TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
Montana Story (2021)
Imminent death has a way of bringing the living together, whether that’s what they want or not. Blood responsibility and the requirements of endings – not the same thing as closure, which is a cherry on top – mean that last chances are a compulsion almost impossible to ignore. When the setting for this reckoning is the chilly Montana prairie, where regular people work several jobs in a second-hand coat to survive, there’s a harsh immediacy not found in more comfortable and/or populated places. Here the secrets are all out in the open.
Continue reading “Taking Care of Business” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
All My Puny Sorrows (2021)
Movies about death are often the most vibrantly alive. How’s that for irony? A very early sequence in the wonderful “All My Puny Sorrows” shows a man standing in a railway crossing, working himself up to step into the path of an oncoming train. As the sirens blare and the barriers drop, he takes off his glasses and sets them neatly onto the ground. Is it so as not to make a mess? Or is it because it’s easier to go to your death if you can’t exactly see what’s coming? These are just some of the questions this somber, joyous, intellectual movie grapples with. But what makes it a joy to watch despite the heavy subject matter is how much love saturates the story – love which can survive the most permanent separation.
Continue reading “All in the Family” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
The Wheel (2021)
Director Steve Pink is best known for directing both “Hot Tub Time Machine” movies, but he also wrote the screenplays for “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity.” These movies are all basically about whether John Cusack will stop being a jackass with his friends (or fellow assassins) in order to find the love that’s been right there all along. “The Wheel,” which is Mr. Cusack-free and written by Trent Atkinson, is a smaller but more heartfelt exploration of similar themes. In this case the jackass is a woman and the love is halfway out the door.
Continue reading “Irreconcilable Differences” »
Céline Nieszawer
MOVIE REVIEW
Arthur Rambo (2021)
It’s really, really annoying to see a movie try to make a sociological point when it doesn’t understand the meaning of its own plot in the first place. This is a trap a lot of people fall into when they are talking about social media that they don’t use themselves. Reading about Twitter is not the same thing as being on Twitter. Lurking on the site is not the same thing as being an active user. And there is a colossal difference in being torn to pieces over a misunderstanding, or after deliberately poking the bear. But you’d think you’d get all that cleared up before going to the trouble of making a movie about it.
Continue reading “Youthful Offender” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (2021)
The awkward title might sound better in the original Albanian. The lionesses are three poor, socially outcast 18-year-olds in an Albanian-speaking village in Kosovo, impatiently kicking their heels as they wait to discover if they have passed their college entrance exams. Education is the only ticket out, and they are desperate for its escape; no country will give them visas without an education, and none of them want to spend their lives in their backwater town, cleaning toilets or cutting hair like their mothers. They have ambitions but no one else has any of these things for them. But as the summer passes their dreams alter, twisting a coming-of-age story into something else altogether.
Continue reading “Gang Up” »
R. Arpajou/Kino Lorber
MOVIE REVIEW
France (2021)
At a press conference held by President Emmanuel Macron, the first question goes to famous and well-respected TV journalist France de Meurs (Léa Seydoux). Her question is so scorchingly insulting it takes the president a little while to answer, and as he does, France makes eye contact with her assistant, Lou (Blanche Gardin) at the side of the room. They egg each other on with increasingly obscene gestures, laughing in triumph, as he wriggles on her journalistic hook. It’s very clear writer-director Bruno Dumont is using real footage of Mr. Macron, edited together for the appearance of a real event with Ms. Seydoux C.G.I.-ed in – something American cinema hasn’t allowed itself to do with a sitting leader since the speech purportedly given by Bill Clinton in 1996’s “Contact.” This is by far the most interesting part of the movie.
Continue reading “Bombshell” »
Glen Wilson/Netflix
MOVIE REVIEW
The Guilty (2021)
Some years ago, Halle Berry starred in a movie about a Los Angeles emergency dispatcher plagued with guilt and chained to her phones called “The Call.” A few years ago, Tom Hardy starred in a movie about a man overwhelmed with responsibility and chained to the phone in his car having the worst night of his life called “Locke.” Neither of these were the impetus for “The Guilty” – that was a Danish film of the same name that came out in 2018. But if you mashed up “Locke” and “The Call,” you have the idea; an emergency dispatcher suddenly has the worst night of his life. It all takes place at a few desks in the 911 dispatch center in Los Angeles, in the middle of last summer’s wildfires, and Jake Gyllenhaal is the man chained to his phones, desperately hoping it’s not too late.
Continue reading “Sleuth Operator” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
Ali & Ava (2021)
Without putting too fine a point on it, there is no greater signifier of mental illness in the United Kingdom than deliberately “making a show of yourself,” i.e., publicly acting in a way that might draw attention. Yet the most shocking sequence in this improbable British romance between two 50somethings does exactly this. On a busy train, Ali (Adeel Akhtar) is playing his ukulele and singing to Ava (Claire Rushbrook), who is blushing with happiness. These are people from a place who would have learned not to make a show of themselves in the cradle. As a piece of rule-breaking it’s off the charts. So it’s hard to tell which is more shocking: that Ali does it, that Ava is charmed instead of mortified or that the other passengers don’t tut themselves to death.
Continue reading “Opposites Attract” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
Aloners (2021)
“Aloners” is being marketed as an exploration of a life isolated by choice, but it felt much more about how easy it can be to become isolated when you’re dealing with grief – especially when your everyday life isn’t all that wonderful in the first place.
Continue reading “Solitary Animal” »
TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
Violet (2021)
This movie could only have been made in United States, and not just because it’s about what happens when fear is your primary emotion. There’s a sequence of Violet (Olivia Munn) at a party for work – she is a film producer in Los Angeles – mingling with various peers in the large backyard of someone’s lovely home. By the pool there’s an open, catered bar. She orders a dirty martini, which takes a little while to prepare, but when it comes she allows herself only two tiny sips before giving it to a passing waiter. But of course, when she leaves she must pick up her car from the valet parking and drive herself home. No wonder she is fearful and anxious; the lack of external help for something as simple as getting home from a party means true relaxation is an impossible dream. If we needed a metaphor for the emotional state the country has worked itself into, this movie would be a good place to start.
Continue reading “Hostile Work Environment” »