Whoa Canada: 27 essential films from Canadian directors

Weaponized telekinesis is at the heart (and exploding heads) of , a gritty sci-fi thriller about two “Scanners” and their ability to do to people’s heads—using only their thoughts—what Gallagher’s mallet would do to melons. Starring character actors Michael Ironside and Cameron Vale in the lead roles, Cronenberg explores with slow-burn fascination the moral and ethical cost of certain medical treatments and the explosive ends humanity will use to enforce or protect that cost.“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”Blame for giving us that iconic line, along with an all-timer Jeff Goldblum performance. Director and co-writer Cronenberg elevates the film’s B-movie origins into a tragic, body horror cautionary tale that serves as a gory metaphor for the 1980s’ AIDS crisis. Science and the consequences of breaking its laws literally transform inventor Seth Brundle into a human fly; the more insect he becomes, the farther away from his humanity he gets—and the more terror the audience feels about his plight, which culminates in a bloody, heartbreaking sequence that ranks among the most haunting that Cronenberg has ever crafted.Cronenberg and screenwriter Josh Olson adapted , based on a little-known 1997 graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. They shaped the story into a slow-burn, Oscar-nominated thriller about the slippery (and bloody) slope that connects violent acts with heroic origins. Starring Viggo Mortensen as a small-town diner owner who thwarts a robbery by two small-time crooks and, in the process, shines a light on his own shady past, Violence delivers film-noir thrills as Cronenberg explores the toll that the secrets of our past can take as they arterial spray all over our all-too-clean present.

Memory and our often fleeting grasp of it are at the beating heart of writer/director Sarah Polley’s underrated tearjerker. Feature directorial debuts don’t get much better or more resonant than this story about an elderly couple (Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent) struggling to hold their marriage together when Christie’s character develops Alzheimer’s. While being cared for at a nursing home, her withdrawn husband is forced to accept a fractured “new normal” when his wife develops feelings for another resident at the home. Polley delicately dramatizes how the heart and mind work both for and against us when love is on the line, or when its moorings turn to quicksand and slip away, or compel us to hold on tighter. Polley won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her very faithful, and very powerful, adaption of Canadian novelist Miriam Toews’ book of the same name. Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Frances McDormand headline the film’s ensemble of American Mennonite women who must re-evaluate their future when they discover their colony’s history of rape. Polley lets the drama largely unfold like a stage play, her camera observing these women and empathizing with their plight as they struggle to make sense of it. is a powerful, timely film that—like Away From Her before it—proves Polley is one of our greatest filmmakers.

director Denis Villeneuve really put himself on the Hollywood A-list with , a 2016 Best Picture nominee and the rare sci-fi film to net such an honor. Starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner as the two people running point on first contact with an alien race, Arrival takes a grounded, Carl Sagan-esque procedural approach to what such an event would look like—which gives way to an emotional and deeply personal story about love, time, and how our species needs to start using the two to better communicate amongst ourselves before we try to talk to another species.This belated follow-up to 1982’s was a long time coming, but the wait was more than worth it. Picking up several decades after Ridley Scott’s landmark film, follows Ryan Gosling’s Agent K as he unravels a mystery that promises to reshape the fragile existence between humanity and androids. Sci-fi movies don’t get more gorgeous or atmospheric than this.

Norman Jewison takes on American racism in the South with , a compelling and complex neo-noir set in 1960s Mississippi and starring the late Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The latter won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Bill Gillespie, a racist police chief who wrongly accuses Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), a Black police detective from Philly, of murder. When Tibbs not only proves his innocence, but that of another suspect, he and Gillespie join forces to track down the real killer. Tension flares as their partnership casts a deserved and, unfortunately, still timely look at race and how it is perceived through the justice system’s unblind eye. Poitier gives a career-best performance as Tibbs, who ranks up there as one of cinema’s greatest fictional detectives.If there’s anything better than Cher and ’80s Nic Cage in this Oscar-winning rom-com, we don’t wanna know about it. Jewison’s range was considerable and , one of his biggest swings, still connects more than 35 years after its original release. A movie that celebrates all things romance and Italian-American culture, Moonstruck is a charming comedy about Loretta Castorini (Cher), a recently widowed woman who reluctantly falls for her fiancé’s younger brother with one too many screws loose, played by Cage. The two actors’ chemistry could power a city block as they banter back and forth under Jewison’s assured direction of one of the most charming and witty films of the 1980s.

, Jason Reitman’s Oscar-winning follow-up to , fully helped the then-bourgeoning nepo baby filmmaker emerge from his dad’s considerable shadow. Elliot Page portrays the title character, a pregnant teenager coming to terms with her life and the life of the child she’s putting up for adoption. As coming-of-age films go, they don’t get much more clever or soul-searching than this one.George Clooney went from law firm “fixer” in to boardroom hatchet man in , an underrated dramedy based on Walter Kirn’s book of the same name. As Ryan Bingham, the guy who companies call when they need to downsize a few salaries, Clooney plays against his mega-wattage Danny Ocean charm by wearing an almost permanent “it’s-not-personal-it’s-just-business” scowl. But it’s all a mask to hide that which he refuses to feel—especially when his “single-serving lifestyle” hits some turbulence in the form of a would-be romance with a fellow frequent flyer (Vera Farmiga) and a new relationship with a very untested trainee, played by Anna Kendrick in a star-making turn.