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Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006)

Patrick Huard (whose starring role in Ken Scott’s Starbuck makes that 11th on this list of 10) shares credit with Colm Feore. Two cops – one from Quebec, one from Ontario –must work together after a murder victim is found bisecting the border. The two solitudes were never funnier than in Erik Canuel’s film.

WolfCop (2014)

This one’s also about a cop – who is also a wolf! If you need another reason to see this low-budget charmer, consider that you don’t want to be lost when WolfCop 2, also directed by Lowell Dean, comes out this year.

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A few months ago, Evan Rissi set out to prove a theory.

He asked more than 500 Canadians from Vancouver to Halifax a simple question: what’s the best Canadian film of the last 10 years? He got a lot of fraught looks, nonplussed silences and not much in the way of answers.

Eight out of 10 people he asked couldn’t even name a Canadian film. Several who could named Fubar, a film that was released in 2002. “People didn’t have a favourite Canadian movie — they didn’t even care,” explains the filmmaker turned pollster.

Rissi’s motives for conducting this informal survey weren’t purely inquisitive. His real aspiration was to use the information he gathered to help create that elusive favourite Canadian film himself. Earlier this month, he launched an ambitious crowdfunding campaign to help make it happen.

As part of his crusade, he wrote and directed a seven-minute proof-of-concept short — an ironic riff on the buddy action comedies of the late 1980s called Going In, replete with moussed hairdos, gold-plated pistols and a soundtrack of top-40 synthpop mainstays — that he hopes to expand into a blockbuster feature. The Indiegogo page promises the venture will “prove to you, ourselves, and everyone else that it’s entirely possible to create cinema that can rival Hollywood productions.” Or, as Rissi puts it: “You don’t have a favourite Canadian movie? This is a problem. I want this to be your new favourite Canadian movie.” He hopes — perhaps optimistically — to raise $200,000 in 30 days.