TIFF13 REVIEW: Mystery Road [2013]

“How’d he know it was a wild one, Jay?” Originally conjured up by writer/director Ivan Sen in 2006, Mystery Road’s look at a “turncoat” cop working within a largely racist, white profession always had Australian television actor Aaron Pedersen in mind for the lead. Years passed, locales shifted, and the end result is finally hitting theaters as a sort of contemporary western set in the outback home of a returning detective years removed after a stint in the city. Not only an outcast with his peers—each quick to ensure his…

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REVIEW: Top of the Lake, Parts 1-3 [2013]

“You know, you were my first kiss. Was I yours?” A young boy on a bus—this is the indelible mark left by the first three episodes of Jane Campion and Gerard Lee‘s miniseries Top of the Lake and it sticks less than five minutes in. Anonymous throughout these three hours of crime drama, this boy is the only one who seems to care about twelve-year old Tui (Jacqueline Joe) after she walks into their small New Zealand town’s cursed lake. His text “R U OK” goes answered as she is…

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