TIFF21 REVIEW: The Middle Man [2021]

You’ve just got to take things as they come. Frank Farelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) has been unemployed in a dying town for quite some time. The area used to attract visitors in the past—not many, but enough to staff a hotel that’s now been closed for years. So too has the local movie theater. As the so-called “Commission” (Paul Gross‘ Sheriff, Nicolas Bro‘s Pastor, and Don McKellar‘s Doctor) explains it, they may not be able to keep the streetlights going thanks to a dwindling budget caused by a lack of…

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REVIEW: O’ Horten [2007]

“There’s a man smoking a pipe in the middle of the taxiway” There is no more appropriate a name for the lead role in Bent Hamer’s film O’ Horten then Odd Horten. For a man of modesty, generally hiding in the corners of life to avoid much interaction or attention, he finds himself in the middle of some very odd happenings, all in a matter of a few days following his retirement. After 40 some years as a locomotive engineer in Norway, his age has hit the year for a…

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