TIFF20 REVIEW: Pieces of a Woman [2020]

There will be consequences. Every bit of promotional material I’ve read about director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber‘s Pieces of a Woman (kudos to their shared “a film by” credit) has billed the work as a look into the emotional grieving process of a woman who just lost her newborn child. Even the title highlights her experience above all others because she’s the one who gave birth. She’s the one who everyone is turning to for his/her own cues as to how to act. She’s the one whose body…

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REVIEW: Winchester [2018]

I died. You wouldn’t think to use the word timely to describe a horror movie about a place known as the Winchester Mystery House wherein a black lace-veiled woman feels the presence of ghosts and locks them away in specially built rooms with thirteen nails, but here we are. The reason stems from why this woman does what she does. She is Sarah Winchester—the widow of the son of the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—and she believes her family is cursed. To hear her say it, every victim…

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REVIEW: The Glass Castle [2017]

“You learn from living. Everything else is a damn lie.” It’s easy to dismiss films like Destin Daniel Cretton‘s The Glass Castle for losing their bite upon reaching a conclusion nobody can deny is melodramatically sentimental. You’ve watched Jeannette Walls’ (Brie Larson) decades-long journey of psychological pain and suffering wrought during her upbringing and ever-present in adulthood. You’ve seen trying times in poverty crosscut with present success, emboldened by her strength to stand tall and be the woman she wants to be no matter what the voices of her past…

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