TIFF20 REVIEW: Concrete Cowboy [2020]

The past is not the present. There’s a pretty timely notion hiding in the background of director Ricky Staub and co-writer Dan Walser‘s Concrete Cowboy. Republicans love to spin a reductive talking point out of the “defund the police” initiative, but that plea isn’t actually demanding we dissolve law enforcement. It merely seeks to divert their excess of funds in order to assist them since they’re the first to admit they’re treading water in the deep end without a means to exit. Every time the government slashes a social program’s…

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REVIEW: Selah and the Spades [2020]

They always try to break you down when you’re seventeen. It’s senior year for the infamous teenage faction heads who rule Haldwell right under its custodians’ noses—the final two semesters to ready the successors they’ve handpicked to continue stewarding the longstanding legacy of extracurricular opportunities their tandem organizations have provided this east coast boarding school’s student body for decades. The passing of the batons proves even more crucial for this graduating class, though, because of the ever-present desire to stop their behind the scenes activities by a newly instated headmaster…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: Moonlight [2016]

“Chiron and trouble always found a way” What’s it like to be a young boy on the drug-filled streets of Miami: without friends, without family, without hope? As cliques begin to feign superiority by ganging up on the weak to prove themselves hard enough for what’s coming, Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert)—or “Little” as they call him—can do nothing but struggle to survive. So who would have thought the one man to show kindness would be the king of the very drug holes his bullies seek to rise up within? In…

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