Colin Mochrie

  • Drifting Snow (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) As someone proudly born-and-raised in eastern Ontario, any movie billing itself in the TV Guide log-line as being set there earns a spot on my DVR. Alas, I’m not sure I’ll ever recommend Drifting Snow as a good look at my native land: Executed with an overwhelming dourness, it seems focused on pointing out how far the characters are from everything, how cold everything is, and how dull rural life can be when compared with (sigh) the all-consuming TORONTO where most of the cast and crew probably comes from. Other than a few longing references to the cities that define the boundaries of Eastern Ontario (with a side slam to Ottawa— geez, filmmakers, are you going overboard to get me to hate your movie?), there’s nothing here to distinguish Drifting Snow from being set in Generic Rural Canada, especially as the wintertime setting overwhelms any geographical distinction with a suffocating blanket of snow and cold. The script itself is no better: revolving around a chance meeting between two very different people following a car accident, Drifting Snow is one of those languid conversation-heavy dramas where characters complain about their lives and where they’re stuck — have I mentioned how much distance the Eastern Ontario tourism organizations are going to put between themselves and this film? There are, to be fair, a few good moments in the film: Tess Girard’s wintertime cinematography is cold but occasionally interesting, while such notables as Colin Mochrie and the ever-compelling Jess Salgueiro show up in minor roles. But the rest is almost deathly dull. Looking around the web, I see that most of the film’s positive reviews have commented on Drifting Snow’s emotional appropriateness during the pandemic lockdown, to which I say — never mind low-budget isolation, I want epic productions with a cast of thousands. But mostly I want a film set in Eastern Ontario that doesn’t spend its time complaining about being set in Eastern Ontario. Would that be so hard?

  • Canadian Strain (2019)

    Canadian Strain (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) I don’t have any interest in weed (legal or otherwise), but I’m certainly interested in Jess Salgueiro, and her lead performance here as an unusually conscientious drug dealer put out of business by the legalization of recreational cannabis in 2018 is one of the reasons why Canadian Strain works so well. A sharp script also crams a lot of fun on a solid framework. Colin Mochrie turns up as a father who doubles as a cautionary tale, with remarkable comic performances from Naomi Snieckus, Nelu Handa and Marcia Bennett in a film with many good female roles. The film is fiercely Canadian even when it cynically tries not to be (by ironically presenting footage from old instructional videos about the RCMP or the public service, for instance), espousing the value of legality when it’s the acknowledged alternative, and dealing with government bureaucracy as the final victory (rather than blowing it up, as could be the case down south). It’s also a film that is definitely of its times, wringing laughs out of social changes and, in doing so, allowing its audience to accept those social changes as well. But more importantly, Canadian Strain is a funny, no-longer-than necessary film, worth a look—especially given how I suspect it will play for years on Canadian Cable TV. And I now definitely look forward to Salgueiro’s next movie.