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Movie Review: The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker - Kate Winslet

Imagine a small town in Australia. It’s 1951. A young woman returns home with her Singer sewing machine and a sophisticated attitude that all her old friends lack. It’s been several years since she’s been home and she’s concerned that the whole town thinks she’s cursed, but she can’t fully explain why. Soon enough, it is revealed that she was sent off to boarding school because the town suspected she murdered a young boy.

When a woman who looks like Kate Winslet shows up out of the blue, everyone takes notice. As a clothing designer, Myrtle AKA Tilly (Kate Winslet) has beautiful taste in fashion and she distracts all the football players when she arrives at a game looking like a knockout in a red dress. Teddy (Liam Hemsworth), one of the football players, quickly becomes Tilly’s love interest and he’s a charming one at that.

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September 25, 2015 by

Movie Review: Inside Out

Inside Out - Carbon Brew

Core Memories. Personality Islands. Imagination Land. These are just a few of the driving forces behind protagonist Riley Anderson’s thought process in Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out. The original concept takes viewers on a behind the scenes tour of a young girl’s mind as the script explores how her emotions affect her behaviour. Five emotions – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear – run an intense operation and guide her through life’s challenging moments like being the new girl at school.

The characters clearly express their feelings through their large eyes and energetic voices. For example, Disgust (Mindy Kaling) has extra long eyelashes and her sassy personality makes her quite entertaining. No matter which emotion they represent, every character speaks with conviction.

Meanwhile, Amy Poehler’s character Joy is the woman in charge. She’s not bossy, but eager. She wants Riley to be happy.  All of the emotions have a symbiotic relationship that helps Riley function like a typical preteen. When that gets disrupted, chaos ensues. Midway through the movie, I was so engrossed that whenever Joy and Sadness stood at the edge of a cliff, I felt nervous for them. That’s a tell-tale sign of good storytelling.

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June 17, 2015 by

Movie Review: Iris

Iris Apfel

Photo Source: ELLE Decor

Style icon Iris Apfel initially entered my radar as a blogger when I interviewed a former Sears employee for my Behind the Brand series. The new documentary Iris portrays her lifestyle as a collector of couture and costume jewellery.

With support from her husband Carl, Iris fills her apartments (and a storage locker) with pieces from around the world that reflect her eclectic yet stylish taste. Their residences look clean, but purposefully cluttered. In addition to garments and accessories, they also have a large collection of books. Iris prides herself on knowing what’s happening in economics and politics. She recognizes how fashion trends reflect historical events and has lived long enough to confirm that eventually everything becomes trendy once again.

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May 28, 2015 by

Movie Review: The Longest Ride

Photo Source: EW
Photo Source: EW

Recognizing that I’m a Nicholas Sparks fan, I was excited to receive passes to an advance screening of The Longest Ride, which is based on his novel. The movie’s luscious rural North Carolina setting looks nothing like Toronto, so it was nice to escape and be swept away by the romantic script.

Sophia (Britt Robertson) is a college senior eager to finish school and start building a career in New York’s art scene. When her sorority sisters drags her to a rodeo, she meets Luke (Scott Eastwood) and starts dating the bull rider. Meanwhile, their love story is intertwined with another, which dates back to the 1940s.

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April 10, 2015 by

Movie Review: Fed Up

Photo Source

Make room for another documentary about the obesity epidemic. In Fed Up, narrator Katie Couric walks viewers through history to explain why so many Americans are overweight.

In addition to featuring numerous interviews with professors, politicians and doctors, Fed Up chronicles the lifestyles of a few students. The students provide testimonials in between clips of them at home, school and doctor appointments.

In 1977, when a government report was released encouraging the food industry to manufacture food with less fat, food manufacturers responded by decreasing calories and increasing sugar. I like one doctor’s approach to explaining how consuming sugar affects our metabolism. “You can eat a bowl of Corn Flakes with no added sugar or you can eat a bowl of sugar with added Corn Flakes,” he says. “They might taste different, but below the neck, they’re metabolically the same.”

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February 25, 2015 by