TIFF22 REVIEW: Until Branches Bend [2023]

You did the right thing. Something is amiss both with Robin (Grace Glowicki) and the quiet Canadian peach grove town of Montague. An invader has taken hold. It’s wormed its way beneath the surface to incubate and grow, causing incalculable stress upon its vessel. And nobody wants to admit it’s there. Because doing that—making it real—means turning everything upside down to deal with it. So, they bury their heads in the sand and ignore that a problem could even be feasible let alone already in progress. Unlike everyone else, however,…

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REVIEW: The Unspoken [2016]

“I repeat. Suspect present.” There are only so many iterations of the haunted house trope and yet they continue getting made. Sometimes we’re lucky with James Wan‘s The Conjuring series delivering fear along with period aesthetic and tense mood, but those are few and far between. More often we receive work trying hard to stand out from the pack that prove less than inspired with the past decade or so seeing an uptick in violence and gore to make up for any redundancies in themes. To that end I commend…

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REVIEW: Assault on Wall Street [Bailout: The Age of Greed] [2013]

“Grenades are fun. You take it easy.” Despite the appeal of rubbernecking at a car wreck, I have never seen an Uwe Boll film. Whether back when the infamous German tax break scheme was in effect on his videogame adaptations or more recently with extreme violence and attempted social satire, I’ve always found something better to view. But when his newest thriller Assault on Wall Street (previously known as Bailout: The Age of Greed) came across my desk, I thought maybe the “auteur” had found his stride. Maybe he was…

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