Barry Hertz covers film for The Globe and Mail. Hertz released his Top 10 Canadian films of 2020.
Film reviews can be a matter of taste. We offer up what we like and don't like about Canadian films. As a public service, we thought it would be fun to go through his Top 10 list and bring our perspective.
Here is the Hertz list of top Canadian films from 2020.
Anne at 13,000 Ft.
Blood Quantum
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
Hammer
Jusqu’au Declin | The Decline
The Kid Detective
Murmur
Possessor
Souterrain | Underground
White Lie
The list includes no films shown at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (they might count as 2021 films), neither entry for Canada for Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Oscars, and the only film scheduled to play at Cannes (Nadia, Butterfly). The list only contains 2 French language films.
Hertz's list does have a couple of Canadian films from the TIFF Top 10 list of Canadian films: The Kid Detective and Possessor.
Not sure if these films qualified as 2020 films but There's Something in the Water, And The Birds Rained Down, Kuessipan, and Slut in a Good Way were all wonderful films at the 2019 Windsor International Film Festival.
Your humble narrator has seen 6 of the 10 films on the Hertz list. Saw Murmur and White Lie at the 2019 Windsor International Film Festival. Have also seen Anne at 13,000 Ft., Blood Quantum, and Disappearance at Clifton Hill. Have no issue with those films being on a Top 10 list.
Canadian film review: The Decline
Hertz said Jusqu’au Declin | The Decline "is supremely confident and frequently chilling. More than just a collection of algorithmic key-words, The Decline is Canadian genre filmmaking done right."
Patrice Laliberté went out of his way to make most of the characters irrelevant and the few characters that remained not that interesting. When a horror film is boring, that film can't be chilling. Interesting premise, but the film had a bad delivery. Character development was poor and you soon recognised that most of them weren't relevant to know who they were. The filmgoer had no reason to root for those who survived toward the end since they weren't interesting.
Canadian film review: Family First
Hertz says Souterrain is "aesthetically slick and dramatically taut" and the film should "put Dupuis on a first-name basis with fellow Quebecois breakouts Denis Villeneuve and Jean-Marc Vallée."
That is as embarrassing a statement as one could make about Quebecois film. I've seen Maelstrom and Polytechnique (Villeneuve) and C.R.A.Z.Y. and Café de Flore (Vallée). If Dupuis made 10 films and doubled her talent after each film, she would be the distance between Montréal and Vancouver from those films.
Can't speak to Souterrain | Underground, the second film from Québécois director Sophie Dupuis. Hertz describes Family First | Chien de garde as a "compelling, itchy crime-saga thriller." That film was so obvious from the start and poorly constructed. One of the worst Canadian films I have seen.
Despite how terrible Chien de garde was as a film, and that film was really terrible, I would give Souterrain a fair chance. Call it the Joey Klein rule. You can make a terrible film and I will still watch your next film, mostly to learn why someone makes terrible films.
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Hertz and I did agree on 5 films from the list, a good total in any year, though 2020 might not be the best year to compare notes. If you agree with Hertz on the efforts of Dupuis and Laliberté, you will likely disagree with my take, but you are a better-informed film consumer.
Reading Hertz's take on those films and filmmakers doesn't change my mind but reading other people's works lends insight you might have missed. Writing, character development matter more to some film critics and filmmakers.
We love engaging people to learn more about Canadian film. This definitely includes people we often agree with and sometimes disagree with on films. Be respectful.
photo credit: The Decline film
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