TIFF 2018 Review: Neil Jordan’s ‘Greta’
“Greta’s biggest asset is that it’s a film that relishes in its own absurdity.”
TIFF 2018 Review: Jonah Hill’s ‘Mid90s’
“The influence of Larry Clark’s 1995 cult film ‘Kids’ may be all over ‘Mid90s,’ but Hill has a more tender and perhaps more realistic approach of his young subjects: they are smart enough to know when they’re going too far.”
TIFF 2018: One Small Step – A Review of Damien Chazelle’s ‘First Man’
“What ‘First Man’ might lack in emotionality, Chazelle more than compensates for in spectacle.”
TIFF 2018: The French Affair – A Review of Louis Garrel’s ‘A Faithful Man’
“Within the power plays of a self-aware love triangle, Garrel examines love, sex and companionship and tries to get to a point where everyone meets and exists in perfect harmony. It’s a tug of war between these three, and the final result is basically a test of which one outlives the others.”
TIFF 2018 Review: Xavier Dolan’s ‘The Death and Life of John F. Donovan’
“For a film revolving around an actor destroyed by a bad reputation, ‘The Death and Life of John F. Donovan’ remains frustratingly vague about the media’s indiscretions that bring John’s downfall.”
TIFF 2018 Review: Steve McQueen’s ‘Widows’
“‘Widows’ offers the thrills and the feelings, the political and the sentimental corruption, the men but also, and especially, the women behind them, who will do anything for love, but won’t do that.”
TIFF 2018 Review: Brady Corbet’s ‘Vox Lux’
“By being so lazy and aggressive with his judgment of pop culture, Corbet ends up making a film that is bland in its anger, annoying in its attacks and ridiculous in its contempt for its characters and audience.”
TIFF 2018 Review: Sara Colangelo’s ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’
“‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ is purposefully not a comfortable watch, but it satisfies in many ways. Not only is its central character an imperfect woman, but she also expresses her palpable rage in a strange and fascinating form of intellectual violence.”
TIFF 2018: Embracing the Oxymoronic – A Review of Jacques Audiard’s ‘The Sisters Brothers’
“Audiard finds the real drama of the film in how the seemingly boundless promise of the land collides with the very real limitations of the human imagination and body.”
Review: Joseph Kahn’s ‘Bodied’
“‘Bodied’ is a blisteringly urgent and inescapably topical meditation on race, class and identity; the kind of movie that could only be told with the panache and in-your-face directness of Kahn.”
TIFF 2018: The Never-Ending Ruminations of Olivier Assayas – A Review of ‘Non-Fiction’
“For a film about an eternal conflict, ‘Non-Fiction’ is a strangely calming film. It quietly assures you that while a fight for permanence is natural, the need to change is also equally natural.”
Film Noir Without the Femme Fatale: André De Toth’s ‘Pitfall’ and ‘Crime Wave’
“In ‘Pitfall’ and ‘Crime Wave,’ two seminal films bookending the classic noir cycle, director André De Toth develops a more nuanced view of marriage and the married couple.”
Baby and The Driver: Motion, Music and Meaning
“‘Baby Driver’ and ‘Drive’ are not road maps to modernity, they don’t offer any route through it that guarantees a safe arrival. The only advice they might offer is to tear up the map itself. To simply drive.”
Welcome to the War: Power Politics in the ‘Predator’ Franchise
“The ‘Predator’ franchise is a repository of the fears that plague the powerful. The context changes, but the fear persists — the fear that the conqueror may one day become the conquered.”
Arrow Video FrightFest Review: Franck Ribière’s ‘The Most Assassinated Woman in the World’
“‘The Most Assassinated Woman in the World’ is not, by my estimation, a horror film, but a film about horror spectatorship; the joy of discomfort.”
‘What Keeps You Alive’: A Gorgeous, Blood-Pumping Rumination on Betrayal
“Minihan’s tale is a moody, memorable work of art that dares its audience to meditate on the layers and anxieties of love and deceit.”
Wading Through the Western Expanse: The Myth-Busting Power of Andrew Haigh’s ‘Lean on Pete’
“‘Lean on Pete’ isn’t for me. It isn’t about me. But I needed it to wade through all the stories I’d ever heard that were supposed to be for me and about me.”
Arrow Video FrightFest Review: Pascal Laugier’s ‘Incident in a Ghostland’
“Both characters are lazy, ugly sketches of deviancy, leaning on ableist and transphobic stereotypes in the place of characterisation.”
Arrow Video FrightFest Review: Ezequiel Endelman and Leandro Montejano’s ‘Crystal Eyes’
“A loving tribute to the days of switchblades and shoulder pads, ‘Crystal Eyes’ gives credence to the giallo genre through its tongue-in-cheek absurdity and commitment to the transitory styles that defined its later years.”
A Matter of Style: Yasujirō Ozu Covers ‘Christopher Robin’
Michael J. Casey Imagines ‘Christopher Robin’ in the Style of Yasujirō Ozu