The cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin's eerie, sometimes monumental images italicize the experts' statements, making the suburbs seem like an asphalt-and-Sheetrock dreamscape where democracy goes to die.
Radiant City
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Canada · 2007
1h 33m
Director Jim Brown, Gary Burns
Starring Daniel Jeffery, Bob Legare, Jane MacFarlane, Ashleigh Fidyk
Genre Documentary
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Radiant City explores the evolution of suburbia in North America. It follows the Moss family from Calgary as move from the inner-city to the suburban sprawl on the outskirts of town. As they struggle to adapt to their new environment, the film deconstructs the isolated way of living that has become the norm for millions of families.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Jim Brown and Gary Burns hang a powerful antisuburban diatribe in the form of statistics, expert opinions and pictures worth a thousand words on the experiences of the Moss family.
The faux-documentary aspect of Radiant City is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off. If anything, the movie's observations about the corrupting social influence of cluttered mall spaces get undercut by the fact that Burns and Brown feel the need to INVENT characters to prove their truth.
As a one-time suburbanite now living happily in Manhattan, I can attest that Radiant City tells it like it is. The film ends with a surprise that you won't see coming and I won't spoil.
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