TIFF22 REVIEW: I Like Movies [2023]

The medium is the homework. Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) likes movies. Not in the putting a film on in the background while hanging with friends sense. I mean recommending ‘s Happiness to a pregnant couple looking for a romantic comedy. He drags his best friend Matt Macarchuck (Percy Hynes White) to see because they both love watching “Saturday Night Live” together and laughs about intentionally duping him into seeing a Paul Thomas Anderson film he’ll probably hate. So, while Lawrence tells himself that he “likes” movies, he actually likes being…

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REVIEW: Rupture [2017]

“You will feel it soon” It’s taken ten years, but Secretary director Steven Shainberg has finally followed-up Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The result is Rupture, a body horror-lite tale about a woman held captive as part of an experiment meant to unlock humanity’s hidden potential to evolve beyond our current state. Written by Brian Nelson (the two share story credit), its script seeks to mess with our expectations as it does its prisoner Renee (Noomi Rapace). We’re to cultivate a sense of paranoia with surveillance dominating the…

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REVIEW: Milton’s Secret [2016]

“Without forgiveness the past determines who you are in the present” After finding international success with his spiritual teachings through best-selling books The Power of Now and A New Earth, author and counselor Eckhart Tolle set his sights on children in 2008 with Milton’s Secret and its blatantly synergistic subtitle to those previous works “An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now”. Written in collaboration with Robert S. Friedman and illustrator Frank Riccio, this tale focuses upon the titular eleven-year old (soon-to-be twelve) boy as an…

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