Top 10 Canadian Films of All-Time?!

Taking a look into the best in Canadian filmmaking...

BY EMIL TIEDEMANN

In honour of Canada Day--and the Great White North's 142nd birthday--SiM is celebrating the best in Canadian filmmaking...according to About.com, that is! Jurgen Fauth and Marcy Dermansky had recently put together a list of the "Top 10 Films from Canada," which includes most of the classics (sorry, but Porky's didn't make the final cut!), and a few others that most of us haven't even heard of.

Canada has never exactly been famous for putting out great movies year after year, unlike our southern neighbours, but perhaps that's because our government simply doesn't fund Hollywood North like the Americans do their own. Or maybe it's because so much of our homegrown talent journey south in order to make it big (ie. Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, Rachel McAdams, Mike Myers, Donald Sutherland, Ryan Reynolds, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy...should I go on?), or could it be that we're just too busy drinking Canadian brewskies and watching hockey on the CBC?! Whatever the reasoning, Canucks lack what our American cousins have become legend for...an abundance of great films.

That aside, we're here to look at Fauth and Dermansky's own choices for the best of our domestic cinema archives, a list that dates back no further than 1971! And remember, if you notice any unaccaptable omissions--and I'm sure there'll be a few--be sure to write to About.com rather than SiM, because we're just the messengers. Now here we go....

1. Videodrome (1983)-dir. David Cronenberg (pictured above)
One of the earliest films on the list is Cronenberg's cult classic psychological thriller that starred James Woods and...wait for it...Blondie's Debbie Harry! Woods plays a sleazy TV network exec looking to add some spice to his softcore pornographic television channel, and when he comes across Malaysia's "Videodrome," he pounces on the foreign snuff films for local broadcasting. The torture and murder videos soon infect the airwaves as TV screens are transformed into the mind's eye, igniting brain tumors within its viewers. The experimental film, which bombed at the box office, lived on as a '80s favourite, christened as one of Total Film magazine's "23 Weirdest Films of All Time."

2. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)-dir. Atom Egoyan
Based on Russell Banks' 1991 novel of the same name, Atom Egoyan's Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter focuses on a small town in British Columbia, where a school bus accident kills most of the local children. A lawyer (Ian Helm) comes in to set things right by rattling up a class action lawsuit, but any hopes of winning the case are shattered by the testimony of one of the surviving victims, played by proud Canadian Sarah Polley. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1997, Hereafter holds a rare 100% approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes movie review site.

3. Last Night (1998)-dir. Don McKellar
Filmed and set in Toronto, Don McKellar's apocalyptic drama also starred Toronto-born Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter), as well as director-screenwriter McKellar, Videodrome director David Cronenberg, and future TV star Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy). The three-time Genie Award-winning feature told of a group of intertwined characters who determine how they will spend their final day on Earth, which will come to an end at midnight, though no reason was ever explained for the calamity. Last Night was McKellar's directorial debut.

4. I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)-dir. Patricia Rozema
Released to theatres on 9/11 '87, Rozema helmed, penned and co-produced this ignored Canadian drama, about a loner temp worker named Polly (star and narrator Sheila McCarthy) who snaps pictures as a hobby. Polly seems to fit in nowhere sparking a temporary romance with the owner of the art gallery she works at, and which refuses to show any of her photos on display. She falls into a downwards spiral that ends on a metaphorical note, giving Mermaids an artsy feel at times. The title was taken from T.S. Eliot's novel The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

5. Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988)-dir. Guy Maddin
This black-and-white pscho-drama/ black comedy delves into the situation of two young children dealing with their dying mother, though the story changes direction and focuses on a Gimli Hospital patient named Einar (Kyle McCulloch), as told by the children's Icelandic grandmother. Maddin, who was nominated for a Genie Award for his original screenplay, then sets the attention on Einar and bedside neighbour Gunnar (Michael Gottli) competing for the flattering recognition of the Manitoba hospital's two young and beautiful nurses, before the film ends under tragic circumstances.

6. Mon oncle Antoine (1971)-dir. Claude Jutra
Consistantly regarded as one of the nation's greatest achievements in film, Mon oncle Antoine is a French-language drama funded by the National Film Board of Canada, directed and co-produced by Montreal-born co-star Claude Jutra. Set at Christmas time in rural Quebec, just before the Asbestos Strike that plagued the region in the '40s, Antoine is examined by the point of view of Benoit (Jacques Gagno), a 15-year-old boy who feeds us the time period's true events that eventually led to the "Quiet Revolution" in the '60s. The award-winning feature made Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list in December '08.

7. Away from Her (2006)-dir. Sarah Polley
One of 2006's most acclaimed features was the directorial debut of Canuck screen legend Sarah Polley (Road to Avonlea), adapted by Polley from Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (2001). British screen icon Julie Christie received an Oscar nod (as did Polley for her script) for her role as a wife stricken with Alzheimer's, as her devoted husband (Newfoundland's Gordon Pinset) is left to witness her downfall. Executive produced by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Away from Her made countless critics' Top 10 lists, and captured seven Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture and Director.

8. The Five Senses (1999)-dir. Jeremy Podeswa
The winner of the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival's Best Canadian Feature Film award was this drama directed, written and co-produced by openly gay, Toronto-born Jeremy Podeswa (Queer as Folk, Dexter), who won the Genie Award for Best Director. The Five Senses interconnects five stories that focus around...you guessed it, the five senses, represented by a cast of relatively unknown actors, including Gabrielle Rose, Molly Parker, Nadia Litz and Brendan Fletcher. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May of that year.

9. Kissed (1996)-dir. Lynne Stopkewich
Lynne Stopkewich (Suspicious River) directed, co-wrote and co-produced this psychologocal drama adapted from "We So Seldom Look on Love," a short story by fellow hoser Barbara Gowdy. B.C.-born actress Molly Parker (The Five Senses) plays Sandra, a young woman obsessed with the "romanticization" of death, which leads her to a mortuary school, where she studies embalming and discovers her fascination of necrophilia. In order to complete the filming of Kissed, Stopkewich was forced to dip into her personal savings, going $30,000 in debt.

10. The Decline of the American Empire (1986)-
dir. Denys Arcand
Denys Arcand's French Canadian comedic drama centers around the conversations--primarily of sexual content--of a group of eight friends who work together at the Department of History at the University of Montreal. Nominated for the Best Foreign Feature Academy Award, The Decline of the American Empire (Le Declin De L'empire Americain in French) was more prominent on home turf, snagging nine wins at the year's Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture and the Golden Reel Award. Arcand also directed and scripted the Oscar-winning sequel The Barbarian Invasions (2003).

For all you red-faced Canucks disturbed by this list's exclusions, SiM has decided to end this article by paying homage to some of the notable Canadian feature films left on the sidelines. Here are some honourable mentions that are surely part of someone's list of Canada's best cinematic contributions: Colin Low & Wolf Koenig's City of Gold (1957), Claude Jutra's A tout prendre (1964), Michel Brault's Drifting Upstream (1968), Donald Shebib's Goin' Down the Road (1970), Mireille Dansereau's La Vie revee (1972), Donald Shebib's Between Friends (1973), Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Jan Kadar's Lies My Father Told Me (1975), Jean Pierre Lefebvre's The Old Country Where Rimbaud Died (1977), Peter Medak's The Changeling (1979), Francis Mankiewicz's Good Riddance (1980), John Zaritsky's Just Another Missing Kid (1981), Ralph L. Thomas' Ticket to Heaven (1981), Phillip Borsos' The Grey Fox (1983), William D. MacGillvray's Stations (1983), Daniel Petrie's The Bay Boy (1984), Sandy Wilson's My American Cousin (1985), Jean-Claude Lauzon's Night Zoo (1987), David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), Jonathan Kaplan's The Accused (1988), Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal (1989), Guy Maddin's Archangel (1990), Bruce Beresford's Black Robe (1990), Atom Egoyan's The Adjuster (1991), David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991), Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo (1992), Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994), David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), Francois Girard's Red Violin (1998), Denis Villeneuve's Maelstrom (2000), Jean-Marc Vallee's C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), Paul Gross' Passchendaele (2008), and Michael McGowan's One Week (2008). There, that should cover it, eh?! (You know I had to say it at least once!).
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