REVIEW: Honey Bee [2019]

You’ll like the horses then. It would be easy to dismiss Rama Rau‘s first non-documentary feature Honey Bee as another melodramatically grim look at the consequences of sex trafficking in North America because it does utilize a lot of narrative convenience as far as driving the plot towards its endgame. Doing so, however, would discount the reason why Bonnie Fairweather and Kathleen Hepburn‘s script works this way and why the resulting message is more important than the journey to get there. The whole point of portraying young Natalie’s (Julia Sarah…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Come True [2021]

I can’t tell you that. The darkened screen is almost pitch black before we can begin to discern shapes in the distance. First it’s wooden stakes in the ground at what looks to be a trailhead of sorts. Next it’s a mountain in the distance. Finally we come to a door that swings open as though we’ve been placed inside a videogame merging the puzzle mechanics of Myst with the brooding aesthetic of Hellraiser only to continue moving forward towards a bald figure with back turned—unmoving and foreboding with a…

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TIFF17 REVIEW: Allure [A Worthy Companion] [2017]

“You don’t deserve any of it” Capturing the complexity of abuse is tough to accomplish when mainstream audiences clamor for black and white delineations between predator and prey. Some go the horror route for metaphorical terror focusing on the pursuer while others go dramatic for the helplessness of a victim unable to break free. Writer/directors (and photographers) Carlos Sanchez and Jason Sanchez chose to throw out convention, using their feature debut as a vehicle to explain how easy boxes don’t exist for the devastation wrought by abusive relationships built on…

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