REVIEW: Wrath of Man [2021]

We’re all over-qualified for this game. And we all have a history. Fans of Guy Ritchie that wore out Lock Stock and Snatch during the early Aughts will find themselves hard-pressed to take the opening act of Wrath of Man seriously. It’s as though he and co-writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies are trying to re-capture the quick-paced slang that made the dialogue in those films so uniquely fun and of the moment despite being two decades removed in age and culture. Because while talking the talk as a thirty-year…

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TIFF19 REVIEW: The Shadow of Violence [Calm with Horses] [2020]

That’s not you. To cross the Devers family is to earn retribution. This is a known fact to all in the rural Irish town of Glanbeigh. Some strangers arrive and overstep their bounds without knowing (as if getting involved with drug dealers was an act whose danger can be unknown), but most everyone knows everyone else’s name and where to find them. So when it’s Fannigan’s (Liam Carney) turn to “make good” on a transgression, he doesn’t try to run. He sits in his chair as Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (Cosmo…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: Without Name [2016]

“Best to sleep with your pajamas on inside out, yeah?” For someone afraid of loneliness, Eric (Alan McKenna) sure loves putting himself in positions that can’t help isolating him from the world. A land surveyor who specializes in remote areas and works by himself unless apprentice-of-sorts Olivia (Niamh Algar) can tear herself away from her thesis to help, his long hours and extramarital affair (also when Olivia can put down her studies) risk destroying a marriage already on the rocks. He must work to keep his family together and therefore…

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