TIFF19 REVIEW: Entwined [2019]

I long for the old ways. The death of their father triggers Panos (Prometheus Aleifer) and half-brother George (John De Holland) to take stock. The latter wants to stick together and move forward while the former chooses to start anew. Panos is a doctor who now recognizes the delicacy of life too well and wants to hit the country in Alyti so his services can do some real good away from the city. George incessantly calls in the hopes of persuading him out of this altruistic dream he assumes will…

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REVIEW: Un couteau dans le coeur [Knife+Heart] [2018]

She’s playing with real life. Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) has ruined her love. What she’s done to push Loïs (Kate Moran) away is unknown, but her desperation ensures we know she was dumped and not the dumper. Whatever happened hasn’t soured their relationship completely, however. Loïs still cares enough about Anne as a person and especially as an artist to remain editor on her cheaply produced gay porn films utilizing the same loyal troupe of actors—her eye forever lingering on Anne’s smile whenever it’s caught on-camera before François (Bertrand Mandico)…

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FANTASIA19 REVIEW: 白蛇:緣起 [Baishe: Yuanqi] [White Snake] [2019]

Do you ever have to do what you don’t want to do? Filmmakers Amp Wong, Ji Zhao (directors), and Damao (screenwriter) have taken the Chinese fable Legend of the White Snake and reformatted it into a prequel/remake with sequel possibilities (if a mid-credits sequence is any indication). The concept of reincarnation keeps the characters the same despite letting them meet five hundred years in the past. That’s how long snake spirit Blanca (Zhang Zhe‘s Xiao Bai) has practiced Taoist magic while waiting to achieve Immortal status alongside her sister Verta…

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REVIEW: Anastasia [1997]

In the dark of the night she’ll be gone. In a fantasy world where royalty was adored as idyllically benevolent leaders thinking only about how to protect and serve their people, the Romanovs were betrayed by the evil Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd) who subsequently consorted with the Devil to wield dark magic powerful enough to curse their entire bloodline to death. His goal was to eradicate them and seize control, but things didn’t go quite as planned. And although the princess Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst) narrowly escaped his grasp when he fell…

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REVIEW: Last Night [1998]

Would it hurt you to play along just once? The cause might be unnamed, but the fact it’s still sunny at midnight guarantees the giant star at the center of our solar system is going supernova (whether or not physics deems it possible). Because all life on Earth will cease in a predetermined instant, you can bet the entire world thought about where they’ll be and what they’ll do when it happens. Maybe a newscaster takes it upon himself to stay on-air and guide viewers while your local DJ compiles…

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REVIEW: สุดเสน่หา [Sud sanaeha] [Blissfully Yours] [2002]

I feel like hitting someone. After witnessing the arrest of two young Burmese women while shooting his previous film in Bangkok, Apichatpong Weerasethakul decided to create a new work depicting the political injustice caused by growing tensions between Thailand’s government and illegal immigrants. Because those familiar with his oeuvre know he’s built his career upon glacially paced narratives that do more to conjure mood than advance plot, the declaration that the aforementioned incident inspired him to “cast the sun as [his] main character” in สุดเสน่หา [Sud sanaeha] [Blissfully Yours] proves…

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REVIEW: Ophelia [2019]

Why do the hens peck at you? A lover distraught and driven to madness after her father’s murder at the hand of the man she loves, himself destined to die by order of his uncle: Denmark’s unjust and power-hungry king. This is Ophelia’s fate within William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a woman used to mourn and incite violence amongst men ruled by grief, ego, and righteousness. Why wouldn’t someone choose to therefore reimagine her legacy away from such abuse in text with nothing but death in her future? Novelist Lisa Klein does…

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REVIEW: Always Be My Maybe [2019]

Kale can’t hold on forever. The premise is familiar. Two childhood best friends of the opposite sex lose touch after growing up only to find themselves in close proximity again almost two decades later. One became a huge success elsewhere while the other remained home and thus without much opportunity for escaping that neighborhood’s limited resources—the former falling prey to a materialistic superiority complex while the latter stayed “down to earth” on a depressive trajectory steeped in a fear of failure. Will celebrity chef Sasha Tran (Ali Wong) remember her…

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REVIEW: Doubles vies [Non-Fiction] [2019]

An infinite minority. You know when you go to a get-together and the conversation inevitably turns to current affairs for which everyone has a fringe understanding? So rather than provide true opinions, they simply start regurgitating what they’ve read on the subject. Most times their content doesn’t even come from a primary source because we’ve conditioned ourselves to blindly trust media outlets that paraphrase, parse, and filter through their own personalized political agenda. Fact therefore becomes a stepping-stone towards editorial and that editorial suddenly becomes a stand-in for the facts.…

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REVIEW: The Wedding Planner [2001]

Dark tower demolished. I shouldn’t be surprised that my nineteen-year old self wasn’t a fan of The Wedding Planner when it came out. Romantic comedies weren’t my genre of choice and I surely didn’t pick it upon going to the theater with friends. So I probably watched with an immovable bias, honed in on its familiarity, and ignored its strength with an agenda to walk out without laughing. Watching it almost twenty years later removed from that teenage boy mentality, however, reveals how strong preconceptions can prove. That’s not to…

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REVIEW: 江湖儿女 [Jiang hu er nü] [Ash Is Purest White] [2018]

Armed men tend to die first. The genesis of Zhangke Jia‘s Jiang hu er nü [Ash is Purest White] is intriguing. After thinking about cut scenes from two of his earlier films starring now wife Tao Zhao (Unknown Pleasures and Still Life), he found himself merging her characters into one. He saw this woman having begun in the coal-mining town of Shanxi before eventually making way towards Fengjie as the county worked to flood cities for construction on the Three Gorges Dam. So this latest work becomes a sort of…

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