REVIEW: Blood Relatives [2022]

What does that make me? As a vampire without American identification, you could say Francis (Noah Segan) is an illegal immigrant regardless of the fact he’s lived in the country longer than anyone else currently alive with a legitimate birth certificate. Why he chooses to drive through red states in his vintage Barracuda while confusing Alex Jones-loving, conspiracy-theorizing yokels with Yiddish is therefore a mystery. This is the solitary bachelor life he’s chosen, though. And perhaps that part of the country is simply better suited for a nomadic lifestyle demanding…

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REVIEW: White Noise [2022]

Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. I must commend Noah Baumbach for taking on Don DeLillo‘s White Noise because it is nothing like his other films. Where they are all in some way a projection of his life and that of those around him, this satirical tale of one family’s (in)ability to cope with their impending mortality is on an entirely different tonal level. Because while Baumbach’s worlds are obviously heightened realities delivered through an affected aesthetic lens, the dialogue and interactions coming from the Gladney family have…

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REVIEW: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery [2022]

I gave you the truth. Even world-renowned private detectives like Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) get restless during lockdown. Just as Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out put some tongue-in-cheek gags a la Trumpism and the rise of fascism under the façade of politics, his sequel Glass Onion injects a bit of COVID pandemic fatigue in much the same way. Whereas that window dressing continued throughout the former via juxtaposing a Latina lead against her affluently entitled white employers, it ends here quite early so that the mystery itself can take center stage.…

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REVIEW: My Father’s Dragon [2022]

I’m feeling really cautious! When the only home Elmer Elevator (Jacob Tremblay) ever knew becomes deserted and the grocery his mother (Golshifteh Farahani‘s Dela) owned is foreclosed, the duo is forced to move to the big city of Nevergreen amidst its hustle, bustle, industrial pollution, and mistrustful inhabitants. Gone are the days of knowing your neighbors and finding them the perfect item hiding in one of the shop’s corners. Now it’s scrounging every penny in the hopes of paying rent to Mrs. McClaren (Rita Moreno) so as not to be…

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REVIEW: Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades [Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths] [2022]

Slivers all knotted together. Our minds have a funny way of protecting us when events outside our control threaten to derail objectivity, comprehension, and even sanity. In the case of Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and Lucia Gacho (Griselda Siciliani) losing their first-born child Mateo thirty hours after his birth, the inability to let him go manifests as farce. They obviously know he’s gone—a metal urn in the shape of an egg holds his ashes. But the pain of that loss and the desire to watch him grow weaves a fantastical…

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REVIEW: Wendell & Wild [2022]

Let the revisionism begin. Sometimes tragedy begets opportunity. Case and point: Henry Selick‘s The Shadow King being unceremoniously scrapped by Pixar. It was supposed to be his follow-up to Coraline and the buzz was strong before things went south. So, while Selick took a step back creatively in the aftermath, he found “Key and Peele” debuting on Comedy Central. The director would ultimately finish its five-season run and declare Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele the “boldest, bravest, and funniest” comedy duo of his lifetime, vowing to reach out and broach…

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REVIEW: The Banshees of Inisherin [2022]

To are graves. Just like every other day at two o’clock for the past how many years, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) strolls across Inisherin, a small island off Ireland’s western shore, to collect his best friend Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) for a pint at Jonjo Devine’s (Pat Shortt) bar. Unlike those days (up to and including yesterday), however, his knock at the window goes unanswered. Colm is neither in distress nor absent. He’s merely sitting inside his house smoking. Pádraic is at a loss. Why won’t he acknowledge his presence?…

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REVIEW: May [2003]

I need more parts. Kids don’t like weird. They like being weird and marking those weirder than them as pariahs out of jealousy and/or entitlement. The question where it concerns May Dove Canady (Angela Bettis) is whether she was ever actually weird at all. As writer/director Lucky McKee explains via a brief prologue, the kids stayed away from her because of how she handled her lazy eye. Rather than lean into it and make it a non-issue, her mother did everything in her power to force young May to keep…

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BIFF22 REVIEW: Relative [2023]

Right beside you. Life is about handling contradictions. And they all demand that we choose between compromising, conceding, or refusing to back down whether it’s opposite a family member, friend, lover, or even yourself. We weigh pros and cons. We anticipate a future that we can never know for certain. Do we choose the job or the potential for love? Do we sacrifice our career for our spouse? Do we leave our hometown, or do we decide to make a new one? Each choice becomes another snowflake falling atop a…

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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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TIFF22 REVIEW: The Blackening [2023]

Probably runs on racism. The original short directed by Chioke Nassor asked a group of Black friends to choose who amongst them was the “blackest” as a sacrifice to save the rest. Why? Because the killer got confused when starting his spree due to his inability to find the “Black character” his trope-fueled brain demanded as its first victim. Hilarity ensues as everyone desperately tries erasing said blackness to keep breathing, revealing embarrassing (and some unforgivable) secrets along the way. It’s an ingenious conceit for a satire that’s perfectly suited…

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