REVIEW: Rare Beasts [2021]

I still love and respect myself. I love this line from the director notes of Billie Piper‘s Rare Beasts: “When you live through nihilism/cynicism/hopelessness, your view of the world is not necessarily as it is, but rather your projection [of it].” She’s speaking about the frank tone and dialogue of the heightened world she’s constructed on-screen as writer/director/star, but she could also be talking about the lens in which we now view our own world via social media. You could say Piper has chosen the trending topic of “romantic love”…

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REVIEW: Eternal Beauty [2020]

I’m in my oils. You cannot just watch part of Craig Roberts‘ latest film Eternal Beauty. You might think you could since it’s seemingly as schizophrenic as its lead character Jane (Sally Hawkins), but that chaos is premeditated so that it can find tonal and thematic sense by the end. I was about twenty minutes in when “hate” started to solidify as a reaction to what I saw because it felt like Roberts was poking fun at the disease—purely using Hawkins’ monotone delivery and erratic actions for laughs. If I…

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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…

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