TIFF11 REVIEW: Shame [2011]

“Blue or green?” Three years after their first collaboration—and the director’s debut film—Steve McQueen and star Michael Fassbender return with the viscerally intense Shame. To call a movie assured to receive an NC-17 rating more mainstream than their previous Hunger is insane, but it’s true. Whereas that film took a more formal approach to the medium, leaving us in a visually stunning world without introducing the lead character until about a third of the way in, Shame definitely has more of a narrative voice. With that said, however, McQueen’s improved…

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TIFF11 REVIEW: Twixt [2012]

“Keeping track of time around here is pointless” After a stellar career directing some of cinema’s greats—The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation—you can’t blame Francis Ford Coppola for deciding to film smaller passion projects in his twilight. After the self-financed Tetro and Youth Without Youth, he returns with a story from an unusual origin. With an alcohol-induced dream in Istanbul, a vivid conversation with Edgar Allen Poe while a murder mystery happens as a backdrop, the impetus behind Twixt was born. Awoken before its end, Coppola scribbled down what he…

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TIFF11 REVIEW: Lipstikka [2012]

“This is my life. I might as well live it.” Dealing with the tenuousness and unreliability of memory, Jonathan Sagall has crafted a sophomore feature that isn’t easy to shake. An Israeli-raised, Canadian-born filmmaker, many at the Toronto International Film Festival were interested to discover why he chose to tell a story about two Palestinian women. Attempting to remain as politically correct and honest as possible, his response was a resounding, “This is a story about people”. To Sagall, his work doesn’t deal with two sides of a never-ending war…

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