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Sample: Title; rating (out of 4); principal setting; year of release; international co-producer (if any); cast; description; scriptwriter; director; content warning; running time.
THE DIAMOND FLEECE
* *
(1992) (/U.S.) Ben Cross, Kate Nelligan, Brian Dennehy,
Tony Rosato, Janet-Laine Green, Ron Lea, David Huband, Kurt Reis.....Convicted
jewel thief (Cross) is hired to evaluate the security around a precious
diamond, but plans to rob it instead -- despite a suspicious cop (Dennehy)
and falling in love (with Nelligan). So-so suspense-drama is competently
assembled, as long as you don't expect much, but a crucial twist is pretty
obvious and attempts at grittiness clash with the film's generally breezy
tone. Nelligan won Best Actress Gemini. sc: Michael Norell. dir: Al Waxman.
93 min.
DIAMOND GIRL
* * 1/2 setting: USA.
(1998) (/South Africa) Joely Collins, Jonathan Cake,
Kevin Otto, Denise Virieux, Blair Slater, Royston Stoffels, Dyan Cannon.....U.S.
para-legal (Collins) is slightly infatuated with her likeable, goof-off
boss, then his no-nonsense brother shows up (Cake), horning in on a deal
to sell the family winery. She can't stand him at first, but then... Things
get even more complicated when he wants them to pretend to be involved
to shake-up his brother. O.K. light romantic drama has more complicated
ideas than some, and is energetic, though the plot itself isn't always
riveting. Good cast; Collins initially seems a bit out of her depths, but
has enough low-key charm to compensate. See Harlequin.
sc: Charles Lazer (from the novel by Diana Palmer). dir: Timothy Bond.
91 min.
DIAMONDS (TV Series)The first season (made with a U.S. partner) was obviously intended to emulate the wave of romantic/comic detective series in the States ("Remington Steele", "Moonlighting") and was vastly superior to the previous year's Hot Shots. The episodes were often quite funny mystery-comedies emphasizing wit over mayhem, and at their best with the chemistry and comic interplay between the leads (including Rosato). But the 2nd season brought in French financing and suddenly the series wanted to be gritty and serious and it fell apart completely. The lightweight characters, great for comedy, weren't right for drama and the stories themselves were flat and cliched and really tedious. A real shame. Based on a concept by Keith Johnson. Best bets: the first season one about the baby; others. Two seasons of hour long episodes, the first season made for CBS late-night, and both shown in Canada on Global. |
DIANA KILMURY: Teamster
* * * setting: B.C./USA.
(1996) Barbara Williams, Nicholas Campbell, Robert
Wisden, Stuart Margolin, Wayne Robson, Mitch Kosterman, John Gilbert.....Story
of the Canadian female trucker (Williams) who helped fight the corruption
and lack of democracy in the powerful, U.S.-based Teamsters union, despite
personal and professional tragedies. Extremely good-looking, well-acted
made-for-CBC TV drama takes a bit to really get going, but is overall pretty
gripping. Williams received the Best Actress Gemini. Kilmury
and John Vlahovic (Campbell's real-life part) have cameos. Co-scripter
Wheeler co-produced. Director Gunnarsson first made a name for himself
with the union-themed documentary Final Offer.
sc: Anne Wheeler, J.W. Meadowfield. dir: Sturla Gunnarsson. - violence.-
92 min.
THE DIARY OF EVELYN LAU *
* setting: B.C.
(1994) Sandra Oh, Harrison Liu, Shirley Cui, Kenneth
Welsh, Eugene Lipinski, Nicholas Campbell, Jay Brazeau.....True story
of writer Lau's (Oh) early life as a runaway and a teen-aged prostitute.
Pedestrian CBC TV movie has few scenes that manage to spark, and rarely
gets inside anyone's head. Neither convincing enough to be gritty,
nor constructed enough to be dramatic. And the "stylish" direction
is sometimes just silly. Filmed on video. sc: Barry Stevens
(from the book Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid by Evelyn Lau). dir: Sturla
Gunnarsson. - sexual content.- 93 min.
DICE (TVMS)
* 1/2 setting: CDN./USA.
(2001) (/U.K.) Aidan Gillen, Martin Cummins, Gina
McKee, Fred Ward, Brendan Fletcher, Callum Keith Rennie, Gary Farmer, Robert
Wisden.....A brutal sex murder leads a small town cop (Cummins) and
a private eye (Ward) to a sociopathic University professor (Gillen) who
likes to mess with people's minds, helping them unleash their inner vices
through a "self-improvement" ritual involving the rolling of dice to make
choices. This dark, potentially intriguing, crime thriller kicks off with
a moody, smartly written first episode, despite the hackneyed and lurid
cliche of the rape and murder of a teenage girl (why so many writers like
that idea -- "Twin Peaks", "Murder One" -- I'll leave for others to analyze).
It boasts a crackerjack cast, but ultimately ends up more a dud than anything.
The "stylish" direction can quickly become annoying, and the story drags
out for six episodes, only to stagger to a non-ending. Various elements
are thrown into the pot (including the idea that the villain is both a
manipulator and a killer himself -- the latter idea kind of undermining
the uniqueness of the former) but many ideas never seem to go anywhere,
like ghostly kids who keep cropping up, or corrupt cops. Frankly it seems
like they started filming before the final episodes were written and everyone
working on it assumed it would all somehow come together...but it never
does. Too bad. Still, a gutsy move has Cummins' character be gay (well,
sort of). A co-production, this is an attempt to do the kind of dark n'
gritty crime-thriller mini-series that British producers churn out regularly,
except this is, nominally, set in Canada (though most of the references
are American!). Six hour long episodes, originally aired on The Movie Network.
sc: A.L. Kennedy, John Burnside. dir: Rachel Talalay. - violence.-
Dick Francis Mysteries.....Trio of Canada-Irish co-productions taking novels by bestseller Francis and giving them a common hero -- Jockey Club Investigator, Dave Cleavland (played by Ian McShane who seemed to be doing little more than his character from TV's "Lovejoy"). The Canuck and Irish settings were, surprisingly, not ignored, but the pulpy movies themselves were not the least reminiscent of Francis' character-oriented thrillers -- and were uneven even ignoring their supposed source material. titles: Blood Sport (the best of them), In the Frame, Twice Shy.
DIEPPE (TVMS)
* 1/2 setting: other
(1994) Gary Reineke, Victor Garber, Robert Joy, Peter
Donat, Aidan Devine, John Neville, Kenneth Welsh, Gordon Currie, Larissa
Lapchinski, Gabrielle Rose.....Story of the disastrous Dieppe invasion
of W.W. II and the planning and political machinations that went into it.
Dry, leden-paced docudrama engendered some strong emotions from veterans,
but for non-vets it suffers from ineffective performances (and largely
unconvincing British accents), flat direction, trite characterization and
dull dialogue. It almost seems to take the lazy attitude that its
earnest subject matter will make people forgive its pedestrian presentation.
Ironically, when Canadians do docudramas about foreign events (Hiroshima,
Race
for the Bomb) they're often complex and thought-provoking, but when
they do Canadian stories they come across too often as jingoistic and simple-minded.
It won Geminis for Best Music and Best Mini-Series (its competition in
the latter category was -- wait for it -- nothing! no one! It was the only
nominee!). Four hours. sc: John Krizanc (from the book Unauthorized
Action by Brian Villa). dir: John N. Smith. - violence.-
DIGGER
* * 1/2 setting: B.C.
(1993) Adam Hann-Byrd, Joshua Jackson, Barbara Williams,
Timothy Bottoms, Olympia Dukakis, Leslie Nielsen.....Story of kid (Hann-Byrd)
sent to stay with his grieving aunt and uncle (Williams and Bottoms) on
their island home for the summer, and his friendship with a dying, mystical
boy (Jackson). Moody drama is atmospheric and mildly engaging, but
if it's trying to be a family film, it'll probably be deathly slow for
kids...and a lot of adults too (not to mention under-lit). Good cast, though
most are imports -- even the (adult) Canucks are expatriates. Only
Canadian Jackson, long before his success on the U.S. TV series "Dawson's
Creek", was probably still a resident at that time. sc: Rodney Gibbons,
with Michael Chandler. dir: Robert Turner. 93 min.
DING ET DONG, Le Film *
1/2 setting: P.Q.
(1990) Claude Meunier, Serge Theriault, Raymond Bouchard,
Sophie Faucher, Yves Jacques, Denis Bouchard.....Story of the misadventures
of two bumbling wanna-be comedians, Ding and Dong (Meunier and Theriault).
Popular comic duos' first film was a hit in Quebec, but travels poorly.
Chief source of humour is word plays (based on the characters' frequent
mispronunciations), stuff that, though admirably translated, doesn't play
well in subtitles. Add in a largely non-existent plot and you have
a film whose interest is as thin as its laughs. The main fun is watching
for familiar faces in bit parts such as Gildor Roy (as a cabbie), Jean
LaPoint and Jean-Pierre Bergeron (as a rich man and his aide), Robert LePage
(as an intellectual at an opening), Stephanie Morgenstern (as a band conductor)
and others. sc: Claude Meunier (story Meunier and Theriault). dir:
Alain Chartrand. 99 min. (video)
DING ET DONG, THE MOVIE see Ding et Dong, le film
THE DINOSAUR HUNTER *
* 1/2
(2000) Alison Pill, Simon MacCorkindale, Christopher
Plummer, Shaun Johnston, Bill Switzer, Enuka Okuma, Wendy Anderson, Joely
Collins, R.H. Thomson, Roberta Maxwell.....In the 1930s on the prairies,
a girl (Pill) and her brother (Switzer) become caught up in fossil fever,
after a government scientist (MacCorkindale) offers a bounty for a complete
dinosaur skeleton; while a more sinister fossil hunter (Plummer) skulks
about, as well. Family drama has plenty of colourful characters, but the
story doesn't really support them, at times more interested in being a
"serious" drama about Depression-era hardships (money problems, miscarriages),
than it is in the more flamboyant story ideas (concepts that aren't all
that plausible or realistic). Even a potential conflict between the palaeontologist
and a fundamentalist minister (Thomson) never goes anywhere. And it suffers
from some of the usual stiltedness that has plagued a lot of Canadian family
period dramas (though it's the modern day framing sequence that's really
poorly done and threatens to derail the film before it gets started). Ultimately,
O.K. for younger viewers (if you don't mind the occasional grim n' grittiness),
but there's a feeling it should've been a lot more. One of those Canadian
movies that refuses to say whether it is, or isn't, set in Canada. But
since the source book was set in the States, maybe such ambiguity is the
best we can hope for. sc: Edwina Follows (from the book My Daniel
by Pam Conrad). dir: Rick Stevenson. 90 min.
DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY
* 1/2 setting: other
(1991) (/U.K.) Wendel Meldrum, Michael Hogan, Ofelia
Medina, Michael Riley, Guillermo Rios, Pedro Armendariz, Salvador Sanchez,
Maruska Stankova.....Canadian diplomat (Meldrum) arriving in El Salvador
to check on an aid project realizes things are more complicated than she
had thought. Good looking drama but with poor sound and bad subtitles
for the Spanish sequences. The usual cliches (burned-out cynic, naive newcomer,
American spy, etc.) only remind you of better films because this one fails
to make you care emotionally, thanks to an unwritten lead (flatly played
by Meldrum), or even intellectually since too little is explained.
You come away knowing less about El Salvador than you did going in.
Hogan is a stand-out (natch) and Riley good. Filmed in Mexico.
sc: Steve Lucas. dir: Sturla Gunnarsson. - violence.- 93 min. (video)
DIRTY *
* setting: B.C.
(1997) Tom Scholte, Babz Chula, Benjamin Ratner, Nancy
Sivak, Abby Arnold, Frida Betrani, Marya Delver, Vincent Gale.....Story
of various interconnected neurotic, frequently obsessive compulsive, characters
-- such as a masochistic sexaholic (Scholte)) and his seeming slightly mentally
handicapped roommate (Ratner). Dark serio-comic flick is a tough call,
review-wise. It's well acted and well put together...but without something
more resembling, well, a plot, or protagonists you can, y'know, root for,
or at least empathize with, you have a movie where the parts are much stronger
than the sum. One can't even view it as a mordant examination of the human
condition because it's too much of a one note exercise and the movie doesn't
entirely work on a realist level (the characters and their actions are
occasionally so bizarre). sc./dir: Bruce Sweeney (with the cast).
- male nudity, explicit sexual content, parttial female nudity.- 95 min.
DIRTY TRICKS *
1/2 setting: USA.
(1980) (/U.S.) Elliot Gould, Kate Jackson, Rich Little,
Arthur Hill, John Juliani, Alberta Watson, Nicholas Campbell, Michael McNamara,
Martin McNamara.....American university professor (Gould) tussles with
baddies over a letter that may or may not have been written by U.S. president
George Washington. Grating, unpleasantly violent comedy-suspenser.
And why should Canadians care about a letter written by Washington?
sc: William Norton, Sr. & Eleanor Elias Norton and Thomas Gifford &
Camille Gifford (from the novel The Glendower Legacy by Mr. Gifford).
dir: Alvin Rakoff. - violence.- 91 min. (video)
THE DISAPPEARANCE *
* 1/2 setting: P.Q./other
(1977) (/U.K.) Donald Sutherland, Francine Racette,
David Warner, David Hemmings, John Hurt, Peter Bowles, Virginia McKenna,
Christopher Plummer.....Hit-man (Sutherland) becomes preoccupied with
his obsession for his unstable wife (Racette), whose disappearance may
be tied to his next assignment. Good atmosphere, performances and memorable
scenes in this suspense flick but slow, confused and not a lot of plot.
Hemmings co-produced and Sutherland and Racette are a real-life couple.
sc: Paul Mayersberg (from the novel Echoes of Celandine by Derek
Marlowe). dir: Stuart Cooper. - partial female nudity, sexual content,
violence.- 88 min. (video)
DISTANT DRUMMING *
* * setting: N.W.T.
(2005) Tina Keeper, Tom Jackson, Dakota House, Jennifer
Podemski, Ken Pogue, George Leach, Simon Baker, Lubomir Mykytiuk, Lorne
Cardinal, Timothy Webber, Wilma Pelly, Jimmy Herman, Tina Louise Bomberry,
Angela Gam.....A robbery and a murder in the sleepy town of Lynx River
has Constable Kenidi (Keeper) eyeing a local parolee...and weathering political
pressure to find a culprit that satisfies the agenda of the local governments.
Deliberately-paced North of 60 TV movie scores
best as a textured, human drama, focusing on the town, and the characters,
as they deal with the notion of a killer in their midsts. Though the mystery
itself -- basically an either/or scenario -- is a tad thin, and resolves
with a kind of simple-minded solution. But it holds your interest, thanks
to the mood and its strong cast. sc: Peter Lauterman. dir: Dean Bennett.
app. 90 min.
DIVIDED LOYALTIES *
* setting: CDN./USA./other
(1990) Jack Langedijk, Tantoo Cardinal, Chris Wiggins,
Lisa LaCroix, Robert Bidaman, August Schellenberg, Raoul Trujillo, George
Touliatos, Alan Scarfe.....Fictionalized true story of native leader
Joseph Brant (Langedijk), whose siding with the British during the American
revolution divided the Six Nations. So-so made-for-TV historical
action-drama is historically confusing and dramatically not overly convincing.
The use of painted non-natives (like the lead) hurt its credibility.
Cardinal stands out. At the time it was the most expensive Canadian
TV movie made. sc: Peter Jobin. dir: Mario Azzopardi. - violence.-
(video)
THE DIVINE RYANS *
* * setting: Nfld.
(1999) Jordan Harvey, Pete Postlethwaite, Robert Joy,
Wendel Meldrum, Mary Walsh, Marguerite McNeil, Richard Boland, Genevieve
Tessier.....Young boy (Harvey) has trouble adjusting to life in early
'60s St. John's after the death of his father, while surrounded by his
eccentric kin, some accepting, like his roguish uncle (British actor Postlethwaite),
some more domineering, like his strictly religious aunts. Quirky drama
is nicely done, benefitting from a few secrets and revelations as the story
unfolds. Though the movie maybe gets by on making you think that
more's going on than actually is, with some plot threads not really going
anywhere, and most of the characters not really evolving beyond the first
few minutes. The story might not hold up for subsequent viewings, but the
first time through it's engaging enough and quirky. sc: Wayne Johnston
(from his novel). dir: Stephen Reynolds. - partial female nudity.- 106
min.
THE DIVINERS *
* 1/2 setting: Man./Ont./B.C.
(1993) Sonja Smits, Tom Jackson, Wayne Robson, Jennifer
Podemski, Dianne Douglass, Geordie Johnson, Don Francks, Nicola Cavendish,
Mairon Bennett, Dakota House, Alicia Panetta.....A writer (Smits) reflects
on her life -- her struggle for personal fulfillment; her periodic relationship
with a metis man (Jackson); how racism put up a barrier between them and
scarred her relationship with their daughter (Podemski). Well acted
made-for-CBC TV drama has some fine scenes and nice techniques (like filming
the flashbacks almost like faded photographs) but it never comes together
as a whole, with the various ideas and relationships only being touched
on. Sincere, but lacking the fire of the main characters. Probably
should have been longer, like a mini-series. Won Geminis for TV-Movie
and Supporting Actor (Robson). sc: Linda Svendsen (from the novel
by Margaret Laurence). dir: Anne Wheeler. - sexual content.- app. 117 min.
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