Tag: 1987

In my final two years of high school in Montreal, I made a private curriculum of the local repertory circuit—seeing everything that played, determined to absorb as much cinema as possible before heading to college and, eventually, film school in America. One winter afternoon, on the eve of leaving the city, I wandered into a nearly empty theater and discovered Dead of Winter, directed by Arthur Penn. I fell hard. I went back—once, then again—lingering over the sly menace and savoring the performances, especially Mary Steenburgen’s controlled unraveling and Roddy McDowall’s deliciously eccentric menace. Decades later, while idly scrolling through streamers, I stumbled upon a new title bearing the same name—Dead of Winter (2025), this time starring Emma Thompson. Nostalgia did the rest. Curious, a little wary, and more than ready to test memory against reinvention, I pressed play.