TIFF16 REVIEW: City of Tiny Lights [2017]

“Death weighs heavier than heartbreak” Small-time private detective Tommy Akhtar (Riz Ahmed) has all the swagger of a hard-boiled snoop: leather jacket on his shoulders and cigarette in his mouth, leaning against London architecture in the darkened night. His office resides above some shops, he makes friendly with local convenience store owner Mrs. Elbaz (Myriam Acharki), and asks new clients where they found him because he’s not advertising in the paper. But while he’s good at his work and enjoys the struggle if only to get out of his father’s…

Read More

REVIEW: The Fifth Estate [2013]

“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth” As reporters from The Guardian and The New York Times are shown sifting through hundreds of thousands of leaked documents uploaded to the Wikileaks site by Chelsea Manning (then Bradley) in 2010, the acronym EOF is clearly defined as “Escalation of Force” in a blatant swipe at the US government’s penchant for unnecessary killing in the Middle East. While the term explains what America did wrong, it’s also relevant to the speed at which Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate…

Read More

REVIEW: Inescapable [2012]

“I need to see her eyes” Acclaimed Arab-Canadian filmmaker Ruba Nadda follows her festival winning romantic drama Cairo Time with the mystery thriller Inescapable. It’s new territory for the writer/director in that its love story has already occurred, been thwarted, and had its central pairing move on. Whereas one could see Nadda weaving the tapestry of Adib Abdel Kareem’s (Alexander Siddig) early years in Damascus with his love Fatima (Marisa Tomei) amidst the war-torn city’s police occupation’s paranoia, this chapter in her lead’s life is a different beast altogether. A…

Read More

REVIEW: Doomsday [2008]

“You don’t see that everyday” Forget all the subtle and nuance of mood from Neil Marshall’s taut thriller The Descent; he decided to go all out with the new flick Doomsday. Call it 28 Weeks Beyond Thunderdome if you’d like as Marshall seems to cull all the best aspects of past cinema B-movie greats to create a pastiche that is one helluva ride. With a plot that serves only to give us an excuse for action and borderline comical characters introducing us to the punk-metal cannibal way of life as…

Read More