Film critic | Peter Howell Night Vision

Big Night: Cash and laughs at TFCA annual gala

The Toronto Film Critics Association threw a lively party Tuesday night at the Carlu where Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell official...

Canucks slammin' in Park City

Remember Matt Johnson? He's in the news again with his film Operation Avalanche as one of three finalists for the Rogers Best Canadian Fi...

Let's meet at The Egyptian

What would Sundance be without The Egyptian Theatre, the jewel box cinema up the hill on Main Street in Park City? The cinema, the first ...

Countdown to Sundance 2017

The 2017 Sundance Film Festival takes place in Park City, Utah, from January 19 to 29. That's only six weeks away 'til the day Sundance f...

A local honour for a national treasure

On Monday, night, the Toronto Film Critics Association awarded Canadian First Nations filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin the group's prestigious ...

Operation Avalanche

Director Matt Johnson (holding microphone) introduces the cast and crew of Operation Avalanche at a Q and A session following the film's w...

The O.K. Corral

Sundance, the annual indie film bash in Park City, Utah, takes place every January. It's full winter in the stunning Wasatch Range of mou...

Dudley Andrew’s misguided “Target of Film Theory”

By M.L. Bream Cinema is, and has been, undergoing an undeniable shift in recent decades with the advent and propagation of digital techno...

An Inventory of FX: Marshall McLuhan Revisited

Since first publishing “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” in 1967, Marshall McLuhan’s theories of media’s impact on so...

Binge is the New Black: Netflix and Contemporary Cinematic Practices

In his seminal 1971 essay “Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field,” Jean-Louis Comolli calls for a conceptualizati...

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Movies I can't live without

Toronto Star movie critic Peter Howell has written a book about his 25 favourite movies, with highly personal reviews from Apocalypse Now to The Wizard of Oz.

Here's a sample of his review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, his all-time favourite film:

"It was billed as The Ultimate Trip and the hyperbole was justified, then as now.

Stanley Kubrick's space opus still seems like the future, 52 years after its release and 19 years after its significant title year. It never gets old and I never tire of seeing it, even after 50-plus viewings..."