Jake Pitre

Dec 21, 2024 | this.org | Jake Pitre

“This industry is corrupt,” Lisa Milne, owner of The Royal Theatre in Trail, B.C. (population 7,920), told me, referring to the film exhibition industry in Canada, before I’d even been able to start recording our interview. She was, seemingly, dying to say it. “The studios don’t listen to us,” she continued. “In the 15 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had many conversations with [the studios] as high up as I can go, and they basically say, ‘Well, Lisa, that’s the way it is.’ There’s no reason why.

Aug 20, 2024 | inreviewonline.com | Jake Pitre |Luke Gorham

Pandemic films seem to arrive now with an amount of healthy attendant skepticism. Do we really want to keep reliving these moments of our lives? Even more worryingly, won’t it be kind of annoying to do so? Nevertheless, Zach Clark’s The Becomers overcomes this preconceived notion of the pandemic film, effectively transcending how trite most commentary on the era has typically been. The film tells the tale of two aliens who come to Earth because of trouble on their home planet.

Aug 6, 2024 | inreviewonline.com | Jake Pitre |Luke Gorham

As ever, Fantasia’s Retro lineup offered a wealth of riches this year, from the familiar titles to the utterly unexpected. First and foremost is, of course, the run of Hong Kong classics screened, mostly on 35mm, in partnership with The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office. A Chinese Ghost Story II was perhaps the most anticipated of the lot, coming after the first film screened at last year’s festival (rumors are that the third may be featured next year).

Aug 3, 2024 | inreviewonline.com | Jake Pitre |Luke Gorham

In Alice Lowe’s first feature since Prevenge in 2016, which announced the actress and writer as a talented director to boot, we are witness to an epic romantic saga of unrequited love through the ages, a time loop of reincarnated passion being placed in all the wrong places.

Jul 31, 2024 | inreviewonline.com | Jake Pitre |Luke Gorham

It has become a somewhat common tactic for documentary filmmakers in the digital age to turn to the supercut as a way to sift through the massive amount of content and information available online on our behalf. This is the doc filmmaker as curator, exposing themselves to all of this so we don’t have to, and gathering it together in one place for us to, hopefully, find some meaning within.