REVIEW: Infinite Storm [2022]

You know what day it is. There’s a beautiful tale of grief and rebirth at the center of Malgorzata Szumowska‘s film Infinite Storm. The only reason Pam Bales (Naomi Watts) hiked up Mt. Washington despite warnings of blizzards and extreme temperatures that November day is because, as she tells her friend (Denis O’Hare), “It’s cheaper than therapy.” This has been her ritual on the anniversary of her daughters’ death. She climbs. She remembers. She mourns without the threat of anyone trying to comfort or pity her in a moment of…

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TIFF17 REVIEW: On Chesil Beach [2018]

“I wasn’t my family. I was me.” It’s 1962. Florence Ponting (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward Mayhew (Billy Howle) have just been married. She’s from a wealthy family and he a provincial one; her desire to be active in world affairs beyond her status’ ambivalence and his hope to be accepted as an intellectual with the potential of outgrowing a brawler reputation placing them at odds with the environments that raised them to seek escape. And they are in love: a true, deep, and unstoppable love that allowed their differences to…

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