Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies is a film that desperately wants to be dangerous, seductive, and layered with intrigue. Instead, it faceplants into the shag carpet of its own pretensions like a drunk lounge singer trying to nail a jazz solo in a karaoke bar. It’s supposed to be a neo-noir thriller full of … Read More “Where the Truth Lies (2005): A Sleazy, Snoozy Mystery With All the Erotic Charge of a Wet Sock” »
Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002) is a film about the Armenian Genocide—or at least that’s what the press kit insists. What it’s actually about is harder to say. It might be about denial, identity, intergenerational trauma, filmmaking, customs agents, art history, editing software, or the overwhelming power of Charles Aznavour’s eyebrows. Or maybe it’s just about … Read More ““Ararat” (2002) – Trauma, Turkey, and Tangents” »
There’s a moment early in Felicia’s Journey—Atom Egoyan’s 1999 psychological thriller where “psychological” means “nobody blinks” and “thriller” means “you might nod off”—when the titular Felicia, a naive Irish teenager, stares blankly at a British cityscape. In that moment, you can practically hear Egoyan whispering behind the camera: “Behold… alienation.” Unfortunately, all we behold is … Read More “Felicia’s Journey (1999): Atom Egoyan’s Half-Baked Serial Killer Soufflé” »
Let’s begin with a question: Have you ever wanted to watch a two-hour funeral for an entire town set in a snow globe of sorrow, where every character speaks like they’ve recently been diagnosed with terminal reflection? Welcome to Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter—a film so sad, so relentlessly elegiac, it should come with a … Read More “The Sweet Hereafter (1997): A Snowy, Somber, Soul-Sucking Slog” »
Atom Egoyan’s Exotica (1994) is a film about grief, longing, and exotic dancing—though not necessarily in that order, and not with any real enthusiasm. Set mostly in a dimly lit strip club that resembles a half-dead terrarium, this is a movie that takes a potentially titillating premise and then drains it of all joy, energy, … Read More ““Exotica” (1994) – A Strip Club with Feelings (And Zero Fun)” »
Atom Egoyan’s Calendar is what happens when a filmmaker stares into a void for too long and decides the void might make an interesting movie. Spoiler: it doesn’t. What we have here is not a film so much as an experimental hostage situation—one in which time, emotion, and narrative coherence are blindfolded and marched off … Read More “Calendar (1993): A Cinematic Root Canal in Twelve Bleeding Months” »
Atom Egoyan’s The Adjuster (1991) is the kind of film that gets introduced at film festivals with phrases like “bold psychological exploration” or “a meditation on identity and trauma,” when in reality it plays like someone filmed a philosophy major’s anxiety dream using a discarded David Lynch starter kit and the last roll of Canadian … Read More ““The Adjuster” (1991) – Atom Egoyan’s Freudian Carnival of Wut” »
If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to be emotionally waterboarded by a fax machine while trapped inside a RadioShack circa 1989, Atom Egoyan’s Speaking Parts has you covered. This is a film that stares deep into the hollow soul of modern relationships and comes back with nothing but static. It’s an existential … Read More “Speaking Parts (1989): Atom Egoyan’s Moody Karaoke of Miscommunication” »
Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing (1987) is a film that takes the word “uncomfortable” and stretches it over 80 minutes of dreary Canadian awkwardness, broken communication, and truly horrifying camcorder choices. It’s like if American Beauty were directed by a Soviet documentarian on Ambien, using only expired film stock and half-charged batteries. Critics might call it … Read More ““Family Viewing” (1987) – Press Play to Suffer” »
Before Atom Egoyan became Canada’s official exporter of art-house melancholy and incestuous subtext, he made Next of Kin—a film so painfully awkward, so aggressively polite in its mediocrity, it feels like it should come with an apology and a Tim Hortons gift card. This was his debut feature, the cinematic equivalent of a teenager’s slam … Read More “Next of Kin (1984): Atom Egoyan’s Dysfunctional Family Reunion with the Audience” »
