TIFF15 REVIEW: Bacon & God’s Wrath [2015]

“I prefer non-believer. Maybe infidel.” I apologize to both my grandmothers because Razie Brownstone is my new hero. Kosher for 90 years of life, it was a journey through “the Google” by way of “the internet” that shook her faith. All the questions she never thought could be answered suddenly became available with a few keystrokes—sometimes Google even anticipated exactly what she wanted to ask. We’ve all fallen down rabbit holes of information overload and alternative opinions infiltrating our brains to cement themselves as core belief, but it’s something else…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: Never Steady, Never Still [2015]

“Let’s imagine smacking them in their faces with our voices” A lot can happen over a very short period of time. We leave home to start new lives and things come our way that either allow the rebirth to flourish or stop it in its tracks. Sometimes we return to take care of family. Sometimes it’s for a lost love. Other reasons stem from being out of options. Kathleen Hepburn‘s Never Steady, Never Still deals with each of these examples converging on a small Canadian town as one boy’s homecoming…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: o negative [2015]

“Everything okay?” Sorry, Twilight. Your depiction of love between vampire and human pales in comparison to the uncensored drama of Steven McCarthy‘s o negative. This is the gritty truth of the type of co-dependent relationship such a union is constructed upon—one where morality and humanity is excised completely from matters of life and death. When your lover needs blood to survive you must be willing to forfeit your own existence whether it means feeding them from your vein or playing mother bird by acquiring an outside source and readying it…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: O sinaleiro [The Signalman] [2015]

“The train was on time” Writer/director Daniel Augusto definitely cultivates a dark tone for his short film O Sinaleiro [The Signalman]. Between the quiet isolation of the titular character (played by Fernando Teixeira) and the almost supernatural occurrences surrounding him, you can’t help but conjure ideas of some spectral evil looming at his door. The monotony of his job—logging an on-time train as just that—places him on a path towards psychological upheaval, transforming what we see into nightmarish hallucination as easily as believing it to be reality. Abstract and devoid…

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