REVIEW: Nocebo [2022]

What isn’t in the mind? Christine’s (Eva Green) perfect life comes crashing down with a phone call on what should be the best day of her professional career. A children’s clothing fashion designer, her latest catwalk is proving an immense success once the buzzing pushes her into the next room to learn horrible news for which we can only hypothesize from the word “bodies.” Shock and horror wipe the smile from her face as she hangs up with a quietly distraught attempt to pretend none of it had happened. That’s…

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REVIEW: Vivarium [2020]

Raise the child and be released We all like to believe that we have some semblance of control over our lives. Do we, though? How much of our identity is dictated by social conditioning? Maybe it’s explicit indoctrination like that taught by religion, politics, and culture as “superior” than others. Or maybe it’s implicit like the subliminal messaging possibilities of art appropriated by marketing. You might say to yourself that you’re too smart for advertising, but what do you do when confronted by four of the same product consisting of…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: Without Name [2016]

“Best to sleep with your pajamas on inside out, yeah?” For someone afraid of loneliness, Eric (Alan McKenna) sure loves putting himself in positions that can’t help isolating him from the world. A land surveyor who specializes in remote areas and works by himself unless apprentice-of-sorts Olivia (Niamh Algar) can tear herself away from her thesis to help, his long hours and extramarital affair (also when Olivia can put down her studies) risk destroying a marriage already on the rocks. He must work to keep his family together and therefore…

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