December 22, 2023

Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA members.

ICYMI: We announced the winners of the 27^th annual TFCA Awards and nominees for the Rogers Best Canadian Film and Rogers Best Canadian Documentary awards.

In Release this Week

Aitamaako’Tamisskapi: Before the Sun (dir. Banchi Hanuse)

“An easy watch at only 90 minutes, this Indigenous Canadian documentary is also informative on the history of our land,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

American Fiction (dir. Cord Jefferson)

“The trouble with American Fiction, though, is that the bulk of the film has nothing to do with Jefferson’s zeitgeist-skewering comedy – really, just a more palatable update of Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled – and everything to do with the filmmaker’s desire to be the next Nancy Meyers or James L. Brooks. The great truth (non-fiction?) of this film is that it is actually a rom-com,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Especially if your rom-com is loaded with endearing characters and clever situations and is thoroughly laced with charm. But American Fiction, which is adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, can’t quite boast such breezy bona fides.”

“Freely adapting the novel Erasure by sharp-edged American author Percival Everett, Jefferson has a blast with American Fiction, which took the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival,” notes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Wright, too often relegated to supporting roles (such as an officious general in Wes Anderson’s recent Asteroid City), finally gets to cut loose with his Oscar-beckoning lead performance as the aptly named Monk. An ascetic about most things, except for his love of libations, Monk has other concerns and distractions besides the ones listed above.”

“There has been early awards buzz over Wright’s performance, and it’s richly deserved. The humour he injects into Monk — a character purposely blandly-written in Jefferson’s layered script — reveals a subtle comedic timing that punctuates each beat perfectly,” writes Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. Ho also speaks with Wright about getting into character: “The heart and soul of the film is this family in crisis and Monk’s relationship to that, and the responsibilities that fall upon him to become caretaker, not only to his mother, but to the family as a whole,” Wright tells Ho. “That struck me, because when Cord sent me the script to read, I was living a pretty near approximation to that myself.”

“Pointed, wryly funny, and well-cast, American Fiction is easy to recommend for its humour and timely commentary. The issue of selling Black art that panders to white prejudices dates back at least to James Baldwin’s 1949 critique of Richard Wright’s bestseller, Native Son. The subject has fresh relevance in the current post-Black Lives Matter era, when organizations are anxious to demonstrate diversity on committees and panels, and the entertainment industry is producing a record number of Black-themed films and television series,” notes Liam Lacey at Original Cin. “As a satire of cosmetic inclusiveness, moral posturing, and the popularity of trauma narratives, one senses that American Fiction could have been a bit harder.”

“Jefferson goes for easy laughs with by making Clifford’s sexuality a layer of discomfort for American Fiction to peel back. Clifford embraces his newfound lifestyle by taking lovers, appearing with a new boytoy (or two) each time he appears,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “But as Brown’s scene-stealing performance defies the stereotype of the gay man in a movie, particularly a hyper-masculine gay man, his presence in American Fiction underscores the point that Monk misses with his own book. While there is no singular way of being Black, or being gay—or of being white, straight, Brown, etc., etc.—nobody has a right to say that one person’s way of existing in the world is more or less valid than another’s.”

Anselm (dir. Wim Wenders)

“Wenders’ film is meticulous and mesmerizing work and a pleasure for those in the field.  Dialogue and voiceover are used at a minimum,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“Kiefer’s art is that of someone who has confronted the evils of the past and wants to expose them to the world. His work is replete with the rich heritage of Norse and Teutonic mythology and a fierce knowledge of Greek tragedy,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Kiefer’s sculptures often have the shape and density of huge books, filled with the texts of the past greats. They’re often placed on shelves that seem fit for libraries or archives of giants from an ancient civilization. Everything is huge, offering the sense of a Romantic time of great gods now lost to us.”

“This is a beautiful art film about art, but it also gives space to the argument that the provocation truly is part of the journey,” writers Jason Gorber at POV Magazine. “Kiefer integrates poetry and shocking Nazi poses in a refusal to erase the past. Rather than glorifying it through repetition, he manages to subvert its original meanings and place them within a more critical mode. Of course, it’s up to the viewer whether this approach is successful or not, but Wenders’ film provides a detailed view of the philosophical and rhetorical canvas on which Kiefer’s argumentative art has been assembled over the years.”

“Anselm isn’t quite as accessible as Pina, which spent much of its runtime merely capturing the dancers doing their routines in unusual places, including a suspension railway,” says Chris Knight at Original Cin. “In contrast, this new doc spends time trying to get into the mind of the man who grew up amid the rubble of a defeated military power, and who has at times tried awkwardly to reclaim philosophers whom the Nazis fêted for their own shallow reasons.”

Anyone But You (dir. Will Gluck)

“The bar for these types of movies has been so lowered by overall rom-com market saturation that it’s a nice change of pace when a film like Anyone But You manages to be consistently funny,” admits Andrew Parker at The Gate. “It’s not a classic by any stretch, but rom-com enthusiasts searching for literally anything that’s not a Hallmark movie will be deeply appreciative.”

“Don’t expect anything too much in terms of message or insight,” advises Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “As a silly romantic comedy, Anyone But You provides sufficient entertainment, while updating the Shakespearean play to the modern world, complete with a full accepted gay lesbian wedding that would make the Bard turn in his grave.”

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (dir. James Wan)

“Director James Wan amps up the comic-book quirks of his first Aquaman film by several notches – there are giant-crab warriors, an octopus sidekick, a Jabba the Hutt-like gangster fish voiced by Martin Short – while keeping the pace relatively tight,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Aside from a few genre-obligatory exposition-dumps of dialogue in which ancient lore is unloaded with an unseen-but-felt eye-roll, The Lost Kingdom is almost entirely a series of underwater wham-bam-thank-you-clam set-pieces. The wavy action is rendered with a, well, fluidity that is if not beautiful or consistently comprehensible than at least unfamiliar from so many other bland and more landlocked superhero slugfests.”

“Director James Wan disappoints with lazy direction and an equally lazy script that somehow manages to touch all the clichés found in an action film.  Despite the 3D and special underwater effects – a complete bore!” groans Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“The first stand-alone Aquaman adventure was a pleasing and enjoyable diversion amid a glut of other DCU attempts that weren’t much fun at all, and returning director James Wan delivers more of the same,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate. “It’s nothing groundbreaking and almost shamelessly derivative, but as a silly big budget blockbuster, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits a popcorn movie sweet spot.”

“To quote the dude-bro dialogue of screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Momoa’s buff, scruffy and smirking Aquaman is now ‘the king of frickin’ Atlantis.’ He’s also the delighted father of a newborn son with wife Mera (Heard), who is absent so much that Aquaman almost seems like a single dad,” says Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Aquaman will be obliged to ‘save the world’s ass’ from an environmental threat posed by a bilious green substance called orichalcum, which is like climate change on steroids… might just be the worst movie of 2023.”

The Boys in the Boat (dir. George Clooney; Dec. 25)

“From the outset, audiences already know that the crew will defy the odds to win,” sighs Rachel West at That Shelf. “It’s a feel-good sporting story that we’ve seen time and again, while knowing the outcome is inevitable. But even when sports films reach their foregone conclusion, like the recent Red, White and Brass or Next Goal Wins, it’s really about the road that got us there. In Clooney’s film, that journey is a slog as challenging as the sit-ups and daily rowing practice to be endured. There is little joy or surprise to be had here, with central characters that can often come across as dry as the dusty Depression Era-hued colour palette.”

“The film hops from one inspirational moment to another, without gathering much momentum,” agrees Anne Brodie at What She Said. “It’s competent but conventional and ultimately not successful. Triumphant episodes seem inevitable and therefore lack drama and engagement. The side stories could have been fleshed out and not quite so perfectly, painlessly wrapped up. A disappointment from the man who directed so many terrific films.”

“[S]ucceeds at being a feel-good sports drama, hitting all the right buttons, though many of these buttons have been hit before,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The filmmakers have obviously taken many what they now call ‘artistic liberties’ with the story in order to dramatize the story.”

“Largely exercising the most interesting material of Brown’s book – Hitler’s attempts to impress the world with the scope of his Games while hiding his regime’s brutal treatment of Jewish people and other persecuted minorities – to focus on a bunch of blandly sketched pretty boys, Clooney and Smith deliver a movie so by-the-numbers that it rivals sheep-counting as the perfect substitute for Ambien,” yawns Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “The aesthetic can be summed up as ‘light brown,’ the characters rarely stretch beyond ‘Boy 1’ and ‘Girl 2,’ and the rowing scenes lack a sense of propulsive tension (Clooney clearly hasn’t seen David Fincher’s The Social Network).”

The Color Purple (dir. Blitz Bazawule; Dec. 25)

“The power of Alice Walker’s novel cannot be denied and this musical version still reveals the story of Walker’s book. The cruelty by the Blacks is revealed to be just as bad as the white racism present throughout the story. This is what makes this 2023 version still entertaining, though less from its musical numbers, though executed with sufficient aplomb,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“At 140 minutes, there are more times during which you might be eyeing the exit signs than the actual film. But it is a certainty that any time you might be glued to the screen will be due to the remarkable cast,” admits Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Brooks, who also starred in the 2015 Broadway revival, is a powerhouse as the take-no-guff Sofia, a performance that’s all the more impressive once the story cuts the character’s pride down in a devastating fashion. American Idol’s Barrino also gives the entirety of herself over to Celie and her struggles – even if the script doesn’t match the heights of and layers to her performance. And Empire scene-stealer Henson, as ever, devours the screen each time she shows up, which is hardly ever enough.”

Ferrari (dir. Michael Mann; Dec. 25)

“[A]nother downbeat biopic of a wealthy, powerful man with demons, this time Enzo Ferrari, inventor of the eponymous line of high-end Italian race cars. For some reason, American actor Adam Driver plays Ferrari whose dubious accent is constantly distracting,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “The former race car driver is the benign dictator as leader of the design, engineering, and manufacturing concern; his innovations were landmarks in the development of race cars, but by 1957 the company’s in financial trouble. Ferrari’s also at a personal crossroads, married to Laura, a suspicious, bitter, and deeply unhappy woman played with gritted teeth by Penélope Cruz.”

“[T]he Mille Miglia race, as thrilling and terrifying as it is — cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt and composer Daniel Pemberton keep the adrenalin surging — happens almost in the background of the film, with frequent stops and starts,” says Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Contrary to Enzo Ferrari’s instructions to ‘brake later,’ the guiding philosophy for Mann and screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin is to brake often. In what amounts to a prequel for the Italian side of Ford v Ferrari, the 2019 James Mangold movie that Mann executive produced, the main focus here is on the imperfect human rather than the elegant car. The sunglass-wrapped enigma of Ford v Ferrari becomes the all-too-knowable jerk of Ferrari.”

“Mann’s command of the racing scenes across the film brings about an odd comfort, almost as if this is exactly the type of film he should be making,” argues Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. “Yes, the car crashes are excessive and dramatic — but would it be a Michael Mann movie if they were tame and understated? There’s no doubt that the crash during Mille Miglia is grotesque — although, given the reality of what happened that day, Mann’s vision doesn’t feel that far off-base. The veteran director pumps a great deal of adrenaline and mayhem into these sequences, creating a visceral and entertaining experience — until it’s not.”

“Director Michael Mann captures the spirit of racing and the environment of the racing business,” adds Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“Cruz, although Spanish, can pull off the Italian job with far more ease [than Woodley]. And indeed it is her scenes, either alongside Driver or with those playing Enzo’s many bankers and underlings, that deliver the biggest emotional wallops,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Mourning her only child, her marriage, and very likely her fortune as the betrayed and sidelined Laura, Cruz goes scorched-earth, incinerating any performer sharing her space.”

The Iron Claw (dir. Sean Durkin)

“Director Durkin omits certain important parts of the family history in lieu of the other parts that involve Kevin, primarily for the obvious reason that Ephron is the star of the movie,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“Writer/director Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) straddles the “is it fake?” issue nicely, underlining that the competition to please is marked by things like who is best at the mic, and who gives the best show. Kevin looks the part better than anybody, and has done the crunches to make it so. But he’s missing a certain ‘something,” says Jim Slotek at Original Cin.  “What isn’t fake is the price the athletes pay, both physically and emotionally. And, however closely it does or doesn’t hew to reality (Durkin’s script is ‘inspired by’ the Von Erichs, rather than ‘based on’), The Iron Claw is an emotionally resonant movie about a profoundly dysfunctional family with an unescapable gravity-well of connectedness, one that dates to when they all grew up in a house on wheels, going from bout to bout.”

“Durkin hits a few casting jackpots here, too, including The Bear breakout White as the committed but reckless Kerry, the reliably tremendous Tierney as Doris (doing a lot with an underwritten role), and newcomer Simons as the tender-hearted Mike,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “But it is McCallany as Fritz who walks away with the show time and again. Sporting a mean buzz cut and intimidating paunch, there is something about the way the actor, best known until now for his far kinder character on Netflix’s Mindhunter, carries his weight that suggests a highly controlled kind of menace. Every time the actor steps into a scene, the air seems to get a degree frostier.”

“There’s so much humanity in The Iron Claw, it almost overwhelms,” adds Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. “Between Kevin and Fritz’s contrasting responses to the individual suffering of Doris and each brother, beneath the raw grief and pure joy exists a family simply trying to get by amid the bad hand they were given. The brotherhood of the boys is genuinely touching, as the chemistry between Efron, White, Dickinson and Simons feels effortless and worn-in, while Tierney’s turn as the matriarch comes to us as restrained yet precariously feral. Durkin’s attempt to get to the heart and soul of each Von Erich proves to be successful, layering each fit of laughter and tear of sadness together to build a nuanced character study above all else.”

Maestro (dir. Bradley Cooper)

“Cooper has clearly been a student of his craft — learning, observing and delivering. A passionate filmmaker and actor, Cooper acts and directs like the maestro he emulates. He fills the film with simple and profound moments, utilizing long pauses and lingering quiet to leave viewers feel uncomfortable, mirroring how Leonard and Felicia must have felt and thought during those moments. When Jamie (Maya Hawke), Leonard and Felicia’s eldest child, confronts her father about the rumours of his affairs, there’s a silent glance between the two as the camera zooms in on Leonard’s face, a moment that screams in its silence,” notes Marriska Fernandes at Exclaim!. “In all aspects, Maestro will be enjoyed by cinephiles, music lovers and critics alike, and it will certainly sing to audiences everywhere.”

At Zoomer, Marriska Fernandes speaks with the Bernstein kids about Maestro and seeing how Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan brought their parents’ stories to the screen. “[She was] such a subtle, complex and very private person,” Jamie Bernstein tells Fernandes. “There’s so much Bernstein footage and stuff written about him that Bradley could use as a resource, but much, much less for Felicia. So I just don’t know how Carey did it. All we know is she somehow captured the essence of Felicia.”

Migration (dir. Benjamin Renner)

“The animation is fancy and inventive enough but one wishes there is more innovation in the overall storytelling than the Christmas message of being one as a family,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Society of the Snow (dir. J.A. Bayona)

“Writer-director J.A. Bayona’s incredible epic, shot in the same location, under the same conditions at the same time of year re-enacts the event, save the deaths uses tight closeups to great advantage, revealing the men’s physical scars from the cold, and the desire to live in their eyes,” notes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “It was tight in the plane’s fuselage, where they might share one another’s body heat. Realism defines the film; the actors lost weight and became oddly at one with the cold, as did the team back in 72. There’s a kind of majesty that Bayona delivers, a heightened sense of soul, that perhaps those who know they may die, might feel, an appreciation of life and even of their icy windswept home. It’s a celebration of the strength humans have that might be called spiritual. Stars Enzo Vogrincic, Simon Hempe and Esteban Bigliardi. And that is one heck of a crash sequence.”

“Meticulously executed,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Riveting account of surviving an air crash in the Andes that looks almost too incredible to be but is true.”

The Zone of Interest (dir. Jonathan Glazer)

***Winner: 2 TFCA Awards – Best Picture, Best Director***

“Using languorously staged sequences in and around the Hoss estate, amplified by composer Micah Levi’s spare and fantastically haunting score, the filmmaker cautiously and confidently guides us into a wading pool of darkness – we can swim, but never drown. His refusal to go inside the walls of the camp represents a controlled and calculated cinematic cruelty: in the absence of presented images, the audience is forced to conjure our own. Glazer’s complete lack of sentimentality here not only underlines his artistic discipline, but also his tremendous respect for history and the actual ground he walks on,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “The Zone of Interest is a knockout in all senses. It will pummel your heart, and flatten your soul. It cannot, must not, be missed.”

“It’s two worlds of evil; Hedwig runs the house with cheery efficiency, happy to have finally found their perfect home. It comes with interned slaves as staff and gardeners who can do nothing but their ‘duty’ as they hear and see the same sights and sounds emanating from the camp where their families may be,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Her sunny disposition is a feat of feigned ignorance, while her husband is at work deciding more efficient ways to kill Jews with better equipment and timetables. She glories in her fine wardrobe and jewelry, stolen from the interned knowing full well the weight of her evil. Glazer chooses a subtle way to illustrate the duality of life; little mention is made of the camp, as Glazer’s persistent background noise of death intensifies. Most unusual opening and closing sequences and the eerie music fill us with dread, sounding like a symphony of muffled screams, a brilliant, soul-damaging masterstroke.”

“Glazer worked with the actors to make their lives as pure, affectless, and unemotional as it was for the Höss family during the Nazi regime,” writes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “The effect is chilling: you see the pure faces of evil. These are people who don’t care about anything but themselves and following the orders of a regime that is dedicated to conquering the world and killing those whom they consider to be beneath contempt. Glazer has created an airless, inhuman world and let us in to view it for a couple of hours. This is, arguably, the film of the year. You may not enjoy it but it’s important to see The Zone of Interest.”

“[A] horror film about the Holocaust without a single scene of concentration camps.  It depicts the banality of evil so well put forward that the audience is left just as silent as in the recent Christopher Nolan nuclear war vehicle, Oppenheimer,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“[T]his isn’t an ordinary Holocaust movie. Instead, Glazer’s focus is in exploring the psyche of the people who were able to perpetuate horror, to live next to it, and look the other way,” says Karen Gordon at Original Cin. “Glazer’s oblique approach starts with a black screen and a soundscape that sounds mechanical and inhuman. When the screen shifts, we see an idyllic scene: a family on a sunny day, lounging on the grassy meadow overlooking a lovely river. Rudolph and Hedwig (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, both formidable) and their five young children are enjoying a quiet afternoon. Their good fortune at having this property is due to Rudolph’s posting as commandant of Auschwitz, which has allowed them to create the lifestyle they’ve always hoped for.” Gordon also speaks with star Christian Friedel about exploring his character’s evil side: “[Jonathan Glazer] said something to me, and I think this was one important key for me to dive into the darkness of the character. He said, ‘If you speak the truth, then lie with your eyes. And if your eyes tell the truth then lie with your mouth,'” Friedel tells Gordon. “I think to find normal situations believable, that’s one thing. But, we don’t want to see him act like a perpetrator.  We cannot say what is going on in his head, and that was the challenge for me: to play it as normal as I can but be aware that there’s no—how can I say it? That we cannot say, ‘Okay, now I realize he’s the perpetrator. Or he has evil thoughts.'”

“Even when the sun shines and Hedwig and company enjoy the tranquil summer days, though, there’s no escaping the violence of this idyll setting,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “An engaged soundtrack by Johnnie Burn dexterously layers the film with the horrors of war. Foley is the truth-teller in The Zone of Interest as screams, gunshots, rolling trains, and the sounds of suffering punctuate the frames. It’s a chilling feat of portraiture. One can’t dare look evil in the eye with a film like The Zone of Interest. Rather, one observes how it’s here, there, and everywhere–just another part of everyday life.”

“The film’s technical aspects are spectacular. Lukasz Zal’s cinematography is eerily sterile, unblinking in its widescreen reveals (the movie was shot on location in Poland),” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Mica Levi’s idiosyncratic music raises the pulse with its hints of malice, especially during the dark-screen title sequence when it suggests intense human suffering. But Johnnie Burn’s subtle sound design is the most devastating tech credit. He sears upon our ears the appalling circumstances of the story, while at the same time indicating how the Höss family carries on as if the killings are trivial events, hardly worthy of notice. It’s not that they can’t hear what’s going on across the garden wall, they just choose not to.”

The Best of 2023

At the Toronto Star, Peter Howell picks the top 10 or 11 films of 2023 and says that this year was all about Barbenheimer: “Critics and other know-it-alls doubted the wisdom of opening films about a plastic doll and the father of the atomic bomb on the same day in July,” notes Howell. “Barbie would be too silly, even for the summer season; Oppenheimer would be too serious, especially with its butt-numbing three-hour run time. I’m happy to say we were as wrong as wrong can be… Margot Robbie charms and surprises as Stereotypical Barbie, the blond and blue-eyed teen dress-up model of popular acclaim, and Ryan Gosling seizes every frame he’s in as Ken, Barbie’s beach-brained beau.”

At CBC, Eli Glasner picks the best films of the year. Atop the list? Killers of the Flower Moon: “Killers is not a bird’s-eye view of genocide,” writes Glasner. “It’s close up and personal. It’s about Lily Gladstone bearing witness as the world shirks around her.  At the centre of the movie are the imperfections of the human heart, with equal chambers for love and evil. It’s a film that acknowledges its limitations but also peels back the layers of love and greed in a way that only Martin Scorsese can.”

At POV Magazine, Marc Glassman and Pat Mullen pick the best documentaries of 2023. Atop Marc’s list? The Mother of All Lies: “Asmae’s community’s recollections of the Riots and Morocco’s autocratic past help in understanding the film’s most audacious artistic intervention, the creation of marionettes who play out their lives for the director,” writes Glassman. “It is period recreation as theatre, with the puppets being the Moroccan people who were dominated by a willful aristocracy. The Mother of All Lies is a deeply moving film: truly the personal is the political in this brilliant documentary hybrid.” For Mullen, 2023’s top doc is one still in search of distribution: Milisuthando. “Nothing is more exciting than encountering a new voice that radically shakes up an art form. Milisuthando Bongela’s feature debut offers exactly the kind of discovery one hopes to see at a festival,” says Mullen. “The film’s expansive scope, rich personal history, and innovative approach to form immediately marked it as the standout film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film is even better on the big screen—a truly cinematic work of art—and proved the best of the fest when I caught it on the big screen at Hot Docs.”

File Under Miscellaneous

At What She Said, Anne Brodie catches up with Leave the World Behind: “Strange occurrences begin. All communications are dead, an oil tanker grounds itself while they are on the beach, Rose sees hundreds of deer flocking around the house, planes start falling from the sky, and there are no other people about and no information,” writes Brodie. “The characters face demons from unfulfilled obsessions, witness the horror of unloosed electronic cars, isolation, and maladies that could arise from suddenly being thrust into primitive darkness. Deathless quote: ‘I am a man without GPS and a phone. I am a useless man.’”

At Sharp, Marriska Fernandes chats with Rebel One’s Charlie Hunnam and learns the best spot for Thai food in Toronto: “Apart from the tendency to betray everybody around him [laughs], I always hope I’ve got at least some of [my character’s] charm and swagger on my good days,” Hunnam tells Fernandes in terms of relating to his characters. “I had the most epic interaction on the street in Toronto. Well, last time I was there, I was there for the Toronto International Film Festival, and I was by my favourite restaurant, Khao San Road, great Thai restaurant, and this really elegant older man stopped in the street, and looked at me. It was one of those things where, you know — I’m fairly used to getting recognized at this point — but there was just such charisma and a twinkle in his eye. He went, ‘You are who you are, though.’ And I went, ‘On my good days.’ [Laughs.]”

At POV Magazine, Marc Glassman and Pat Mullen offer a timeline of the history of the Documentary Organization of Canada upon its 40^th anniversary.