TIFF16 REVIEW: Snowden [2016]

“Secrecy is security and security is victory” Remakes repackaging foreign films for American audiences are justifiable if done correctly. I’d hope our movie-going public would willingly read subtitles and experience the original artist’s vision, but we don’t live in a utopia. Dramatizing non-fiction work is equally acceptable in specific circumstances because a narrative built from talking head interviews is sometimes easier to parse and appreciate than those disparate accounts alone. Where I take umbrage with this trend is when Hollywood uses a documentary—an Oscar-winning documentary no less—and literally re-enacts it…

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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: Citizenfour [2014]

“It’s scary but at the same time liberating” Some films cannot be judged solely on form because their content is too crucial to be swept underneath ideas of aesthetic. Laura Poitras‘ Citizenfour is a perfect example. Its visuals are monotonously static with a majority of sequences depicting conversations between a whistleblower and a reporter inside a hotel room and there’s little information disseminated that hasn’t already been made publically known. To someone like me with only a cursory knowledge of the leak and specifics of the NSA’s surveillance into the…

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