I Like Movies

I Like Movies

VHS Forever

Mongrel Media

Release date

September 9, 2022 (TIFF)

SYNOPSIS

Toronto writer/director Chandler Levack makes her feature film debut with I Like Movies, a dramedy based on her experience working at a Blockbuster Video in the early 2000s.  Socially inept, Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen) is a 17-year-old cinephile who gets a job at the Sequels video store in Burlington, Ontario.  Anxious about his future (and desire to attend NYU’s Tisch School of Arts), Lawrence begins alienating the most important people in his life – his best friend (Percy Hynes White) and his single mother (Krista Bridges) – all the while developing a complicated friendship with his older female manager (Romina D’Ugo).  Sequels is furnished with props from a real Blockbuster, while the store’s branded colour scheme of red and teal reoccurs throughout the film.  The film is rife with references to Canada (Carleton, Cronenberg) and cinema (mentioned in almost every sentence that Lawrence utters!).  And how about the DVDs and VHS tapes of the time?  Bollywood/Hollywood? Punch-Drunk Love?  Part of Telefilm’s Talent to Watch Program, the film is produced by Lindsay Blair Goeldner and co-produced by Levack and Evan Dubinsky.  Levack is a veteran arts journalist (contributor to Globe and Mail film section), music video director (with multiple Juno Award nominations) and emerging filmmaker (short We Forgot to Break Up/TIFF 2017).  Levack, Goeldner and editor Simone Smith are Canadian Film Centre alumni.

Directed by

Chandler Levack

Written by

Chandler Levack

Produced by

Lindsay Blair Goeldner

Starring

Isaiah Lehtinen as Lawrence

Krista Bridges

Dan Beirne

Cinematography

Rico Moran

Edited by

Simone Smith

Music by

Murray Lightburn