REVIEW: Leviathan [2013]

“It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.” To no one’s surprise, the end of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel‘s documentary Leviathan does not contain the usual “no animals were harmed during the making of this film” since the piece itself is literally the harrowingly horrific depiction of North Atlantic sea creatures’ deaths. Whether decapitated fish being filleted and thrown in bins, sting rays de-winged before mid-sections are tossed aside, or a haul of clams/oysters cracked open before their empty shells can…

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REVIEW: Paradise [2013]

“Why twitter with Satan when you can friend with God?” My first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival had me arriving at the box office with vouchers and no clue about what to see. Ready for anything, my friend and I took a chance on Juno based solely on our enjoying Thank You for Smoking and our intrigue in Ellen Page’s follow up to her fantastic turn in Hard Candy. It was a great choice: funny, fresh, contemporary, and accompanied by a Q&A with director Jason Reitman and first-time…

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REVIEW: Don Jon [2013]

“I lose myself” I will say this: Don Jon is not quite what I expected. While the trailers do a good job showing off the surface objectification first-time writer/director Joseph Gordon-Levitt infuses into the comedy, it doesn’t speak to the film’s heart. Rather than simply a 90-minute romp of Jersey accents and pretty people arguing over whether porn is disgusting or not, this is a journey of discovery wherein Jon (Gordon-Levitt) evolves into a man. Yes, such a statement couldn’t sound more cliché if I tried, but that doesn’t mean…

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REVIEW: In a World … [2013]

“The whole thing’s based on the Prussian War” I remember seeing Lake Bell for the first time on the criminally underrated HBO show “How to Make It in America” and thinking, “this is a real person.” She was slightly awkward, somewhat unconventionally attractive, and far from the ditzy, interchangeably dull girls mainstream entertainment loves to shove down our throats ad nauseum. Bell’s Rachel was headstrong, successful, charmingly flakey, and ultimately the kind of woman you’d believe could find herself at the center of a love triangle. What I couldn’t have…

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REVIEW: Eroticide [2013]

“I’m the woman of his dreams. And you? You’re the silver medal.” With a title like Eroticide, it isn’t hard to imagine at least one character dying by the time the credits roll. Who of Matthew Saliba’s sexually warped love triangle will it be, though: the doormat, the predator, or the prey? Love, sex, and self-worth can combine to form any number of psychological cocktails just waiting to explode when the players find themselves lost in an unfamiliar territory like happiness. If you’ve lived your life in a way where…

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REVIEW: Computer Chess [2013]

“War is death. Hell is pain. Chess is Victory.” Writer/director Andrew Bujalaski‘s lo-fi Computer Chess is an intriguing period piece curio depicting a programming convention of brilliant minds engaging in a five-round competition that pits their artificial intelligences against each other’s at the titular, strategic board game. Although we see tournament organizer Pat Henderson (Gerald Peary) has hired a filmographer (Kevin Bewersdorf) for the proceedings, our vantage point is outside that camera as a fly on the wall within their hotel. Shifting room to room spying on students, tech geeks,…

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REVIEW: Rush [2013]

“You fat little inbred beauty” The story of James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is one we can all relate too. It’s a tale of two extremes: the easygoing partier with ideas of immortality and the calculating taskmaster who knows the odds and understands the consequences. In keeping with the Formula One spirit cinematically, we could even metaphorically pit Rush‘s Hunt against Senna’s Lauda—the Hollywood pretty boy opposite the riveting documentary—to see how your tastes align with personality. I’m a Lauda, always have and always will be.…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: Falastine Stereo [Palestine Stereo] [2013]

“We all should sing and dance and live and allow nothing to break us” No matter how much Stereo (Mahmud Abu-Jazi) loves his country, living in the warzone that is occupied Palestine has to prove hollow at some point. A wedding singer with what many say is a sweet voice—hence the nickname—that moment comes via an Israeli bombardment. The aftermath leaves his wife dead, his brother Sami (Salah Hannoun) a deaf mute, and himself ravaged by the guilt of not being there and the understanding that his government’s words are…

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REVIEW: Brazil [1985]

“Care for a little necrophilia?” Although Terry Gilliam had already established the highly imaginative filmic style we now associate him with above his Monty Python animations, no one could have imagined the scale of what would become his unequivocal masterpiece, Brazil. There were shades of its escapism in Time Bandits and its bureaucratic satire in short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, but nothing as grandiose as Sam Lowry’s (Jonathan Pryce) fantastical dreamscape juxtaposed against his Orwellian, nightmarish reality. In fact, Gilliam even sought to title the film 1984 1/2 before…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: Faroeste caboclo [Brazilian Western] [2013]

“A real man always pays his debts” Composed by Renato Russo in 1979 and finally released in 1987 on his band Legião Urbana’s album Que País É Este, “Faroeste Caboclo” became a folk song hit in Brazil. It was Russo’s family —Renato died in 1996 due to complications from AIDS—who began the process of finding the right talent to adapt its nine-minute story of João de Santo Cristo for the big screen ten years after his death. A few delays later—including an attempt to stall production due to outside copyright…

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REVIEW: The Spectacular Now [2013]

“You’ll always be my favorite ex-boyfriend” Some of us are lucky—a lot luckier than most. The thing about luck, though, is that it may look nothing like it should. Sometimes luck means having your father leave. Sometimes it’s being an eighteen-year old alcoholic everyone at school loves for epitomizing fun despite ultimately acknowledging you’re a joke. We can’t all hit bottom to pull ourselves back up because the floor isn’t always forgiving enough to allow us to walk away. When it does—when the collision rocks you awake, scares you to…

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