“He owns you now” Call me a sucker, but I highly enjoy films about the criminal underworld of a city like Brooklyn; all those seedy little details that you can imagine actually happening right before your eyes. I was a fan of the short-lived tv series “The Black Donnellys” and really like The Yards and to a lesser extent Sleepers. The new film The Narrows plays with the same types of storylines as these other works, namely centering on one young man, trying to stay good while having one foot…
Read MoreDay: September 13, 2008
TIFF08 REVIEW: Genova [Summer in Genoa] [2008]
“My heart bleeds” Michael Winterbottom is a director that never sticks to one genre and never compromises his vision. From the well-received music bio-pic 24 Hour Party People, to a meta-comedy in A Cock and Bull Story, to a sexually graphic concert narrative in 9 Songs, to the story of Daniel Pearl’s murder in the Middle East with A Mighty Heart, he won’t shy from controversial subject matter. That makes his new film, Genova [Summer in Genoa], that much more interesting because it is on all accounts a very safe…
Read MoreTIFF08 REVIEW: The Wrestler [2008]
“Sacrificial ram” It’s a fascinating thought I had going into Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. I began to worry that a straightforward tale may not be playing to the director’s strengths. The reason being that his masterpiece The Fountain was still in my head and since he didn’t have writing credit here, my trepidation increased. It wasn’t until the end credits that I recalled Requiem For a Dream being an adaptation and his debut π being pretty grounded in reality despite its surrealistic tendencies.…
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