What on What's Good

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 L...