEWHERE IN QUEENS $671k *NEW* 602 screens

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