Top Ten Films of 2014: A deluge of sci-fi doppelgängers and one-word titles

I don’t want to label 2014 as a good, bad, or average year. I want to call it inventive, original, and delightfully dark. Whether it’s doppelgänger paradoxes leading to murderous rage, the bleak carnage of war, prison violence, or psychologically debilitating struggles to be great, my favorite films had an edge that cut to the bone by credits’ end. The best thing I can say about 2014 is that my top ten (heck, maybe my top twenty-five) could be re-organized and re-listed without making me too angry about what is…

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REVIEW: The Good Lie [2014]

“I’m thinking about that chicken” It isn’t easy to write a film around a tragic hot-button issue such as the “Lost Boys of Sudan” without coming across as either exploitative or manipulative. Making the result human is an even loftier goal. I won’t say screenwriter Margaret Nagle and director Philippe Falardeau were flawless in their execution of The Good Lie, but they were at least honest. Well, more honest than the marketing firm selling us on Reese Witherspoon being the lead when she’s only onscreen for a quarter of the…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Beats of the Antonov [2014]

“Laughter is like a new birth” Sudanese director Hajooj Kuka‘s documentary Beats of the Antonov is smartly constructed in a way that eases us into the political message and hope for peace lying underneath the music and laughter initially portrayed. Beginning with a look at the people residing in the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, we learn about the planes overhead dropping bombs while they hide in ditches for cover. No matter how much pain and suffering is inflicted by these raids, however, they emerge with smiles to the…

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