DESIGN: Cultivate Cinema Circle Summer 2017
Month: September 2017
REVIEW: Battle of the Sexes [2017]
“Libbers not lobbers” Between the title and trailer, I assumed Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris‘ Battle of the Sexes would focus strictly on the circus surrounding the event itself. It’s not like there isn’t enough content to make that happen between the political, social, and athletic motivations behind the media frenzy. But screenwriter Simon Beaufoy knew he had to go further back to truly understand the climate that led to former champion and current senior tour member Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) calling up Billie Jean King (Emma Stone)—arguably the best…
Read MoreBIFF17 REVIEW: Prodigy [2017]
“Love is the guise under which selfishness operates” Guilt is a powerful thing. It can make you act in ways that go against your own survival and yet still ensure those actions are selfishly motivated. You aren’t necessarily acting to help another or have their best interests in mind. You’re goal is to make-up for something you did previously. It’s about feeling better and feeding a misguided notion that you’re somehow the center of attention—the inevitable bringer of unwarranted pain and suffering. Wars have been fought over guilt. Religions have…
Read MoreREVIEW: Videodrome [1983]
“Better on TV than on the streets” To watch David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome today is to acknowledge his clairvoyance as far as technology’s capacity to control via (mis)information. He filmed this body horror classic about subliminal messaging in mass consumption in 1983: years before the political firestorm in 1992 revolving around ubiquitous violence in videogames via Mortal Kombat, the 2007-08 television writers strike that spawned the proliferation of reality TV, the 24-hour news cycle that transformed real-life tragedies into entertainment, and social media placing false content at our fingertips with an…
Read MoreREVIEW: I Am Another You [2017]
“I’ll show you what freedom is like” Documentarian Nanfu Wang left China in 2011 to find the freedom that remaining in her home country never could provide. She came to America—specifically New York City—to study filmmaking before ultimately creating the 2017 Oscars-shortlisted Hooligan Sparrow (which depicted some of the oppression and persecution that she sought to escape). In order to tell that film’s subject’s (Ye Haiyan) story, Wang had to go back and live on the run from Chinese police with little in the way of comfort along their journey…
Read MoreTIFF17 REVIEW: Princesita [2017]
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars” Miguel (Marcelo Alonso) compares God to a fire when explaining how the ones our religions’ sacred books describe aren’t quite right. Our creator is simpler than those iterations. He has the power to turn wood into ash and water into steam. He has the power to transform. But just as fire forges from its flames, it also destroys. It’s this duality that director Marialy Rivas and co-writer Camila Gutiérrez gives form to in their film Princesita. As cultist Miguel’s young disciple Tamara…
Read MoreTIFF17 REVIEW: Vinterbrødre [Winter Brothers] [2017]
“Everyone has a little darkness in them” It opens in darkness—the beams from headlamp flashlights and sparks of metal on rock our only points of illumination. This is the oppressive environment holding the over-worked and under-paid miners while their boss sits in his factory office without a care as to who the men in his employ are besides a social security number. They let off steam with a bottle of homebrew alcohol to cut the monotony of their daily routines before returning to their respective trailers back in town that…
Read MoreTIFF17 REVIEW: Of Sheep and Men [2017]
“In this country, the big fish eat the small fish” It’s the cusp of Eid in Algiers, Bab el Oued circa 2016 and the rams are running wild. Well, not wild per se considering each is bought, sold, and always owned. They seem to be a huge staple in this impoverished town as a means for wool, meat, and entertainment. Yes, along with all the usual uses you could think of for the animal (including a sacrifice to Allah) is a prevalent fight circuit where competitors seek out new opponents…
Read MoreTIFF17 REVIEW: شيخ جاكسون [Sheikh Jackson] [2017]
“You can’t guarantee living till tomorrow” The thing I could never wrap my head around religious-wise is the idea of strict right and wrong. As a Catholic it’s somewhat easy as far as sin and repentance. You’re allowed to do a lot as long as you feel remorse and guilt enough to learn your lesson. But other religions are more stringent than Ten Commandments and more vehement in how each version of its worship follows its specific edicts. There’s no better place than the Middle East to see this in…
Read MoreREVIEW: Elizabeth Blue [2017]
“Mental illness doesn’t need to be treated like a dirty secret” It’s highly disconcerting yet unsurprising that many Baby Boomers now in their sixties and seventies still see mental illness as a weakness. Talk about the scenarios that young people of today face and they dismiss them as a generational thing, a liberalization of society wherein strength and stoicism have been replaced by laziness and excuses. Try and tell them that very viewpoint is what stigmatized psychological ailments for so long and they scoff. It’s easier for them to believe…
Read MoreTIFF17 REVIEW: Licht [Mademoiselle Paradis] [2017]
“If you cannot see, you are not seen” Maria Theresia von Paradis was the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa’s Court Councilor and thus a young woman of standing despite the blindness that took her eyes before the age of five. Her father Joseph Anton and mother Maria Rosalia had the means to therefore teach her the finer things such as piano—a vocation to which she found expertise. The Empress allowed her a disability pension as financial assistance to help offset the strain of raising a daughter in the eighteenth century…
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