TIFF22 REVIEW: Fixation [2023]

The past is not the present. What did Dora (Maddie Hasson) do all those years ago? That’s the question she’s asking herself as she sits straightjacketed in a hospital she doesn’t remember entering. What did her family do to her to earn that ire? That’s the question her doctors (Genesis Rodriguez‘s Dr. Melanie and Stephen McHattie‘s Dr. Clark) hope to answer for her through an invasively experimental psychiatric evaluation. While the two questions ultimately go together considering her actions were a response to that abuse, separating them should always be…

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REVIEW: Malignant [2021]

It’s time we cut out the cancer. I don’t know about you, but the prologue to James Wan‘s Malignant is so tonally over-the-top that I expected the title screen to fade away and reveal it was a soap opera on the television inside Madison Mitchell’s (Annabelle Wallis) home. Reality, however, provides something different: an earnest decision to stay true to that soapy filter of comically extreme emotions with blatantly obvious reveals punctuated by overwrought music cues. Give Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper credit for sticking to those guns because the…

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REVIEW: We Summon the Darkness [2020]

Let the madness begin. A rash of 1980s-era satanic ritual killings puts Pastor John Henry Butler (Johnny Knoxville) front and center in rural America’s consciousness because his church is doing its very best to combat the disintegration of society with the word of God. Just as his increased television appearances rally the Bible Belt to his cause (treating rock music and other not quite “demonic” practices as sinful weapons destroying their children’s souls), however, they also work to embolden those he is forsaking. More than calling out the as yet…

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TIFF15 REVIEW: I Saw the Light [2016]

“Remember: they can kill you, but they can’t eat you” The opening to Marc Abraham‘s I Saw the Light holds a lot of intrigue. Based on Colin Escott‘s biography about hillbilly legend Hank Williams, the start goes from a faux black and white newsreel interview with producer Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford) recounting how one-of-a-kind the singer was to a magically lit performance by Tom Hiddleston as Williams (the actor sings every note and the actors playing his band pluck every string). He’s sitting on a stool with a hazy spotlight…

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REVIEW: God Bless America [2012]

“You guys need extra napkins?” I’ll probably end up on some kind of list for saying it, but Frank Murdoch is my new hero. Here is a guy so fed up with the disintegrating IQ of America turning its rabble into slaves to C-list celebrities and numb to shock value that he’s decided to cleanse the country of its idiocy. Evil role models, entitled millionaires, prepubescent whores, and a new generation so attached to their technologically advanced toys that they’ve lost the concept of personal responsibility and human compassionā€”all must…

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