Kate Taylor

It’s the direction, not the script, that really kills the picture, as Mazer limps along from the chugging contest to the half-naked conga line to the car chase without ever raising the laughs he needs from the comic set pieces or the tension he needs from the dramatic developments.

There is something of the charming first novel to Victoria Day: It's a small film focused on a teenage passage. It is intensely well observed, but somewhat lacking in drama. It is lightly nostalgic about its moment in history. It's probably autobiographical. And it doesn't have much of an ending.

Mainly, it features dramatic footage of the protests, following the protestors’ logic as a leaderless movement coalesces on social media and crowd-sources strategies on the fly.

The director’s larger point is deployed with such subtlety that it creeps up on the viewer with devastating force.