Tag: Ashley McKenzie

BERLINALE22 REVIEW: Queens of the Qing Dynasty [2022]

Jared Mobarak

We’re both needing something. Our introductions to writer/director Ashley McKenzie‘s leads in Queens of the Qing Dynasty are not to be forgotten. Whether Star’s (Sarah Walker) open-mouthed and fully dilated thousand-yard stare in a hospital bed after her latest suicide attempt (this time for drinking poison) or An’s (Ziyin Zheng) voice regaling the women nurses with a Chinese song while their supervisor drawls “Old Macdonald” in response, the notion that we’re dealing with two eccentrics in a world that may never understand them is abundantly clear. It’s therefore only right…

Read More

TIFF16 REVIEW: Werewolf [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“It’s not your responsibility to keep him alive” Writer/director Ashley McKenzie‘s feature debut Werewolf picks up right where her 2012 short When You Sleep left off. We’re back in Canadian squalor on the poverty line with a couple barely staying afloat as society and addiction continuously seeks to drag them under into an abyss of forgotten souls. Frustration abounds as they hide beneath thick skins necessary to survive bureaucratic paper-pushers citing rules and regulations alongside a populace who’d rather ignore than lend a hand. Vanessa (Bhreagh MacNeil) looks defeated mostly,…

Read More

TIFF12 REVIEW: 2012 Short Cuts Canada Programmes

Jared Mobarak

Programme 1 “So a TV killed your father” What do you get when you mix the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the ancient metallurgical science of alchemy, and the namesake of inventor Philo Farnsworth? The answer is Connor Gaston‘s short film Bardo Light—titled for the bright glow none of us can avoid at the end of our lives. Told via the police interrogation of the younger Farnsworth (Shaan Rahman) after his adopted father (Bill Gaston) was found suffocated to death in their cabin, we quickly learn of successful experiments using…

Read More