2 Best Movies to Watch by Valerie Cadieux

Staff & contributors

Polytechnique directed by Denis Villeneuve, is a dramatization of the 1989 Montreal massacre of multiple female engineering students. This film focuses on a male student navigating the massacre for the majority of the film’s run time. The performances and minimal dialogue in this film certainly make this an unnerving film to watch. Littered with the screams of the actors portraying the engineering students, this could be mistaken as a gaudy horror film. However, this is far from a fictionalized horror.

This Villeneuve classic is undoubtedly one of the most emotionally brutal films of the 2000s, yet I appreciate the honesty of the storytelling. Polytechnique encourages its audience to ask itself if it truly understands the truth of misogyny. 

Genre: Crime, Drama, History, Thriller

Actor: Adam Kosh, Alexandre St-Martin, Alexis Lefebvre, Cynthia Wu-Maheux, Dawn Ford, Eugénie Beaudry, Ève Duranceau, Eve Gadouas, Evelyne Brochu, Francesca Barcenas, Johanne-Marie Tremblay, Jonathan Dubsky, Karine Vanasse, Larissa Corriveau, Lily Thibeault, Marc-André Brisebois, Martin Watier, Maxim Gaudette, Natalie Hamel-Roy, Nathalie Girard, Pierre Leblanc, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Sébastien Huberdeau, Sophie Desmarais, Stéphane Julien, Valerie Cadieux

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Rating: Not Rated

, 2016

This drama from France and Canada is about Matthieu, a 33-year-old from Paris who never knew his father. One morning he gets a call to go to Montreal, where he is told his dad has passed away and where a funeral will take place.

To add to his confusion, upon arrival Matthieu is asked to conceal his identity from his step-mother and step-brothers.

A Kid is made as though the filmmaking styles from the countries it’s set in were mixed together. There are complicated family dynamics reminiscent of Xavier Dolan movies; and identity issues and comments on different compositions of families like the films of Mia Hansen-Løve.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Aliocha Itovich, Amélie Lafleur, Catherine De Léan, Claudiane Ruelland, Emmanuelle Dupuy, Gabriel Arcand, Hugues Leforestier, Jean-Pierre Andréani, Marie-Thérèse Fortin, Martin Laroche, Patricia Dorval, Patrick Hivon, Pierre Deladonchamps, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Romane Portail, Tania Bolduc, Timothé Vom Dorp, Valerie Cadieux

Director: Philippe Lioret