TIFF21 REVIEW: Paradis sale [After Blue] [2022]

Cut the bad weeds. It’s as though Roxy (Paula Luna) is standing at the gates of Heaven, being judged for what transpired during life on After Blue—a new planet devoid of computer screens post-Earth’s cultural destruction. Do we ever see the God she’s relaying her tale too? No. Or perhaps we are that God, judging her actions against whatever criteria we have in our own unprompted minds. The latter makes sense considering writer/director Bertrand Mandico operates under the cinematic Incoherence Manifesto that he co-wrote Katrín Ólafsdóttir. He “has faith in…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Ich bin dein Mensch [I’m Your Man] [2021]

Your eyes are like two mountain lakes I could sink into. Writer/director Maria Schrader‘s Ich bin dein Mensch [I’m Your Man] posits the question: What if Weird Science, but real? That’s not to say the conceit she and co-writer Jan Schomburg have created (from a short story by Emma Braslavsky) isn’t science fiction fantasy. I just mean that their romantic comedy isn’t saddled by the puerile male gaze of an 80s sex romp. It uses its skeptical lead character (Maren Eggert‘s ancient language specialist Alma) to confront the scenario she’s…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Encounter [2021]

Everything I do is to protect you. A meteorite falling to Earth disintegrates into stardust that subsequently permeates everything it touches. It hits the soil, enters a bug, is consumed again, and then injected into human flesh by a mosquito while feeding on a microscopic tardigrade about to explode. This is the computer-generated prologue to Michael Pearce‘s Encounter that sets the table for its forthcoming struggle between man and neurological parasite. Has he and co-writer Joe Barton therefore shown that their protagonist has suddenly been infected while sleeping? Malik Khan…

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TIFF21 REVIEW: Night Raiders [2021]

We are still here. German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller coined the poetic confession “First they came …” in 1946. The post-WWII piece spoke about how groups like the Nazis would always find new targets to oppress once their recent victims were erased. First it was the socialists. Then trade unionists and Jews. The sigh of relief breathed by those not yet included under those labels is therefore only ever brief. Unless you don the swastika to partake in the purges, they’ll eventually find a label to justify wiping you from…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Mad God [2022]

The Mad God of the film’s title is writer/director/animator Phil Tippett and the sheer audacity of him manufacturing an 80-minute opus of grotesquery sprung from a passage by Leviticus that would ultimately need thirty years to complete. His original footage went before cameras during the late 80s and early 90s—around the time he was working on Robocop 2—before he let the concept fade away once computer graphics (thanks to Jurassic Park, which he won an Oscar for) began taking over the special effects industry. It wasn’t until the 2010s that…

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REVIEW: Free Guy [2021]

Don’t have a good day. Have a great day. Every day is awesome for Guy the bank teller (Ryan Reynolds). While so-called “heroes” in sunglasses run roughshod on Free City by wrecking it with explosions, crime, and debauchery, his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery) and him get their favorite coffee (medium with cream and two sugars), talk about hitting the beach, and greet everyone the same exact way they did yesterday … and the day before that. If not for the hole in his heart where love was concerned,…

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REVIEW: Demonic [2021]

It means it’s coming for ya. Carly (Carly Pope) hasn’t seen her mother (Nathalie Boltt‘s Angela) in two decades—if you don’t count the nightmares. Writer/director Neill Blomkamp brings us into his latest film Demonic through one such dream pitting daughter against mother inside an abandoned sanitarium with the latter calling out for the former’s help. Rather than conclude with a heartfelt reunion that’s yet to happen in the real world, Carly finds herself startled awake from the flames created by her mom tossing a lighter into the pool of gasoline…

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REVIEW: Shivers [1975]

Poor birdy. You almost want to say Dr. Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver) is on to something when telling Dr. Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) about his latest scientific experimentations between bites of his pickle. He and the late Dr. Hobbs (Fred Doederlein) have been funneling grant money into a project that hopes to put parasites to work for humanity. The pitch is as follows: Which is better? A faulty kidney? Or a working parasite? If the latter cleans your blood without needing to wait for a new organ, doesn’t it…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Tin Can [2022]

We’re in a tomb. Despite being neither a household name nor one I could immediately place, seeing writer/director Seth A. Smith attached to a film while sifting through the schedule at the Fantasia International Film Festival forced me to pause. A quick search later revealed him to be the filmmaker behind 2017’s The Crescent—an under-rated gem that enthralled me via narrative and visuals alike. It didn’t therefore matter what his latest, Tin Can, was about because I felt confident it would prove memorable whether I ended up enjoying it or…

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REVIEW: Night Drive [2021]

I didn’t realize ‘good evening’ was an admission of guilt. Russell’s (AJ Bowen) a good guy. We know because his Jount rideshare driver helps a customer by carrying her giant wreath to the door before refusing a tip with a genuine “Merry Christmas.” You kind of have to be if you’re working a thankless job on the biggest holiday of the year so you won’t go insane before igniting a killing spree. “Good” doesn’t equal “saint,” however. He’s not going to pass up a couple hundred dollars when the next…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Droste no hate de bokura [Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes] [2021]

I don’t know why. The logistics behind Droste no hate de bokura [Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes] are mind-boggling to fathom since time-travel stories are often confusing enough to keep straight when they aren’t filmed as a one-shot. The Europe Kikaku theatrical troupe embracing that extra challenge is thus wild. Group director Makoto Ueda admits he wouldn’t have written the script that way if he didn’t already trust his actors and know they could handle the experiment. Not that having them at his disposal necessarily made his and director Junta…

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