A routine memory piece about long-buried family secrets that bubble back to the surface to wreak havoc.

| Mar 4, 2005

Confusing the profound with the pretentious, director Bessai packs the story with elliptical, ominous flashbacks that undercut all the advances he makes with the contemporary tale.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 4, 2005

Tenderly touches our emotions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 4, 2005

Sir Ian McKellen is at his tweediest and most persnickety as the title character in Emile, the portrait of an eminent scientist who returns from England to his homeland, Canada, to receive an honorary degree from the University of Victoria.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 3, 2005

It's appropriate that the director calls this the final chapter in a trilogy about struggling with one's identity -- he shows none of his own while mishandling someone else's.

| Mar 3, 2005

At heart a reverie, a meditation on the past and its treacheries, the ways in which people become flawed, and the eternal though often elusive possibility of forgiveness and redemption.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 3, 2005

McKellen and Unger do a wonderful trudging through the dirt (and, finally, cheese), Emile never quite gets off the ground.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 27, 2004

The films of Carl Bessai are remarkably similar on two fronts: (1) They all have a single name for a title -- first Johnny, then Lola, now Emile; and (2) They just aren't getting much better.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 4, 2004

Technical shortcomings aside this is a good story well told, elevated by McKellen on top form.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2004

Reminds us that Sir Ian McKellen is used to playing more complex characters than Gandalf or Magneto.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 11, 2004

McKellen, as one might expect, is brilliant in the role of a 60-something man re-inhabiting his earlier life on a farm in Saskatchewan and visiting the imagined life of his brother and his niece during the period when he has been living in England.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2004

McKellen is superb as usual, and even if it's all a bit pat, the film quietly generates enough emotional momentum to be genuinely moving.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2004