TIFF18 REVIEW: Where Hands Touch [2018]

I want her to be like everyone else: unremarkable. Now is not the time to make a film romanticizing Nazism or allowing anyone who donned the swastika during World War II a modicum of sympathy. I’d argue there could never be such a time—at least not for those who say they felt bad but still did nothing to stop the nightmare they helped usher into creation. Their cooperation in a genocidal extermination cannot be given a footnote for remorse. They cannot skate by on some notion that they participated unwillingly…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Hölmö nuori sydän [Stupid Young Heart] [2018]

Nobody knows. It was fun to laugh back in January when Donald Trump spoke to the media about how he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole” countries and more from the likes of Norway. We laughed because it was obvious what the difference between the two was for him—my ignorance towards Scandinavian politics stopping at the color of their respective skin. But apparently there’s a growing trend towards radical right populism and nationalism over there too. Just as Nazis have come out of the woodwork in America under their rebranded moniker…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] [2018]

Stay cool. Okay? It starts with a rape. I won’t lie: I sighed thinking Sven Taddicken‘s Das schönste Paar [The Most Beautiful Couple] was going to end up another drama about coping and retribution like most others wherein Liv (Luise Heyer) struggles as Malte (Maximilian Brückner) protects. So it was a welcome surprise when we’re moved past this harrowing prologue to meet the couple two years later working, smiling, and possibly healed in a bid to forget. Not only that, but Liv proves the one who wants to celebrate upon…

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REVIEW: Searching [2018]

Mom would be too. While it’s been done before (Unfriended and Open Windows to name two recent features), Aneesh Chaganty‘s all-on-digital-screens thriller Searching has earned a lot of buzz namely because it arrives with a genre pedigree beyond “schlock.” The vast majority of critics, filmgoers, and distributers still find it easy to dismiss horror despite it being an innovator in so many things. They can all roll their eyes at the aforementioned duo, labeling them “cult classics” without ever giving credit for their technological achievements until something “better” comes along.…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Cascos Indomables [Helmet Heads] [2018]

There’s a spot on your face. If Broken Lizard were Central American and deadpan, they might make something akin to Ernesto Villalobos‘ Cascos Indomables [Helmet Heads]. Think an extremely droll Super Troopers meets Office Space starring a sextet of bike messengers desperately trying to break the monotony of their stagnant lives while also staying afloat once their employer closes shop without warning. At the center lies Mancha (Arturo Pardo), a listless sleepwalker of a man allergic to change in any form. Of all these men left unemployed, he’s the sole…

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REVIEW: The Little Stranger [2018]

Well you’re forgiven now. Novelist Sarah Waters said her intent with The Little Stranger was never to write a ghost story, but instead speak about the rise of socialism in the United Kingdom and how those of affluent stature just below the nobility dealt with the decline of their legacies in its aftermath. I haven’t read the book myself, but this all rings true as far as Lenny Abrahamson‘s cinematic adaptation. Scripted by Lucinda Coxon, the result is more gothic romance than horror at first glance. While the marketing has…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Lof mér að falla [Let Me Fall] [2018]

Then you’ll get the kick. Films about addiction can be tough to endure depending on how authentically harrowing the experience is drawn. They can only end in one of two ways: death or sobriety. The former can be literal or figurative depending on how deep the drug of choice has its claws fastened and the latter can often be shown as a victory rather than a small step in a series of steps that will go on forever. A character’s journey is therefore always repetitive since reaching bottom before the…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Les salopes ou le sucre naturel de la peau [Les Salopes or the Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin] [2018]

In the end there are only human experiments. Can skin tell the difference between love and desire? It’s an intriguing question Marie-Claire (Brigitte Poupart) can’t help but want to answer as a dermatology professor and lover of sex if only to supply a reprieve from the usual carcinoma studies her doctorate students tediously gravitate towards. She knows the young woman who presents it (Charlotte Aubin‘s Sofia) is up to the challenge scholastically, but unsure experimentally. So Marie-Claire takes it upon herself to collect samples of her own cells before and…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Blindsone [Blind Spot] [2018]

Remember to breathe. The boldness of Tuva Novotny to choose to make her directorial debut a one-shot film of harrowing emotion cannot be understated. Her Blindsone [Blind Spot] takes us through the wringer as tragedy befalls a small, (seemingly) happy family without warning. These characters are distraught, confused, and falling to pieces as ambulances race and patience is tested before discovering new insights that may only provide more questions. And Novotny fearlessly traverses each new dramatic impulse, moving the camera from one to the other so we can be a…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Kingsway [2018]

I’ve been on speaker? Love and suicide. Those are the words director Bruce Sweeney says inspired him to write Kingsway and are very much at the forefront of his dramedy about the dysfunctional Horvat family. And both are treated with humor despite never in a way that belittles their respective import. It’s not about laughing at suicide or those distraught and lost enough to contemplate the act. We smile instead because of our ability to see ourselves in the subject’s heaviness and a tumultuous aftermath that can lead towards a…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Un ange [Angel] [2018]

I’d rather consider myself a gazelle. Two lost souls struggling to reconcile their image meet in Senegal by chance. One’s a prostitute—although she rejects the label and the registration card that’s as much a means to procure wealthy clients as a permanent brand upon her skin. The other is a world famous cyclist just recovered from a devastating accident that brought unsavory questions to light thanks to the hospital finding cocaine in his blood while there. Desperate to escape the limelight of fame and the spotlight of infamy, he flies…

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