Sarah Polley Movies
Known as much for her intelligence as for her talent, Canadian actress Sarah Polley has been wowing television and film audiences since she was barely out of diapers. Born January 8, 1979, in the Toronto area, Polley got her first screen role at the age of six, in Disney's One Magic Christmas. From 1987 to 1988, Polley made her name in the title role of the Canadian television series Ramona. Her work on the show led to more screen work, first in the Matt Dillon flop The Big Town (1987) and then in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989).In 1990, Polley got a lead role on the acclaimed TV series The Road to Avonlea, a part that she played for five seasons. In 1994, she had a small but significant role in Atom Egoyan's Exotica and again collaborated with the director in 1997, for his critically lauded The Sweet Hereafter. The film was nominated for a host of awards, including a Best Director Oscar for Egoyan, and won a Special Grand Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Polley drew her share of praise for her performance as the paralyzed survivor of a catastrophic bus accident and soon Hollywood was courting the waifishly unconventional actress, whom one critic remarked looked like Uma Thurman's wiser younger sister. However, for her next picture, Polley opted for a small Canadian production, The Last Night (1998), directed by Don McKellar.
Hollywood did become part of the picture with Polley's casting in Doug Liman's Go (1999), in which she starred with such other young notables as Katie Holmes, Scott Wolf, Taye Diggs, and Breckin Meyer. Her role in the film, combined with her performance in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999) and a lead role in Guinevere (also 1999), helped to classify her as one of the most talented actresses of her generation, not a bad accomplishment for someone who repeatedly stated that her primary goal in life was to become a writer.
In 2000, Polley returned to Canada to star in Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water, a drama about the efforts of a photojournalist and her husband (Catherine McCormack and Sean Penn) to investigate a 19th century murder. That same year, she also appeared in Michael Winterbottom's The Claim, playing the daughter of a gold miner (Peter Mullan) who sells his family for a bag of gold.
Over the next four years, Polley continued to stick mostly to smaller independent films. She played a journalist opposite a monster in Hal Hartley's 2001 fantasy No Such Thing and won rave reviews and a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award for her performance as a terminally ill young woman in 2003's My Life Without Me.
In 2004, Polley took another stab at Hollywood, heading up the ensemble cast in the remake of George Romero's horror classic Dawn of the Dead. She returned to artier fare with the 2005 film The Secret Life of Words opposite Tim Robbins.
Polley made her direcotiral and screenwriting debuts in 2007 with Away From Her), an adaptation of Alice Munro's story The Bear Came Over the Mountain, a beautifully observed drama about an elderly married couple dealing with the wife alzheimer's disease. The film earned a handful of year-end awards and nominations, garnering Polley a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay from the Academy.
She returned to acting in the award-winning miniseries John Adams, and appeared in the sci-fi film Splice in 2010. Her released her sophomore directorial effort, Take This Waltz the next year. The movie, starring Michelle Williams as a young married woman contemplating cheating on her husband, was a festival favorite and got a release in the United States in the summer of 2012. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
- 1987
Hands of a Stranger was adapted by playwright Arthur Kopit from the best-selling novel by Robert Daley. Armand Assante plays a New York City narcotics officer who aids DA Blair Brown in her investigation of a rape case in which drugs were involved. In the subsequent days, Assante becomes something of an expert in rape evidence. Thus, when his wife Beverly D'Angelo is sexually assaulted while en route to a rendezvous with her lover, Assante suspects something even though D'Angelo remains mum about the incident. Conducting his own investigation, Assante determines the rapist's identity while wiretapping a phoned-in attempt to blackmail his wife. Will Assante forget everything he's learned about police procedure and attempt to take the law into his own hands? Co-starring in Hands of a Stranger is Arliss Howard as the scummy rapist. Preceded by a warning that the film contained scenes of a violent and graphic nature, Hands of a Stranger was originally broadcast in two parts, on May 10 and 11, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1987
This 15-part family-oriented series chronicles the lively adventures of author Beverly Cleary's much loved and ever mischievous 8-year-old Ramona as she grows up in a midwestern middle-class suburb. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Sarah Polley's sophomore directorial effort Take This Waltz stars Michelle Williams as Margot, a 28-year-old Toronto woman who has been married for five years to Lou (Seth Rogen), a cookbook author who specializes in chicken dishes. One day she meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) her neighbor across the street, and there is a quick and lasting connection between the two. While she remains faithful to Lou, she finds herself drawn more and more to this seemingly perfect other man. Eventually, Margot is forced to confront the truth about herself, and share her feelings with her unsuspecting husband. Take This Waltz had its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, (more)
Celebrated genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) conduct a clandestine experiment to create an animal/human hybrid that could revolutionize modern medicine -- if it doesn't destroy humanity first. On the heels of engineering an entirely new species of animal, Clive and Elsa become the toast of the scientific community. Their experiment begins to spiral out of control, however, when the superstar scientists introduce human DNA into the equation. When Dren is born, Clive and Elsa welcome her into the world as the next leap in human evolution. Now, the faster Dren evolves, the more her creators start to realize they may have made a catastrophic mistake. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, (more)
One of the oldest epic poems in the English language gets a robust visual interpretation in this historical epic shot on location in Iceland. Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgård) is a Danish king who murders a troll that has been terrorizing his countryside. But Hrothgar spares the life of the troll's strange young son, who with the passage of years grows to become Grendel (Ingvar Sigurdsson), a fearsome warrior intent upon avenging his father's death. As Grendel begins his slaughter of the king's closest confidants, Hrothgar realizes his life is in danger, and he calls upon the brave and fearless Beowulf (Gerard Butler) to track down and kill Grendel. As Beowulf and his band of warriors search for the vicious and elusive Grendel, he crosses paths with Selma (Sarah Polley), a beautiful and sensuous witch whose alliances are divided between Beowulf and his archenemy. Produced by Canadian, British, and Icelandic concerns, Beowulf & Grendel was a major box-office success in Canada before crossing south to American theaters in the summer of 2006. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgård, (more)
Director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard, who collaborated on the award-winning film Paris, Texas, once again join forces for this dark drama of a man trying to turn over a new leaf late in life. Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a veteran actor who has been a popular Western star since the mid-'70s. Spence's onscreen image as a strong, principled lawman is a severe contrast to his life off the set, which has been dominated by drinking, drugs, and promiscuous womanizing. However, Spence has begun to find his hedonistic life a shallow existence, and one day, in the midst of filming his latest movie, he simply hops on his horse and rides away, eventually making his way to the small Nevada town where his mother lives. Mother (Eva Marie Saint) has little interest in seeing her wayward son after so many years, but she does share a recently discovered bit of information with him -- one of Spence's former girlfriends stopped by with word that she had given birth to his son years before. Spence borrows his father's old car and drives to Butte, MT, where he finds Doreen (Jessica Lange), the woman who was his lover years ago. Doreen runs a tavern where her son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), plays for the locals with his rock band; Spence is in fact Earl's father, but the young man has no interest in meeting his biological father, and shuts out Spence as the actor tries to get to know him. As Spence struggles to find some sort of familial connection in Butte, he makes friends with a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley), only to discover she was also fathered by him during his rowdy younger days. Don't Come Knocking's distinguished supporting cast includes Tim Roth, George Kennedy, Fairuza Balk, Julia Sweeney, and Tim Matheson. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, (more)
Adapted from a series of short stories by Canadian cult favorite Bruce La Bruce, this seriocomic coming-of-age story stars Andre Noble as Cliff, a teenager growing up in Toronto in the 1980s. While Cliff is aware of the fact he's gay and has a ravenous curiosity about sex, he hasn't been able to do much about it. However, on his 18h birthday, Cliff's free-thinking mother, Madge (Marnie McPhail), pours him a stiff drink, offers him a reefer, and politely but firmly tells him to go downtown and have some fun. Eager to lose his virginity, Cliff instead encounters Butch (Brendan Fehr), a good-looking guy in his early twenties who makes his living as a male prostitute. Cliff is infatuated with Butch from the first moment he sees him; however, while Butch appears fond of Cliff and strikes up a friendship with him, his career has forced him to develop a sense of emotional distance from others, and he isn't interested in sex with other men unless he's being paid for it. Cliff becomes a regular visitor to Butch's apartment and gets a crash course in the underbelly of the Toronto gay community, but one day Butch drafts Cliff into performing a sex act with him for a customer, leaving Cliff humiliated and heartbroken. Sugar also stars Sarah Polley and Maury Chaykin. Only the second feature film from respected theatrical director John Palmer, it was screened as part of the 2004 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
The feature-film debut of director Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead is a modern retelling of George Romero's 1978 horror classic, which was actually the second film in a trilogy that began with Night of the Living Dead and concluded with Day of the Dead. Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames star as two of the last remaining people on an earth that has been ravaged by flesh-eating zombies. After escaping to a shopping mall with a handful of other survivors, they decide that they only way to truly elude the approaching throng of undead is to somehow make their way to an island that is supposedly zombie-free. Jake Weber and Mekhi Phifer also star. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, (more)
Roland Suso Richter's psychological thriller The I Inside stars Ryan Phillippe as a man who, as the film opens, becomes involved in a terrifying accident that leaves him unable to remember the last two years of his life. As if the protagonist being unable to recognize his wife (Piper Perabo), and learning that his brother (Robert Sean Leonard) has died, were not bad enough, dreams of a woman (Sarah Polley) he once loved come to him regularly. The hero must negotiate the terrain between fact and fiction in order to figure out what happened to his life. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Polley, (more)
Isabel Coixet's Mi vida sin mi (My Life Without Me) is a tale of a woman dying before her time. Sarah Polley plays Ann, a 24-year-old mother of two. Ann is married to Don (Scott Speedman), and they live near Ann's mother (Deborah Harry), who is bitter about the fact that Ann's father is serving a ten-year prison sentence. Ann learns that she has only a few months to live. She makes a series of goals to complete before her time on Earth comes to an end. Among her accomplishments are taking a lover (Mark Ruffalo), finding someone to care for Don, and recording birthday greetings for her two daughters. My Life Without Me was screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, (more)
Canadian filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald directs the sentimental ensemble drama The Event. Nick (Parker Posey) is a district attorney investigating several deaths in the gay community of New York City's Chelsea District. It seems that many AIDS sufferers have died under similar mysterious circumstances. Each case suggest the use of assisted suicide, which is illegal in New York. HIV-infected cellist Matt (Don McKellar) has died of a drug overdose following a large party in Manhattan given by his family and friends. Nick first questions his lover Brian (Brent Carver), who runs an HIV support clinic. Still looking for answers, she interviews Matt's closest family members, including his mother Lila (Olympia Dukakis), his younger sister Dana (Sarah Polley), and his older sister Gaby (Joanna P. Adler). Meanwhile, Nick battles with her own past secrets involving her family back in New Jersey. The Event premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
- Starring:
- Parker Posey, Olympia Dukakis, (more)
Beauty meets the Beast, and neither is sure just what to make of the other, in a modern-dress comic variation on the ancient folk tale, written and directed by the eternally offbeat Hal Hartley. Beatrice (Sarah Polley) works with the office staff of a sleazy tabloid TV news show, run by a harridan producer (Helen Mirren) eager for something other than the usual spate of violent crimes and natural disasters that are her show's bread and butter. The producer sends her camera crew to Iceland in search of something new and unusual, and they certainly find it when they run across a village that has its own monster (Robert John Burke), a large part-mammal and part-lizard with a short temper and habit of killing people who get on his nerves. The show's camera crew (including Beatrice's boyfriend) doesn't survive their first encounter with the monster, and Beatrice is sent to find out what happened to them. En route to Iceland, Beatrice's plane crashes into the waters off the coast, and while she survives the accident, a group of unsympathetic locals decide (after a few drinks too many) to take her to the monster's lair, where a grim fate doubtless awaits her. Except that the monster is a bit depressed and Beatrice isn't in the mood to take any guff from anyone; after the monster wonders aloud why folks aren't as frightened of him as they once were, he asks Beatrice to help him find Dr. Artaud (Baltasar Kormakur), a mad scientist who might be able to cure him of the curse of eternal life. No Such Thing received its world premiere at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard series. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sarah Polley, Robert Burke, (more)
An aspiring comic, Neville (Larenz Tate) is burdened by drug abuse and memories of childhood traumas. He and his older half brother Matthew (Martin Cummins), a boxer, are unable to escape from the painful repercussions of their past, which includes their mother serving a prison sentence for killing Neville's father. Things seem to look up for Neville when he becomes involved with a gifted singer (real-life R&B chanteuse Deborah Cox), but still he must struggle to surmount a family legacy that has resulted in so much anger and emotional ruin. Screened at the 2000 Vancouver International Film Festival, Love Come Down features renowned Canadian actress Sarah Polley in a role as an unconventional nun. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
- Starring:
- Larenz Tate, Deborah Cox, (more)
One man's small empire threatens to collapse under the weight of his greed and deceit in this drama that transplants the story of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge to 19th century America. In 1867, Dillon (Peter Mullan) is an Irish immigrant who settled in California during the Gold Rush of '49 and has done quite well for himself. Dillon owns nearly every business of consequence in the town of Kingdom Come; if someone wants to dig for gold, rent a room, open a bank account, or even order a drink, they have to go to Dillon to do it. One of the few profitable enterprises in town that he doesn't own is the brothel, which is operated by Lucia (Milla Jovovich), Dillon's lover. Circumstances change somewhat when Dalglish - a surveyor with the Central Pacific Railroad - turns up and expresses his plans to implement a railroad in the area. Dillon, sensing a great opportunity afoot, travels well out of his way to ensure that the line is run through Kingdom Come, to enhance the town's commercial prospects. Also arriving in town the same time as Dalglish are two women, the beautiful but ailing Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and her lovely teenage daughter Hope (Sarah Polley); their presence is deeply troubling for Dillon, for they are the keys to a dark secret Dillon has kept from the people of Kingdom Come. The Claim is Michael Winterbottom's second adaptation of the works of Thomas Hardy; his 1996 feature Jude was adapted from Hardy's final novel, Jude the Obscure. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Peter Mullan, Wes Bentley, (more)
A woman studying a crime of the past finds her own life becoming a morass of suspicion and deceit in this drama based on the novel by Anita Shreve. Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is a photographer working on a project that would document surviving evidence of a multiple murder that occurred a hundred years ago -- when a man named Louis Wagner (Ciaran Hinds) brutally killed two immigrant women from Norway with an axe, only to discover a third, Maren Hontvedt (Sarah Polley), witnessed the mayhem and survived to identify him in court. Jean travels to the small New Hampshire coastal town where the killings occurred with her husband Thomas (Sean Penn), an award-winning poet; his brother Rich (Josh Lucas); and Rich's girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley). As Jean digs deeper into the troubling facts of the long-ago murder, as well as the tangential details of Maren Honvedt's unhappy marriage to John Hontvedt (Ulrich Thomsen) and her incestuous affair with her brother Evan (Anders W. Berthelsen), Jean begins to believe that she has a crisis of her own to contend with: she is convinced Thomas is having an affair with Adaline. The Weight of Water also features Katrin Cartlidge as Maren's sister Karen and Vinessa Shaw as her sister-in-law Anethe. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, (more)
Exploring concepts of fate and free will, Jerry Ciccoritti's contemplative drama shows the lives of a handful of random people during the 12 hours leading up to a bloody shooting spree in a posh coffee shop. Maggie (Emily Hampshire) is a waitress in the café whose acting career is going nowhere fast. Her co-worker Connie (Sarah Polley), who is learning to love her lawyer boyfriend, is supposed to have the day off. Sheena (Catherine O'Hara), who frequents the shop, is a lovelorn bridal consultant looking for a decent man. And Brian (Stephen Rea), an exterminator/philosopher, is still mourning the death of his daughter, who died a year ago. Their petty, everyday problems gain ironic resonance when juxtaposed with the day's bloody ending. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Stephen Rea, Catherine O'Hara, (more)
Director/cinematographer Doug Liman's third feature links together three edgy stories, all beginning in the same Los Angeles supermarket with an interconnected group of characters. Ronna (Sarah Polley) is a down-on-her-luck checkout girl who is sweet talked into taking an extra shift from her friend Simon (Desmond Askew) so he can go to Las Vegas. Ronna is then approached by two good-looking actors, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), who want to buy drugs. Ronna, who needs money, plans to act as a go-between between the actors and a dealer friend of Simon's, Todd (Timothy Olyphant), until a cop named Burke (William Fichtner) enters the picture. Meanwhile, Simon is living it up in Vegas; in the course of a very wild night on the town, he manages to bed two women, accidentally steal a car with his good friend Marcus (Taye Diggs), and get thrown out of the best strip club in town, with more than a few people after him, especially when he leaves behind a credit card he borrowed from Todd. Once again back at the supermarket, Adam and Zack turn out to not be quite what they seemed, and their relationship with Burke and his wife Irene (Jane Krakowski) takes an unexpected turn as their evening becomes very, very complicated. Go, Liman's long-awaited follow-up to his indie hit Swingers, received its World Premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, (more)
Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who has long been fascinated by the ways new technology shapes and manipulates the human beings who believe they are its masters, is in familiar territory with eXistenZ, a futuristic thriller which combines elements of science fiction, horror and action-adventure. What is eXistenZ? According to the glossary Cronenberg put together for this film, it is a new organic game system that, when downloaded into humans, accesses their central nervous system, transporting them on a wild ride in and out of reality. What's more, it changes every time it is played, by adapting to the individual user -- you have to play the game to find out why you are playing the game. More than one person can plug into the same game and set out on a series of bizarre and surrealistic adventures together. The narrative takes place sometime in the near future, when game designers are worshipped as superstars and players can organically enter inside the games. Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the goddess among computer game designers whose latest invention, 'eXistenZ,' taps deeply into its users' fears and desires by blurring the boundaries between reality and escapism, is subject to an assassination attempt and forced to flee. Her sole ally is Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a novice security guard sworn to protect her. Persuading Ted to play the game, Allegra draws them both into a phantasmagoric world where existence ends and eXistenZ begins. Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is supposedly something of a computer nerd in real life, is hip and sexily alluring as Allegra Geller. When she and Pikul make love and are transported to the bizarre setting of a trout farm which has been converted to an assembly line production plant for games, they delve deeper into the dangerously intriguing game. Soon the forces of Anti-eXistenZialism will close in on Pikul and Allegra. eXistenZ marks the first time since Videodrome that Cronenberg has written a completely original screenplay. eXistenZ was inspired by the tribulations of the fugitive writer Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses. After interviewing the author for a magazine article in 1995, Cronenberg was struck with the idea of an artist who suddenly finds himself on a hit list for religious or philosophical reasons and is forced to go into hiding. The idea of a game came later on, for which he created a new vocabulary. According to Cronenberg, eXistenZ thematically connects to Crash, Videodrome, Naked Lunch and even M. Butterfly in terms of exploring the extent to which we create our own levels of reality and the idea of a creative act being dangerous to the creator. This is the second film on which Alliance Atlantis has been associated with Cronenberg, after Crash, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 International Cannes Film Festival. On the occasion of the presentation of eXistenZ, Cronenberg received a Silver Bear for his outstanding artistic achievements at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival in 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, (more)
Writer Audrey Wells (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) makes her directing debut in Guinevere, which won the screenwriting award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, where it made its world premiere. The film concerns Harper Sloane, a twenty-something upper class pre-law student who falls for Connie, a bohemian photographer 30 years her senior. Shy, waifish, and camera shy, Harper feels her life is mapped out for her, coming from a long line of successful, Harvard-educated lawyers living in San Francisco. At her older sister's wedding, Harper meets Connie, who photographs her privately. When he shows her the photos, Harper (whom Connie refers to only as Guinevere) is intrigued, and a passionate romance and sexual attraction begins. Harper moves in with Connie to become his student, against her mother's wishes. Harper also learns that she isn't Connie's first Guinevere; in fact, there have been a half-dozen others, all of whom have remained friends. As the relationship takes its ups and downs, Harper comes out of her shell to become a stronger woman, more in control of her life and destiny than she would have ever dreamed possible. As Connie slowly dies from poverty and alcoholism, all of his Guineveres, including Harper, come together to remember (and drink to) his work and his life. ~ Arthur Borman, Rovi
- Starring:
- Stephen Rea, Sarah Polley, (more)
Don McKellar wrote and directed this comedy-drama about the last night of the world, part of the 12-film Arte series of movies about the Millennium. Set in Toronto, Patrick (McKellar) endures a faux Christmas celebration with his family while Sandra (Sandra Oh) tries to get across town to commit suicide with her husband, a gas company employee Duncan (David Cronenberg). Meanwhile, Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) hopes to achieve sexual satisfaction with several women on his list. Still mourning his dead wife, Patrick plans his last moments alone, until he and Sandra crosspaths. Shown in the Directors Fortnight section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, (more)
Ten years after he disappeared from his family's life, Sweet William (Chris Leavins) returns home to Nova Scotia for his sister's wedding. Despite the fact that he's gone from a morbidly obese adolescent to a thin, handsome, self-assured young man, the reunion proves bittersweet. Although he reconnects with his loving sister Rosemary (Kerry Fox) and his Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother Grace (Joan Orenstein), he is dismayed to learn that his parents' rocky marriage has settled into permanent animosity. He also witnesses the toll his absence has taken on his abusive, alcoholic father, Whiskey Mack (Peter MacNeill); his tight-lipped mother Iris (Seana McKenna); and Violet (Christine Dunsworth), the tomboyish younger sister he's never met. The past lingers in the very air of William's childhood home; disturbing visions of himself as both a waifish boy (Ian Parsons) and a fat adolescent (Troy Veinotte) follow him everywhere. And it's not just the ghosts who dredge up the past. Rosemary's new husband, Fletcher (Joel S. Keller), flirts shamelessly with William, bringing back memories of the painful relationship the two shared as teenagers. When Iris disappears, William must confront not only the haunting visions of his past, but also the unfinished business he left behind. The feature debut of writer/director Thom Fitzgerald, The Hanging Garden was the winner of the Air Canada People's Choice Award for best picture and the co-winner of the Toronto-CITY TV Award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
- Starring:
- Chris Leavins, Kerry Fox, (more)
In this Canadian film, overweight piano prodigy Junior Brown (Martin Villafana) searches for a piano because his goofy mother (Lynn Whitfield) severed the strings on the family piano. Since paranoid Miss Peebs (Margot Kidder), his piano teacher, won't let him finger her keyboard, he has to run scales on her dining room table. Fortunately, Junior has a friend -- troubled Buddy Clark (Rainbow Sun Francks) who lost his family in a fire when he was a young child. Buddy goes out with a teen runaway (Sarah Polley), and he helps eccentric school janitor Mr. Pool (Clark Johnson) construct a model of the solar system in the school basement. Junior's frustrations mount as his quest continues. Music includes Chopin's "Prelude No. 4". Shown at the 1997 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Martin Villafana, Lynn Whitfield, (more)
Atom Egoyan's haunting adaptation of the Russell Banks novel The Sweet Hereafter was the Canadian filmmaker's most successful film to date, taking home a Special Grand Jury Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and scoring a pair of Academy Award nominations, including Best Director. Restructured to fit Egoyan's signature mosaic narrative style, the story concerns the cultural aftershocks which tear apart a small British Columbia town in the wake of a school-bus accident which leaves a number of local children dead. Ian Holm stars as Mitchell Stephens, a big-city lawyer who arrives in the interest of uniting the survivors to initiate a lawsuit; his maneuvering only drives the community further apart, reopening old wounds and jeopardizing any hopes of emotional recovery. Like so many of Egoyan's features, The Sweet Hereafter is a serious and painfully honest exploration of family grief; no character is immune from the sense of utter devastation which grips the film, not even the attorney, whose interests are in part motivated by his own remorse over the fate of his daughter, an HIV-positive drug addict. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, (more)
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