TIFF20 REVIEW: I Care A Lot [2021]

There’s no such thing as “good people.” It’s the kind of grift that would make ‘Slippin’” Jimmy McGill proud. Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) calls up her friend Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) to get a line on any prospective dementia patients with good insurance and ample nest eggs that have come through her office. She gets her partner (professionally and romantically) Fran (Eiza González) to run a background check with help from police contacts and calls an emergency trial with Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) if their assumptions can be corroborated.…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Pieces of a Woman [2020]

There will be consequences. Every bit of promotional material I’ve read about director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber‘s Pieces of a Woman (kudos to their shared “a film by” credit) has billed the work as a look into the emotional grieving process of a woman who just lost her newborn child. Even the title highlights her experience above all others because she’s the one who gave birth. She’s the one who everyone is turning to for his/her own cues as to how to act. She’s the one whose body…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Falling [2020]

I’m sorry I brought you into this world … so you can die. The best part of Falling, Viggo Mortensen‘s debut as writer/director, is a family dinner bringing the surviving members of the Peterson clan together in California. John (Mortensen) has gone through the emotionally arduous task of collecting his homophobic father (Lance Henriksen‘s Willis) from the family farm up north to stay with him, his husband (Terry Chen‘s Eric), and their daughter (Gabby Velis‘ Monica) in a bid to move him down now that old age and dementia are…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Nomadland [2020]

Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. The film opens with words too many Americans will understand: “On January 31, 2011, US Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada after 88 years.” One night there’s hope in tomorrow because you have a well-paying job and a community to rally around. The next day it’s gone. Literally. Just six months later the town’s zip code was discontinued, its houses abandoned. In a post-capitalist society where the rich get richer and the poor get even poorer, the latter can’t simply stick around…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Monday [2021]

I’ll take you anywhere you want. Director Argyris Papadimitropoulos‘ Monday feels like it’s going to be a wild ride right from the start as Chloe (Denise Gough) screams into her phone at the voicemail of an assumed ex-boyfriend ditching their final goodbye before she heads back to America. Utter chaos is unfolding around her as the house party she’s stumbled into threatens to rage into the next morning with music, drugs, sex, and whatever else the Greeks in attendance have up their sleeve. Because the host (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos‘ Argyris) hears…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Limbo [2021]

Tomorrow we’ll have apricots. Two Africans, an Afghan, and a Syrian walk onto a remote island in Scotland. The punch line potential is infinite. Writer/director Ben Sharrock knows it too as he places them all in the same cramped apartment with a “Refugees Welcome” banner outside so they can argue about the merits of Ross and Rachel’s “break” courtesy of a burned “Friends” box set left behind by whomever lived their last. Add an eccentric cultural awareness course led by a duo in Helga (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Boris (Kenneth…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: David Byrne’s American Utopia [2020]

Us and you. We open on an illuminated square with a table at its center: the stage from an overhead perspective of which the sold-out crowd at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre is never privy. That’s the appeal of a filmed performance. By setting up cameras and documenting David Byrne‘s 2019 stage show from every angle, director Spike Lee is able to present the minimalist aesthetics and artistry in a way that its original format can’t. And with a through-line message of inclusion and connection, that ability is necessary. Just look at…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: La nuit des rois [Night of the Kings] [2020]

The prince without a kingdom. Writer/director Philippe Lacôte looks to tell a tale of the Ivory Coast and its most recent two decades of civil war and strife with his latest film La nuit des rois [Night of the Kings]. With that also comes a necessity to speak about the youth who’ve recently taken up residence within the confines of his setting: La MACA. This prison—whose under-thirty population is currently hovering around eighty percent—shifts between the horrors of its inherent violence and the magical fantasy conjured when Lacôte was a…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Holler [2021]

There’s more than cans and bottles. You can only hide so many eviction notices underneath the porch flowerpot before a bank official finds and tapes them all onto the front door. This is where we meet Ruth (Jessica Barden) and Blaze Avery (Gus Halper). What choice do they have, though? With their mother (Pamela Adlon‘s Rhonda) in jail because of a refusal to go to rehab for a pain pill addiction and family friend Linda (Becky Ann Baker) already over-extending herself to help, these two siblings are waking up at…

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TIFF20 REVIEW: Mila [Apples] [2021]

I don’t remember if I like them. Amnesia is a tragic ailment. To wake up and find yourself unable to remember your name or any other aspect of your life is nothing short of a nightmarish scenario. We fear diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s precisely because losing our memory is akin to losing our very identity and by extension our sense of purpose. So it’s only natural to see the conceit behind director Christos Nikou‘s and co-writer Stavros Raptis‘ film Mila [Apples] as one steeped in horror. It’s unknown why…

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