Perhaps if Cardinals had felt a little bit more its own thing and less like an Atom Egoyan movie, it would have been a more worthy effort from writer/co-director Grayson Moore and director Aidan Shipley.
In fact, it’s pretty close to nil that Moore and Shipley set out to emulate the style of Egoyan. But the film is frankly too much of an artistic film to have a style that feels so muddled as a sub-Egoyan aesthetic as the first ten minutes are pretty solid, but then the progression the viewer expects doesn’t come and we remain in the sonic sphere of nothingness.
The story is interesting, and Sheila McCarthy gives it her all as the matriarch of the story. Grace Glowicki is surprisingly glowery in the film, giving a stronger performance in Chandler Levack’s We Forgot to Break Up, and Katie Boland has also been better elsewhere. Poor Noah Reid receives the saddest fate of all, as his character borders on the cartoonish. It’s a shame because the Cardinals team is lovely. But the result isn’t there.
