TIFF22 REVIEW: Fixation [2023]

The past is not the present. What did Dora (Maddie Hasson) do all those years ago? That’s the question she’s asking herself as she sits straightjacketed in a hospital she doesn’t remember entering. What did her family do to her to earn that ire? That’s the question her doctors (Genesis Rodriguez‘s Dr. Melanie and Stephen McHattie‘s Dr. Clark) hope to answer for her through an invasively experimental psychiatric evaluation. While the two questions ultimately go together considering her actions were a response to that abuse, separating them should always be…

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REVIEW: Bullet Train [2022]

Why do you laugh at fate? It was supposed to be simple. Ease his way back into the snatch and grab game. He’s not even carrying a gun—not that that ever prevented people from dying while he worked. It’s why he considered quitting. And why he’s in therapy. But he’s a new man now. Ready to think positive. Maybe even listen when his handler Maria says the “bad luck” befalling those around him is “good luck” for him. It’s not like he’s died yet. So, she names him Ladybug (Brad…

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VENICE22 REVIEW: Dogborn [2023]

You’ll cope. The twins (Silvana Imam‘s Sister and Philip Oros‘ Brother) have nothing since their mother passed away. No house. No jobs. No money. Brother doesn’t even have a voice—not since they left Syria long ago. It’s therefore up to Sister to manage for them both. Finding places to squat, talking their way into odd jobs to get paid, and making connections that she can hopefully lean on when things get even tougher than they already are. That’s why it’s nice to have someone like their cousin Petri (Lukas Malinauskas)…

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REVIEW: Bodies Bodies Bodies [2022]

He’s a libra moon! The reasons for ignoring the group chat were legitimate. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) had checked into rehab and needed time working through things while readjusting her life to sobriety. Jumping back in with her equally privileged twenty-something products of wealth would probably have been the worst choice she could have made. But things are different now. She’s in love. And while her and Bee (Maria Bakalova) have only known each other six weeks, we can guess that Sophie has never been happier. So, with the strength of…

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REVIEW: Breaking [2022]

I have a bomb. To read Aaron Gell’s article about Brian Brown-Easley’s death from the military-centered publication Task & Purpose is to dive deep into the nuts and bolts of how a tragedy such as this occurred from systemic racism to the failure of organizations to help those it purports to help to mental illness and beyond. To watch Abi Damaris Corbin‘s cinematic depiction Breaking is to confront the incident’s emotional ramifications whether doing so manipulates the facts in the process or not. And that’s expected. Even if Corbin had…

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REVIEW: Out of the Blue [2022]

Maybe I can be the solution. A new cinematic drinking game has arrived. It’s a doozy too since taking a shot every time writer/director Neil LaBute uses an intertitle demarking time in Out of the Blue means you’ll probably pass out before Connor’s (Ray Nicholson) inevitable plan to kill Marilyn’s (Diane Kruger) abusive husband is floated let alone put in motion. Many are arbitrary. Some are exacting. Few have narrative relevance beyond telling us something we already know. I’m not therefore sure what the point of using so many is…

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REVIEW: The Legend of Molly Johnson [2022]

Sing it in your sleep. A favorite of Leah Purcell‘s as a child, Henry Lawson’s short story “The Drover’s Wife” was always at the front of her mind upon growing into adulthood as an artist. It only makes sense then that she would take that tale from 1892 and reimagine it as an Australian western able to bring her own ancestral history as a fair-skinned Aboriginal woman into the light. First, she had to give the titular wife a name: Molly Johnson. Next, it was fleshing out a dramatic narrative…

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REVIEW: The Immaculate Room [2022]

What if he’s watching? On its surface, The Immaculate Room is a contest. A game. If you and your romantic partner can spend fifty days in a stark white room with nothing but a bed, minimalist couch-like ottoman, and bathroom that only allows one contestant at a time, you go home with five million dollars. It seems easy because it is … if you’re only looking at the surface. Peel back the layers of its conceit, however, and you see the potential for participants to go stir crazy with nothing…

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REVIEW: Orphan: First Kill [2022]

Nothing is ever just one thing. Screenwriters Alex Mace and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick gave their character Leena Klammer, aka Esther Albright, a complete back story at the end of Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Orphan. A victim of a rare hormone disorder known as hypopituitarism, causing proportional dwarfism, had made it so her thirty-three-year-old woman looked as though she was only nine. The condition obviously prevented her from being seen as a mature adult and so she used it to her manipulative advantage. What began as thieving, however, eventually escalated to murder once…

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REVIEW: Get Away If You Can [2022]

The eternal trip to nowhere. Some people deserve a second chance. Few deserve a third. Especially when we’re talking about having a modicum of human decency for the person you say you love. Yet that’s exactly what we’re asked to give TJ (Terrence Martin). From what we can glean via disjointed flashbacks leading up to a sailing adventure to Easter Island meant to reignite their marriage, he’s had one purely selfless and enjoyable period in his life: meeting Domi (Dominique Braun). As soon as he brought her into his chauvinistically…

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REVIEW: Rogue Agent [2022]

Everyone has a story they want to be told. I’m surprised the studio gives up the game in its marketing materials since Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson‘s Rogue Agent is built in such a way that allows the ruse to stand as truth until a midway point revelation. It’s a case where not watching a trailer probably augmented my enjoyment of the piece because I genuinely didn’t know where things were going or who to believe. Was Robert Freegard (James Norton) really an MI5 agent who fell in love and…

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