Alison Gillmor

Alison Gillmor

Writer

Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.

Since then, the long-time Winnipegger has covered books, pop culture and food for the Free Press. (Since picking up the Recipe Swap gig, her pastry has hugely improved.)

She has also written for The Walrus, Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, Border Crossings, The Winnipeg Review and the CBC’s arts and entertainment website. As well, Alison has made a fortunate return to her first love, art history, as a contract lecturer at her alma mater, the U of W.

Alison’s favourite beat is the movies, which she has covered, on and off, for over 20 years. She still feels that prickle at the back of her neck every time the theatre lights go down.

Recent articles of Alison Gillmor

Embracing the darker side, Ted Lasso kicks back into gear

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Embracing the darker side, Ted Lasso kicks back into gear

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Mar. 18, 2023

‘Well, I guess I do sometimes wonder what I’m still doing here,” says an uncharacteristically downbeat Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) in the first episode of the third season. “I know why I came, but it’s the sticking around I can’t figure out.”

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Saturday, Mar. 18, 2023

Jason Sudeikis in a scene from Ted Lasso. (Colin Hutton / Apple TV+)

The power and devastating glory of a Toronto family tale

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Preview

The power and devastating glory of a Toronto family tale

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Saturday, Mar. 18, 2023

This quiet, potent drama starts with the metallic buzz of wires on a hydro tower. Older brother Francis (Aaron Pierre of The Underground Railroad), cool and charismatic, is explaining the risk-reward ratio of climbing up. Sure, you could die trying, but the view is something else, he explains. Michael (Lamar Johnson, whose credits include The Hate U Give and The Last of Us) is a cautious, contained, wary kid, but he can’t help but follow his big brother.

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Saturday, Mar. 18, 2023

Elevation Pictures

In Brother, Lamar Johnson’s Michael (left) can’t help but follow the lead of elder brother Francis, played by Aaron Pierre.

Aspirational auteur stumbles toward self-awareness

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Aspirational auteur stumbles toward self-awareness

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Mar. 11, 2023

I Like Movies, Chandler Levack’s no-budget feature film debut (now playing at Cinematheque) is a sincere but complicated ode to movie love, wrapped in a sweet but never sappy coming-of-age story. It’s also a funny valentine to the obsolescent video rental store, where the teenaged protagonist works.

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Saturday, Mar. 11, 2023

Chandler Levack understands the pleasure of nostalgia. (Tijana Martin / Canadian Press files)

Full-court press stumbles midstride

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Full-court press stumbles midstride

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Mar. 10, 2023

In this well-meaning but underwhelming Winnipeg-shot sports dramedy, Woody Harrelson plays Marcus, an assistant coach for a minor-league basketball team in Des Moines, who explodes on court, loses his job, consoles himself by getting drunk and then unwisely tries to drive home.

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Friday, Mar. 10, 2023

Focus Features

From left: Casey Metcalfe as Marlon, James Day Keith as Benny, Woody Harrelson as Marcus, Ashton Gunning as Cody, and Tom Sinclair as Blair in Bobby Farrelly’s Champions.

Creed’s new challenger packs powerful punch in threequel

Alison Gillmore 3 minute read Preview

Creed’s new challenger packs powerful punch in threequel

Alison Gillmore 3 minute read Friday, Mar. 3, 2023

In this uneven but often powerful threequel, we see Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) reckoning with his past as this long-running franchise tries to find some firm footing for the future.

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Friday, Mar. 3, 2023

Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Michael B. Jordan, left, and Jonathan Majors in Creed III.

Camaraderie captivates Levy’s vexed voyager

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Camaraderie captivates Levy’s vexed voyager

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023

Here’s the novel premise of a new travel series starring Eugene Levy: Eugene Levy doesn’t really like to travel.

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Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023

Travel makes Eugene Levy nervous. (Apple TV)

Out-of-this-world encounters hold mirror to humanity

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Out-of-this-world encounters hold mirror to humanity

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023

After several days of enigmatic objects being blown out of the sky, even the normally staid and sober New York Times seemed a bit discombobulated, putting out the questioning headline: What’s Going On Up There? Over at Politico, the banner read: The truth is out there.

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Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023

Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary in one of the more memorable scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO blockbuster.
Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary in one of the more memorable scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO blockbuster, which turns 40 this year.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon still leaps off screen

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon still leaps off screen

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023

This weekend, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the haunting, ravishing martial arts film from Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee, returns to the big screen for a limited engagement.

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Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Zhang Ziyi, left, and Michelle Yeoh battle in this scene from director Ang Lee’s hit film, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Manitoboggan and Crokicurl are exactly what Winter Cities Shake-up Conference hopes to encourage

Alison Gillmor 7 minute read Preview

Manitoboggan and Crokicurl are exactly what Winter Cities Shake-up Conference hopes to encourage

Alison Gillmor 7 minute read Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023

This week, from Feb. 15-17, Winnipeg is hosting the 2023 Winter Cities Shake-up Conference, which features designers, planners, entrepreneurs, tourism operators, cultural workers, community organizers and happiness experts talking about how cities and their citizens can make the most of winter.

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Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

The multi-level Manitoboggan at St. Vital Park features an accessible ramp and metal grates on walkways to reduce snow accumulation.

One-of-a-kind Lyonne the real deal as throwback PI

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

One-of-a-kind Lyonne the real deal as throwback PI

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023

As 21st-century audiences, we’ve become used to the idea of Prestige TV — the big, serious, expensive shows that are routinely described as “complex,” “difficult,” “novelistic,” “cinematic.” But with all those enigmatic narratives stretched out over multiple episodes and seasons, with all those significant details that need to be pored over and analyzed, with all that admirable but exhausting moral ambiguity, you can’t blame viewers who might be feeling a bit prestiged-out.

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Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023

Natasha Lyonne stars in Columbo homage, Poker Face. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Rushdie’s return a sprawling new magic-realist novel that spans centuries

Reviewed by Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Rushdie’s return a sprawling new magic-realist novel that spans centuries

Reviewed by Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023

Salman Rushdie’s 15th novel is a return to that mix of fraught history and extravagant fabulism that helped make the India-born British-American writer’s name in 1981’s Midnight’s Children. Rushdie sets his new tale in a version of Vijayanagar, a real-life empire in what is now southern India that flourished from the 14th to 16th centuries C.E., but immediately spins that factual base into a sprawling, shifting magic-realist narrative that features enchanted forests, talking animals and a whole city whispered into being through words.

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Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023

Chris Young / The Canadian Press files

While great energy flows from sentence to sentence in Rushdie’s new novel, the narrative lacks urgency.

Breaking down this year’s diverse slate of films vying for the Best Picture Oscar

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Preview

Breaking down this year’s diverse slate of films vying for the Best Picture Oscar

Alison Gillmor 6 minute read Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023

The Oscar nominations were announced on Jan. 24, and this year’s wide-open Best Picture field includes critics’ darlings and box-office smashes, outré art-house satires and popcorn action sequels. In an unpredictable race, here are a few (tentative) predictions:

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Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in "Avatar: The Way of Water." (Courtesy 20th Century Studios/TNS)

Weird, wonderful and… winning?

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Weird, wonderful and… winning?

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023

I often find myself baffled by Oscar picks. So I was thrilled to read that the glorious, fabulous Everything Everywhere All at Once leads this year’s list with 11 nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and not one but two (!!) Best Supporting Actress nods, along with some below-the-line categories.

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Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023

This image released by A24 shows Jamie Lee Curtis, left, and Michelle Yeoh in a scene from "Everything Everywhere All At Once." (Allyson Riggs/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Jamie Lee Curtis, left, and Michelle Yeoh in a scene from

Sweet relief from a buttoned-down life

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Sweet relief from a buttoned-down life

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023

QUIET and delicate, this period drama from director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro is a close remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), transposed from postwar Japan to 1950s England. While Living might not rise to the level of Kurosawa’s masterwork, it is, taken on its own, a simply lovely film — profound, poignant and graced with a note-perfect performance by Bill Nighy (which has just earned him his first Oscar nomination).

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Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023

A note-perfect performance by Bill Nighy in Living earned him his first Oscar nomination. (Jamie D. Ramsay / Sony Pictures Classics)

Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel a harrowing, humane look at systems that perpetuate violence

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel a harrowing, humane look at systems that perpetuate violence

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Monday, Jan. 23, 2023

When women in an isolated traditional Mennonite colony find themselves waking up groggy and in pain, sometimes covered in bruises and blood, they are told by the community’s male elders that this could be the work of Satan or a punishment from God. Or perhaps these are just figments of “female imagination.”

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Monday, Jan. 23, 2023

United Artists / Entertainment Pictures

From left, Michelle McLeod as Mejal, Sheila McCarthy as Greta, Liv McNeil as Neitje, Jessie Buckley as Mariche, Claire Foy as Salome, Kate Hallett as Autje, Rooney Mara as Ona and Judith Ivey as Agata in Women Talking.

Last of Us proves a winning crossover combo

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Last of Us proves a winning crossover combo

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023

The Last of Us, a best-selling 2013 videogame set against a post-apocalyptic landscape, is now a nine-episode HBO series (on Crave, Sundays at 8 p.m.).

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Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023

The Last of Us, a best-selling 2013 videogame set against a post-apocalyptic landscape, is now a nine-episode HBO series (on Crave, Sundays at 8 p.m.).

Love the man, less the movie

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Love the man, less the movie

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023

Tom Hanks is reliably, dependably Tom Hanksy in this feelgood comedy-drama, the newest addition to the “grumpy old guy in need of redemption” genre. Unfortunately, his steady work is almost undone by clunky direction and shoddy, shortcut scripting.

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Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023

Niko Tavernise/Sony Pictures via AP

The clichés are thick in this movie’s redemption of grumpy old man Otto (Tom Hanks).

M3GAN’s techno-terror also taps into primal fears

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

M3GAN’s techno-terror also taps into primal fears

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023

M3GAN, the titular robot star of a new horror flick that’s slaying at the box office, managed to go viral even before her film was released. From her Uncanny Valley dance scene to her paper-cutter machete rampage to her deadpan Mean Girl snark, the new pint-sized princess of killer dolls is having a moment.

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Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023

Both zany and zeitgeisty, M3GAN’s cautionary tale dwells in that anxious, ambivalent terrain between fascinated technophilia and petrified technophobia. (Universal Pictures)

Throwback murder mysteries breathe life into genre

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Throwback murder mysteries breathe life into genre

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023

Streaming services may be facing an uncertain new year, but Glass Onion, the followup to 2019’s Knives Out, was a reliable hit for Netflix over the holidays. In fact, writer-director Rian Johnson is already dropping some clues about the next Knives Out pic. Also backed by Netflix, this will be the third outing for Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), the famous detective known for his laser-like precision of mind and his somewhat amorphous Southern accent.

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Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023

Edward Norton ( left), as Miles, Madelyn Cline as Whiskey and Daniel Craig as Det. Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. (John Wilson / Netflix)

Essays explore Miriam Toews’s body of work in accessible, thoughtful prose

Reviewed by Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Preview

Essays explore Miriam Toews’s body of work in accessible, thoughtful prose

Reviewed by Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022

In this thorough, detailed monograph on the work of Miriam Toews, Sabrina Reed looks at the Manitoba-born writer’s recurring theme of resilience and the ways it plays out across her fiction.

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Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022

Lives Lived, Lives Imagined

Debauched Hollywood history babbles on and on

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Debauched Hollywood history babbles on and on

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022

This would-be epic of early Hollywood kicks off with an orgy fuelled by pulsing hot jazz and a cool, white mountain of cocaine. There are gyrating nudes on the main floor, some sexual specialties going on upstairs, a storehouse of liquor and drugs, and a giant phallus on a pogo stick. There’s an elephant.

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Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022

Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Brad Pitt, left, and Diego Calva are denizens of Old Hollywood in Babylon.

Holiday TV fare now includes Bacon to go with usual cheese

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Holiday TV fare now includes Bacon to go with usual cheese

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022

According to Entertainment Weekly, there are 171 new Christmas movies coming out right now. It may be impossible to sort through all those snowy sleigh rides, town-square Christmas trees, mugs of hot chocolate and meet-cute romances, but here’s a small holiday sampler of streaming possibilities.

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Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022

A bear on blow, yucks mixed in with yuks

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Preview

A bear on blow, yucks mixed in with yuks

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022

When I first stumbled across the Cocaine Bear trailer on Twitter, I assumed it was a fake. It felt like a goofy, made-up promo for a never-to-be-made movie. There was Keri Russell in a bubblegum-pink jumpsuit, possibly in outtakes from her 1980s-set espionage series The Americans. There was Ray Liotta ranting about lost cocaine, maybe from a D-movie knockoff of Goodfellas.

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Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022

When I first stumbled across the Cocaine Bear trailer on Twitter, I assumed it was a fake. It felt like a goofy, made-up promo for a never-to-be-made movie. There was Keri Russell in a bubblegum-pink jumpsuit, possibly in outtakes from her 1980s-set espionage series The Americans. There was Ray Liotta ranting about lost cocaine, maybe from a D-movie knockoff of Goodfellas.

Puppet’s poignant journey to real boy fraught with pain

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Puppet’s poignant journey to real boy fraught with pain

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022

‘I want to tell you a story,” says Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) in the trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s wondrously strange stop-motion-animation version of Pinocchio. “It’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t.”

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Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022

Netflix

Pinocchio, voiced by Gregory Mann, has stop-motion-animated adventures aplenty in Guillermo del Toro’s new film.