TIFF Review: “Leonor Will Never Die”

Toronto International Film Festival Canadian premiere and Midnight Madness closing night film. There’s an indelible charm to 80s action movies, whether they’re good, bad, or as is often the case, so bad they’re good. Beyond the glorification of violence and celebration of masculinity at its most macho, the action is frequently creatively realized (particularly in […]

TIFF Review: “Susie Searches”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 World Premiere It’s exciting when movies take ambitious swings, but sometimes the final product is too messy to be even admired. At the beginning of Sophie Kargman’s feature debut “Susie Searches” (based on her 2020 short of the same name), the story appears to be moving in a predictable direction, […]

TIFF Review: “Prisoner’s Daughter”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 Gala Presentation World Premiere Max (Brian Cox) has just been freed from a long prison sentence. But that’s about as good as the good news gets. The reason for him being granted the opportunity to spend the rest of his sentence on house arrest is because he’s been diagnosed with […]

TIFF Review: “Coyote”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 World Premiere The clatter of dishes and murmur of voices populate the background of the opening scene of Katherine Jerkovic’s sophomore feature “Coyote.” Framed in a medium close-up against a plain wall, Camilo (Jorge Martinez Colorado) speaks to someone off-screen. As he describes his past experience, it’s quickly clear that […]

TIFF Review: “El Agua”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 North American Premiere In a small river-side town in Spain, legend holds that every few decades when the river overflows, female residents disappear, an effect of the water’s desire to claim a woman who has recently fallen in love. Filming in her hometown and drawing on its own local legends, […]

Review: “Bodies Bodies Bodies”

“Bodies Bodies Bodies,” director Halina Reijn’s Gen-Z satire clothed in trappings of a whodunnit from a story by Kristen Roupenian and screenplay by Sarah DeLappe, opens on a tender note. The camera caresses young couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and their girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) as they caress each other, Sophie even going so far as […]

Review: “Alone Together”

We’re over two years into this thing now, and I think I’ve figured out at least partially why no movie that centers around the COVID-19 pandemic has been good. In fact, they’ve almost all been almost excruciatingly bad, with the exception of Steven Soderbergh’s straight-to-HBO Max thriller “Kimi,” which tied the protagonist’s anxiety to the […]

Review: “Skies of Lebanon”

He was an astrophysicist who dreamed of sending the first Lebanese man into space. She was a Swiss artist who moved to Beirut to work as a nanny. For this seemingly unusual pair, it was love at first sight, but even the most idyllic romance struggles to withstand the hardships of war. Director and cowriter […]

Review: “Watcher”

Julia (Maika Monroe) is outside her comfort zone. The American just moved to Bucharest with her part-Romanian husband Francis (Karl Glusman), who accepted a demanding new job there. With Francis away for much of the day, and not knowing the language or anyone around her, Julia’s isolation soon transforms into paranoia when a serial killer […]

Review: ”Marvelous and the Black Hole”

Sammy (Miya Cech) is angry. Her mother passed away within the last few years, and the 13-year-old channels her grief through acts of aggression at school (vandalism, and a fight that leaves her with a black eye) and home. She smokes and uses foul language. She shuts out her older sister Sue (Jae Suh Park) […]