Mile End Kicks: Chandler Levack

Mile End Kicks is like Almost Famous for a new era. Both are semi-biographical coming-of-age films with young, naive music critics as protagonists. But instead of the early 1970s, Mile End Kicks takes place in 2011 during the salad days of Montreal’s renowned indie music scene, and the protagonist is a young woman. The film follows Grace (with a great, awkward performance by Barbie Ferreira), a 22-year-old music critic who leaves Toronto for the city of saints to write a book about Alanis Morissette's album Jagged Little Pill. With its loft parties, soundtrack, and La Fin du Monde six-packs, the film does an excellent job of capturing the youthful energy of Montreal’s heyday, but, like most bildungsroman romantic comedies, it falls victim to the genre’s tropes—most notably, the nice-guy-finishing-last love interest and predictable low point of Grace’s journey that arrives like clockwork at the end of the second act. Aside from some clichés, Mile End Kicks has some laugh-out-loud moments and is worth a watch for fans of the genre or the music scene it depicts (eh).

-Adrian Lysenko