TIFF18 REVIEW: Freaks [2018]

Go away ghost. It’s weird to think about a movie like Push today—an under-appreciated, much-maligned sci-fi that I’d argue is a lot better than the legacy it’s been given. The X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies had completed by the time it was released and Iron Man just hit theaters the year before to usher in what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And yet here was a smaller-scale, original piece centering upon a group of mutants that could exist outside the realm of built-in fandoms. Perhaps that which made it special…

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REVIEW: The Bookshop [2017]

Where there’s life, there’s hope. Looks are deceiving with Isabel Coixet‘s The Bookshop, an adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald‘s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel from 1978. What appears to be a run-of-the-mill drama that will surely fall into the usual clichés of perseverance and eventual victory about a woman standing up to a small town of bullies that sees her as an outsider is actually much more complex. Rather than be about an ever-increasing contingent of allies coming out of the woodwork to rally around her as she sticks it to the haughty…

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REVIEW: Western [2017]

What are you searching for here? When a group of Germans enter rural Bulgaria on an assignment to divert water towards a new power plant, those unversed in the area and its history wouldn’t think too much about it. Those like me would assume whatever conflict at this story’s back would arise from differing languages and cultures, but be sparked by individual personalities rather than inherent nationwide prejudices. As Valeska Grisebach‘s Western proves, however, that is far from the case. As one character explains around midway through the runtime, the…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Føniks [Phoenix] [2018]

It has to be my turn sometime. If our best laid plans are said to often go awry, what happens to the ones we hastily make in desperation? Writer/director Camilla Strøm Henriksen looks to supply an answer to that very question with her feature debut Føniks [Phoenix] because desperation is all young Jill (Ylva Bjørkaas Thedin) has left. Her fourteenth birthday is just days away and yet she returns home from school to see the beginnings of a celebration abandoned and her mother Astrid (Maria Bonnevie) asleep in bed. Knowing…

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BIFF18 REVIEW: Age Out [Friday’s Child] [2019]

I don’t hurt people. The only thing worse than never getting your happy ending is having it within grasp and realizing you cannot accept it. To see salvation and turn around knowing it would be a lie is the type of heartbreaking choice we often have to make in order to keep on going. It’s the decision that separates man from monster: an admission of remorse, guilt, and regret. Our actions cause ripples that affect countless others we haven’t met yet or never will and while that truth allows some…

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REVIEW: Searching for Fortune [2018]

I didn’t know we could do that. Whether you’re a proponent of nature over nurture or vice versa, you cannot deny the impact both have on our lives regardless of the other. Yes we all have the potential to be President of the United States on paper, but we don’t all have the tools at our disposal to turn such blanket statements of opportunity into reality. Oftentimes we don’t even realize this fact because our identities are forged by those tools we do have. For example: growing up in a…

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REVIEW: BlacKkKlansman [2018]

Did you just use your real name? The fact that Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman is based on a true story is absolutely crazy. A black rookie cop in Colorado calls the Ku Klux Klan, wins them over with racist rhetoric, and talks his precinct chief into approving an investigation wherein a white officer would pretend to be him in-person before ultimately coming face-to-face with Grand Wizard David Duke? You literally cannot write a more scathing commentary on the hubris of white supremacists or the courage of those fighting the good fight…

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REVIEW: Univitellin [2016]

All of that for nothing. Writer/director Terence Nance describes his short film Univitellin as “an improvised prequel about the past lives of one person—about the two people they were before they karmically merged.” It’s important to know this because that’s not what you’d assume upon watching its tale of fated and tragic romance between Aminata (Aminata M’Bathie) and Badara (Badara Ngom). On the surface we’re merely watching as this couple meets on the train to work, sitting across from the other in silence. It shows the possible ways that could…

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REVIEW: Munchausen [2013]

You can almost hear the musical score when thinking about old silent films from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They have that peppy melody to really shine a light on the optimism of what could be before some sort of hardship or tragedy arrives with a somber tone to lead our emotions along a roller coaster of hijinks and reflection. But we never mind that slow, deep transition of sound because it’s always followed by a miraculous recovery, joyous occasion, or happily ever after. We get through…

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REVIEW: What Still Remains [2018]

People need to stick together. There are two kinds of people still watching “The Walking Dead”: those who love the gore quotient and believe zombies are the true enemy of the people and those who understand that the undead are merely a catalyst to expose the evil that has always lived within. I’m of the latter group because the drama is always more real when it builds between two very different people trying to survive via diametrically opposed ways than when it’s just the living bashing the skulls of unfeeling…

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REVIEW: Eighth Grade [2018]

Gucci! The transition between middle and high school is weird and frightening for everyone—those who disagree are lying. It’s crazy how different those two worlds prove since elementary and middle are really quite similar. Some crave this shift, desperate for a new beginning. Others dread it because they know the pecking order restarts once multiple schools converge. But then there are also those like Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) who don’t know what to expect because change is scary and the status quo insufferably depressing. So she decides to get a…

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