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TIFF 2021 | The Other Tom (Rodrigo Plá, Laura Santullo, Mexico/USA)
By Angelo Muredda Single mom Elena (Julia Chavez) tries to do right by her scampish ten-year-old son Tom (Israel Rodríguez Bertorelli) despite the interventions of the byzantine Texas school system in Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo’s minor-key drama The Other Tom, based on Santullo’s novel. The filmmakers do well to balance their kitchen-sink realism and…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | One Second (Zhang Yimou, China)
By Shelly Kraicer Published in Cinema Scope #87 (Summer 2021) Zhang Yimou has released 22 features to date, in addition to a couple of shorts, two more features shot and ready to go (censors permitting), his grandiose made-for-TV pageants for the Beijing Olympics, opera stagings like Turandot at the Forbidden City, and, if we’re being…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Murina (Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, Croatia)
By Madeleine Wall Winner of this year’s Caméra d’Or at Cannes, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Murina is a competent but slight combo of thriller and coming-of-age film basking in the sun of the Adriatic sea. Armed with a speargun and clad in a white bathing suit, 16-year-old Julija (Gracija Filipovic) cuts a striking figure in the…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Devil’s Drivers (Mohammed Abugeth & Daniel Carsenty, Qatar/France/Lebanon/Germany)
By Katherine Connell Car chases, the customary crescendo of the action genre, are a tense everyday reality for the subjects of The Devil’s Drivers, Mohammed Abugeth and Daniel Carsenty’s documentary that follows Palestinian drivers who smuggle workers living in the West Bank into Israel. Plumes of orange dirt trail behind vehicles navigating desert roads at…
By Katherine Connell | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Dashcam (Rob Savage, UK)
By Corey Atad As livestream horror has become a recognizable subgenre in its own right, director Rob Savage has deliberately thrown all caution to the wind, diving head first into absolute chaos with Dashcam, his follow-up to the more sparse, Zoom-set pandemic hit Host. The chaos begins well before the horror with our introduction to…
By Corey Atad | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve, France)
By Jay Kuehner The concept of a Bergman Safari on the island of Fårö is something that not even a Roy Andersson would have conceived of, but it’s a tour bus that many cinephiles have been riding for years, like it or not. The punchline afforded in Mia Hansen-Løve’s faintly brackish, irreverent homage is that…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | France (Bruno Dumont, France)
By Lawrence Garcia Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus In the seven years since P’tit Quinquin, it has become impossible to continue tagging Bruno Dumont with the longstanding clichés of Bresson criticism. Epithets like “ascetic,” “severe,” “punishing”—already limited descriptors…
By Lawrence Garcia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Spencer (Pablo Larraín, UK/Germany)
By Jay Kuehner Come for the Di, but stay for the Pablo. Having followed the moves of the Chilean autor far more than that of any royal family member, I thought the strategy was sound enough to suffer the eternal hors d’oeuvre of crustless sandwiches and acrid tea that is monarchy-watching. If Larraín, in Tony…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | A Hero (Asghar Farhadi, Iran)
By Jay Kuehner An unexpected insight is proffered in Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero by the maligned creditor Bahram, who speculates whether good deeds have become so scarce in society that they warrant congratulation. Much of Farhadi’s moral tale revolves around the appearance of virtue and all of its attendant deceptions, conjuring a very modern anxiety…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Sundown (Michel Franco, Mexico)
By Adam Nayman The indefatigable Michel Franco is back on his grind with Sundown, a companion piece to last year’s accomplished or objectionable (depending on who you ask) New Order. Both films—one a thriller, the other a character study, both set in the director’s native Mexico—could broadly be said to be about “wealth inequality.” Careful…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Zalava (Arsalan Amiri, Iran)
By Madeleine Wall It is easy to be certain in the daylight. For gendarmerie sergeant Masoud (Navid Pourfaraj), maintaining order in the small Kurdish village of Zalava is a balancing act between accommodating the superstitions of the villagers and the rapidly changing modern world. These beliefs are foundational to the villagers, part of their genetics,…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Three Minutes – A Lengthening (Bianca Stigter, Netherlands/UK)
By Jay Kuehner Perhaps not since José Luis Guerin’s Tren des Sombres (1997) has a film so exactingly interrogated its source—in the case of Bianca Stigter’s documentary, a short 16mm reel discovered in a Florida attic in 2008 by the maker’s grandson, Glenn Kurtz. The eponymous three minutes of holiday footage (shot in the Polish…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Farha (Darin J. Sallam, Jordan/Sweden/Saudi Arabia)
By Gabrielle Marceau Farha opens with a familiar story: a young Palestinian girl, nearing womanhood, who is trying to determine the course of her life beyond the confines of tradition. Farha (Karam Taher) wants to go to school, but her father wants her to marry and stay in their village. This family conflict is interrupted…
By Gabrielle Marceau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Wheel (Steve Pink, USA)
By Adam Nayman From the director of both Hot Tub Time Machine movies (there was a sequel, remember) comes a probing, emotional relationship drama. “What if it doesn’t work?” asks Albee (Amber Midthunder) about the step-by-step, relationship-saving experiment proposed by her husband Walker (Taylor Gray), and the only thing really pressurizing the 83 more or…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Drunken Birds (Ivan Grbovic, Canada)
By Angelo Muredda With Jean-Marc Vallée tied up in American television and Denis Villeneuve bound for Arrakis, Canada’s response to the tangled international melodramas of Alejandro González Iñárritu seemingly falls to Ivan Grbovic. Grbovic follows up his understated character study Roméo Onze with the curiously schematic Drunken Birds, which marks a step up in scale…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Denmark)
By Robert Koehler Jonas Poher Rasmussen, the Danish co-writer and director of Flee, met an Afghan refugee in high school. He’s maintained a friendship with him ever since, but realized at some point that he didn’t really know him. Rasmussen’s heartfelt yet gimmicky attempt at understanding him better isn’t as failed as the 20-year US…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Dune (Denis Villeneuve, US/Hungary)
By Meg Shields In retrospect, Denis Villeneuve’s career has always been hurtling toward Dune, given its fateful melange of unadaptable sci-fi (Arrival), closely guarded cult objects (Blade Runner 2049), and morally fraught political sandstorms (Sicario). Adapting the first half of Frank Herbert’s monumental sci-fi novel, Dune begins with an uneasy exchange of power: the transfer…
By Meg Shields | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović, UK/France/Belgium)
By Madeleine Wall In a large, gloomy house somewhere in Europe, sometime after a war, Albert (a brittle Paul Hilton) lives in isolation with his charge, ten-year-old Mia (Romane Hemelaers). Mia does not speak, and Albert’s main communication with the outside world is from sporadic telephone calls, asking about the state of his ward. Mia…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad/France/Germany/Belgium)
By Jordan Cronk Another fine if unremarkable film in a career defined by them, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Lingui, the Sacred Bonds features all the hallmarks that have made the Chadian director a mainstay of the modern festival circuit: competent craftsmanship, topical subject matter, and geographic backdrops just unique enough to lend an air of urgency to…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Whether the Weather is Fine (Carlo Francisco Manatad, Philippines/France/Singapore/ Indonesia/Germany/Qatar)
By Robert Koehler In early November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan hit the eastern Filipino island of Leyte with wind speeds as high as 195mph—the second-highest ever recorded in the Western Pacific. Haiyan killed over 6,300 and flattened most of Tacloban City, the hometown of filmmaker Carlo Francisco Manatad. In his feature debut, Manatad has reconceived the…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | To Kill the Beast (Agustina San Martín, Argentina/Brazil/Chile)
By Katherine Connell The moon floats against a sky so overcast that it’s impossible to determine whether the hour is night or day—a suitably disorienting opener for Agustina San Martín’s surreal To Kill the Beast. In an area surrounded by rainforest bordering Brazil and Argentina, 17-year-old Emilia (Tamara Rocca) shows up at a hostel owned…
By Katherine Connell | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Mlungu Wam (Jenna Cato Bass, South Africa)
By Angleo Muredda “I think she’s been working for too long now,” a man deadpans about his bone-tired mother Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe) late in Jenna Cato Bass’s absorbing thriller Mlungu Wam, an allegory about how the white supremacist violence of apartheid-era South Africa reverberates into the future as demons for the children and grandchildren of…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid, France/Israel/Germany)
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) Nadav Lapid continues to take a scalpel to contemporary Israel in Ahed’s Knee, although this particular dissection might leave a bigger scar. The Kindergarten Teacher (2014) and Synonyms (2019) already flirted with autobiography, but his fourth feature pushes forward into full autofiction, sending a director…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, Canada)
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope #86 (Spring 2021) When navigating the as-yet-unknown films of a festival program, nationality still provides a persuasive point of reference for some, a feeling underlined by the proud declarations issued by national funding organizations, promotional bodies, or particularly partisan members of the press once titles have been announced.…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Middle Man (Bent Hamer, Norway/Germany/ Denmark/Canada)
By Adam Nayman Tapped for a spectacularly thankless civil service gig in a dilapidated Ontario backwater, Frank (Sverre Hagen) interviews for the job in front of a panel that includes Don McKellar and Paul Gross. The Canadiana couldn’t be thicker, but as writer-director Bent Hamer actually hails from historic Sandefjord, Norway—a one-time Viking stronghold and…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, Russia)
By Robert Koehler A suffocating, claustrophobic box canyon, lousy with industrial waste, is the dominant landscape of Kira Kovalenko’s second feature, Unclenching the Fists. Kovalenko, who workshopped with Alexander Sokurov but is firmly her own filmmaker, uses this place—Mizur, in the Caucasus highlands of North Ossetia-Alania—as a metonym for the awful, hopeless lives of her…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Quickening (Haya Waseem, Canada)
By Katherine Connell Writer-director Haya Waseem’s formally striking first feature is a melodrama executed with considerable restraint. After an opening title defines the term “pseudocyesis”—a form of psychosomatic but hormonally convincing pregnancy—we are taken to a dance studio, where bodies writhe on the floor and smash into walls. In front of the class, Pakistani Canadian…
By Katherine Connell | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Small Body (Laura Samani, Italy/France/Slovenia)
By Angelo Muredda A young mother’s desire to give her stillborn child a name prompts a perilous trip to a mountain sanctuary in Laura Samani’s assured if familiar Small Body. Celeste Cescutti is appropriately severe as Agata, a pure-hearted stoic who risks life and limb to carry her limbo-bound child to a remote church where…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Wen Shipei, China)
By Shelly Kraicer Increasingly strict censorship limits the kind of films Chinese directors can make and still get approved for either domestic screenings or export. But film noir remains a viable option for filmmakers to play with violence and ambiguity, within limits. Are You Lonesome Tonight? is first-time director Wen Shipei’s entry into a tough…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes, Portugal)
By Robert Koehler 2020 may go down as The Year From Hell, but at least it gave us The Tsugua Diaries. Rudely interrupted by the COVID pandemic in proceeding with not one, but two productions—Savagery and Grand Tour—Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes opted to do exactly the opposite of what everyone, including undoubtedly the Portuguese…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Falls (Chung Mong-hong, Taiwan)
By Shelly Kraicer Many recent films take COVID-era quarantining as a premise to examine lonely humans and their difficulties connecting, but Chung Mong-hong’s The Falls does something quite special. This story of a cloistered family allows the Taiwanese director—who has heretofore specialized in blackly comic portraits of men under intense stress—to open up his world…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Lo Invisible (Javier Andrade, Ecuador/France)
By Angelo Muredda Anahi Hoeneisen is inscrutable as a woman on the verge of either a breakdown or a breakthrough in Javier Andrade’s chamber drama Lo Invisible. Co-written by Hoeneisen and Andrade, the film unfolds, enigmatically at first and then tediously, as a series of opaque tableaux of protagonist Luisa’s tentative reintegration into family life…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Mad Women’s Ball (Mélanie Laurent, France)
By Katherine Connell Despite its interest in shedding light on the patriarchal, abusive history of medicine, Mélanie Laurent’s The Mad Women’s Ball can’t help but indulge tropes that both romanticize and exploit its subject matter. An adaptation of the novel by Victoria Mas, the film follows Eugénie Cléry (Lou de Laâge), whose privileged class status…
By Katherine Connell | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria)
By Christoph Huber Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) I Peter Tscherkassky’s 20-minute film Train Again unearths some new materialist marvels while expanding on those typically Tscherkasskian sensations the Austrian filmmaker achieves through the technique of contact printing, in which found footage is copied by hand, frame by frame, onto unexposed film stock. His…
By Christoph Huber | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, Norway/France/Sweden/Denmark)
By Jordan Cronk One of the year’s more pleasantly unexpected returns to form, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World finds the Norwegian director back on firmer ground following the underwhelming international co-production Louder Than Bombs (2015) and the ill-fitting supernatural thriller Thelma (2017). Though billed as the final film in a trilogy that…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Terrorizers (Ho Di Wing, Taiwan)
By Shelly Kraicer Starting from a seemingly unmotivated samurai-style sword attack in present-day Taipei’s main train station, Terrorizers circles back and around again and again through a complex network of characters—a student, an aspiring actress, a cosplayer, a masseuse—spawning threads and mysteries that it eventually knits back together into a disturbing portrait of today’s Taiwanese…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Maria Chapdelaine (Sébastien Pilote, Canada)
By Gabrielle Marceau Maria (Sara Montpetit) is the eldest daughter of a settler family living in rural Québec after the turn of the century, and like many literary heroines, she is trying to determine what kind of life she wants to lead— which, in the strictures of the era, means which suitor to marry. She…
By Gabrielle Marceau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Kicking Blood (Blaine Thurier, Canada)
By Gabrielle Marceau Early in Blaine Thurier’s existential vampire drama, the beautiful, bloodsucking Anna (Alanna Bale) takes home the hapless drunk Robbie. He asks for a drink, and Anna replies: “I don’t drink alcohol.” It’s a clear reference to Bela Lugosi’s iconic line in Dracula (1931), where he lingers deliciously over the pause between, “I…
By Gabrielle Marceau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Girl and the Spider (Ramon & Silvan Zürcher, Switzerland)
By Blake Williams Published in Cinema Scope #87 (Summer 2021) I will never know how you see red, and you will never know how I see it; but this separation of consciousnesses is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.—Maurice Merleau-Ponty Near…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Jockey (Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar, US)
By Robert Koehler The sun is setting on the career of Phoenix-based jockey Jackson Silva, literally, in Jockey, an old-fashioned sports movie that has inexplicably become one of the hits of this year’s North American festival circuit. It was one of the few acquisitions by Sony Pictures Classics at Sundance, a testimony to either how…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Night Raiders (Danis Goulet, Canada/New Zealand)
By Katherine Connell Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) The appeal of dystopian narratives hangs on their capacity to hold up a funhouse mirror to the corruption and exploitation of our already extant social realities. Indigenous artists and filmmakers have long underscored the dystopic reality of colonial nation states in their work, and the…
By Katherine Connell | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Edwin, Indonesia/Singapore/Germany)
By Robert Koehler One of the dirty little secrets of art cinema is that most directors who make such films can’t do action. (I adore Zama [2017] as much as anybody, but, oh my, those action scenes…) So it is with Edwin and his well-intentioned but bumbling Indonesian martial-arts tribute movie based on Eka Kurniawan’s…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Titane (Julie Ducournau, France/Belgium)
By Phil Coldiron Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) The erotic history of the car in cinema extends back nearly to the dawn of the medium: there’s Chaplin, in 1914, asserting in his first film that he’s a more enticing view than the soapbox derbies at the Kid Auto Races (no engines yet). Though…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia/Thailand/ UK/France/Germany/Mexico)
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) “When he came to, the present was almost intolerable in its richness and sharpness, as were his most distant and trivial memories…Now his perception and his memory were infallible.”—Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes the Memorious” Amongst the research materials, set photographs, email correspondence, and treatment excerpts…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | The Odd-Job Men (Neus Ballús, Spain)
By Robert Koehler It is advisable to ignore most festival program notes. It is especially advisable to ignore the TIFF program note accompanying The Odd-Job Men, which would set up the viewer to expect a feminist parable on machismo. Catalan filmmaker Neus Ballús and the screenwriting team of Montse Ganges and Ana Sanz-Magallón (under their…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryusuke, Japan)
By Mark Peranson Published in Cinema Scope #88 (Fall 2021) Throughout his filmography, tracing back to Happy Hour (2015), Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been intrigued by the place of women in Japanese society: their awareness of how they are supposed to behave and how they either choose to live by the rules or break out on…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2021 | Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, France)
By Courtney Duckworth Published in Cinema Scope #87 (Summer 2021) Fairy tales routinely kill or banish parents to clear a path for the roaming imaginations of children. Recall that Hansel and Gretel must plumb the forest alone, assaying their own mettle, and the stranded Goose Girl cannot speak her secret self to another soul. Céline…
By Courtney Duckworth | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2021, TIFF Coverage & Reviews
TIFF 2020: Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada)
By Adam Nayman The sterile, corkscrew expanse of the Guggenheim is a concrete geometric presence in Point and Line to Plane, which takes its title from a 1947 book of art theory by Wassily Kandinsky and is punctuated by images of his abstract canvases, as well as those of his lesser-known predecessor Hilma af Klint.…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Rules for Werewolves (Jeremy Schaulin-Roux, Canada)
By Adam Nayman Having not read Kirk Lynn’s 2015 novel about a feral cult of squatters, I can’t say if Rules for Werewolves qualifies as a proper adaptation or a literary riff in miniature: the snaky long take narrating the desecration of a sprawling but sterile suburban mansion unfolds in sync to the author’s ramblingly…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman, US/Canada)
By Adam Nayman The title character of Canadian director Emma Seligman’s feature debut is technically the 18-month-old blonde moppet sired by affluent nebbish Max (Danny Deferrari) and his shiksa-goddess wife Kim (Dianna Agron), a miniature avatar of assimilation yelping up a storm amidst a company of black-clad mourners. Symbolically, though, the title refers to tousled,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, Canada)
By Adam Nayman “A moment stopped would burn like a frame of film, blocked before the furnace of the projector,” intones Alexandra Stewart in Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983), testifying to the essential fluidity of time versus the fixity of photography. Marker’s point seems to be that to disproportionately privilege still images, in cinema as…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Violation (Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, Canada)
By Adam Nayman If you believe that the worst thing a movie can do is pass unnoticed, then Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli’s Violation might be for you. Deliberately taking its formal and tonal cues from certain filmmakers occupying the endurance-test wing of the art/grindhouse—specifically the cabin-in-the-woods incarnations of Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier—Violation…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Inconvenient Indian (Michelle Latimer, Canada)
By Adam Nayman Toronto’s Fox Theatre plays itself in Inconvenient Indian, which opens by sending Thomas King—author of the 2012 critical study that give the film its title and rhetorical spine—to the cinema. Sitting in the dark before clips from Nanook of the North, a man watches a movie, and the critic must acknowledge that…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Every Day’s Like This (Lev Lewis, Canada)
By Adam Nayman The one direct allusion to assisted suicide in Every Day’s Like This is filtered through movie madness: discussing a potential date for the euthanasia of their terminally ill matriarch, a father and his two young-adult children agree that it would be best not to do it before the Oscars. Lev Lewis’ mournful…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Beans (Tracey Deer, Canada)
By Adam Nayman “Fuck you,” whispers 12-year old Beans (Kiawentiio) to her reflection in the mirror, a playful gesture of self-deprecation that’s also a rehearsal for external clashes. It’s July 1990 in Oka, and if a preteen Mohawk girl is going to get through a summer of standoffs in one piece—or fit in with the…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: As Spring Comes (Marie-Ève Juste, Canada)
By Adam Nayman Metaphor blooms in As Spring Comes, which reconfigures a frosbitten ice-fishing shack into a literal hothouse. Sheltered inside with her lover in what seems to be a mutually understood ritual, a young woman photogenically mutates—evolves? reverts?—from fauna to flora. Typically, a little magic realism goes a long way, and thankfully, French-Canadian director…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: The Archivists (Igor Drljaca, Canada)
By Adam Nayman A significant change of pace for Bosnian-Canadian filmmaker Igor Drljaca after a run of Balkan-themed hybrid fictions and docs, the sci-fi-inflected The Archivists concerns a trio of future-shocked musicologists trying to reconstruct an I-Love-the-’80s hit, using improvised instruments in an abandoned country home. The theme is the durability and necessity of art…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Akilla’s Escape (Charles Officer, Canada)
By Adam Nayman A weary, wary weed dealer with decades on his odometer, Akilla (Saul Williams) operates self-effacingly under cover of the Toronto night; staring down the barrel of a gun aimed by Jamaican gangbanger Sheppard (Thamela Mpumlwana), he decides to try to save a wayward boy who could be his mirror. The structural gimmick…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili, US)
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope #84 (Fall 2020) The role of past insights in (still) present-day struggles is at the heart of The Inheritance, a playful, erudite, and boundary-blurring examination of what performing Black theory, literature, music, and testimony in a contemporary Philadelphia commune might set in motion. Given even greater topicality by…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Fauna (Nicolás Pereda, Mexico/Canada)
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope #84 (Fall 2020) There’s a point in nearly every Nicolás Pereda film when the narrative is either reoriented or upended in some way. In the past this has occurred through bifurcations in story structure or via ruptures along a given film’s docufiction fault line. Pereda’s ninth feature, Fauna,…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
TIFF 2020: Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy/France/Germany)
By Mark Peranson Published in Cinema Scope #84 (Fall 2020) “The night scares me so much,” confesses a courageous Yazidi pre-teen girl to a therapist, remembering the period when she and her younger sister were captured by ISIS. Anyone who was seen crying would be killed, they were told; it turned out to be a…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2020
Three Summers (Sandra Kogut, Brazil/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Caitlin Quinlan Celebrated Brazilian actor Regina Casé shines as Madá, the industrious, enterprising housekeeper for a wealthy Rio family in Sandra Kogut’s warmly affecting Three Summers. Each December from 2015 to2017, Kogut’s film checks in on Madá and her co-workers at a condominium owned by Mr. Edgar and Ms. Marta, the disengaged, too-rich-for-their-own-good married…
By Caitlin Quinlan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Knives Out (Rian Johnson, US) — Special Presentations
By Meg Shields Knives Out is a massively fun, if blissfully unsubtle, old-school whodunnit from Star Wars helmer Rian Johnson. The film takes place in a manor presumably built by the same contractor behind Laurence Olivier’s mansion in Sleuth, and revolves around the mysterious death of the Thrombrey family’s patriarch, Harlan (Christopher Plummer). The writing…
By Meg Shields | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman With five minutes to go in Jojo Rabbit, I laughed out loud. One of the actors (not one of the famous ones) got off a good line reading, and my response, fully audible and totally involuntary, filled me with shame. (I actually apologized to my seatmate, who will remain nameless but successfully…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Hope (Maria Sødahl, Norway/Sweden) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski This third feature film by Maria Sødahl is less a comeback than a new beginning. As the opening title card announces, Hope is based on a true story, although the director refrains from telling the viewer that the story is in fact her own. This knowledge certainly isn’t necessary, but it only…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh, US) — Special Presentations
By Mark Asch “Follow the money” is the imperative of every Steven Soderbergh movie: since Traffic helped inaugurate the “everything is connected” genre, he’s tracked the flow of circulating commodities from viruses to athletes, and his heist films invert the find-the-lady deceptiveness of global finance to redistributive ends. The Laudromat, his Panama Papers movie, aims…
By Mark Asch | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas, France/Brazil/Spain/Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig There is certainly fertile ground for a film in the spy-riddled landscape between Cuba and Miami during the early ’90s. Think of the Pulitzer-winning photograph of six-year-old Elián González being forcibly seized by armed soldiers, and you have the setting for Olivier Assayas’ new film. Wasp Network narrates the heyday of…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie, US) — Special Presentations
By Ella Kemp Josh and Benny Safdie chip away at the diamond-hard veneer of greed with Uncut Gems, their newest New York thriller that offers up a nightmare vision of a business transaction gone awry. Adam Sandler is at once ferocious and utterly numb-skulled as Howard Ratner, a Jewish jeweller with no self-awareness but an…
By Ella Kemp | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Song of Names (François Girard, Canada) — Gala Presentations
By Josh Cabrita Though the designation of a “late work” is usually reserved for revered masters who in their twilight years distil their style down to its supposedly purified essence, I see no reason why that term couldn’t also apply to a decidedly mediocre (and rarely brilliant) filmmaker like François Girard. Adapted from a book…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers & Kathleen Hepburn, Canada/Norway) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Josh Cabrita The sad, slow, melancholy words of Joni Mithcell’s “Little Green” feature prominently in a mournful scene from the latest by Vancouver filmmakers Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. While East Vancouver hipster Áila (Tailfeathers) speaks over the phone with a female crisis centre, the “extremely pregnant” Rosie (Violet Nelson)—whom the former happened upon…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Resin (Daniel Joseph Borgman, Denmark) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Something sticky this way comes: Resin is not a very good film judged on its own merits, but it also has the additional misfortune of demanding a side-by-side comparison. The story of Jens (Peter Plaugborg), a delusional “naturalist” who has moved his family to the outskirts of town after faking the drowning…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Henry Glassie: Field Work (Pat Collins, Ireland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Phoebe Chen Pat Collins’ Henry Glassie: Field Work follows the folkloric practices of its title subject, an emeritus professor at Indiana University who has spent the past 50 years in decade-long sojourns with folk artists across various continents. That a white, American ethnographer should be the ideal interlocutor for communities of craftspeople in rural…
By Phoebe Chen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
August (Armando Capó, Cuba/Costa Rica/France) — Discovery
By Caitlin Quinlan In August, director Armando Capó makes beautiful use of a Cuban colour palette: lush, leafy greens, rich sea blues, with accents of yellows and oranges. Even the subtitles appear in a soft shade of pink. This debut feature is indicative of a director with a skillful eye for composition and framing, and…
By Caitlin Quinlan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Twentieth Century (Matthew Rankin, Canada) — Midnight Madness
By Michael Sicinski Hats off to Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky for selecting this singular, albeit somewhat counterintuitive, homegrown oddity. Certainly a cult item in the making, The Twentieth Century represents the sort of Freudian-perverse take on national mythmaking that one finds in the work of Jim Finn, combined with the stark Futurist abstraction of…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Proxima ( Alice Winocour, Germany/France) — Platform
By Mark Asch A feature-length version of the scene in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact (1997) in which an astronaut’s teary-eyed daughter begs her daddy not to go into space, Alice Winocour’s Proxima follows Eva Green as she juggles parenting an eight-year-old and preparations for a year aboard the International Space Station. Sarah (Green) shares custody of…
By Mark Asch | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, France) — Special Presentations
By Anna Swanson Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, the first thing that stands out about Portrait of a Lady on Fire is its framing device. The film begins with artist and instructor Marianne (Noémie Merlant) posing for her students; when one inquires about a striking painting on the wall of her studio, the film transports to…
By Anna Swanson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Antenna (Orçun Behram, Turkey) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall Hiding from the world behind solitary, mindless work, Mehmet (Ihsan Önal) serves as the superintendent of an anonymous apartment complex. The residents mainly keep to themselves, but as Mehmet settles in for a day where the only thing of note on the agenda is the installation of a new antenna, things rapidly…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Un film dramatique (Éric Baudelaire, France) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Despite the fact that it is both preposterous and technologically untenable, a widespread ideology tends to enshroud childhood, proclaiming it a space to be protected from politics and social concerns, a zone of “innocence.” This is perhaps why, in the United States—a nation where a young person entering a school building doesn’t…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Easy Land (Sanja Zivkovic, Canada) — Discovery
By Anna Swanson For the mother-daughter pair of Sanja Zivkovic’s directorial debut Easy Land, the old sentiment that the grass is always greener on the other side resolutely rings true. Jasna (Mirjana Jokovic) is a Serbian immigrant committed to her dream of giving the teenage Nina (Nina Kiri) a better life in Canada. She’s an…
By Anna Swanson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Scoular There’s nothing that can do justice to the terror of the footage that plays near the start of Alexander Nanau’s Colectiv: a fire, breaking out in the middle of a packed album-release show for metal-core band Goodbye to Gravity, destroys a venue with no sprinklers or fire exits, and what we see…
By Michael Scoular | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, US) — Gala Presentations
By Daniel Reynolds Maybe this is my male gaze talking, but if Hustlers was made purely to satisfy Jennifer Lopez’s desire to show she’s still got it at 50, well, fine, I accept that. The film, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, has other things it wants to say about financial crime, our cruel capitalistic…
By Daniel Reynolds | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu, US) — Gala Presentations
By Meg Shields Clemency was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance festival, and maybe it’s time we accept that the altitude is having some pernicious effect on Utah audiences. The film follows Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard), a beleaguered Death Row warden who takes her job very seriously, but is starting to feel…
By Meg Shields | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley, US) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman The stories of H.P. Lovecraft teem and crawl with terrifyingly malleable creations, yet paradoxically resist cinematic adaptation; more than most weird tales, they exist to be beheld in the mind’s eye. Richard Stanley’s go at Lovecraft’s 1927 chestnut “The Color Out of Space” eschews the original’s turn-of-the-century setting and repertorial framing device…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The County (Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland/Denmark/Germany/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mark Asch At Cannes 2015, an Un Certain Regard jury headed by Isabella Rossellini awarded its top prize to Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams, a film about the congenital stubbornness of Iceland’s aging rural population which, with its agricultural wit and final shot of feuding twin brothers in a symbolic return to the womb, reached for…
By Mark Asch | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Ema (Pablo Larraín, Chile) — Special Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig In his first film set in contemporary Chile, Pablo Larraìn relays a story of wicked energy within a system that doesn’t recognize itself as such anymore. In contrast with the director’s previous films, Chilean society in Ema is not a character per se, but a platform upon which one can exercise…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Entwined (Minos Nikolakakis, Greece) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall It is much harder to make a film like a fairy tale than one expects. When we look back at half- remembered stories from our childhood, they seem simple; we often forget the horrors and complexities that come from sparse storytelling. Minos Nikolakakis’ Entwined takes the form of such a tale, but…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Paris Stalingrad (Hind Meddeb, France) — TIFF Docs
By Madeleine Wall The only static aspect of Hind Meddeb’s documentary Paris Stalingrad is the area from which the film takes its name. Beginning with this eponymous space, Meddeb expands to the treatment of the refugees who must stay there, focusing as much on the newcomers as the Parisians and their varying levels of aid.…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Sole (Carlo Sironi, Italy/Poland) — Discovery
By Clara Miranda Scherffig It is always surprising how many filmmakers deploy the narrative device of a pregnancy in order to explore the emotional and social depths of male characters. This is the case in Sole, the first feature by Italian Carlo Sironi. Ermanno (Claudio Segaluscio) is a young man who spends his time engaged…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Clifton Hill (Albert Shin, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Good thrillers live or die by their specifics, and Clifton Hill is nothing if not precise about its tourist-trap environment (the Canadian side of Niagara Falls) and its inhabitants, including trashy gambling addicts, possibly psychopathic land developers, French-Canadian husband-and-wife tiger-trainers, and—if you hadn’t already heard—David Cronenberg emerging like Ursula Andress (except fully…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Coppers (Alan Zweig, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Angelo Muredda “Cops are by far the biggest liars,” a subject admits early in Alan Zweig’s Coppers, which brings the filmmaker’s signature conversational style to bear on a profile of retired Toronto police officers, about a dozen of whom are interviewed at rest and in ride-alongs to the scenes of past arrests and disaster…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
This is Not a Movie (Yung Chang, Canada/Germany) — TIFF Docs
By Steve Macfarlane “The person who denies the genocide in Armenia will deny the Jewish holocaust in Europe, and will deny any other kind of massacre that comes to hand.” That’s Robert Fisk, among the most celebrated war correspondents of the last quarter-century, getting the bio-doc treatment in Yung Chang’s documentary This is Not a…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Audition (Ina Weisse, Germany/France) — Discovery
By Anna Swanson You could throw a dart and hit an apt musical metaphor for Ina Weisse’s The Audition: it’s a symphonic study of human behaviour, a film with an unrelenting rhythm that crescendos with an act both shocking and, on reflection, inevitable. Nina Hoss is absolutely magnificent as Anna, a violin teacher who takes…
By Anna Swanson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Tammy’s Always Dying (Amy Jo Johnson, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman Tammy’s also always yelling—and cursing, and drinking, and threatening suicide, and making a messy spectacle of herself in public and private. That’s just who Tammy is, and it’s also just the sort of movie that Tammy’s Always Dying is trying to be: a smile-through-tears comedy-drama about the need to hold our loved…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Australian Dream (Daniel Gordon, Australia/UK) — TIFF Docs
By Beatrice Loayza It’s no coincidence that the title of Daniel Gordon’s documentary portrait of Australian footballer Adam Goodes echoes the concept of the “American Dream”: after all, the history of Australia, like that of the United States, is a story of colonization and of the violence and racism that both fuelled it and still…
By Beatrice Loayza | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
1982 (Oualid Mouaness, US/Lebanon/Norway/Qatar) — Discovery
By Mark Asch Surely autobiographical, fortysomething Lebanese writer-director Oualid Mouaness’ debut fiction feature 1982 views the Israeli invasion into the then civil-warring nation from the unlikely, ultimately unpropitious vantage of an English-language private school in East Beirut at the end of the school year. Fifth-grader Wassim (Mohamad Dalli) scrambles to finish his exams and muster…
By Mark Asch | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Joker (Todd Phillips, US) — Gala Presentations
By Barbara Wurm Ed. note — even Cinema Scope, in the face of potential online wrath, must needs post a SPOILER warning before reviews of films such as this. The joker is not one, but three. A film, consisting of three, is usually a nuisance. Joker, splendidly directed by Todd Phillips and ingeniously performed by…
By Barbara Wurm | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
My English Cousin (Karim Sayad, Switzerland/Qatar) — TIFF Docs
By Meg Shields My English Cousin is probably what it would actually feel like to be a fly on the wall: people scratch their asses, bicker harmlessly with loved ones, and pack and repack their bags. It’s a hard truth: most people just aren’t that interesting. The documentary follows director Karim Sayad’s cousin Fahed, who…
By Meg Shields | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Son-Mother (Mahnaz Mohammadi, Iran/Czech Republic) — Discovery
By Michael Scoular Hours before leaving for Evin Prison to begin a five-year sentence, filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi shot a three-minute video. “I’ve got great anger in me,” she said, calling prison “a place where you are sentenced to go, even if you don’t deserve it.” Though there were petitions and a statement from Cannes, nothing…
By Michael Scoular | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman The subtext of Atom Egoyan’s latest mid-late-career work is that you shouldn’t be mean to people online—a plaint that looks retrospectively prophetic in light of the film’s Venice reception, which included an attempted murder in the pages of Variety. Suffice it to say that Guest of Honour is not nearly so bad…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Mariam (Sharipa Urazbayeva, Kazakhstan) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler Shot in a stark, rural patch of Kazakhstan and contained inside the frame of a short story—quite often the best model for a feature screenplay to follow—Mariam tells the tale of a woman, wife, and mother who doesn’t realize that she must change her life until outside forces tell her so. Then,…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Devil Between the Legs (Arturo Ripstein, Mexico/Spain) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski Well folks, it’s September 2019, and here we have a late-breaking entry for Worst Film of the Decade. I’m not kidding, and I’m not levelling empty hyperbole. I have been a major supporter of director Arturo Ripstein and screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego in the past: The Beginning and the End (1993) and…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Made in Bangladesh (Rubaiyat Hossain, France/Bangladesh/Denmark/Portugal) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Dana Reinoos Shimu, the 23-year-old protagonist of director Rubaiyat Hossain’s Made in Bangladesh, could be the face of global capitalism: a young woman who works punishing shifts at a textile factory for paltry wages on which she cannot even afford rice for herself and her unemployed husband. When a fire takes the life of…
By Dana Reinoos | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Incitement (Yaron Zilberman, Israel) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda Israeli filmmaker Yaron Zilberman follows up A Late Quartet with Incitement, an unnerving recreation of the days leading up to Orthodox Jewish law student Yigal Amir’s assassination of then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for his integral role in the Oslo peace process. Offering another look into the social customs by which…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
I Am Not Alone (Garin Hovannisian, Armenia/US) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski An up-close, day-by-day chronicle of the 2018 Armenian revolution that deposed autocrat Serzh Sargsyan and brought reform-minded activist Niko Pashinyan to power, I Am Not Alone is a fascinating look at the contemporary structure of power and protest. While unabashedly pro-Pashinyan, the film reveals a bit more than it probably intends to…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Waves (Trey Edward Shults, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman With Waves, Trey Edward Shults goes for broke; another way to put it is that he’s writing cheques that his filmmaking can’t cash. Even leaving aside the question (which I’m assuming will be asked at some point by somebody not otherwise participating in a standing ovation) about a white filmmaker aggressively melodramatizing…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Lost Okoroshi (Abba Makama, Nigeria) — Discovery
By Brendan Boyle Director Abba Makama displays an array of tones in his Lagos odyssey The Lost Okoroshi, which follows Raymond Obinwa (Seun Ajayi), a shiftless security worker who commutes to the city and, one morning, finds himself transformed in his bed into the voiceless purple spirit of his dreams. Stricken mute by his transformation,…
By Brendan Boyle | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
American Woman (Semi Chellas, Canada) — Gala Presentations
By Angelo Muredda TV-to-feature transitions are always a fraught jump for writers of sparkling, monologue-heavy prose, and Mad Men writer Semi Chellas’ American Woman is no exception. Faring a bit better than Chellas’ former boss Matthew Weiner’s dispiriting Are You Here but falling well short of the intimacy and idiosyncrasy of David Chase’s Not Fade…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
ZANA (Antoneta Kastrati, Albania/Kosovo) — Discovery
By Dana Reinoos Twenty years after the end of the Kosovo war, Kosovar filmmaker Antoneta Kastrati makes her narrative debut with ZANA, a fictionalized treatment of the deeply ingrained trauma still acutely felt by survivors. Lume (Adriana Matoshi, whose placid face explodes into rage and grief at unexpected moments) is married to Ilir (Astrit Kabashi);…
By Dana Reinoos | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Nobadi (Karl Markovics, Austria) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Courtney Duckworth Karl Makovics’ Nobadi gestures toward revelations that never resonate. Ostensibly a culture-clash tale about a cantankerous (read: bigoted) old German man named Robert (Heinz Trixner) and an Afghani migrant (Borhanulddin Hassan Zadeh, embodying a gesture at politics more than a human being) who he contracts to bury his late companion, a fluffy…
By Courtney Duckworth | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
My Life as a Comedian (Rojda Sekersöz, Sweden/Belgium) — Discovery
By Meg Shields Within the first several minutes of My Life as a Comedian, it becomes readily apparent that something terrible is going to happen: the kind of inevitable third-act tragedy that leaves now-grown protagonists with weighty shoulders and instant recoil at the mention of hometowns. This is certainly the case with Juha, a now…
By Meg Shields | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Sea Fever (Neasa Hardiman, Ireland/Sweden/Belgium/UK) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman You learn something new every day: for instance, I didn’t know that redheads were considered bad luck on the open seas, hence the chilly reception for bookish ginger Siobhán (Hermione Corfield) aboard the trawler that’s hosting her solo marine-biological expedition. (“You need to get your hands dirty,” says a supervisor, foreshadowing plenty…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Instinct (Halina Reijn, Netherlands) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler Viewed strictly as a vehicle for Carice van Houten, who had a fine European film career for herself before all the world began to know her as Game of Thrones’ Red Queen, Instinct is a serviceable entry on the actor’s resume, but, as a credible psychodrama that pits a therapist against her…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Maria’s Paradise (Zaida Bergroth, Finland/Estonia) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Anna Swanson Director Zaida Bergroth’s film about a clairvoyant cult leader is unable to see that its strongest aspects are woefully underserved. The eponymous Maria (Pihla Viitala) is the leader of a religious sect who presents herself as having been visited by an angel that bestowed her with second sight. One of her most…
By Anna Swanson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Castle in the Ground (Joey Klein, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman The swift, ruinous descent from normalcy into substance abuse is hardly a subject lacking for cinematic treatment, and Joey Klein’s Castle in the Ground offers one more. In terms of casting, this Sudbury-set feature is above reproach, juxtaposing sad-eyed Henry (Alex Wolff, already an old hand at being put through the physical…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Jaclyn Bruneau Karim Aïnouz has created a decadently frustrating, and thus accurate, study of longing, which begins as what seems like a coming-of-age story about two sisters in 1950s Brazil. One evening, Guida (Julia Stockler) asks Euridice (Carol Duarte) to cover for her so that she can slip through the back door to meet…
By Jaclyn Bruneau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa, Netherlands/Lithuania) — Wavelengths
By Bob Kotyk The death of Joseph Stalin seems to have been so unthinkable that numbness and shock are almost all that can be gleaned from the faces of the dozens of mourners as they gather in plazas, pause from their work at job sites, or offer up bouquets in State Funeral, expert exhumer Sergei’s…
By Bob Kotyk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Anne at 13,000 ft (Kazik Radwanski, Canada/US) — Platform
By Josh Cabrita Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) With his first two features, Tower (2012) and How Heavy This Hammer (2015), Toronto-based director and MDFF co-founder Kazik Radwanski established something of a recurring archetype: sad, lonely, and horny men whose unpleasant or uninteresting qualities are accentuated by the director’s unrelenting approach of shooting…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Murmur (Heather Young, Canada) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Almost any movie featuring an animal doubles as a documentary about an animal that doesn’t know it’s in a movie—that is perhaps not the intended animating conflict of Murmur, but it’s the thought that most entered my mind most when watching the canine star of Heather Young’s docufiction first feature. Donna (Shan…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Antigone (Sophie Deraspe, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Jaclyn Bruneau Sophie Deraspe has picked up Sophocles’ eponymous tragedy and hurled it headlong into the present. Our orphaned heroine (Nahéma Ricci) immigrated to Montréal (from a home country never stated, in what is, I suppose, an attempt to level all Canadian immigrant experiences) as a child, along with her grandmother Ménécée, sister Ismène,…
By Jaclyn Bruneau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Billy (Zachary Epcar, US) — Wavelengths
By Phil Coldiron If one were to enumerate the major trends in sophisticated American filmmaking in the last decade, it seems to me that Zachary Epcar’s films would provide an adequate summary of such a list. In their wit, their formal restlessness, their sharp conception of certain stickier corners of the American psyche, they continue…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
2minutes40seconds (Han Ok-hee, South Korea) — Wavelengths
By Jesse Cumming Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) “There are two prejudices in pre-existing cinema: filmmaking is a male job and the movie should be fun. We, as outsiders, will break these biases.”—Han Ok-hee, 1974 In 1974, a group of students from the prestigious Ewha Womans University in Seoul formed South Korea’s first…
By Jesse Cumming | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Knuckle City (Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, South Africa) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews South African director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka’s muscular sports/crime drama centres on aging, womanizing boxer Dudu Nyakama (Bongile Mantsai) and his criminal brother Duke (Thembekile Komani). Dudu, desperate for one last shot at fame and glory in the ring before retirement, enlists Duke’s help in finally becoming a contender—even if it means being…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Fever (Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/France/Germany) — Wavelengths
By Beatrice Loayza In Brazilian documentarian Maya Da-Rin’s first feature film, an indigenous man, Justino (Regis Myrupu, weathered but warm) must reckon with his daughter’s impending departure to med school. A recent widower, Justino works as a cargo port watchman while his daughter, Vanessa (Rosa Peixoto), juggles several jobs at local clinics. Their lives are…
By Beatrice Loayza | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello, France) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) Bertrand Bonello’s eighth feature, among his best and most daring, furthers his recent interest in the youth of contemporary France and the imprint of the country’s political history on the modern world. Set alternately in 1962 Haiti and present-day Paris, Zombi Child moves nimbly between…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Comets (Tamar Shavgulidze, Georgia) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall It is inevitable that any reunion will always be more than the sum of its parts. Tamar Shavgulidze‘s Comets is a slight drama where two childhood friends, Irina (Nino Kasradze) and Nana (Ketevan Gegeshidze), have their own Janus-faced meeting. The film begins in the domestic realm of Nana, who spends a morning…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
White Lie (Calvin Thomas & Yonah Lewis, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Madeleine Wall Taking place during a barren Hamilton winter, Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis’ White Lie is as intimate as it is claustrophobic. Katie (Kacey Rohl) is a cancer poster child, a star of local fundraisers and surrounded by supporters. But Katie begins her day shaving her head, her chemo appointments involve getting empty…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Varda by Agnès (Agnès Varda, France) — Special Events
By Jaclyn Bruneau “I enjoyed setting up an enigma for which only I knew the secret,” says Agnès Varda from her throne-like seat atop a dolly, pushed along a track in a wide-open field by a technician, in an allusion to the landscapes of her Vagabond (1985). The tender-hearted irony of this utterance is that…
By Jaclyn Bruneau | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Platform (Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, Spain) — Midnight Madness
By Angelo Muredda A pitch in search of a movie to ground it, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform never amounts to more than the sum of its parts, but fans of high-concept science fiction such as Cube and Snowpiercer may nevertheless appreciate the sheer number of those parts in a film that teems with ideas, but…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
A Girl Missing (Koji Fukada, Japan/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Elena Lazic A Girl Missing opens on Ichiko (Mariko Tsutsui), a mysterious middle-aged woman whose strange actions are progressively explained in long flashbacks to her former life. In the present, she is a seductive femme fatale living alone in an empty flat, who only ever smiles in the most polite and artifical way and…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Africa (Oren Gerner, Israel) — Discovery
By Beatrice Loayza The halcyon days of a recent vacation to Namibia linger in the mind of retiree and former engineer Meir (Meir Gerner), the grumbling 68-year-old father of the filmmaker whose depressingly impotent mad scramble to regain purpose in life is the subject of this debut feature. Working in the space between fiction and…
By Beatrice Loayza | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman, France/Qatar/Germany/Canada/Palestine/Turkey) — Masters
By Richard Porton Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) In conversations addressing the plight of what was once known as the “Third World,” one of the central debates still involves the inevitable tension between nationalism—as well as the quest for national identity—and the rather amorphous concept known as “cosmopolitanism.” In the Palestinian intellectual milieu,…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Liberté (Albert Serra, France/Spain/Portugal/Germany) — Wavelengths
By Phil Coldiron Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) —I feel like prey. —Perhaps soon you won’t anymore. If there is a dialectical movement to be found in Albert Serra’s decidedly non-dialectical films, it is in the relationship they figure between movement and stasis. Firm in the belief, or delusion, that “chivalry is…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Traitor (Marco Bellocchio, Italy) — Masters
By Celluloid Liberation Front Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) “The most beautiful film is our own history,” confessed Marco Bellocchio to a journalist following the release of The Traitor, after it surpassed Godzilla: King of the Monsters at the Italian box office, proving yet again that the Mafia movie is still a commodity…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Black Conflux (Nicole Dorsey, Canada) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews A “conflux” or confluence is the juncture where two rivers meet, seamlessly connecting into a single body. This convergence becomes a recurring visual motif in Nicole Dorsey’s small-town coming-of-age story set in 1980s Newfoundland, a portent of the coming collision between its two main characters, teenage Jackie (Ella Ballentine) and intense loner…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Les Misérables (Ladj Ly, France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Manuela Lazic The extreme tension between residents and police in the French banlieues seems to push the boldest filmmakers to go beyond the gritty realism that typical “urban” stories often cling to. Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine not only adopted black-and-white photography and a propulsive editing style, but also primitive drone shooting: a camera placed…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux, France) — Special Presentations
By Elena Lazic We all remember Flat Eric, the creepily expressionless yellow puppet turned music-video star, sitting at a huge office desk and bopping along to Quentin Dupieux’s international hit “Flat Beat” while signing contracts, taking phone calls, and doing all the things a businessman does. Twenty years and seven feature films later, the French…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
143 Sahara Street (Hassen Ferhani, Algeria) — Wavelengths
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) Hassen Ferhani’s crowd-pleasing second feature is an example of a familiar format being executed with such intelligence and clarity that you wonder why it happens so rarely. The entire film is built around a woman almost as formidable as Vitalina Varela, and just as much…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
SaF05 (Charlotte Prodger, UK) — Wavelengths
By Erika Balsom Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) For Scotland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Charlotte Prodger delivered the final installment in a trilogy of films begun with Stoneymollan Trail (2015) and her Turner Prize-winning BRIDGIT (2016). SaF05 is named after a maned lioness, a rare creature in Botswana that adopts typically male…
By Erika Balsom | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
I Was At Home, But… (Angela Schanelec, Germany/Serbia) — Masters
By Giovanni Marchini Camia Published in Cinema Scope #78 (Spring 2019) It’s outrageous that it should have taken until 2019 for Angela Schanelec to make it into the Berlinale Competition—and ironic, given that it was a review of her film Passing Summer (2001), published in Die Zeit, that originated the term “Berliner Schule.” That film…
By Giovanni Marchini Camia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe, Spain/France/Luxembourg) — Wavelengths
By Azadeh Jafari Published in Cinema Scope # 80 (Fall 2019) After two films set in Morocco—You Are All Captains (2010) and the Cannes Critics Week winner Mimosas (2016)—French-born Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe returns to his parents’ homeland of Galicia for his third feature, Fire Will Come, which the director has called a “dry melodrama.”…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Synonyms (Nadav Lapid, France/Israel/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) Like an alien dropping out of the sky, Yoav, the hero of Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, is introduced as a being without a home, a purpose, or even clothes. As he scrambles naked around a vacant Parisian apartment, his strong, lean, athletic body mitigates his desperate…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan, China/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Azadeh Jafari In his new crime thriller, Diao Yinan returns to the noir tropes and bleak atmosphere of his 2014 Golden Bear winner Black Coal, Thin Ice to tell the story of on-the-run cop-killer gangster Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge), who gets involved with a mysterious prostitute, Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun-Mei). The film begins with…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Father (Petar Valchanov & Kristina Grozeva, Bulgaria/Greece/Italy) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski In essence, The Father is a Bulgarian Alexander Payne film, and so you should adjust your expectations accordingly. Directors Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva (whose film The Lesson played TIFF back in 2014) combine melancholic family shenanigans with the kinds of broad comic gestures you can see coming a mile away. The…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa, Poland/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Beatrice Loayza Jan Komasa does redemption à la Paul Schrader in this tale of the sacred and the profane, which follows a 20-year-old ex-con, Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia), who poses as a priest in a small Polish town. While some presumably symbolic moments (a burning pyre, a climactic disrobing) register as self-administered profundity, Corpus Christi…
By Beatrice Loayza | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman That Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe mutually lose their shit over the duration of The Lighthouse is not a spoiler: sequestered together off the coast of Nova Scotia in a lighthouse (also not a spoiler) with little more than a pot to piss in (and there is a lot of pissing in…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Sibyl (Justine Triet, France/Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Manuela Lazic After her terrific 2016 feature Victoria, Justine Triet continues her exploration of the female psyche and body with Sibyl, once again casting the great Virginie Efira as her heroine. Sybil is a psychiatrist who retires early to focus on her original dream of being a writer. But aren’t the personal histories of…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
A White, White Day (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland/Denmark/Sweden) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Dana Reinoos When the Icelandic fog is particularly thick and obscures the landscape, the dead can speak to the living—so says the eerie epigraph that opens Hlynur Pálmason’s A White, White Day, which unfolds as a meditation on grief and violence. It’s this kind of dense fog that can cause a car to slide…
By Dana Reinoos | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Endless Night (Eloy Enciso, Spain) — Wavelengths
By James Lattimer Eloy Enciso’s third feature unfolds as a series of conversations conducted at various locations within an unnamed city, most of which are public: outside a church, in a bus, at the bus station, in the bar, in the office of the prospective mayor. These conversations revolve around the current state of life,…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania/France/Germany) — Masters
By Mark Peranson An entertaining film-festival outlier, Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers seemed to have been punished at Cannes for being a change of form for Porumboiu: it’s a rollicking film that, on its surface, doesn’t appear to fit into any dominant narrative, whether we are talking the historical development of the Romanian New Wave or…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Atlantics (Mati Diop, France/Senegal/Belgium) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Jesse Cumming Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) In 2012, when French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop pitched her anticipated debut feature Atlantics as part of Locarno’s Open Doors initiative, the film went by the title Fire Next Time. While much in the film has changed in the time between its initial conception and its…
By Jesse Cumming | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles, Brazil) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) Kleber Mendonça Filho’s ongoing quest to sound out the tensions of contemporary Brazil takes a turn at once more strident and more oblique in Bacurau, an exhilaratingly jittery mash-up of genres and moods co-directed with Juliano Dornelles, the production designer for his two previous features.…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, Italy/France) — Platform
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) Pietro Marcello’s decade-long evolution from idiosyncratic film essayist to grand narrative storyteller represents one of the most significant artistic flowerings in contemporary cinema. Recently unveiled in competition at Venice, the Italian filmmaker’s fifth feature, Martin Eden, is momentous in ways that many Marcello enthusiasts may…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
This Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, US/Switzlerand) — Wavelengths
By Dan Sullivan Published in Cinema Scope #78 (Spring 2019) “The way I see it, movies move,” James N. Kienitz Wilkins declares in his monologue film This Action Lies (2018), made for Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement. A styrofoam cup of coffee is viewed several times, with fluctuations in gradient distinguishing…
By Dan Sullivan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda In Pain and Glory, Pedro Almódovar burrows further into his late-style period with all the “intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction” Edward Said promised, with an equally frank and flattering self-portrait of the artist as an aging Antonio Banderas. Though a decade younger and a good deal handsomer than the auteur behind the…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, US) — Special Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig Marriage Story opens with a close up of Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) with her neck wrapped in a black turtleneck and her blond hair cut short. She is on a stage, being directed by Charlie (Adam Driver), her close collaborator, as well as her husband. Like the overlap between the protagonists’ professional…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, US) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman The more things change, the more they stay the same, and the conspiracy-minded 1950s resonate in a zeitgeist in which everything feels accessible and occluded at the same time. Between the suspicious suicide of Jeffrey Epstein and its ostensible connections to the making of Eyes Wide Shut (and the death of Stanley…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Krabi 2562 (Anocha Suwichakornpong & Ben Rivers, Thailand/UK) — Wavelengths
By Robert Koehler Since Ben Rivers is credited as co-director of Krabi 2562, there could be the assumption that this is another “Ben Rivers film.” The many instances in this project where assumptions are wrong start here, because Rivers has completely given himself over to his collaborator, the gifted Anocha Suwichakornpong, who is absolutely the…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
La belle époque (Nicolas Bedos, France) — Special Presentations
By Daniel Reynolds Nicolas Bedos’ second feature intends to evoke the feel of a classic screwball comedy, albeit one with a modern twist in both production and subject matter. The film’s rapid-fire dialogue is a throwback, yet the quick-cutting, handheld camerawork and light commentary on our technologically mediated relationships pushes it somewhere new. While nostalgia…
By Daniel Reynolds | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Love Me Tender (Klaudia Reynicke, Switzerland) — Discovery
By Michael Scoular At the level of plot, Klaudia Reynicke’s second feature never deviates from its empowerment narrative. After putting on a comfortable one-piece tracksuit and putting away hope her family will safeguard her every move, an agoraphobic millennial steps outside and overcomes obstacles, all while retaining her abstract annoyance at the world. But with…
By Michael Scoular | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Pelican Blood (Katrin Gebbe, Germany/Bulgaria) — Special Presentations
By Brendan Boyle Early in Katrin Gebbe’s Pelican Blood, an abrupt edit takes the viewer to the scene of a clash between police and rioters. Smoke hangs in the air and the mounted police struggle to control their horses. After a moment it becomes clear that the scene is being staged: the rioters are only…
By Brendan Boyle | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (Jessica Sarah Rinland, UK/Argentina/Spain) — Wavelengths
By Darren Hughes Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) A key to Jessica Sarah Rinland’s newest film, Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another, can be found in the closing credits: along with cinematography, editing, and foley, Rinland is credited as “Voice” and “Pink-Nailed Ceramicist” (the nail designer is also credited). When we first…
By Darren Hughes | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea) — Special Presentations
By Adam Cook Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) Precisely a decade after his last film shot and produced in South Korea, Bong Joon Ho returns to a place that feels both familiar and unfamiliar with his Palme d’Or-crowned Parasite. Moving beyond the ambitious, overly conceptual, and uneven international co-productions Snowpiercer and Okja, Parasite…
By Adam Cook | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise, Germany/Austria) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Published in Cinema Scope #79 (Summer 2019) “Archaeology is about Digging” is the title of an essay by Thomas Heise, included in the DVD booklet for several of his films, including the 2009 film Material, a key film in terms of raising Heise’s profile outside of Europe. In the essay, the filmmaker…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, Portugal) — Wavelengths
By Haden Guest Published in Cinema Scope #80 (Fall 2019) A moving study of mourning and memory, Pedro Costa’s revelatory new film offers an indelible portrait of Vitalina Taveres Varela, a fragile yet indomitable woman who makes the long voyage from Cape Verde to Lisbon to attend her estranged husband’s funeral, but misses the event…
By Haden Guest | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
The Land of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener, US) — Special Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane Every day is a film festival on Netflix, and so Nicole Holofcener’s unfortunately-titled The Land of Steady Habits (I guess it’s a slang phrase for Connecticut) touches down as the lights adorning #TIFF18 are finally unplugged. Even if Steady Habits weren’t, as trade critics like to say, “better than it has any…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Vice of Hope (Edoardo de Angelis, Italy) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski The Vice of Hope gets its title from a rather sanitized version of a phrase spoken several times during the course of the film. What the characters are actually referring to is “the bullshit of hope,” and although Edoardo de Angelis’ film does end on a somewhat upbeat note, there is no…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Roads in February (Katherine Jerkovic, Canada/Uruguay) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Josh Cabrita When Sarah (Arlen Aguayo Stewart) arrives in South America during the month of February there is a natural contrast between her original location and eventual destination—for just as her home in Montreal is being lambasted by the flurries of Quebec winter, her grandmother’s village in Uruguay is enjoying the blistering heat…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Wind (Emma Tammi, US) — Midnight Madness
By Madeleine Wall Not unlike its South-shall-rise-again predecessor from 90 years ago, Emma Tammi’s The Wind pits woman against landscape, and when confronted with what little remains of Western civilization, things begin to unravel. Tough to the point of being worn down, Elizabeth Macklin (Caitlin Gerard) first appears in the doorway of her home, covered…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Stone Speakers (Igor Drljaca, Canada/Bosnia & Herzegovina) — Wavelengths
By Pedro Segura As in Krivina and The Waiting Room, Igor Drljaca explores identity concerns and still-dormant wounds inherited from the Yugoslavian Civil War in The Stone Speakers, his first documentary feature, in which the observational analysis of tourism allows him to explore nationalism by its manipulative fictional bases. With a clinical and distant approach…
By Pedro Segura | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Summer Survivors (Marija Kavtaradze, Lithuania) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Welcome to Lithium-uania. This downcast, unassuming road movie is a small peak into the lives of ordinary young people who are losing the best years of their lives to mental illness, constantly wavering between a desire to accept help and a countervailing impulse they can’t necessarily trust. Are they actually better? Is…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Good Girls (Alejandra Márquez Abella, Mexico) — Platform
By Pedro Segura In 1983, a year after the most shocking economic crisis in Mexico’s recent history, the writer and journalist Guadalupe Loaeza published in a now-defunct national newspaper an article that enunciated, with clinical description, a compendium of young, unconscious, and shallow bourgeois women of that time that could be categorized, ironically, under the…
By Pedro Segura | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Man Who Feels No Pain (Vasan Balan, India) — Midnight Madness
By Michael Sicinski It’s a clever enough premise for an action-comedy. Surya (Abhimanyu Dassani) is born with a rare condition that doesn’t allow him to experience pain. And though this makes his childhood something of a minefield, short-circuiting the usual learning curve by which the rest of us humans learn to survive, it eventually leads…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Reason (Anand Patwardhan, India) — TIFF Docs
By Steve Macfarlane Every TIFF features at least one epic-length historical documentary whose subject matter is way too depressing to penetrate the fog of cinephile and awards-season discussions encircling the neighbouring Town Crier, but kicks around in the back of the mind as probably advisable viewing anyway. Once I realized it was on the lineup,…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Her Job (Nikos Labôt, France/Greece/Serbia) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski It’s certainly not news to anyone that the economic downturn of recent years has been particularly hard on the Greeks. But Her Job presumes that we won’t get the severity of the situation unless we watch a virtual simpleton get kicked like a dog by family and employer alike. This is a…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Mouthpiece (Patricia Rozema, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Girish Shambu One idea has persisted in film culture for nearly 75 years: that of the “auteur” as a lone genius who not only directs his [sic] films, but also conceives of and writes them himself. The results on the ground of this notion have been, shall we say, mixed. Take, for example, Olivier…
By Girish Shambu | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Ulysses & Mona (Sébastien Betbeder, France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Joseph Pomp A young art student develops a morbid fixation on a washed-up artist and offers her apprentice services in an effort to lure him back out into the world—how in the world could this premise fall flat? In a few ways that Ulysses & Mona indeed sees through, such as by wallowing in…
By Joseph Pomp | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Orange Days (Arash Lahooti, Iran) — Discovery
By Robert Koehler For the first several minutes of Orange Days, the script by director Arash Lahooti and writer Jamileh Darolshafaie tries to be mysterious about the livelihood of a woman named Aban (veteran Iranian star Hedieh Tehrani, whose name the TIFF program notes consistently misspell). The big reveal is that she supervises an orange grove…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Angels Are Made of Light (James Longley, US/Afghanistan) — TIFF Docs
By Steve Macfarlane James Longley’s unfortunately titled Afghanistan documentary Angels Are Made of Light spans three years in the lives of a handful of schoolchildren (all boys) in Kabul. It’s a significant achievement in the gathering of footage, shot by the filmmaker himself, who manages to give ordinary day-to-day moments a sheen that’s elegant to the point…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Saf (Ali Vatansever, Turkey/Germany/Romania) — Discovery
By Angelo Muredda Ali Vatansever takes a stab at an Asghar Farhadi-style overdetermined drama about tired people in impossible situations with his second feature Saf. The film tells the two-part story of Kamil (Erol Afsin) and Remziye (Saadet Isil Aksoy), a working-class Turkish couple who struggle to live with dignity in the shadow of an…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Fig Tree (Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian, Germany/Ethiopia/France/Israel) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Sometimes debut films are actually frustrating because of the promise they show: I find myself wishing I could skip ahead to the next film, which is almost certain to be richer and more fully realized. But anyone who has ever worked in the creative arts in any capacity knows that this isn’t…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Driven (Nick Hamm, Puerto Rico/UK/US) — Special Presentations
By Jennifer Lynde Barker Driven announces itself as a biopic of John DeLorean, but we don’t learn much about the auto exec and innovator in the film; instead, director Nick Hamm and screenwriter Colin Bateman focus on the 1982 FBI investigation into DeLorean’s possible drug trafficking. The real protagonist of the film is DeLorean’s friend…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Our Body (Han Ka-ram, South Korea) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall Adrift in a South Korea where professional advancement appears to be the only option, lonely, 31-year-old Ja-young (Moon Choi) has a chance encounter one evening with the beautiful and enigmatic runner Hyun-joo (Ahn Ji-hye), who inspires Ja-young to ditch the civil service exam she’s spent years studying for and move out. But…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Truth About Killer Robots (Maxim Pozdorovkin, US) — TIFF Docs
By Robert Koehler In the span of eight months, nonfiction filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin has produced two features on what are, on paper, vital topics: Our New President, which premiered at Sundance, addresses his native Russia’s gullible openness to the Putin propaganda machine’s relentless promotion of Donald Trump before and after his US election; now, with…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Before the Frost (Michael Noer, Denmark) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski The latest from Michael Noer (Papillon) exists just on the right side of the dividing line between stodgy and well-appointed; in fact, it is so classically constructed in terms of plot and character organization that I was surprised to learn that it is based on an original screenplay (by Noer and Jesper…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (Xavier Dolan, Canada/UK) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman It’s a bittersweet symphony, this life: that’s the thesis (and arguably the most expensive-to-license hook, assuming friend-of-the-director Adele offered hers for free) in Xavier Dolan’s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. A famously troubled production that fired one of its two biggest stars via Instagram and betrays scars of that…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Redemption (Boaz Yehonatan Yacov & Joseph Madmony, Israel) — Contemporary Word Cinema)
By Michael Sicinski Or, Hey, I Know I’m Hassidic Now But Let’s Get the Band Back Together! A charming film that operates quite modestly despite the life-and-death stakes it depicts, Redemption is cinematic comfort food, reasonably predictable in its arc but acted and written well enough to prevent familiarity from lapsing into contempt. Menachem (Moshe…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (Henry Dunham, US) — Midnight Madness
By Elena Lazic Set almost entirely in a single warehouse and focused on a group of criminals and undercover cops quickly undone by suspicion, Henry Dunham’s debut feature is undeniably inspired by Reservoir Dogs. Yet far being from a simple homage or a poor copy, The Standoff at Sparrow Creek only takes Tarantino’s film as…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Vision (Naomi Kawase, Japan/France) — Special Presentations
By Michael Sicinski Despite the presence of an international superstar (Juliette Binoche) for the first time in Naomi Kawase’s filmography, Vision will not convert anyone to the Kawase cause. That’s because this new film doubles down on all the elements that so many critics find off-putting about Kawase’s cinema, especially a spiritual sensibility that, in…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Maya (Mia Hansen-Løve, France) — Special Presentations
By Lawrence Garcia In bald description, Mia Hansen-Løve’s follow-up to L’Avenir (2016) might seem a rather distasteful (or at least misguided) affair: Gabriel (Roman Kolinka), a French war correspondent recently released from Syrian captivity, returns to his childhood home in India, where he falls in love with the title character (Aarshi Banerjee), his godfather’s young…
By Lawrence Garcia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Sew the Winter to My Skin (Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, South Africa/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler If 2018 may be remembered as the year when the movies finally realized that Afro-futurism was a viable genre, it may also be remembered as the year when the African Western finally got some mojo. It’s been a long, long time since Moustapha Alassane’s The Return of an Adventurer (1966), and on…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
What is Democracy? (Astra Taylor, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski The latest philosophical documentary by Astra Taylor (Examined Life, Zizek!) takes on a very timely question, one she can’t be faulted for failing to answer in just under two hours. However, What is Democracy? does suffer from a rather scattershot approach, as though the sheer monumentality of the problem undermined the clear…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Baby (Liu Jie, China) — Special Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer Social melodramas are a mainstream genre in Chinese cinema, in both state-approved and indie flavours, but they are not usually realized as adeptly and creatively as Liu Jie manages with his seventh feature Baby. Liu is no stranger to this kind of socially aware, ethically engaged filmmaking that follows in the tradition…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Most Beautiful Couple (Sven Taddicken, Germany/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer Without the joys of coincidence and bad decision-making, The Most Beautiful Couple would barely have a plot, even if the film fails to commit to them sufficiently to go all-out trashy. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Sven Taddicken’s perversely entertaining drama surrenders to silliness, although an ill-advised third-act cover of Radiohead’s…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu, Kenya/South Africa/France/Lebanon/Norway/ Netherlands/Germany) — Discovery
By Sarah-Tai Black Firsts are almost always in some measure definitive. To be the first Kenyan film to ever premiere at Cannes, as Wanuri Kahiu’s newest feature film Rafiki was, is to be placed under an incredible weight of expectation. To be banned in your home country due to a supposed “intent to promote lesbianism”…
By Sarah-Tai Black | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Hidden Man (Jiang Wen, China) — Gala Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer Jiang Wen’s Hidden Man poses challenges for viewers (Chinese as well as foreign), but careful watching has its rewards. The third installment in Jiang’s informal trilogy about an idiosyncratically spectacularized fictional history of Republican China—which started with Let the Bullets Fly (2010) and continued with Gone With the Bullets (2014)—Hidden Man is the least flamboyant, visually: it’s an…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Freedom Fields (Naziha Arebi, Libya) — Platform
By Madeleine Wall Taking place over the four long years after the Arab Spring, Naziha Arebi’s documentary Freedom Fields tracks the changes, and the lack thereof, after revolutionary fervour calms down. The film focuses on a group of young women attempting to become Libya’s first all-female soccer team and who, despite their best intentions, end…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany/Italy) — Special Presentations
By Stefan Grissemann The childhood and early career of German superstar painter Gerhard Richter is given a very free rendering in this three-hour-plus drama that tries to short-circuit Nazi euthanasia programs with a crash course on postwar avant-garde art. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director of the Oscar-winning GDR retaliation The Lives of Others (2006), now…
By Stefan Grissemann | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog & André Singer, Germany/UK/US) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski While Errol Morris is busy sitting down with unrepentant fascists, Werner Herzog is making time with one of the key figures of the 20th century, a leader so visionary that he essentially reformed himself right out of a job. This is not to say that Meeting Gorbachev is a free meeting of…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, USA) — Special Presentations
By Sarah-Tai Black There is perhaps no contemporary filmmaker better suited to adapting the work of James Baldwin than Barry Jenkins. Much like Jenkins, Baldwin’s work is less expository than it is a feeling made concrete: a translation of black consciousness, space, and time into words that are as generous as they are unambiguous. His…
By Sarah-Tai Black | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, Mexico) — Discovery
By Steve Macfarlane So-called “world cinema” is a dicey game. Lab-incubated dramas addressing capital-I Important issues can betray the subject matter in a direct plea for festival-land relevance (or, worse, culminate in an Iñárritu-style call to arms), and often land squarely in the middle: ungalvanizing as agitprop, pedantic as cinema. It’s rare to sit through…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Halloween (David Gordon Green, US) — Midnight Madness
By Mallory Andrews The story goes that director David Gordon Green approached Jamie Lee Curtis with an idea for a Halloween sequel she apparently deemed too good to pass up: toss out the 40 years’ worth of sequels, and make Laurie Strode’s return to the screen a direct continuation of John Carpenter’s 1978 original. Green’s…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Beautiful Boy (Felix van Groeningen, US) — Gala Presentations
By Robert Koehler Beautiful Boy plays it safe with the details of the true story of meth addict Nic Sheff and his father, freelance writer David Sheff. At the same time, the movie risks danger with a time-jumping, memory-driven editing scheme that overlaps sound and image in ways that have generally been all but forgotten…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Factory (Yury Bykov, Armenia/France/Russia) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski A slice of social criticism so direct that it’s hard to believe it could be made inside Putin’s Russia, The Factory is also a cracking actioner of the first order. Young auteur Yury Bykov (The Major, The Fool) has imbibed lessons from both his black-hearted Russian compatriots (the late Aleksei Balabanov, especially)…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Tito and the Birds (Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar & André Catoto, Brazil) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Here’s a film that’s virtually guaranteed to snag one of those fourth or fifth slots in the Oscar race for Best Animated Feature: those films that almost nobody has heard of even by the time of the broadcast and that are put in place to serve as also-rans against that year’s big-budget…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
22 July (Paul Greengrass, Norway/Iceland/USA) — Special Presentations
By Stefan Grissemann The only mild surprise that 22 July has in store is its narrative emphasis. After 32 minutes, the horrific acts (the bomb in Oslo, the massacre on Utøya Island) are all done, the teenage corpses have piled up, and Norway has plunged into a deep political and moral crisis—leaving 101 more minutes…
By Stefan Grissemann | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Complicity (Kei Chikaura, Japan/China) — Discovery
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Shot in a coldly minimal documentary style, complete with shaky camera, Complicity opens with a group of Chinese illegal immigrants in Japan stealing machinery at night to buy ID cards. The look of the film connotes a certain energy: distant, cerebral, utilitarian. Despite its aesthetic, Kei Chikaura’s debut feature is anything but.…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Clara (Akash Sherman, Canada) — Discovery
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Crumbling under the grief of a lost child and subsequent divorce, astronomer Isaac (Patrick J. Adams) throws himself into searching for extraterrestrial life, with research assistant Clara (the actor’s real-life wife Troian Bellisario) slowly opening him up to new possibilities. Characters question what could be more important than finding alien life, while…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Shadow (Zhang Yimou, China) — Gala Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer After essaying several genres (period history, period comedy, historical melodrama, international epic) in the last 15 years, Zhang Yimou has returned to something like Hero’s (2002) combination of imperial court and wuxia spectacle. Shadow tones down that earlier film’s concentration on the morality of loyalty to state power in favour of a…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Divine Wind (Merzak Allouache, Algeria/France/Lebanon/Qatar) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski The latest film from veteran Algerian director Merzak Allouache is tonally strange. Quiet and stilted, it exhibits an overall seriousness that’s firmly in keeping with its subject: suicide bombers and the warped ideologies that drive them on. At the same time, there is such an exaggeratedly fraught relationship between the two main…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
EXT. Night (Ahmad Abdalla, Egypt/U.A.E.) — Contemporary World Cinema)
By Michael Sicinski Although EXT. Night is not a particularly enjoyable film, credit is certainly due. Few movies are as successful in communicating the protagonist’s point of view to the spectator through structure and form. As you watch, you’ll wonder how Abdalla got you from the opening scenes, which so clearly promise an affable…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
High Life (Claire Denis, Germany/ France/US/UK/Poland) — Gala Presentations
By Adam Nayman There is a shot of an infant being carried by its father in Claire Denis’ L’intrus that may be the most rapt and tender image of its kind I’ve ever seen in a film. The first ten minutes of High Life are an extension and an elaboration of that shot, observing Monte…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Screwdriver (Bassam Jarbawi, Palestine/US/Qatar) — Discovery
By James Lattimer Screwdriver burns through so much narrative in its first 20 minutes that the various steps in how Ziad (Ziad Bakri) goes from being an innocent child to a world-weary adult feel more like a blur than a necessary psychological foundation. Yet even when the pace lets up to focus on his attempts…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Twin Flower (Laura Luchetti, Italy) — Discovery
By Josh Slater-Williams The meaning of Twin Flower’s title is revealed roughly 40 minutes in: preventing teenage trainee Anna (Anastasyia Bogach) from splitting a double-stemmed flower, a florist insists the plant’s parts are a rare thing that must stay together. As a unit, Anna and the film’s other teenage protagonist, Ivory Coast refugee Basim (Kalill…
By Josh Slater-Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Our Time (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Germany/Denmark/ Sweden) — Masters
By Dominik Kamalzadeh In his Cannes-awarded Post Tenebras Lux, Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas already dealt with personal matters, reflecting on his role as lover, father and husband in a semi-autobiographical film with a metaphysical bias. Our Time goes even further in his Knausgårdian self-observation as he himself takes the central part as rancher/award-winning poet Juan,…
By Dominik Kamalzadeh | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier & Edward Burtynsky, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane Coined by scientist Paul Crutzen in the early 2000s but popularized by the Iraq War veteran cum essayist Roy Scranton’s 2015 book Learning to Live and Die in the Anthropocene, the phrase “anthropocene” (wildly popular among totebag-wielding anarchists, autonomists and accelerationists in New York City) refers to the era of Earth’s history…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Through Black Spruce (Don McKellar, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda You almost have to admire the chutzpah of Through Black Spruce, which hits TIFF with an inscrutable mix of sheepishness and self-confidence. Don McKellar’s adaptation of Joseph Boyden’s Giller Prize-winning novel couldn’t be arriving at a worse time, a cultural moment where writers like Jen Sookfong Lee and Alicia Elliott have proclaimed…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Black Book (Valeria Sarmiento, Portugal/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer From Amour Fou to The Death of Louis XIV to Zama, revisionism has been applied so successfully to the costume drama of late that it almost feels like something is missing when a director plays it straight. Veteran Chilean director Valeria Sarmiento’s The Black Book is a case in point here, a…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Freaks (Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman Too grim for a straight-up YA audience and too goofy to be taken too seriously, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s Freaks at leads owns its curious at-oddsness: it’s a weird, scrappy, palpably Canadian mutant that’s actually more likeable for not quite passing as mainstream fare. That earnest-misfit ethos begins with its seven-year-old…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry, US) — Platform
By Jason Anderson Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) The phony magazine cover glimpsed in the early moments of Her Smell may not have the same heady metatextual allure as that of so many journals invented out of whole cloth and newsprint for narrative purposes, like the must-read issues of Dorgon and Kill…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Front Runner (Jason Reitman, US) —Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman The second movie in as many award-season cycles to feature scenes depicting the inner workings of The Washington Post, The Front Runner stakes out its distance from Steven Spielberg by painting even charter members of the fourth estate as carrion-scarfing jackals; (insanely) cast as Ben Bradlee, Alfred Molina cynically justifies his newspaper’s…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Mercy of the Jungle (Joël Karekezi, Belgium, France) — Discovery
By Sarah-Tai Black Joël Karekezi’s second feature, The Mercy of the Jungle, is a propulsive film that uses the visual and dramatic potential of hermetic environments to create a story that is both broad in scope and direct in vision. Taking place at the outset of the Second Congo War in 1998, the Mercy of…
By Sarah-Tai Black | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Manta Ray (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, Thailand/France) — Discovery
By Jennifer Lynde Barker Manta Ray is a film about the Other and all that this philosophical, social, and ethical concept implies. The film strikes a graceful balance between the details of lived experience and a deeper symbolic scope, building the story quietly towards an encounter with the irreducible reality of Others and our responsibility…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Mademoiselle de Joncquières (Emmanuel Mouret, France) — Platform
By Madeleine Wall Loosely based upon a Denis Diderot story, Emmanuel Mouret’s Mademoiselle de Joncquières is a vengeance tale, dry and brightly lit to the point of wash-out. Taking place predominantly in estates in the French countryside, this period piece is about the repressed fury of a woman scorned, and the double standards of the…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, Romania/Germany/Czech Republic/Bulgaria/France) — Discovery
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Somewhere between fiction and documentary, director Adina Pintilie and her characters explore everything that “intimacy” entails in the Golden Bear-winning Touch Me Not. The film centers around Laura (Laura Benson), a woman struggling with intimacy who turns to the personal sexual experiences of a number of marginalized people to learn more about…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Accused (Gonzalo Tobal, Argentina/Mexico) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Diego Brodersen Gonzalo Tobal’s second feature after a long hiatus (his debut film Villegas was released in Argentina in 2012) marks a clear step into the world of popular cinema. The Accused tries very hard to appeal to a broad audience with its tale of Dolores (Argentinian pop star and actress Lali Espósito, definitely…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Heartbound (Janus Metz & Sine Plambech, Denmark/Netherlands/ Sweden) — TIFF Docs
By Kelley Dong Hidden in the grassy seaside of northwestern Jutland, the matronly Sommai has arranged for hundreds of marriages between Thai women and Danish men for more than 30 years. Between 2007 and 2018, documentarian Janus Metz (Borg vs McEnroe) and anthropologist Sine Plambech (Trafficking) closely followed Sommai and her construction of a migration…
By Kelley Dong | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
In Fabric (Peter Strickland, UK) — Midnight Madness
By Robert Koehler I’ve remarked elsewhere in Cinema Scope’s TIFF coverage (specifically regarding Paolo Sorrentino’s Loro) that one of the manifestations of our current state of Late Auteurism is filmmakers who believe their own press and think that they’re actually “authors” will copy earlier and greater masters. In art, imitation is essential: true originality is…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
“I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” (Radu Jude, Romania/Czech Republic/France/Bulgaria/ Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski It’s never a pleasant sight to see a film trying to punch above its intellectual weight class. “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” (the quotation marks are an official part of the title) is certainly a film with a lot on its mind. Specifically, director Radu…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Cities of Last Things (Ho Wi Ding, Taiwan/China/US/France) — Platform
By Shelly Kraicer Ho Wi Ding’s fifth feature film is his most ambitious and most interesting. After a couple of beautifully shot conceptual narrative shorts (Respire [2005]; Summer Afternoon [2008]), Ho made several commercial movies (including the sharp cross-cultural comedy Pinoy Sunday [2010]) before Cities of Last Things, which resumes his narrative experiments. The story…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Let Me Fall (Baldvin Z, Iceland/Finland/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ethan Vestby Turns out the kids aren’t all right—that’s the primary takeaway from the feels-every-second-of-it 136 minutes of Let Me Fall, a new piece of Scandinavian miseryporn that one hopes could be the corrective to this year’s addiction drama (and fellow TIFF selection) Beautiful Boy, or at least that Chalamet Oscar vehicle’s trailer. Epic…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Crises of Perfection: Wavelengths Shorts
By Leo Goldsmith A rediscovered film by Japanese experimental filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto, 1986 Summer (1986), unleashes a torrent of images over three silent minutes. The film seems to comprise a single, double-exposed reel with two layers of imagery set against each other: one layer, a scattering of thousands of single frames of green leaves framed…
By Leo Goldsmith | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Aniara (Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, Sweden) — Discovery
By Manuela Lazic (ELON MUSK… DON’T READ THIS.) In this Swedish sci-fi film from first-time feature directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, getting our ass to Mars doesn’t turn out to be a great idea. The journey on the spaceship Aniara is projected to last three weeks, an unbearable amount of time were there not…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Peterloo (Mike Leigh, UK) — Masters
By Robert Koehler Make no mistake about it: Peterloo, the new movie directed by Mike Leigh, is one weird piece of work. Seemingly created outside of time and space, with no relation to either anything else Leigh has directed nor anything else in contemporary cinema (except for Dick Pope’s ultra HD digital cinematography, which often…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Phoenix (Camilla Strøm Henriksen, Norway/Sweden) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall The amount of skill that goes into taking care of someone is on full display in Phoenix, which begins with its protagonist, 13-year-old Jill (Ylva Thedin Bjørkaas), entering the apartment she shares with her family. Having taken responsibility for the well-being of her depressed and alcoholic mother Astrid (Maria Bonnevie) and her…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, US) — TIFF Docs
By Lorenzo Esposito At the end of the screening of Monrovia, Indiana in Venice, a young man approached Fred Wiseman and told him, “Maestro, your films will be understood in 20 years.” Wiseman, laughing, replied: “I wanna be there!” It is not a joke, but maybe the closest thing to Wiseman’s idea of cinema that…
By Lorenzo Esposito | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Third Wife (Ash Mayfair, Vietnam) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Writer-director Ash Mayfair’s debut feature—about a 14-year-old girl, May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My), who is married off to much older rich man in 19th-century Vietnam—is a work of quiet empathy that skillfully depicts the harsh limits of the title character’s existence without ever reveling in her despair. The Third Wife is a…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Duelles (Olivier Masset-Depasse, Belgium/France) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Or, Bad Mamans. There’s a genuinely intriguing idea at the centre of Duelles, in which a pair of suburban mothers as well-manicured as their respective lawns engage in an escalating game of psychological warfare (and worse) in the wake of a tragedy that, in the eyes of the suffering party, could not…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Crossing (Bai Xue, China) — Discovery
By Shelly Kraicer Once in while a film will transcend its generic limitations and manage to make something new and fresh out of elements that seem overly familiar. The young Chinese director-screenwriter Bai Xue manages this with her first film The Crossing. Young high-school student Peipei (impressive newcomer Huang Yao) comes from a split home:…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Killing (Tsukamoto Shinya, Japan) — Masters
By Steve Macfarlane Tsukamoto Shinya’s Killing is the kind of movie that lives to be pull-quoted as “masterful”: a revisionist drama about a masterless samurai roaming late-feudal Japan (a subgenre known as chanbara) shot on crisp high-definition video, with an insanely sick sword battle at its centre. Tsukamoto stars as a cool-and-collected ronin named Sawamura…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Edge of the Knife (Gwaii Edenshaw & Helen Haig-Brown, Canada) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski The first feature film produced in the Haida language, currently spoken by upwards of 20 individuals, Edge of the Knife is notable simply as a cultural survivance project. If there should come a time when Haida is no longer a living language, the film may serve as a kind of Rosetta Stone…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Graves Without a Name (Rithy Panh, France/Cambodia) — TIFF Docs
By Angelo Muredda Late in Rithy Panh’s elegant successor to The Missing Picture, which more squarely faces his own family losses in the Cambodian genocide of the late ’70s, the filmmaker’s longtime surrogate narrator Randal Douc wonders if he has shot so many images of death in order to forget that he himself is dead.…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Belmonte (Federico Veiroj, Uruguay/Spain/Mexico) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski If there’s a film this year that merits the label “Big Dick Energy” more than Belmonte, it’s going to have to be in Cinerama. This is the story of Javi Belmonte (Gonzalo Delgado), a leading contemporary artist in Uruguay whose large canvases exhibit a hint of Italian Transavantgarde style (especially Francesco Clemente)…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/France/Germany/ Bulgaria) — Masters
By Ian Barr It wasn’t too far into his filmography that Nuri Bilge Ceylan began to express a sense of petulance (albeit in the form of waggish self-reflexivity) regarding his own growing reputation as one of the major heirs apparent to an older tradition of modernist cinema. In his breakthrough Distant, the film’s protag played…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (Roberto Minervini, Italy/US/France) — Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson Judging from the early reviews of What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, which spurred me to write these fast and loose impressions, Roberto Minervini seems to have painted himself into multiple monochrome corners—a white Italian man (albeit one who lives in Texas) making a film named after a spiritual…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Vox Lux (Brady Corbet, US) — Special Presentations
By Jennifer Lynde Barker Brady Corbet’s new film is divisive: in its structure and vision, and in the way it elicits audience response. At the Venice press screening, it sparked immediate bravos and boos—spontaneous cries of love and hate. Neither does the film lend itself to discourse. Like its main character, pop singer Celeste (Natalie…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
That Time of Year (Paprika Steen, Denmark) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Guess what? Families act like assholes at Christmastime. And for some reason, they keep making the same movie about it, over and over, in multiple languages. This one’s in Danish. When one considers the depth and intelligence that Paprika Steen has brought to the cinema over the last quarter-century, it’s truly galling that she…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery, US) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler Some break the law—it’s their nature. Some go after the lawbreakers—it’s their nature. To capture two characters in these natural states is the aim of The Old Man & the Gun, a free and easy account of the real-life exploits of a gang of elderly bank robbers in the early ’80s led…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Angelo (Markus Schleinzer, Austria/Luxembourg) — Platform
By Angelo Muredda It’s funny in an Austrian sort of way that Markus Schleinzer should take seven years to follow his 2011 Cannes debut Michael with a movie called Angelo. That kind of contextual anti-joke would be at home in his latest, a self-reflexive 18th-century period piece, pitched at the edge of irony, about the…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
American Dharma (Errol Morris, US) — TIFF Docs
By Clara Miranda Scherffig Many viewers “only” know Steve Bannon as the bad-skinned evil plotter behind Donald Trump: a racist, a fascist, an occasional movie producer, a failed media mogul—in other words, not exactly a cinephile. Errol Morris’ documentary about Bannon, American Dharma, includes excerpts of classic American films picked by Bannon to illustrate his…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Splinters (Thom Fitzgerald, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski From its lingering focus on silent theatrical gestures that are ill-suited to the screen, to its narrative that’s structured entirely around an elevator pitch, to its irksome reliance on sub-coffee house white-boy folk music that’s woven right into the diegesis, Splinters could very well serve as Exhibit A for why English Canadian…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Core of the World (Natalia Meshchaninova, Russia/Lithuania) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Joseph Pomp The notion that work is rarely depicted with seriousness in the cinema has at this point become a truism, but few narrative films make it their bread and butter as much as Core of the World does. An affecting character study of a lone-wolf veterinarian at a kennel for hunting dogs in…
By Joseph Pomp | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The River (Emir Baigazin, Kazakhstan/Norway/Poland) — Platform
By Michael Sicinski An austere tone poem of parental oppression, The River is unusual in its application of the rigid principles of “festival cinema.” Rather than employing formalism for its own sake, director Emir Baigazin opts instead to orchestrate controlled rituals that are at odds with the youthful energies that are simmering just below the…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Loro (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France) — Masters
By Robert Koehler Because of the various creative ways that capital funds cinema, decadence and corruption are never too far away from eating away at its heart. So, beware of movies about decadence: these are movies that tempt fate, walk right up to the line of becoming the very thing they’re observing or satirizing, and…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France) — Masters
By Andréa Picard Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) “There is a real contrast between the violence of the act of representation and the internal calm of representation itself.”—Le livre d’image Last summer, the Institut Lumière in Lyon run by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux announced a full Godard retrospective for its annual restoration…
By Andrea Picard | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Trial (Sergei Loznitsa, Netherlands) — Wavelengths
By Lawrence Garcia Following the conflicted reportage of Victory Day and the fictional portmanteau of Donbass, Sergei Loznitsa delivers a third 2018 premiere with The Trial, an in-the-gallery documentary account of one of Stalin’s infamous Moscow Trials. Returning to primarily found-footage materials for the first time since The Event (2015), Loznitsa linearly condenses an 11-day…
By Lawrence Garcia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi, Spain/France/Italy) — Gala Presentations
By Azadeh Jafari In Asghar Farhadi’s family dramas, there is always a crucial piece of narrative information that is kept from the viewers and also from some of the characters, and which serves kicks off the director’s stories of secrets and lies. Then, through the meticulously well-written scripts, all the events, actions, and reactions are engineered…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Kingsway (Bruce Sweeney, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews Are there citizens of any other nation who have as strained a relationship with their national cinema than Canadians? This may well be one of the only countries in the world to call its own cinematic output by name: they’re not just movies, they’re Canadian movies, an unofficial shorthand to denote a…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Destroyer (Karyn Kusama, US) — Platform
By Adam Nayman Playing a weathered LAPD lifer in Destroyer, Nicole Kidman looks like she’s been Dragged Across Concrete; her Erin Bell is the kind of hard-driving, harder-drinking detective who sleeps in her clothes in her car and flips off superiors at the scene of the crime. In other words, she’s a cliché, and if…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Jirga (Benjamin Gilmour, Australia) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski An MFA-level piece of short fiction with decidedly honourable intent, Jirga seems blinkered by its Western point of view despite its dogged efforts to leave said perspective behind. Mike (Sam Smith) has returned to Afghanistan where, three years prior, he accidentally killed a civilian during an anti-Taliban raid. He wants to make…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Sunset (László Nemes, Hungary/France) — Special Presentations
By Dominik Kamalzadeh With Son of Saul, his immersive Holocaust drama about a member of the Sonderkommando, Hungarian director László Nemes made a lightning start with a topic few directors dare to face up to at all. His unusual—and, in this context, especially debatable—approach was the product of an aesthetic that claimed to convey the…
By Dominik Kamalzadeh | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Great Darkened Days (Maxime Giroux, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Elena Lazic It’s a testament to French-Canadian director Maxime Giroux’s control over his material that, as seemingly random or absurd as the events and imagery in The Great Darkened Days may appear, they all feel ruled by a genuine and moving emotion at their core. Giroux’s film centres on Philippe (Martin Dubreuil), a Québécois…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
One Last Deal (Klaus Härö, Finland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews The most dreaded of festival films are not the unwatchable dregs (and it’s certainly not the cream of the crop), but the perfunctory middle-of-the-road selections. What to do when a movie doesn’t inspire much more than a “meh”? How does one expand that out to a couple hundred words? One solid strategy…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Day I Lost My Shadow (Soudade Kaadan, Syria/France/ Qatar/Lebanon) — Discovery
By Ethan Vestby Beginning and ending in darkness lit by candlelight—including a rather abrupt, cruel capper that seems to recall nothing so much as the iconic fade to black that concluded The Sopranos—The Day I Lost My Shadow is a rather arch experience. Yet looking upon it in retrospect, if anything one wishes for a…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Load (Ognjen Glavonic, Serbia/France/Croatia/Iran/Qatar) — Discovery
By Azadeh Jafari Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) The debut fiction feature by Ognjen Glavonic is the second time that the Serbian writer-director, who lived through the Yugoslav wars as a child, has explored the same shocking incident from the time of the Kosovo conflict. In his feature-length documentary Depth Two (2016),…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Dead Souls (Wang Bing, France/Switzerland) — Wavelengths
By Jesse Cumming Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) Watching Wang Bing’s Dead Souls at Cannes a few days apart from a restored screening of Safi Faye’s Fad Jal (1979), the citation by Hampâté Bâ that opened the latter felt particularly resonant, with its declaration that “In Africa, when an old man dies,…
By Jesse Cumming | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Giant Little Ones (Keith Behrman, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda From its YA market-friendly nonsense title to its insistent poptimist score and tired elevator pitch—it’s about that One Moment Everything Changes for a sensitive, good-looking teen who has the whole world on his plate—Giant Little Ones has a lot of strikes against it. It’s a bit of a surprise, then, that Keith…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Birds of Passage (Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra, Colombia/ Denmark/Mexico/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Elena Lazic In Embrace of the Serpent, director Ciro Guerra and producer Cristina Gallego demonstrated an all-too-rare talent for finding an original visual language that fit and enhanced their subject matter. The black-and-white cinematography, while beguiling, stripped their representation of the Amazon jungle of the exoticism that is so often associated with it, depriving…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Working Woman (Michael Aviad, Israel) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer Much like its protagonist, Michal Aviad’s Working Woman appears to be in control until things get more complicated. Although Orna (Liron Ben Shlush) takes to real estate like a duck to water, her confidence is progressively undermined by her manipulative, lecherous boss Benny (Menashe Noy), just as the film’s own sense of…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Dogman (Matteo Garrone, Italy/France) — Special Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska As Italo Calvino wrote, “The hell of the living is not something that will be, the hell of living is already here—it is a hell in which we live every day, which we create, being together.” In a laconic way, this quote captures the essence of the newest film by Matteo Garrone,…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Ghost Fleet (Shannon Service & Jeffrey Waldron, US) — TIFF Docs
By Jay Kuehner Apparently they aren’t watching much Errol Morris over at Paul Allen’s Vulcan (the woke producers here), or else The Thin Blue Line has become neglected in documentary programs, lest a telejournalistic “exposé” such as Ghost Fleet, unwittingly indulging its own spurious methodology while attempting to uncover another, be mistaken as meta. Fulminating…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Retrospekt (Esther Rots, Netherlands, Belgium) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews A fractured story structure mirroring the fractured memories of its main character is the gimmick in Dutch director Esther Rots’ second feature, arriving almost ten years after her feature debut Can Go Through Skin (2009). The film follows Mette (Circé Lethem), a social worker who specializes in supporting battered women, who gets…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, US/France/Romania/ Spain) — Special Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig Film festivals provide an opportunity to rethink the way we exercise critical power, for sometimes we are incapable of deciphering how we truly feel about a film while still sitting in the theatre. Upon initial viewing, the first English-language feature by French director Jacques Audiard—a Western of European provenance (it was…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Colette (Wash Westmoreland, UK) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr The unrefined Gabrielle Sidonie becomes the controversial author Colette (Keira Knightley) in Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland’s latest melodrama. The biopic, based on the writer’s early years, tonally and visually manages to balance the feverish luxury of belle époque Paris with a sophisticated gravity and absurdly frenzied emotions with beautifully subdued sensuality.…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Jinpa (Pema Tseden, China) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Shelly Kraicer Two Tibetan men, both named Jinpa, meet on a deserted road in the remote Kekexili highlands of Qinghai province. One (Jinpa, the name of the actor who plays him) drives a truck; he’s just run over a sheep. The other (Genden Phuntsok) is a hitchhiker, and explains he is on a ten-year…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Burning (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea) — Special Presentations
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) In the eight years since Poetry premiered at Cannes, narrative cinema of the sort that director Lee Chang-dong specializes in has hit a fallow period unseen in decades. Coincidence, perhaps, but one need not look much further than the festival’s interceding Competition line-ups, traditionally…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, China) — Discovery
By Celluloid Liberation Front Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) China’s growing economic clout and rising prominence in world affairs can help illuminate some essential if unflattering traits of the business we call show. Not even a decade ago, any mention of China was usually made in relation to the draconian censorship filmmakers…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt, Portugal/France/ Brazil) — Midnight Madness
By Josh Cabrita “The story, all names, characters, and incidents seen here are fictitious. No identifications with actual persons (living or deceased), places, products, genetic procedures or giant puppies is intended or should be inferred. No animals were harmed in the making of this film.” Thus reads the seemingly obligatory, hilariously backhanded legalese that opens…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Hotel by the River (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk Decidedly melancholy, at times even downright dark, Hong Sangsoo’s 23rd feature, Hotel by the River, continues the South Korean maverick’s recent turn toward unguarded vulnerability and introspection. One of Hong’s winter pictures (c.f. The Day He Arrives, 2011; Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, 2000), the film deals with family dysfunction, creative…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Winter Flies (Olmo Omerzu, Czech Republic/Slovenia/ Poland/Slovakia) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer The only truly pressing question that comes to mind when watching Olmo Omerzu’s Winter Flies is who exactly such a film is supposed to be targeting, as its competent, strangely listless blend of genres fails to extract much urgency or specificity from any of them. Does making yet another coming-of-age road-movie comedy…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Angel (Koen Mortier, Belgium/Netherlands/Senegal) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ethan Vestby A film that’s initially mysterious enough in its jagged rhythms, shifting perspectives, and bold colours to stir feelings of possibly unearthing a hidden cinematic sibling to Claire Denis or Bertrand Bonello, it’s highly unfortunate that by the end of Koen Mortier’s Angel one only gets the sense of a work that doesn’t…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Quietude (Pablo Trapero, Argentina) — Special Presentations
By Diego Brodersen In the ample rooms and corridors of the countryside house whose name provides the title for Argentine filmmaker Pablo Trapero’s latest film, a few things are being hidden away, consciously or not. To begin with, there are a tall stack of secrets from the past (family stuff, but also of a very…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Dig (Andy and Ryan Tohill, UK) — Discovery
By Manuela Lazic From the dark and wild lands of Northern Ireland comes this thriller with a morbid, horror-exploitation premise that melds the rural with the brutal. Thirtysomething Ronan Callahan (Moe Dunford, also at TIFF in Black 47 and Rosie) returns home after spending 15 years in prison for a murder he doesn’t recall committing.…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Firecrackers (Jasmin Mozzafari, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman It’s a town full of losers and they’re pulling out of there to win: that’s the premise of Jasmin Mozzafari’s Firecrackers, which expands the director’s 2013 short of the same name into a conspicuously stylish, intermittently impressive debut that feels very much of the moment in young Canadian cinema, like a faster,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Float Like a Butterfly (Carmel Winters, Ireland) — Discovery
By Kelley Dong In Carmel Winters’ Float Like a Butterfly, a police altercation on the grounds of an Irish Traveller encampment culminates in the death of a young mother and the arrest of her husband. This tragedy inspires their daughter Frances’ (Hazel Doupe) dream to become a great fighter like Muhammad Ali. But unlike Ali,…
By Kelley Dong | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Carmine Street Guitars (Ron Mann, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Shelly Kraicer Electric craft becomes a stand-in for analogue’s humanity in Ron Mann’s elegiac Carmine Street Guitars. Rick Kelly is the master guitar maker of the beloved, eponymous Greenwich Village guitar shop. He’s been scavenging wood from historic, mostly demolished 19th-century NYC buildings and turning them into lovingly handcrafted electric musical instruments for decades.…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Asako I & II (Hamaguchi Ryusuke, Japan/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Josh Cabrita Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) By far the most surprising and satisfying selection of this year’s Cannes Competition, Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Asako I & II sets up and throws out stylistic paradigms faster than you can grab hold of them. As if to maximize the frustration of viewers who prefer…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, US) — Wavelengths
By Blake Williams Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) “For the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Emu Runner (Imogen Thomas, Australia) — Discovery
By Sarah-Tai Black The result of a 15-year-long collaboration between first-time director Imogen Thomas and members of the remote New South Wales community of Brewarrina, Emu Runner struggles to strike the right balance between collective art-making and authorial command. In spite of this, 11-year-old Rhae Kae Waites commands the screen with a soft yet precocious…
By Sarah-Tai Black | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
ENDZEIT – EVER AFTER (Carolina Hellsgård, Germany) — Discovery
By Madeleine Wall As each era’s monster reflects its larger cultural identity, the turn to the eco-zombie, in both last year’s The Girl With All the Gifts and now in Carolina Hellsgård’s ENDZEIT – EVER AFTER, presents us with an undead horror directly responding to humanity’s transgressions against nature. After this particular zombie plague, only…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
3 Faces (Jafar Panahi, Iran) — Masters
By Azadeh Jafari Of all the films that Jafar Panahi has made after being officially banned from filmmaking, 3 Faces is the one most visibly influenced by Abbas Kiarostami. After watching a video phone message in which a young girl, an aspiring actress named Marzieh, attempts suicide, Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari take a road…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
First Man (Damien Chazelle, US) — Gala Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska The expedition of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew is one of the central myths in American history and global pop culture. The moon landing was perceived as a symbol of the victory of democracy—the American Dream as one giant leap for mankind (and going where no Russian had gone before…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico) — Special Presentations
By Jennifer Barker Roma opens and closes with the image of an airplane: at the beginning, it is reflected in the water being used to wash away dogshit from a driveway; in the end, it is simply observed crossing the sky. This image aptly bookends the film’s trajectory: at first the past is murkily reflected,…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
El Angel (Luis Ortega, Argentina/Spain) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Manuela Lazic For the young Carlitos (played by talented newcomer Lorenzo Ferro), crime is a way of life, and a means of expression: against a conservative society, against adults, and for love. He didn’t always want to be a gangster, and he’s not after recognition: he craves the thrill of the extremes and of…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, US) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman The red, white and blue split-screen that showcases the horny, house-partying girls of Assassination Nation is the first—and maybe best—bit of neo-Godardian gamesmanship in Sam (son of Barry) Levinson’s state-of-the-union horror comedy. Suffice it to say that there are more plausible candidates to make satire great again than the guy who directed…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Blind Spot (Tuva Novotny, Norway) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Swedish actor Tuva Novotny (known to English-speaking audiences from recent turns in Borg/McEnroe and Annihilation) makes her debut behind the camera with Blind Spot, about a young couple who are thrown into crisis mode over the course of a single night when their eldest daughter seems to have attempted suicide by jumping…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
In My Room (Ulrich Köhler, Germany/Italy) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) I. In the opening minutes of Ulrich Köhler’s new film In My Room, things don’t seem right. In fact, it’s all a bit glitchy, and the unsuspecting viewer might very well wonder whether the DCP is malfunctioning. The scene appears to be the aftermath…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke, China/France/Japan) — Masters
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) It speaks to the richness of Jia Zhangke’s oeuvre that Ash Is Purest White already feels like a career summation, even though the Chinese director has yet to turn 50. Transition has always been at the heart of Jia’s work, but this, his twelfth feature-length…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Stupid Young Heart (Selma Vilhunen, Finland/ Netherlands/Sweden) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Kelley Dong In Selma Vilhunen’s sophomore feature Stupid Young Heart, white nationalism exists as a necessary evil during a young boy’s rite of passage. Routinely bullied for his small stature, Finnish teenager Lenni (Jere Ristseppä) oscillates between reticence and bouts of anger. Kiira (Rosa Honkonen), Lenni’s hip-hop dancing classmate, is pregnant with his child.…
By Kelley Dong | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Sibel (Çagla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti, France/Germany/Luxembourg/ Turkey) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler A movie like Sibel brings out all the worst instincts in programmers working for festivals striving to present a wide range of contemporary international cinema, and, in the bargain, attract buyers. Sibel ticks off so many currently hot-button-category boxes that it’s a kind of a festival porn piece: Girl Power, physical disability,…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Florianópolis Dream (Ana Katz, Argentina/Brazil/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Diego Brodersen Since her debut feature El juego de la silla (2002), Argentine actor-turned-filmmaker Ana Katz has defined a personal style of comedy: a peculiar derivative of the costumbrismo, a cinematic form that she further elaborated in A Wandering Bride (2007), and which reached its limit within the confines of the mainstream in The…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas, France) — Special Presentations
By Jennifer Barker Non-Fiction is an elegantly crafted exploration of society on the cusp: looking towards a virtual future, longing for a material past. Even the film’s production manifests its philosophical aims: the grainy, predominantly Super 16mm images insist on a material vision of the world that glows with specificity. Delightfully and unapologetically intellectual, Olivier…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper, US) — Gala Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig In the era of the self and the ubiquity of digital images, the print billboard has been perhaps replaced by the multiscreen. Both types of visual support make brief appearances in Bradley’s Cooper remake of A Star is Born, and yet—just like the film—both elements stay on the surface instead of…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Putin’s Witnesses (Vitaly Mansky, Latvia/Switerland/ Czech Republic) — TIFF Docs
By Celluloid Liberation Front Almost 20 years after having filmed a promotional campaign movie on Putin and his inner circle during Putin’s first run for president, Vitaly Mansky has returned to this material to look back at the early stages of Putin’s rise to power. The intimacy of the footage paradoxically reveals little of the…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Museo (Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski A not-very-bright film about a very intelligent topic, Museo tries to hedge its bets one too many times. It’s ostensibly about cultural patrimony, in particular the irony that a nation’s most treasured artifacts (such as those housed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, which features prominently in Museo) are…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Walking on Water (Andrey Paounov, Italy/US) — TIFF Docs
By Mark Peranson In June 2016 on Lake Iseo in Italy, the Bulgarian-born artist Christo at last realized The Floating Piers, an orange-coloured, three-kilometre walkway on top of the lake that allowed people the experience of metaphorically becoming Jesus. The rollicking documentary Walking on Water takes us through the process of the execution of The…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Climax (Gaspar Noé, France) — Midnight Madness
By Lawrence Garcia Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) Ahead of Climax’s Quinzaine premiere, Gaspar Noé unveiled the movie’s hilariously boneheaded, almost exclusively text-based one-sheet: a rundown of his filmography, with each entry accompanied by a variation of presumed (not without reason) audience vitriol, capped off with an invitation (complete with a rendering…
By Lawrence Garcia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Fausto (Andrea Bussmann, Mexico/Canada) — Wavelengths
By Josh Cabrita and Adam Cook Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) “Most people want to be kings and queens, but not enough want to be Faust.” —Jean-Luc Godard, Le livre d’image When Goethe wrote his Faust, adapting the German legend about a scholar who makes a pact with the Devil to attain…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Erased,____ Ascent of the Invisible (Ghassan Halwani, Lebanon) — Wavelengths
By Shelly Kraicer How do you make what is missing disappear (again) and reappear? This question might sound abstract, but its concrete instantiation, after the bloody Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990, obsesses artist, animator, and first-time feature filmmaker Ghassan Halwani. His experimental essay-documentary Erased is the product of his research into the traces that remain,…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, Lebanon) — Special Presentations
By Richard Porton Poverty porn at its most shameless, Nadine Labaki’s paean to Beirut’s street urchins charmed a number of viewers when it was screened in this year’s Cannes Competition; one can only conclude that otherwise reasonable critics are reduced to quivering sentimentalists when plied with images of adorable children and babies. Few films addressing…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland) — Special Presentations
By Jordan Cronk With its simultaneously austere and accessible veneer, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida (2013) was that rare arthouse hit that seemed to please the critical cognoscenti as much as it did casual moviegoers. To date the film has grossed over $15 million worldwide and, after taking nearly every critics’ group award under the sun, was…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
RAY & LIZ (Richard Billingham, UK) — Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson In Richard Billingham’s stellar debut feature RAY & LIZ, the Turner Prize-nominated photographer draws on his childhood to vividly recreate the actions and sensations of dysfunctional life on the margins of Birmingham in Thatcher-era Britain. Ray and Liz are Billingham’s parents, the subjects of the series of photographs Ray’s a Laugh, which…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Maria by Callas (Tom Volf, France) — TIFF Docs
By Madeleine Wall Compiled from archival footage of Maria Callas’ stage performances, interviews with the press, Super 8 home movies and the occasional letter, Maria by Callas attempts to create a portrait of a woman using as many angles as possible. Tom Volf’s film is more interested in Callas’ personal life than the professional career…
By Madeleine Wall | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Les Salopes, or The Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin (Renée Beaulieu, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda What can be said about Renée Beaulieu’s Les Salopes, or The Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin that isn’t already conveyed in the title? The Québécois filmmaker and University of Montréal film professor’s second feature—which concers a biologist whose research on the potentially scandalous connection between desire and dermatology—sits at an awkward juncture…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
The Sweet Requiem (Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam, India/USA) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Tibetan refugee Dolkar (Tenzin Dolker) has an active yet average life in Delhi, but we quickly come to see that this woman’s focus on the quotidian is a way to forget past pain. Moving between Dolkar’s adult life in India and flashbacks of her childhood trek through the Himalayas in order to…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Girls of the Sun (Eva Husson, France) — Special Presentations
By Michael Sicinski It’s often the case that a film that’s roundly lambasted in the hothouse environs of Cannes will look a little better under less rarified light. I wish I could say this is the case for the deeply well-intentioned but severely ham-fisted women-vs.-Daesh drama Girls of the Sun. For one thing, it’s a…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Transit (Christian Petzold, Germany/France) — Masters
By James Lattimer Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) Christian Petzold’s progressive drift away from realism gathers pace in Transit, another melodrama of impossibility and despair that unfolds in a hyper-constructed amalgam of past and present as unstable as it is seamless. Yet the deliberately unresolved tension between ’40s Marseille and today is…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, China/France) — Wavelengths
By Blake Williams Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018) “If the cinema isn’t made to express dreams or everything that in waking life has something in common with dreams, then it has no point.”—Antonin Artaud, “Sorcellerie et cinéma” (ca. 1928) Cinema, however realist it may ever strive to be, is synonymous with dreaming.…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor, Chile/Brazil/Argentina/ Netherlands/Qatar) — Discovery
By Kelley Dong All play and no work is a dangerous game in Too Late to Die Young, the third feature by Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor, winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Director at this year’s Locarno festival. Recalls the dreamy, pastoral pastels of painter George Seurat, the film is set in 1990 and…
By Kelley Dong | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
L. COHEN (James Benning, US) — Wavelengths
By James Lattimer Since leaving celluloid behind around a decade ago, James Benning has become ever more invested in the durational opportunities offered by digital formats, with his numerous recent landscape films in particular often stringing together a mere handful of sustained shots or even just unfolding across one. L. COHEN continues this tradition while gently…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Border (Ali Abbasi, Denmark/Sweden) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ian Barr Based on a short story from Let the Right One In author John Ajvide Lindqvist, this naturalistically fantastique sophomore feature from writer-director Ali Abbasi similarly depicts the romantic union of two outcasts whose mythological origins are teasingly parcelled out. Vaguely lupine-looking at first glance, and blessed with a heightened sense of smell,…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Manto (Nandita Das, India) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Following the career of author Saadat Hasan Manto (Thanda Gosht; Toba Tek Singh), Nandita Das’ sophomore feature plays like an artist-biopic checklist. Working in India and Pakistan during Independence and Partition, Manto (played, in a powerhouse performance, by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) grapples with social unrest, poverty, and anti-Muslim sentiment in his work, all…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Styx (Wolfgang Fischer, Germany/Austria) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski So many films about the global refugee crisis are focused on the uniquely Eurocentric task of humanizing those asylum seekers who are risking everything for a better life. To its credit, Styx presumes no such glad-handing is necessary; in fact, the refugees are almost incidental to the film. We only get to…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Rojo (Benjamin Naishtat, Argentina/Brazil/France/ Netherlands/Germany) — Platform
By Adam Nayman The De Palmia-ish split diopter shot in the opening sequence of Rojo is an allusion that also suggests its own distinctive usage. Positioning the camera just behind the balding pate of small-town lawyer Claudio (Dario Grandinetti), as he gazes angrily at a long-haired restaurant patron who’s taken his reservation, uncomfortably aligns us…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Girl (Lukas Dhont, Belgium) — Discovery
By Lawrence Garcia Lukas Dhont is a name you will see again. With his debut feature Girl, which won nearly every award it could at Cannes (the Un Certain Regard FIPRESCI Prize, the Camera d’Or, the Queer Palm, plus a Best Actor prize for 16-year-old star Victor Polster), the Belgian director achieved something akin to…
By Lawrence Garcia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Shoplifters (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan) — Special Presentations
By Mallory Andrews There was a distinct feeling in the air at this year’s Cannes that the Competition jury was under far more scrutiny than usual. The Cate Blanchett-led, female-majority group illustrated a gesture by the festival towards gender equity and a commitment to making structural changes in one of the industry’s most prestigious institutions.…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
La Flor (Mariano Llinás, Argentina) — Wavelengths
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope 76 (Fall 2018) “Some will say I reinvented the wheel. Yes, I’d say, I reinvented the wheel.”—La Flor, Episode 4 To begin, a question: What exactly is La Flor? It’s a pertinent query, albeit one with no easy answer, so let’s break it down. The first thing…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Donbass (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany/France/Netherlands/ Romania/Ukraine) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Richard Porton At first glance, Sergei Loznitsa’s new film—unlike his previous, intricately plotted voyages to Hell such as My Joy and A Gentle Creature—seems like a scattershot series of vignettes, but eventually, Donbass’ near-Buñuelian episodic structure (in interviews, Loznitza cites The Phantom of Liberty as an influence) acquires a cumulative power. Adopting a superficially…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2018
Never Steady, Never Still (Kathleen Hepburn, Canada)—Discovery
By Lydia Ogwang Determining the sum total of Kathleen Hepburn’s formally accomplished feature debut is daunting arithmetic. Protagonist Judy, a longtime sufferer of Parkinson’s disease, lives with her husband and 18-year-old son in warm domesticity. The film’s opening moments deliver a soft, rose-coloured naturalism, but a prologue delivered in voiceover establishes loss and vulnerability as…
By Lydia Ogwang | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Seen and Unseen (Kamila Andini, Indonesia/Netherlands/ Australia/ Qatar) — Platform
By Michael Sicinski The Seen and Unseen is a truly singular film, but it does not relinquish its secrets easily. The story of two young twins, the girl Tantri (Ni Kadek Thaly Titi Kasih) and the boy Tantra (Ida Bagus Putu Radithya Mahijasena), who share an intense emotional bond that may extend beyond death, The…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Kissing Candice (Aoife McArdle, Ireland) — Discovery
By Robert Koehler Any discussion about Kissing Candice begins with cinematographer Steve Annis, who, up until now, has been a specialist in music videos for Nick Cave, Florence and the Machine, U2, and Bryan Ferry. Operating in anamorphic widescreen with writer-director Aoife McArdle (herself a music-video veteran, who previously collaborated with the cinematographer for U2’s…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler, US) — Midnight Madness
By Steve Macfarlane Was Vince Vaughn the Owen Wilson to Jon Favreau’s Wes Anderson? As woebegone drug runner Bradley Thomas, Vaughn delivers a rock-solid command lead in S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 that carries the raggedy mantle of Nolte, Kristofferson, Bronson, McQueen, etc. It’s a film that makes it easy to remember…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, USA) — Special Presentations
By Leonardo Goi Martin McDonagh’s rollicking and viciously funny revenge tale stars a memorable Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, a mother who seeks retribution for her daughter, who was brutally raped and killed by men the local police forces seem uninterested in bringing to justice. Seven months after the crime and without a lead in…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Dark River (Clio Barnard, UK) — Platform
By Alysia Urrutia The places you’ve lived are like the people you’ve loved: you can leave them all you want but they’ll never be gone. The inextricability of space and emotion, the way we infuse familiar places with the ghosts of our memories, is at the core of Dark River, a grim tale that explores…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Disobedience (Sebastián Leilo, UK) — Special Presentations
By Manuela Lazic Now fully crossed over into English-language filmmaking (following in the footsteps of his Hollywood-focused countryman Pablo Larraín), Chilean director Sebastián Lelio continues his series of films about women and discrimination with Disobedience. This time out, he examines the difficult dialogue between sexuality and religion through the story of Ronit (an excellent Rachel…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
I Love You, Daddy (Louis C.K., US) — Special Presentations
By Dan Sullivan Full disclosure: An issue of this publication (CS 70, to be precise [Ed. note: not cleared for use]) appears laid atop the desk of Glen Topher (Louis C.K.), the creatively blocked but nevertheless richer-than-God television writer/producer whose daughter China (Chloë Grace Moretz, surely a career-best turn) moves into his opulent penthouse in…
By Dan Sullivan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mom and Dad (Brian Taylor, US) — Midnight Madness
By Elena Lazic For his first solo directorial effort, Brian Taylor (of Neveldine/Taylor, the creative duo behind Crank and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) tackles the challenge of comedy-horror head on with a premise that could have gone so wrong: a mass hysteria causes parents to suddenly turn against their children, with the clear intention…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
BOOM FOR REAL The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Sara Driver, USA) — TIFF Docs
By Phil Coldiron GELDZAHLER: So they’re kinds [sic] of indexes to encyclopedias that don’t exist? BASQUIAT: I just like the names. Given that this exchange between curator and artist is typical of the latter’s saintly tendency towards terseness, Sara Driver’s decision to render her portrait of the five years before Basquiat exploded onto the art…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Angels Wear White (Vivian Qu, China/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Steve Macfarlane It’s no spoiler to say the whole damn system is found guilty as hell in Vivian Qu’s Angels Wear White. While a sleepy coastal town refurbishes itself as getaway destination, a teenage migrant worker named Xioami (Wen Qi) fills in for her friend working the reception desk at a hotel. There, she’s…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Chappaquiddick (John Curran, USA) — Gala Presentations
By Manuela Lazic It seems that the movies will never stop portraying the tormented lives of the Kennedys. After last year’s divisive Jackie, which focused (oh so tortuously and in slow-motion) on the First Lady’s immediate reaction to JFK’s assassination, the cameras have now turned for the first time (at least in a high-profile studio…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, Australia) — Platform
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country attempts to be unique in every way possible, and nearly succeeds. An Australian Western about colonialism, it consciously revises the racial politics of the genre, while emphasizing vibrant visuals, expressive sound design, and a radically loose narrative structure. After Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris), an Aboriginal farmer, kills a…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Living Proof (Matt Embry, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Aurélie Godet Canadian filmmaker Matt Embry is living proof that one can do well despite being stuck with multiple sclerosis, provided that one circumvents the medical establishment’s augur of incurability by diversifying sources of information on the causes and treatment of the disease. This is the main takeaway of Living Proof, a documentary that…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Disappearance (Ali Asgari, Iran) — Discovery
By Steve Macfarlane In Ali Asgari’s slow-burning melodrama Disappearance, a young unmarried couple (Sadaf Asgari and Amir Reza Ranjbaran) spend one very long night moving from one Tehran hospital to another after their first time having sex results, for her, in a bleeding condition that won’t stop. There are several avenues to help, but each…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Shiekh Jackson (Amr Salama, Egypt) — Special Presentations
By Willow Maclay Michael Jackson’s death sent shockwaves through popular culture around the world. Amr Salama’s film measures its impact in Egypt through the story of a young Imam (Ahmad Alfishawy) whose reaction to the news unearths memories and emotions he had thought long buried. On the surface, the sheikh’s life seems to be going…
By Willow Maclay | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Cocaine Prison (Violeta Ayala, Australia/Bolivia/France/US) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski There’s a scene early on in Cocaine Prison where we see several of the little brothers of Deisy Torrez, one of the film’s main subjects, rolling around in dried coca leaves, playing in the foliage like so many New Englanders have at the height of autumn. This is beautiful and sad, since…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Alias Grace (Mary Harron, Canada/USA) — Primetime
By Angelo Muredda Margaret Atwood’s most genre-bending, postmodern novel gets a mostly straightforward Victorian adaptation in Mary Harron’s CBC-bound miniseries Alias Grace, at least on the basis of its first two episodes. Atwood has a lot of fun with the lurid rubbernecking appeal of the story of Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), the maid turned prisoner…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Victoria & Abdul (Stephen Frears, UK) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Not content with a simple erasure of colonial violence under the veil of a feel-good prestige pic, Stephen Frears opts for full-on degradation in his latest film Victoria & Abdul. Judi Dench stars as a Queen Victoria who is bored with royalty, and the way her crown alienates her from the people…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Black Cop (Cory Bowles, Canada) — Discovery
By Josh Cabrita The inciting central incident in Cory Bowles’ debut feature is an all-too-recognizable altercation between two belligerent, white Toronto PD officers and a hoodie-wearing black man (Ronnie Rowe Jr.) leaving a convenience store mid-run. Starting with the officers’ quasi-congenial attempts to get the jogger’s attention while his earbuds blare, a tumult of racially…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Azmaish: A Journey Through the Subcontinent (Sabiha Sumar, Pakistan) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski While certainly informative and laudably humanist in intent, Azmaish poses a certain problem for this reviewer, simply from the standpoint of context. This new documentary/road movie from Sabiha Sumar (Dinner with the President) is a kind of primer on the conflicts between India and Pakistan, offering a crash course that starts with…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Breathe (Andy Serkis, UK) — Gala Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Andy Serkis takes a left turn from performance-capture guru to prestige-pic helmer with this ingratiating and anonymously directed biopic that leaves no cliché about love and illness untapped. If there’s anything curious about Breathe, it’s the behind-the-scenes business machinations that saw Serkis taking on as his directorial debut a story that turns…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Molly’s Game (Aaron Sorkin, US) — Gala Presentations
By Manuela Lazic It took Aaron Sorkin 15 years to finally go from the writer’s desk to the director’s chair, and in some respects, Molly’s Game feels like the work of an experienced filmmaker. The story of Molly Bloom’s rise and fall as the organizer of the world’s most exclusive and star-studded poker game comes…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Soldiers. Story from Ferentari (Ivana Mladenovic, Romania/Serbia/Belgium) — Discovery
By Alysia Urrutia While on the surface Soldiers from Ferentari would appear to be wildly rugged in every possible sense—stark cinematography, bleak setting, characters frayed by age and rough around the edges—Ivana Mladeovic’s film heroically manages to infuse its ruinous onscreen world with the romantic possibility of freedom, the kind that only having spent half…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Motive (Manuel Martín Cuenca, Spain) — Special Presentation
By James Lattimer Watching The Motive is akin to hearing an artist expound at length on the tedious specifics of their process, a feeling made all the more wearying by the blinkered nature of said approach. The opening scene of Manuel Martín Cuenca’s film shows its protagonist, wannabe writer Alvaro (Javier Gutiérrez), practically crying with…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Swan (Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir, Iceland) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski When someone makes their first film, it’s not uncommon for them to experience some difficulty controlling parameters such as style and tone. But Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir’s The Swan is something a bit more frustrating. For the first half of its running time, this Icelandic coming-of-age story is simply bizarre, taking visual and…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Tigre (Silvina Schnicer & Ulises Porra Guardiola, Argentina) — Discovery
By Lydia Ogwang The feature directorial debut by Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola’s centres on matriarch Rina, a woman in her sixties who is returning to her rundown family home to stage a sort of family reunion. Among her guests are an estranged son whose help she has enlisted in maintaining the family land…
By Lydia Ogwang | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Cardinals (Grayson Moore & Aidan Shipley, Canada) — Discovery
By Lydia Ogwang Canadian newcomers Grayson Moore and Aidan Shipley strike gold with veteran Sheila McCarthy in the lead role of Cardinals. McCarthy is masterful as the damningly self-convicted Valerie, a mother of two recalibrating to free civilian life after serving time for apparent alcohol-induced vehicular manslaughter. While her daughters (played by Grace Glowicki and…
By Lydia Ogwang | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Human Traces (Nic Gorman, New Zealand) — Discovery
By Aurélie Godet Scientific findings keep revealing, with an accelerated urgency, the disruptive and irreversible impact that human activities have on the natural environment and on the species that coexist with them on Earth. Set at a remote sub-Antarctic research station, Nic Gorman’s Human Traces attempts to fuse an urgent message about environmental consciousness with…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches (Simon Lavoie, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Josh Cabrita A tale of a reclusive, degenerate family in rural Quebec in the 1930s, Simon Lavoie’s follow-up to Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves (winner of last year’s Best Canadian Feature prize at TIFF) wastes no time shoving our noses into some truly vile shit: an abusive patriarchy, incest,…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Princesita (Marialy Rivas, Chile/Argentina/Spain) — Discovery
By James Lattimer Some day, there’ll be a film about cult membership that doesn’t draw on the same hoary old clichés, but until then we have Marialy Rivas’ Princesita, whose glossy, vaguely queasy take on the standard narrative of male power figures and helplessly ensnared women is so overfamiliar that it feels stretched at a…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Manhunt (John Woo, Hong Kong/China) — Special Presentations
By Leonardo Goi Brace yourselves: after the American sojourn that brought the likes of Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2 and a detour into Chinese historical-blockbuster mode with Red Cliff, John Woo has returned to the Asian police thrillers which earned him global fame with the hilarious, all-out-bonkers and thoroughly enjoyable Manhunt. Zhang Hanyu stars as…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Ritual (David Bruckner, UK) — Midnight Madness
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Making his feature debut after directing segments for the horror anthology films V/H/S and Southbound, David Bruckner proves that he is clearly familiar with the mechanics of his genre, but The Ritual misses the mark: working in a longer format, he comes up with a confused and unsustainable tangle of typical horror…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Les Affamés (Robin Aubert, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema)
By Michael Sicinski While it could be said that the last thing the world needs is another zombie movie, Québécois director Robin Aubert has managed to offer a solid and at times even original survey of this well-trod terrain. Where so many other genre filmmakers make the mistake of trying to add their unique spin…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
A Fish Out Of Water (Lai Kuo-An, Taiwan) — Discovery
By Azadeh Jafari Obsessive memories from the past haunt Yi-An, a sad, inattentive little boy who claims that he remembers his previous mother and his past life by the sea. In reality, Yi-An’s grandpa has fallen ill and needs constant care, which forces his mother to take him and go live with her sister—a situation…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Professor Marston & the Wonder Women (Angela Robinson, US) — Special Presentations
By Manuela Lazic Angela Robinson’s biopic of the creators of Wonder Woman makes an intriguing companion piece to the DC blockbuster released earlier this year—which presented a more commercial and sanitised version of the heroine—and is an odd yet enjoyable film on its own. Framed by Professor William Marston’s (Luke Evans) defense of the morals…
By Manuela Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
You Disappear (Peter Schønau Fog, Denmark/Sweden) — Special Presentation
By Michael Sicinski A film just obvious and tiresome enough to be a minor hit, You Disappear is the sort of literary adaptation that gives prestige a bad name. Taken from a novel by Christian Jungerson, You Disappear is the sort of film that recites large passages of the book in voiceover, just in case…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Crescent (Seth A. Smith, Canada) — Midnight Madness
By Josh Cabrita Seth A. Smith’s perplexing and propulsive The Crescent strips away nearly all exuberance from its mise en scène and presents Nova Scotia’s naturally picturesque vistas in bleak hues. Using the anxieties of a survivalist psyche to radically realign our perception of specific tropes, Smith capitalizes on fears of economic isolation within the…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Thelma (Joachim Trier, Norway/Sweden/France/Denmark) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Joachim Trier makes a sterling if somewhat noncommittal bid for post-horror with Thelma, a slow-burn supernatural thriller about a Norwegian teen (Eili Harboe) who goes away to college (and away from her morally rigid Christian parents) and finds her long dormant powers to make terrible and strange things happen reactivated by, what…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Poet and the Boy (Kim Yang-hee, South Korea) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews I felt vaguely embarrassed for immediately being reminded of Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson at the outset of Kim Yang-hee’s debut feature The Poet and the Boy. The similarities are apparent: in addition to Yang Ik-june’s Poet (the only name he is identified by in the film) working through his art and inspiration via…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
A Worthy Companion (Carlos Sanchez & Jason Sanchez, Canada) — Discovery
By Angelo Muredda Evan Rachel Wood works hard to put on a tough face in Carlos and Jason Sanchez’s unconvincing debut feature, the kind of miserablist festival fare that has given English Canadian cinema a bad name for too long. Wood stars as Laura, a thirtysomething house cleaner with unsavoury sexual appetites (so a moralizing…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey, Canada/Ireland/Luxembourg) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr In its reductive exploration of misogyny in Afghanistan, The Breadwinner is reflective of how a children’s film, with its simplified, toned-down, and easily conveyed ideas, is not conducive to discussions of serious political problems. But equally faulty is the very obvious issue of who is discussing what, and for whom. A film…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, France/United Kingdom/Belgium) — Platform
By Steve Macfarlane Short of insider knowledge, there’s no way Veep creator Armando Iannucci could have anticipated the appetite for Russploitation accompanying the meteoric rise (and/or fall) of America’s 45th president. Nevertheless, The Death of Stalin arrives at the intersection of mid-career Beckett and later-career Mamet, cocked and loaded for maximum chortling at all things…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Makala (Emmanuel Gras, France) — TIFF Docs
By James Lattimer For all the recent criticism of Cannes’ reliance on the same big names, perhaps the bigger problem is the festival’s continuing failure to find new ones to replace them, as the chances of making a real discovery on the Croisette seem to dwindle further with each passing year. French director Emmanuel Gras’…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Carter Effect (Sean Menard, Canada/USA) — TIFF Docs
By Adam Nayman Filming Drake (billed as a “rapper/actor,” in a nod to his Degrassi stint) in front of some dinosaur skeletons at the Royal Ontario Museum is the wittiest touch in Sean Menard’s barely feature-length, sure-to-be-bought-for-television account of Vince Carter’s tumultuous tenure with the Toronto Raptors, not that said tumultuousness is really given its…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (Chris Smith, USA/Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Pamela Jahn When Jim Carrey auditioned to play Andy Kaufman in Miloš Forman’s 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, he was a man on a roll: Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber (all released in 1994) had made him a star and the best-paid comic actor of his generation, and he exceeded…
By Pamela Jahn | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Future Ahead (Constanza Novick, Argentina) — Discovery
By Diego Brodersen In Constanza Novick’s debut feature, Dolores Fonzi (also present at TIFF in The Summit) and Pilar Gamboa (The Fire, La flor) play best friends whose lives intertwine through the years. Novick is quite experienced in writing professionally (and quickly) for daily TV shows, but fortunately almost no clichés are found in her…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Children Act (Richard Eyre, UK) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Ian McEwan specializes in preposterous plots, and The Children Act is as contrived as anything in his posh, voluminous, award-winning repertoire. (I don’t have an official number, but I’m guessing this is something like the 85th film made from one of his novels). Shortly after receiving a your-job-or-our-marriage ultimatum from her perennially…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Oblivion Verses (Alireza Khatami, France/Germany/Netherlands/Chile) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski An elderly morgue attendant at a huge urban cemetery (Juan Margallo) is working late one night when a political protest gets out of hand, resulting in the secret police bursting into the morgue to hide the bodies of the protesters they’ve killed. Later, when the authorities come back to clean up the…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Guardians (Xavier Beauvois, France/Switzerland) — Special Presentations
By Aurélie Godet Xavier Beauvois is an interesting case of half-tamed wildness. He knows to surround himself with the most reliable professionals—here producer Sylvie Pialat, composer Michel Legrand, and, of course, Caroline Champetier, his cinematographer since 1995’s N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir. You feel that he’s enough of a rebel to resist external pressures…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Waru (Briar Grace-Smith, Ainsley Gardiner, Renae Maihi, Casey Kaa, Awanui Simich-Pene, Chelsea Cohen, Katie Wolfe & Paula Jones, New Zealand) — Discovery
By Willow Maclay Grief has a way of mangling the status quo and turning it strange. It absorbs everything in its path like an all encompassing fog waiting to seep into your blood. We live knowing we are only moments away from it happening to us, but we usually manage to put these feelings away…
By Willow Maclay | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Hannah (Andrea Pallaoro, Italy/Belgium/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Hannah is a bit of a paradox: it is an exceedingly quiet movie, and at the same time a bracing one, with a volatile, superstar performance at its heart. Charlotte Rampling plays the title character, a woman whose life has been dramatically upended just as she and her husband (André Wilms) should…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Dark is the Night (Adolfo Alix Jr., Philippines) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Dark is the Night is unmistakably a cri de coeur regarding the fascist leadership of Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte and his extrajudicial drug war. At the same time, Adolfo Alix, Jr. has chosen to convey this most urgent of messages in a highly unusual format, making his film a rather strange specimen…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
A Sort of Family (Diego Lerman, Argentina/Brazil/France/Poland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Diego Brodersen After 2002’s Suddenly, that magnificent cornerstone of the New Argentine Cinema, Diego Lerman has specialized in powerful but still delicate stories dealing with complex, urgent subject matter. Where his previous film Refugiado dealt with the issue of a family on the verge of disintegration after domestic violence forces the protagonist to run…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Killing Jesus (Laura Mora, Colombia/Argentina) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski A lot of debut films have structural problems, of course, but Killing Jesus, by Colombian first-timer Laura Mora, is rather unusual in this regard. The beginning and end are exceedingly clunky, while the middle feels uniquely organic and atmospheric. Granted, this assessment has as much to do with what I as a…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mademoiselle Paradis (Barbara Albert, Austria/Germany) — Platform
By Michael Sicinski A film that would make a fine double bill with either Jessica Hausner’s Amour fou or David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, Barbara Albert’s Mademoiselle Paradis is a subtle and intelligent film about the historical crisis of female subjectivity and the various men who attempt to control that emerging identity. At the height…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Third Murder (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan) — Masters
By Leonardo Goi Those who have come to love Hirokazu Kore-eda for his flair for quiet, homely pleasures may find The Third Murder a tad surprising. We are no longer in the comfy, Ozu-like milieu of Our Little Sister, and though small talk about Japan’s culinary wonders is exchanged, the feature opens with a much…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart (Tracy Heather Strain, USA) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is a TV documentary about the life and work of the late African-American playwright/activist Lorraine Hansberry. Produced for PBS’ American Masters series, Sighted Eyes is meticulously researched, well assembled, and has most of the appropriate expert commentary. It is instructive to remember just how much Hansberry accomplished in her…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Don’t Talk to Irene (Pat Mills, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler After the dark pleasures of his debut feature Guidance, writer-director Pat Mills wanders into the deep Toronto suburban bush with his considerably less funny follow-up Don’t Talk to Irene. High school seems to be Mills’ bailiwick: Guidance took school counselling to extreme, twisted places, mining good sources of satire; Don’t Talk to…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Custody (Xavier Legrand, France) — Platform
By Ethan Vestby There’s something promising in the nearly 15-minute passage that opens Xavier Legrand’s Custody, which charts a hearing between a divorced couple regarding custody of their 11-year-old son, the mouthpiece avatars of their respective lawyers going off while the idly waiting, pained-looking parents sit in silence. So boldly dry with its ping-ponging legal…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Battle of the Sexes (Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton, USA) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler It is surely awards season and TIFF launch time when a spate of movies appear featuring real-life figures from the recent American and British past (because they must be Anglo-Saxon, just because they must), cast with stars undergoing striking physical transformations, art-designed with meticulous attention to period details down to the wallpaper…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Ava (Sadaf Foroughi, Iran/Canada/Qatar) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews “The bird that would soar above the level of plain tradition and prejudice must have strong wings,” the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel The Awakening is advised; “it is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.” Ava (Mahour Jabbari), the teenage title heroine of Sadaf…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Stronger (David Gordon Green, USA) — Gala Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Boston Marathon bombing survivor Jeff Bauman gets the biopic treatment in Stronger, David Gordon Green’s lazy if intermittently affecting first major stab at Oscar glory. Jake Gyllenhaal tamps down his blinking-related affectations of prestige movies past and brings some calm, regular-guy gravitas to Bauman, who, according to the gruff, faux-Boston brogue of…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Lodgers (Brian O’Malley, Ireland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman Things creak in The Lodgers, a painfully genteel Irish horror movie haunted by the spirits of superior ghost stories, from The Innocents to The Others. It’s not that director Brian O’Malley is unaware of (or not duly reverent to) the old-dark-house tradition that he’s working in, it’s just that he doesn’t add…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Bodied (Joseph Kahn, USA) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman Or: Do the Wrong Thing. The protagonist of Joseph “Look What You Made Me Do” Kahn’s Eminem-produced 8 Mile satire (scripted by Toronto-area rapper Kid Twist) is a slim, shady grad student writing a dissertation on the subaltern subversiveness of clandestine rap battles. After some encouragement from a legendary (black) rapper—who tells…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz, Israel/Germany/France/Switzerland) — Special Presentations
By Pamela Jahn Not every director comes to filmmaking early in life, but those arriving at it later usually kick in with a vengeance. Samuel Maoz was only a few years shy of 50 when he was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 2009 for his debut feature Lebanon, a dramatized version of the…
By Pamela Jahn | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Meditation Park (Mina Shum, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Josh Cabrita Mina Shum’s first narrative feature since 2002 (following a decade-long stint directing Vancouver-based television) is contained within the few blocks surrounding the intersection of Renfrew and Hastings in East Vancouver, a community largely made up of longtime Asian immigrants. One of these residents is the silently resilient Maria (Pei-Pei Cheng), who has…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Nina (Juraj Lehotský, Slovakia/Czech Republic) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Lydia Ogwang The spark at the heart of Nina is kindled by faith in forms. Slovakian director Juraj Lehotský meets us here with a mostly modest coming-of-age film, trusting that the spectacle of adolescent growth still holds enough weight to make the case for its existence just this once more. Lehotský’s eponymous subject is…
By Lydia Ogwang | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Scaffolding (Matan Yair, Israel/Poland) — Discovery
By James Lattimer While understatement is usually preferable to shouting, it can also become too much of a good thing, as Scaffolding (not to be confused with Kazik Radwanski’s new short film, the far better Scaffold, which screens in Wavelengths prior to Denis Côté’s Ta peau ti lisse) neatly illustrates. While Matan Yair’s debut feature…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Price of Success (Teddy Lussi-Modeste, France) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler Considering that a stand-up performer who goes by the singular moniker of Brahim can pack French concert houses and have his face plastered all over Paris, he must have some pretty damn fine comic stylings. Whatever they may be, they pop up at around the 26-minute mark of the erratic and ultimately…
By Robert Koehler | TIFF 2017
Simulation (Abed Abest, Iran) — Discovery
By Phil Coldiron On a large, bare soundstage, actors dressed in street clothes and day-glo blue boots gather to play a curiously shaped morality tale set in Abadan, an Iranian town near the country’s border with Iraq. The props and settings—a police station, a pair of apartments—are plainly artificial, rendered in green-screen green; the narrative…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Samui Song (Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand/Germany/Norway) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Kong Rithdee Six years after his last fiction film Headshot (during which time he made Paradoxocrazy, a documentary chronicling Thailand’s political history), Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang returns to the festival circuit in fine form. At times noir-ish, at times cheeky, and at times a little too self-aware, Samui Song thriller surfs in and out…
By Kong Rithdee | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Great Buddha+ (Huang Hsin-Yao, Taiwan) — Discovery
By Aurélie Godet Augmented and improved from the short film of the same name that Huang Hsin-Yao directed in 2014, the “Plus” version of The Great Buddha is the Taiwanese filmmaker’s first narrative feature. This wink to technology branding is consistent with the central role played by satirical humour in all of Huang’s storytelling endeavours,…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Miracle (Egle Vertelyte, Lithuania/Bulgaria/Poland) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski The TIFF catalogue description trumpets Miracle as “the first film from Lithuania to play the Festival in over 15 years” (sucks to be Sharunas Bartas). While indeed no miracle, this debut film by Egle Vertelyte is certainly pleasant enough, occupying a familiar film-festival category—that’s to say that, if you haven’t marked “wry-yet-rueful…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Euthanizer (Teemu Nikki, Finland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Since the old Vanguard section was put to sleep, Contemporary World Cinema is now forced to make room for films like Euthanizer, a bit of four-legged ugliness from Finland. The story of a clearly deranged yet moralistic factotum who offers to euthanize animals for a fraction of what the local vet charges,…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
What Will People Say (Iram Haq, Norway/Germany/Sweden) — Platform
By Alysia Urrutia Placing a new cultural spin on the well-worn story of a young girl whose sexual blossoming comes into conflict with family values, What Will People Say is both provocative and predictable, topical but trite. The host of repercussions visited upon Nisha (Maria Mozhdah) for having imprudently succumbed to ostensibly sinful urges is…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Radiance (Naomi Kawase, Japan/France) — Special Presentations
By Blake Williams This past weekend the international film community was rocked by the news that Juliette Binoche is set to star in Cannes darling Naomi Kawase’s next film, a Japan-set movie that will reportedly be called Vision. Aside from reporting the casting coup, this news is surprising because it suggests that Kawase, who is now…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho, Portugal) — Wavelengths
By Phil Coldiron In 1978, the earliest year for which OECD labour statistics on Portugal are available, more than 60% of the country’s workforce was unionized. By 1986, the year the country was accepted into the European Economic Community, that number had dropped to just over 40%. Today, following the arc typical of a Western…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
First They Killed My Father (Angelina Jolie, Cambodia) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Can there be any doubt, within the simplified moral terms of cinema as conveniently conscionable entertainment, that Angelina Jolie’s Cambodian project constitutes an act of courage? Any doubts are flagged as cynicism, any detraction deemed insensitive. And yet, for a survival story of such magnitude as Loung Ung’s (from whose memoir Jolie…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mother! (Darren Aronofsky, USA) — Special Presentations
By Leonardo Goi Possibly the most anticipated title on the 2017 fall festival circuit, Mother! certainly is the visually delirious tale promised by its marketing team (the exclamation point is earned!), but Darren Aronofsky’s awareness of his own directorial grandeur ultimately turns it into a self-referential, hallucinatory trip. A world-famous poet (Javier Bardem) has sought…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Butterfly Tree (Priscilla Cameron, Australia) — Discovery
By Robert Koehler Is writer-director Priscilla Cameron kidding or not? The recent Melbourne Film Festival reception to her first feature The Butterfly Tree charitably suggests that this treacly tale may be meant in the spirit of camp. But camp must have a funny side, and there isn’t a moment in this quasi-magical realist coming-of-age story…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzì, Italy) — Gala Presentations
By Leonardo Goi Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland can hardly rescue Paolo Virzì’s first English-language feature The Leisure Seeker, an unnervingly average twilight-years road trip that’s kilometres away from the quality of the Italian director’s European works. Sutherland stars as John, a retired professor addicted to Hemingway and suffering from Alzheimer’s, with Mirren as his…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Tesla World Light (Matthew Rankin, Canada) — Short Cuts
By Jason Anderson Published in Cinema Scope 71 (Summer 2017) International devotees of Canuck pop-cultural arcana may pride themselves on knowing every single line that Drake ever uttered on Degrassi: The Next Generation, but there’s another treasure that Canadians thus far have been able to keep for themselves. These are the Heritage Minutes, a series…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Fluid Frontiers (Ephraim Asili, USA/Canada) — Wavelengths
By Jesse Cumming Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) If it is not here It must be there For somewhere and nowhere Parallels In versions of each other …. where Or even before something came to be —Sun Ra, “Parallels” (1970) Described as “A Video Film on Space and the Music of the Omniverse,”…
By Jesse Cumming | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Arrhythmia (Boris Khlebnikov, Russia/Finland/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler Arrhythmia was originally intended as a comedy about a stressed-out couple in the Russian health-care industry, but co-writers Boris Khlebnikov (who also directs) and Natalia Meshchaninova made the wrong decision by switching gears to the more literal tone of a modest melodrama. The comic possibilities are still visible under the surface, especially…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Kings (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, France/Belgium) — Gala Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane Using the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of four LAPD officers caught on tape beating Rodney King as pretext for a meet-cute between Halle Berry and Daniel Craig, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s nightmarishly terrible Kings has a long career ahead of it as an object lesson in how not to exploit current…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Suburbicon (George Clooney, USA) — Galas
By Adam Nayman On paper (where it was doubtlessly first written, probably with a typewriter, 30 years ago) Joel and Ethan Coen’s script for Suburbicon evokes sinister, postwar domestic melodramas like Shadow of a Doubt and Bigger Than Life. On screen, as directed by George Clooney, it evokes—or, more accurately, pilfers, poorly and to no…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, US) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Greta Gerwig’s debut feature is like something akin to asking a classmate to sign your yearbook and getting a detailed novella in return, or a pink plaster cast scrawled with a poem. It’s also proof that Gerwig is clearly her own muse. The film opens with a cheeky quote from Joan Didion…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mudbound (Dee Rees, US) — Galas
By C.J. Prin A period piece set in 1940s Mississippi, Dee Rees’ Mudbound takes the form of a low-key epic about race relations in America, counteracting its mid-sized budget with a sprawling narrative structure. Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) and his wife Laura (Carey Mulligan) purchase a farm for their family, part of which is leased…
By C.J. Prince | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Oh Lucy! (Atsuko Hirayanagi, USA/Japan) — Discovery
By Elena Lazic While the exotic appeal of foreign titles to Western viewers is undeniable (especially at major film festivals), few movies ever reverse that dynamic. In Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Oh Lucy!, Josh Hartnett doesn’t play one of his usual roles (or at least the roles he used to get in big Hollywood movies), where his…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
PROTOTYPE (Blake Williams, Canada) — Wavelengths
By Phil Coldiron Early in the autumn of 1900, four months before Edison closed the Black Maria and five years before the Lumière brothers left the cinematograph business altogether for what they supposed to be less trivial concerns, a storm landed at the booming port town of Galveston, Texas and killed perhaps as many as…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Of Sheep and Men (Karim Sayad, Switzerland/France/Qatar) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski First of all, let me compliment Mr. Sayad’s directorial prowess: I watched Of Sheep and Men with no foreknowledge, and I honestly thought it was a fictional feature. That’s because this documentary is so tightly structured in terms of its focus on two protagonists and their gradually shifting milieu, and even though…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Three Peaks (Jan Zabeil, Germany/Italy) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Three Peaks opens with a man and a child struggling to hold a conversation underwater in a fancy resort swimming pool; it’s a witty visual pun pointing to submerged motivations and difficult intergenerational communication. Jan Zabeil’s film is filled with such touches, and as they add up, you could be forgiven for…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Valley of Shadows (Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, Norway) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman The other clog doesn’t drop for a good long time in Valley of Shadows, a half-enchanting, half-enervating Norwegian feature whose director tries to have his horror tropes and transcend them too. That it takes Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen a while to really indicate what kind of movie he’s making could be taken as…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Florida Project (Sean Baker, USA) — Special Presentations
By James Lattimer As in many of Sean Baker’s films, The Florida Project’s final destination doesn’t quite captivate as much as the journey taken to get there. Baker’s sixth feature is first a merry wander, then a desperate gallop through the plastic fantastic environs of central Florida, where each motel is more garish than the…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, UK) — Special Event
By Adam Nayman He just can’t help himself. Unless my memory is failing me, Memento-style, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is the first World War II movie — and I suppose, provided we keep the designation relatively straightforward, the first war movie, period — that’s been deliberately crafted as a puzzle box. The relationship of form to…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Le fort des fous (Narimane Mari, France/Algeria/Switzerland/ Germany/Greece/Qatar) — Wavelengths
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) Narimane Mari’s 2013 film Bloody Beans concludes with a query: “What is worth more, to be or to obey?” These words, invoked in succession by a handful of the film’s adolescent protagonists, are taken from Antonin Artaud’s “Petit poème des poissons de la mer,” an…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Luk’Luk’I (Wayne Wapeemukwa, Canada) — Discovery
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Set and shot during the last days of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, in Luk’Luk’I Wayne Wapeemukwa attempts to puncture the veneer of Canadian nationalism by turning away from the event’s image of national prosperity and togetherness in order to focus on marginalized communities. Working with a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors,…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, USA) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner “Fairy tales are meant for difficult times” declares Guillermo del Toro, and even though The Shape of Water is steeped in a Cold War-era America of key lime pie (that reeks of racism and homophobia) and teal-finned Cadillacs (fit for assholes weaned on the power of patriarchal thinking), it’s clear just what…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, USA) — Masters
By Pamela Jahn Just when one is about to lose faith in a director’s ability to recover from the slip-ups of recent years, along comes a film that makes one want to believe in his greatness all over again. Sidney Lumet turned that corner once with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), and even…
By Pamela Jahn | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing, China/USA) — Wavelengths
By Robert Koehler Anticipating the current political moment of a fake US president attacking perceived enemies as fake, much of which is triggered by a culture drowning in simulacra, conceptual artist Xu Bing’s first foray into cinema seems like an ideal Chinese response to the madness. The result of a massive, years-long project to compile,…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Our People Will Be Healed (Alanis Obomsawin, Canada) — Masters
By Josh Cabrita Now in her 85th year and making her 50th film, indispensable Indigenous documentarian Alanis Obomsawin appears to have fallen into an atypical mood of optimistic self-reflection. In her previous film, the nearly three-hour, Wisemanesque We Can’t Make The Same Mistake Twice, she chronicled, with deliberate drudgery and opacity, a years-long judicial suit…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
A Ciambra (Jonas Carpignano, Italy/France/USA/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski In case you had any question as to what to expect from A Ciambra, the latest film from Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea), the TIFF catalogue description clears things up. In a scant 236 words, we are given the following: “unadorned,” “highly naturalistic,” “verisimilitude,” “gritty reality,” “raw vitality,” “stark reality.” Add in the fact…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Lean On Pete (Andrew Haigh, USA/United Kingdom) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner A girl and a gun or a boy and a horse? Andrew Haigh adapts Will Vlautin’s cautionary, melancholic neo-Western with a keen eye and ear for regional vernacular and class distinction. Haigh recognizes the potential in the story that Jane Smiley described as a “sheer cinema-vérité detailing of American life,” and hems…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo, France) — Special Presentations
By Jordan Cronk A sprawling yet affectingly personal portrait of a group of Parisian activists and ACT UP members in the early ’90s, Robin Campillo’s follow-up to the ambitious social thriller Eastern Boys (2013) is defined by a nuanced understanding of group dynamics and the delicate nature of sociopolitical resistance––traits no doubt informed by the…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Under the Tree (Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, Iceland/Denmark/ Poland/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski This would-be black comedy from Iceland starts out in gently grumbling Mike Leigh mode and ends up somewhere in the neighbourhood of Miike Takashi’s Dead or Alive trilogy. That may sound kind of badass, but the trajectory is never really convincing. (Ron Burgundy might opine that things escalate a bit too quickly,…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Disaster Artist (James Franco, USA) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman The pivotal moment in The Disaster Artist—James Franco’s absorbing, hall-of-mirrors adaptation of Greg Sestero’s combination memoir/tell-all about his participation in the making of The Room, which some have called the worst movie ever made—comes when oddball-narcissist-auteur-polymath Tommy Wiseau (played, naturally, by oddball-narcissist-auteur-polymath Franco) is humiliated at a Hollywood restaurant by a powerful…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, France) — Wavelengths
By Jordan Cronk Published in Cinema Scope 71 (Summer 2017) Pitched somewhere between Straub-Huillet and Headbangers Ball, Monty Python and Messiaen, Bruno Dumont’s new feature Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc marks an unexpected and near-perfect synthesis of the French iconoclast’s many disparate interests and obsessions. Although by now it’s convenient to read Dumont’s robust corpus…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman, USA) — TIFF Docs
By Tom Charity Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) Let’s start with this: the transitions in Fred Wiseman’s new film (and there are many) have a simple and specific beauty. They double as establishing shots, each comprising a brief cluster of New York street views, usually including an intersection sign to pin us to…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, Italy/France) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda From the moment the opening credits offer a screen-filling shout-out to the musical score by Sufjan Stevens and the handwritten titles by Chen Li, Call Me By Your Name announces itself as a Luca Guadagnino film: a love letter from one aesthete to countless others. That opening salvo might inspire a bit…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, USA) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr Set in the world of modern-day cowboys, Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is an incisive critique of traditional American masculinity. The film follows rodeo rider Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau, who, like the other actors, is playing a version of his real self) as he struggles to recover from a head injury suffered during…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
April’s Daughter (Michel Franco, Mexico) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler As long as Michel Franco keeps winning major festival awards, like this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize for his atrocious April’s Daughter, it appears that he’ll be able to keep making movies. That, and getting help from the likes of Tim Roth, who has for some reason decided to become…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
3/4 (Ilian Metev, Germany/Bulgaria) — Discovery
By Azadeh Jafari Ilian Metev’s fiction debut, following his award-winning 2012 documentary Sofia’s Last Ambulance is a touching portrait of family relationships that explores the lives of a physicist, Todor (Todor Veltchev), and his two children, Niki (Nikolay Mashalov), an energetic and imaginative teenage boy, and Mila (Mila Mihova), a talented young pianist preparing for…
By Azadeh Jafari | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, UK) — Gala Presentations
By Jay Kuehner A parliamentary drama of considerable pallor (not power), Darkest Hour drops us in on the “action” of the House of Commons floor as the “Phoney War” with Nazi Germany is about to become all too real, and where Winston Churchill’s appointment to wartime prime minister is met with a frenzy of handbill-waving…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Garden (Sonja Maria Kröner, Germany) — Discovery
By James Lattimer The only element of The Garden worth marvelling at is the amount of money seemingly lavished on its production design, as upmarket thrift stores the length and breadth of Germany appear to have been raided in an attempt to capture the spirit of ’76. But while chintzy patterns, vintage cars, and space…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (Mouly Surya, Indonesia/France/ Malaysia/Thailand) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts is a post-postmodern grab bag of genre moves and hollow gestures. At times it seems to want to be taken seriously, and at others it is content to revel in pastiche, very much like Ana Lily Amirpour’s films. How exactly are we supposed to take this…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Caniba (Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France) — Wavelengths
By Dan Sullivan On paper, what could be more sordid than an interview-portrait with Issei Sagawa, the infamous cannibal who became a tabloid sensation in the early ’80s after he murdered and ate part of a Dutch woman in Paris? Caniba, the new film by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, doesn’t exactly skimp on the…
By Dan Sullivan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
High Fantasy (Jenna Bass, South Africa) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman The ’80s-style Hollywood body-swap comedy gets a purposeful and political makeover in High Fantasy, an inventive and entertaining South African feature that cleverly yokes heavy subject matter to an agile DIY aesthetic. Shot entirely on iPhones wielded by its adolescent cast members (who also wrote the script), the film takes the form…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Strangely Ordinary this Devotion (Dani Leventhal & Sheilah Wilson, USA) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) Columbus, Ohio-based artists Dani Leventhal and Sheilah Wilson have embarked on an artistic relationship that is formally and emotionally adjacent to their domestic lives, a quotidian zone they share with their young daughter Rose. Both artists have established careers on their own. Neither Leventhal’s video…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Brazil/Spain/ France/Netherlands/Mexico/ Portugal/USA) — Masters
By Blake Williams Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) “[Cinemas of the senses] generate worlds of mutating sounds and images that often ebb and flow between the figurative and the abstract, and where the human form, at least as a unified entity, easily loses its function as the main point of reference. One way…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Gutland (Govinda Van Maele, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium) — Discovery
By Alysia Urrutia To have lost something is for something familiar to have disappeared, but to be lost is to be surrounded by the unknown—in other words, to have the unfamiliar appear. Jens Fauser (Frederick Lau) is lost in both senses of the word, shedding layers of his former self just as readily as he…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Félicité (Alain Gomis, France/Senegal/Belgium/Germany/ Lebanon) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Dan Sullivan Alain Gomis’ first film since 2012’s Aujourd’hui unfurls leisurely, with a precision, patience, and sense of musicality, embodied on a somewhat literal level by the chansons sung by its magnetic protagonist. The set-up is slightly elemental, which may be the point: by night, Kinshasa native Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, a Congolese…
By Dan Sullivan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/Germany) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk The second in a proposed trilogy of films focused on the European refugee crises, Aki Kaurismäki’s follow-up to the warm and generous Le Havre (2011) is both of a piece with its predecessor and something a little looser and more unkempt. This time the plight of his refugee, a Syrian emigrant named…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Faces Places (Agnès Varda & JR, France) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk The unexpected kinship between 33-year-old visual artist JR and octogenarian Left Bank legend Agnès Varda is infectiously explored in Faces Places, the latter’s first feature since her 2008 personal-poetic landmark Les plages d’Agnès. Inspired equally by JR’s youthful joie de vivre and the large-scale photographic portraits he produces in his makeshift mobile…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia/France/Belgium/Germany) — Masters
By Richard Porton From all outward appearances, the Russian director Andrey Zvyagintzev is a Putin-era incarnation of what was known during the Soviet era as a “dissident”: Leviathan his previous prize-winning film, did after all manage to upset the powers that be, especially the Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky. Produced, unlike Leviathan, without the assistance…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni, UK/France) — Discovery
By Elena Lazic Rungano Nyoni’s debut feature, a deadpan observation of the superstitions and misunderstandings hanging over everyday life in a small, present-day Zambian village, has all the characteristics of a light comedy of manners. The film follows Shula (Margaret Mulubwa), a young girl who is one day accused by her neighbours of being a…
By Elena Lazic | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Pyewacket (Adam MacDonald, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman The hands-down winner of the TIFF 2017 “Google the title to understand it” award, Pyewacket finds Adam MacDonald—who came to the festival in 2014 with a tough, impressive little thriller called Backcountry—swapping generic models, trading survivalist realism for occult-tinged horror. It’s a lateral move, and also not an improvement (albeit one that’s…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Wajib (Annemarie Jacir, Palestine/France/Germany/ Colombia/Norway/Qatar/UAE) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Lorenzo Esposito What does it mean to be a Palestinian abroad? What does it mean to be a Palestinian at home? Can the struggle between the two identities tell us something honest about a Palestinian society living under the Israeli occupation? Wajib, Annemarie Jacir’s third feature, confirms the director’s ability to show and discuss…
By Lorenzo Esposito | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Day After (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea) — Masters
By Andréa Picard Published in Cinema Scope 71 (Summer 2017) With its wonderful Whitman-inspired title, On the Beach at Night Alone gave us one of the year’s most indelible images, so crushing, mournful, and beautiful in its abandon: Kim Minhee’s character Younghee lying forlorn in the sand on a cold beach. The solemn distress and…
By Andrea Picard | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Beyond the One (Anna Marziano, France/Italy/Germany) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski One of the main images that reappears throughout Anna Marziano’s new film is a shot out of a moving train window, that of a thicket of trees racing by in a blur. Although this type of shot is something of an avant-garde staple, there is something truly unique about the way Marziano…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Ta peau si lisse (Denis Côté, Canada/Switzerland) — Wavelengths
By Adam Nayman Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) William K.L. Dickson’s Sandow (1894) is a three-part documentary study of the Prussian muscleman Friedrich Wilhelm Muller, who adopted the more flamboyant nom de plume after he dodged the draft and joined the circus. Sandow’s placement on undergraduate film studies curriculums the world over owes…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Tulipani, Love, Honour and a Bicycle (Mike van Diem, Netherlands/Italy/Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews What is the aesthetic advantage of whimsy, especially in a work presumably meant for an adult audience? These questions preoccupied me throughout Mike van Diem’s Tulipani, Love, Honour and a Bicycle, a primary-coloured fable recounted to Anna (Ksenia Solo), a young woman who travels from Montréal to Italy after her mother’s death…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Miami (Zaida Bergroth, Finland) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ethan Vestby With the demise of TIFF’s Vanguard program—the one with the ostensible mission of bridging the gap between art- and grindhouses—it’s worth wondering what exactly makes a satisfying mix of the two, and if it’s even really worth pursuing in most cases. Looking at a film that would’ve likely been at home in…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Summit (Santiago Mitre, Argentina/Spain/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Diego Brodersen The third feature by Santiago Mitre (The Student, Paulina) is in more ways than one his most ambitious, complex, and accomplished yet. It’s not easy to mess around with the presidency in a country where there’s no such cinematic tradition, with the exceptions of documentary films and the casual fictional hagiography of…
By Diego Brodersen | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK) — Special Presentations
By Jordan Cronk For those who’ve grown weary––or perhaps suspicious––of the seemingly obligatory conceptual gambits that have thus far characterized the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, then the Greek provocateur’s latest should come as welcome reprieve; for everyone else, it’s likely to appear as something a little more ordinary, a little less daring. Starring Colin Farrell…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Winter Brothers (Hlynur Pálmason, Denmark/Iceland) — Discovery
By Aurélie Godet In Hlynur Pálmason’s enigmatic short Seven Boats (which screened at TIFF 2014), a man adrift at sea in the wreckage of his vessel was ignored or pushed away by the occupants of the smaller boats floating around him. Winter Brothers, the Icelandic filmmaker’s first feature, recalls these motifs of rejection and the…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Novitiate (Maggie Betts, USA) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr With Novitiate, director Maggie Betts creates a dramatic portrait of a 1960s convent during the reforms of Vatican II. Following a group of novices as they enter the church, Betts manages to capture a youthful intensity to feverishly convey a multitude of psychological, as well as societal, concerns. Protagonist Cathleen (Margaret Qualley)…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Insult (Ziad Doueiri, France/Lebanon) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman. Call it Two Angry Men: Ziad Doueiri’s courtroom drama applies a stolid, old-fangled Sidney Lumet-ness to a geographically and historically disparate cultural context. The setting is Beirut, a city riven with ethnic and religious tensions. In the opening scene, mechanic Tony (Adel Karam) attends a rally of the Christian Party, whose conservative,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Porcupine Lake (Ingrid Veninger, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda Micro-budget Toronto filmmaker turned production maven Ingrid Veninger hits her sweet spot with Porcupine Lake, which trades some of her scrappier aesthetic instincts for a more polished veneer but keeps the heart and prickly specificity of her best work. Like Andrew Cividino’s recent Canadian indie darling Sleeping Giant, which staged its small-scale…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Redoubtable (Michel Hazanavicius, France) — Special Presentations
By Mark Peranson Which film was the worst at Cannes this year? It’s hard to know where to begin analyzing that rogues’ gallery and the lousy awards bestowed on them, but on behalf of cinephiles everywhere I feel the need to say something brief and to the point about Michel Hackavanicius: can Netflix pay this…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
On Body and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski In describing the histrionic performances that tend to nab Oscars, Mike D’Angelo has noted that voters and juries often mistake “most acting” for “best acting.” I thought of this while watching On Body and Soul, perplexing winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale. It isn’t just that this, the comeback…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Square (Ruben Östlund, Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden) — Special Presentations
By Josh Cabrita Published in Cinema Scope 71 (Summer 2017) A secular credo patchworked from the Golden Rule and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is engraved on an altar: “The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it we all share equal rights and obligations.” Before it was a two-hour and 20-minute…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing, France/China/Germany) — Wavelengths
By Daniel Kasman & Christopher Small Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) An old face—skin drawn tautly over jaw and cheekbone, thinning grey hair, eyeballs quivering like tadpoles—is the central image in Wang Bing’s Golden Leopard winner Mrs. Fang. The naked, sober image of this face, which belongs to Fang Xiuying, the film’s bedridden…
By Daniel Kasman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Downsizing (Alexander Payne, USA) — Special Presentations
By Leonardo Goi After exploring the road-trip genre for nearly two decades (in About Schmidt, Sideways and Nebraska), Alexander Payne now embarks on a radically different and more ambitious project: a sci-fi environmentalist tale set in a world where humanity seeks to solve the overpopulation crisis by shrinking people to five inches tall. Downsizing…
By Leonardo Goi | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Insyriated (Philippe Van Leeuw, Belgium/France/Lebanon) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski A film so phony that its makers needed to coin a nonsense word to give it an appropriate title, the irksome Insyriated is the sort of feeble attempt at profundity that crops up in the face of every armed conflict. It’s based on the notion that in extreme circumstances, people show you…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
In the Fade (Fatih Akin, Germany/France) — Special Presentations
By Richard Porton Directed by one of the world’s most heavy-handed directors, In the Fade is nothing if not unremittingly topical. The ultra-schematic plot foregrounds evil neo-Nazis with a yen for terrorism, victimized Kurds, and one kick-ass wreaker of vengeance played with great flair by Diane Kruger, who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Happy End (Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk It should go without saying at this point that the title of Austrian miserablist Michael Haneke’s new film is a cruel joke–, and an unsurprising one at that. What’s more unfortunate than the forced irony, however, is that just as the title seems to have been spit out by an art-cinema name…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Occidental (Neïl Beloufa, France) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski “You know the word ‘louche’?”—Vince Vaughn, True Detective After a number of impressive short films and one documentary hybrid feature, the 2013 Tonight and the People, French artist Neïl Beloufa offers Occidental, the closest he’s yet come to a conventional feature film. As is often the case with art-world figures and quasi-experimentalists…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Cocote (Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic/Argentina/ Germany/Qatar) — Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson Rare is the feature film from the Dominican Republic, for sure, but even rarer is a film like Cocote. Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias’ fascinating opus, made under the dual sign of Glauber Rocha and Roberto Bolaño, begins in Santo Domingo, where Alberto works as a private gardener. Alberto learns his…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, Chile) — Special Presentations
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr A Fantastic Woman opens with scenes of domestic bliss. On her birthday, Marina (Daniela Vega), a twentysomething trans woman, is taken out for dinner and dancing by her older boyfriend Orlando, before going back home to their shared apartment. Later that night, the Orlando passes away. What begins as romantic perfection quickly…
By Chelsea Phillips-Carr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Good Luck (Ben Russell, France/Germany) — Wavelengths
By Phil Coldiron “Now I am in front of a rock. It splits. No, it is no longer split. It is as before. Again it is split in two. No, it is not split at all. It splits once more. Once more no longer split, and this goes on indefinitely. Rock intact, then split, then…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Mary Goes Round (Molly McGlynn, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman “Are you a piece of shit?” This is the question being pondered by 29-year-old Mary (Aya Cash), who suspects that she might be and knows for a fact that she’s a hypocrite, peddling substance abuse-program platitudes at her day job while getting fucked up by night (and in the afternoon, and on…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Disappearance (Boudewijn Koole, Netherlands/Norway) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ethan Vestby Drawing easy comparisons to Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata with its piano motif, strained mother-daughter relationship, and general Scandinavian coldness, Boudewijn Koole’s Disappearance seems to exist solely to be the umpteenth case in an argument that, yes, a certain brand of ennui and alienation will always be in vogue on the festival circuit.…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Western (Valeska Grisebach, Germany/Bulgaria/Austria) — Contemporary World Cinema
Originally published in Cinema Scope 71 (Summer 2017) By James Lattimer Why would anyone claim to be something they’re not? For Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), the protagonist of German director Valeska Grisebach’s long-anticipated second feature, it’s a way to get himself out of a scrape. Wedged in a car at night with a group of…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, Belgium/France) — Midnight Madness
By Daniel Kasman Having plunged as deep as their knives could go into the long-dead corpse of the giallo genre in Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani now forge a kind of hybrid of the spaghetti Westerns and Italian crime films of the late ’60s, stripping out…
By Daniel Kasman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
The Bait (Buddhadeb Dasgupta, India) — Masters
By Robert Koehler The West Bengali auteur Buddhadeb Dasgupta is sufficiently ignored in the West so that his new movie, The Bait, isn’t listed among his 35 director credits at IMDb. Before watching it at TIFF, I would remark to friends, cinephiles, and fellow critics that I was “about to see the movie by Dasgupta,”…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Bleed for This (Ben Younger, US) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler Fun fact about the tenacious American boxer Vinny Paz, or as he was known during his heyday, Vinny Pazienza: In his final bid for the WBC world super middleweight title, he lost to Canada, represented by Quebec’s Eric “Lucky” Lucas. No Canadian has made a movie about Lucas, not yet anyway, but…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Miss Impossible (Emilie Deleuze, France) — TIFF Kids
By Michael Sicinski It may be a painfully obvious point, but the simplest gauge of Miss Impossible’s unassuming success is to consider all the cheap, ingratiating tics you’d see in an American version of the same material. This is a very small film buoyed by a lead character, 13-year-old Aurore (newcomer Léna Magnien), whose snark…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Once Again (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, India) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski I have to hand it to TIFF. It’s one of the few film festivals in the West that still pays substantial attention to the “parallel cinemas” of India, even though the very idea of independent art film on the subcontinent has gone very much out of style. Back in the ’70s and…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog, UK/Austria) — TIFF Docs
By Robert Koehler Like certain kinds of sports fans, those who are into volcanoes can’t understand those who aren’t. (I’ve met a few, and I’ve found little else in life to discuss with them.) So Into the Inferno, Werner Herzog’s third film addressing volcanoes, and the first taking a global perspective, is not for those…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
India in a Day (Richie Mehta, India/UK) — TIFF Docs
By Jay Kuehner Never mind the city symphony—here is the cacophony of an entire country. The “user-generated doc” is enlisted to reveal (or effectively colonize, depending on your view) its own vast territory, in this case the world’s largest democracy, India. By virtue of sheer plurality and simultaneity—and under the dubious tutelage of Ridley Scott…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig, US) — Gala Presentations
By Robert Koehler Since few grieved over the demise of the dead-end genre known as the High School Comedy, it’s hard to fathom the purpose behind debuting writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s gambit to revive it with The Edge of Seventeen. But because James L. Brooks is backing it as producer and Hailee Steinfeld—currently best-of-show among…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo, Canada/Spain) — Vanguard
By Josh Cabrita Nacho Vigalondo’s discombobulating rom-com monster movie occupies an awkward middle ground. Neither committing to its darker undertones nor giving itself over to unhinged absurdity, the film shifts between an ironic and forthright treatment of its preposterous concept: that thirtysomething alcoholic Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is responsible for unpredictable monster sightings and attacks in…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Salt and Fire (Werner Herzog, France/US/Germany/Mexico) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler In an ideal world, some things wouldn’t be possible in international cinema, such as Kim Ki-duk making any more movies. (Actually, China is doing its bit for that cause, in its own dubious way, right now.) Another would be that Werner Herzog couldn’t make any narrative features in English. The man, so…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Maliglutit (Searchers) (Zacharias Kunuk, Canada) — Platform
By Jay Kuehner There’s something poetic in the notion of an indigenous reworking of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), although it does not appear to be the motivating principle behind Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit, which fashions itself as a western told in an Inuit way. There are of course a host of political/theoretical implications to such…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Yourself and Yours (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea) — Masters
By Robert Koehler A parlour game likely to happen at many festivals around the world over the next several months will be this: Is there one Minjung who appears on screen as the central female character in Hong Sangsoo’s Yourself and Yours, or are there at least two, maybe even three? Does she have an…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Barakah Meets Barakah (Mahmoud Sabbagh, Saudi Arabia) — Special Presentations
By Ethan Vestby Belonging to a burgeoning new sub-genre known as “cinéma de selfie-stick” (or at least that’s what I’m calling it), the Saudi romantic comedy Barakah Meets Barakah has the temerity to tackle what most would, with a snicker, refer to as “How We Live Now.” Thankfully, this framework is used to present a…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Commune (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands) — Special Presentations
By Dominik Kamalzadeh In his Danish films, director Thomas Vinterberg prefers to turn his attention to more personal (and sociopolitical) matters than in his international productions. After The Celebration (1998) and The Hunt (2012), the ’70s-set drama The Commune, originally conceived as a theatre play that premiered at Vienna’s Akademietheater in 2011, is another examination…
By Dominik Kamalzadeh | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (André Øvredal, UK) — Midnight Madness
By Josh Cabrita André Øvredal’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe, the follow-up to his witty Trollhunter (2011), is bolstered by the clever conceit that a locked-room mystery can be housed in a corpse’s crevasses. Naturally then, our detectives are morticians, Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) and his son Austen (Emile Hirsch), who perform a late-night autopsy…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Barry (Vikram Gandhi, US) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro Among Barry’s most likable attributes is the fact that it barely even needs to be about Barack Obama, whose actual given name is never uttered over the course of the film. Set in August 1981, the loose narrative introduces us to its 20-year-old protagonist just as he arrives in NYC to study…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader, US) — Midnight Madness
By Jordan Cronk It requires a unique level of creative autonomy to make a film as gleefully uninhibited as Dog Eat Dog. Luckily for director Paul Schrader—who couldn’t quite maintain the precarious balance between financial and artistic considerations with his previous film, the recut and subsequently disowned The Dying of the Light (2014)—he’s been granted…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice (Alanis Obomsawin, Canada) — Masters
By Adam Nayman There is a moment near the end of Alanis Obomsawin’s purposefully epic-length courtroom-procedural documentary We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice where the camera catches a lawyer’s convictions wilting—he can’t even really make eye contact with the tribunal he’s trying to convince, much less sell them on the idea that the Canadian…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, The Colours of Life (Fariboz Kamkari, Italy) — TIFF Docs
By Robert Koehler There’s no excuse making a poor film on the life and work of one of cinema’s greatest cinematographers. A film about Carlo Di Palma should practically direct itself: stitch together clips from his major (and some of his minor) work—from Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style (1961) and Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Blow-up…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Prank (Vincent Biron, Canada) — Discovery
By Josh Cabrita There’s a self-reflexive moment in Vincent Biron’s feature debut where a group of delinquents watch Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (2011) stoned in a backyard. It’s an odd cinephilic reference point for a film that is ostensibly the bastard child of Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers (2009) and Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Politics, Instruction Manual (Fernando León de Aranoa, Spain) — TIFF DOCS
By Steve Macfarlane If one major lesson can be drawn (as opposed to countless small and terrifying ones) from the last few years of populist upsurges, maybe it’s this: a consistent, well-sold policy—whether Bernie Sanders’ or Nigel Farage’s—can still resonate with dissatisfied voter blocs in a major way, wild-carding the amnesiac Central Casting burlesque that…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Empty Box (Claudia Sainte-Luce, Mexico/France) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski There are only so many variations on the “watching a family member slip into dementia” story. This is a difficult truism to volley at any work of art, precisely because as each of us experiences that painful eventuality—and more and more of us will, given the rapid greying of our Baby Boomer…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Birth of the Dragon (George Nolfi, US/China/Canada) — Special Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane When it comes to biopic treatment, everybody deserves better. But this is especially true for Bruce Lee, who left behind a rich and varied filmography, lest we forget—by my lights, the drinking sequence in The Big Boss (1971) is as termitic a portrayal of shit-facedness as the movies have offered, facing competition…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Katie Says Goodbye (Wayne Roberts, US) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Full disclosure: I have been seeing most of this year’s Discovery titles without reading any synopses, production notes, or press packets, because I have wanted to evaluate them in as close to a tabula rasa state as possible. So I did not learn until well after seeing Katie Says Goodbye that it…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Never Ever (Benoît Jacquot, France/Belgium) — Masters
By Diana Dabrowska To be honest, I really dont understand how, after the debacle of 3 Hearts (2014), Benoît Jacquot is still allowed to make cinema. At this point, somebody should take away his French citizenship for a miserable and paltry contribution to a sparkling filmmaking heritage. One could naïvely ask, just like Werner Herzog…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Una (Benedict Andrews, UK) — Special Presentations
By Josh Cabrita An indication of what Elle could have been if it wasn’t directed by Paul Verhoeven or led by Isabelle Huppert, Una treads dangerous territory without tact, nimbleness or reflexivity. Certain subjects require more care than others, and when representing sexual abuse on screen, there’s always the risk of trivializing its effects or…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Limehouse Golem (Juan Carlos Medina, UK) — Special Presentations
By Josh Cabrita Edgar Allen Poe, the creator of the detective story, and Conan Doyle, its popularizer, conceived their protagonists as psychoanalysts as much as investigators. The framework they established was male-dominated and placed women only in misogynist types. Juan Carlos Medina’s film is a feminist deconstruction of how we record history and a critique…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Old Stone (Johnny Ma, Canada/China) — Discovery
By Ethan Vestby Cab driver Lao Shi (Chen Gang) has his worst fare ever when an inebriated passenger unexpectedly grabs his arm, causing his car to strike a motorcyclist. Quick to act when an ambulance won’t show up, Lao Shi rushes the injured man to the hospital. Yet his good deed only brings him misfortune,…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Blair Witch (Adam Wingard, US) — Midnight Madness
By Alysia Urrutia While it’s ostensibly a bold gesture to reboot the pre-viral benchmark of independent cinema, Adam Wingard’s millennial sequel Blair Witch lacks what its cunning predecessor had in spades: the element of surprise, both in its premise and its grassroots promotional method. You have to hand it to Wingard and his distributor for…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Age of Shadows (Kim Jee-woon, South Korea) — Special Presentations
By Tommasso Tocci A satisfying cloak-and-dagger thriller set in Japanese-occupied Korea during the 1920s, Kim Jee-woon’s The Age of Shadows betrays a kind of business-like approach to spy games, institutional and otherwise. With an unobstructed point of view that moves swiftly between the upper echelons of the Japanese police force and the busy Seoul shopfronts…
By Tommaso Tocci | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Layla M. (Mijke de Jong) — Platform
By Angelo Muredda The youth-in-extremis movie gets a relatively fresh new face in Mijke de Jong’s Layla M., which, together with Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, positions TIFF’s Platform programme as a quality clearing house for coming-of-age melodramas with a critical difference. Here the point of distinction is the budding radicalism of the heretofore university-bound Layla (Nora…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Deepwater Horizon (Peter Berg, US) — Gala Presentations
By José Teodoro We know from the start that this baby’s gonna blow; it’s only a question of when and how abysmally. Deepwater Horizon is everything you might expect from a Gala: it’s big, it’s bad, it has famous people. There’s bald foreshadowing involving bald men and reams of mumbled exposition from Mark Wahlberg and…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck, US/France/Belgium/Switzerland) — TIFF Docs
By Steve Macfarlane This past summer, I attended a screening and panel discussion hosted by the New Negress Film Society in Brooklyn; standing outside the venue afterwards, a flustered British gentleman took the evening’s general political timbre to task as follows: “I’m just a bit tired of hearing about the whole ‘white supremacy’ conversation. It’s…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
White Sun (Deepak Rauniyar, Nepal/US/Qatar/Netherlands) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler One of Sohrab Shahid Saless’ earliest masterworks is titled A Simple Event (1973), which could easily be the title—and a better one—for co-writer/director Deepak Rauniyar’s White Sun. The movie comes to TIFF direct from Venice’s Horizons section, which suggests that it may be an adventurous piece of cinema. It’s not, but aside…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Indivisible (Eduardo De Angelis, Italy) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Diana Dabrowska In all of this three feature films Eduardo De Angelis goes back to his roots in his homeland in southern Italy, and discovers a new side of Naples and its surroundings. In Indivisibile, Castel Volturno appears as a more poetic version of Gomorra, a no man’s land of weird saints and fake…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
(Re)Assignment (Walter Hill, Canada/France/US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman A potential powder keg of (trans)gender politics provided anybody ever actually sees it after its TIFF premiere, Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment is sort of two movies in one: a low-rent, bullet-in-the-head revenge thriller that embraces clichés like long-lost friends, and an inconngrously high-minded disquisition on style that cribs from Shakespeare and Poe en…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Planetarium (Rebecca Zlotowski, France/Belgium) — Gala Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska In an early scene in Planetarium, the character played by Natalie Portman says “I don’t want to be a disappointment.” After Portman’s powerful performance as JBK in Pablo Larraín’s “HBO-style” biopic Jackie, Rebecca Zlotowski’s film is not just a disappointment for its star, but a fiasco—and not just for her, but for…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Sand Storm (Elite Zexer, Israel) — Discovery
By Steve Macfarlane Tradition at loggerheads with modernity: that ancient “world cinema” chestnut gets another diffident tango in Elite Zexer’s Sand Storm, concerning a Bedouin family in the south of Israel. Ruba Blal-Asfour stars as Jalila, a steely matriarch with no choice but to suffer in silence as her husband Suliman (Hitham Omari, who also…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Sámi Blood (Amanda Kernell, Sweden/Denmark/Norway) — Discovery
By Jennifer Lynde Barker Language marks us. What seems innocuous in a familiar setting becomes abruptly conspicuous when contrasted with different sounds and intonations. This makes language an easy target for discrimination, perhaps because we seldom feel more vulnerable than when we cannot understand what someone else is saying. Being denied comprehension means being shut…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
150 Milligrams (Emmanuelle Bercot, France) — Special Presentations
By James Lattimer Even if Emmanuelle Bercot’s stultifying biopic 150 Milligrams weren’t based on a true story, its outcome would anyway be clear from the outset: when feisty provincial doctors take on the system, convention demands that they must win. Bercot doesn’t seem to have a problem with embracing total predictability however, given that she…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Hedonists (Jia Zhangke, China) — Short Cuts
By Michael Sicinski This is a bit like Jia Zhangke’s version of a Ken Loach comedy, and actually that’s not bad. In just under 30 minutes, we witness the closure of a coal mine in Fenyang due to a collapse in the Chinese energy sector. The boss, while a garden-variety curmudgeon, doesn’t even seem like…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
City of Tiny Lights (Pete Travis, UK) — Special Presentations
By Mallory Andrews There’s hardboiled and then there’s just a waste of perfectly good eggs; City of Tiny Lights is regrettably the latter. “Death weighs heavier than heartbreak” intones London-based private investigator Tommy Akhtar (Riz Ahmed, fresh from HBO’s The Night Of and soon to be ubiquitous for his role in the upcoming Rogue One:…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
I Called Him Morgan (Kasper Collin, Sweden/US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro Trumpeter Lee Morgan belonged to that wave of early-’60s Blue Note recording artists that included Sonny Clark and Ike Quebec, guys who did not embrace the radically dilating apertures of free jazz but, rather, confined their explorations to the vernacular of bebop. Over time, these musicians have understandably become overshadowed by the…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Sweet Dreams (Marco Bellocchio, Italy) — Masters
By Blake Williams Pressed so far beyond his trademark disdain for the patriarchal legacy that Catholicism has left (and continues to assert) over modern-day Italian life and culture, master filmmaker Marco Bellocchio here follows up his sublime and mysterious Blood of My Blood (2015) with a handsome and shamelessly cloying picture that represents the most logical culmination…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
In the Radiant City (Rachel Lambert, US) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski “A mom is a mom, even if you call it a tree.” So speaks Richard Gonzalez (Jon Michael Hill), the public defender assigned to the parole case at the centre of In the Radiant City, a vague piece of Kentucky regionalism from first-time director Rachel Lambert. (It’s almost tempting to reimagine the…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Off Frame AKA Revolution to Until Victory (Mohanad Yaqubi, Palestine/France/Qatar/Lebanon) — TIFF Docs
By Robert Koehler Beyond the rare screening of Far From Vietnam (1967), viewers today have few chances to encounter the Third Cinema movement, that brief but intense burst of nonfiction work generally informed by Marxist-Leninist internationalism whose superstar was a radicalized Jean-Luc Godard. If you attended North American universities in the mid-’70s you would have…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
My Entire High School is Sinking Into the Sea (Dash Shaw, US) — Vanguard
By Ethan Vestby Any feature-film debut boasting a stacked cast of celebrities tempts us to conjure up the image of a big-deal producer calling in as many favours as possible. Yet detecting the reasoning for the number of marquee names involved in the freshman effort of comic-book artist/writer Dash Shaw perhaps derives from its script…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Soul on a String (China, Zhang Yang) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer The amount of enjoyment to be derived from Soul on a String hinges on one’s tolerance for heavily processed images. While all the shots of vast natural vistas, tastefully furnished interiors, and portentous encounters have been painstakingly composed, each and every frame of Zhang Yhang’s Tibetan epic has been flushed through a…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James, US) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski Most of the films related to the 2008 financial meltdown (documentaries and features) have assumed an audience thoroughly cowed by the very topic. In fact, the films themselves have often seemed flummoxed by their very subject, doing their best to present the complexities of 21st-century international finance in broad strokes and simple…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Kati Kati (Mbithi Masya, Kenya/Germany) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski A genuinely surprising film from an unexpected source, Kati Kati is a film that draws on tradition (Nollywood, Senegalese counter-cinema, faith-based films) without falling into the stylistic or genre traps of any of those approaches. The plot is basic enough, but inventive in its execution: Kaleche (Nyokabi Gethaiga) wakes up in a…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Daguerrotype (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, France/Japan/Belgium) — Platform
By Robert Koehler Everybody wants to go to Paris, even Kurosawa Kiyoshi. Usually, these ventures to France by non-French directors in order to make French movies result in seriously messy omelettes. (Asghar Farhadi, anyone?) Kurosawa’s Daguerrotype is certainly a mess, though it’s easy to surmise why he was attracted to bring his interest in ghosts,…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Buster Mal’s Heart (Sarah Adina Smith, US) — Vanguard
By Robert Koehler Rami Malek has become the new face of the Disturbed Man, a type owned in the past by Peter Lorre, Ray Milland, Anthony Perkins, Dustin Hoffman and Jake Gyllenhaal. That list suggests that the quality of our Disturbed Men has been somewhat declining. Malek may have reversed that trend purely with Mr.…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey (Terrence Malick, Germany) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler Time was, when he was actually doing good work, Terrence Malick seemed to appear with a new movie once a decade, if that. Now that he’s making drivel, Malick can’t stop himself from churning them out, which, a theory goes, is why they’re drivel. That theory, however, can’t explain the ridiculous new…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America (Paul Dugdale, UK) — Gala Presentations
By Robert Koehler Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues (1973) remains the gnarliest rock-band tour movie ever made, and the best Stones movie too. Watching the new Stones tour movie, The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé!, will recall Frank’s movie for all the ways in which the band has changed. Once profane and on the verge of…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Amanda Knox (Brian McGinn & Rod Blackhurst, USA/Denmark) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro What’s finally most objectionable about Amanda Knox is encapsulated right in this glossy and obnoxious film’s title. Its fundamental sensationalism bubbling under a patina of seriousness, exemplified by cocoon-like, squarely composed, quasi-Errol Morris interview sessions, Amanda Knox revisits the botched investigation—and re-investigation—into the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student,…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Ivory Game (Kief Davidson & Richard Ladkani, Austria/USA) — TIFF Docs
By Jay Kuehner A “call to action,” a “wake-up call”—call it what call you will, The Ivory Game is stylized broadcast journalism for the Netflix set, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering how smart elephants are; if only they can outlast cinema when it comes to extinction. To be fair, the ivory trade is…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Untamed (Amat Escalante, Mexico/Denmark/France/Germany/ Norway/Switzerland) — Vanguard
By Angelo Muredda Repressed sexual impulses find a novel form of expression in Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, a genre film for people who find genre films distasteful. As in his Cannes-winning Heli (2013), Escalante’s knack for high-concept premises—there, using the family unit as a means to explore the insidiousness of violence—is undone by his obvious,…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Forever Pure (Maya Zinshtein, Israel/UK/Denmark/Norway) — TIFF Docs
By Mallory Andrews They call themselves La Familia, and the mob connotations don’t end there for the yellow-and-black-clad uber-fans who reliably fill the stands during each game of Beitar Jerusalem F.C. But in exchange for their loyalty, they exact a high price. In Forever Pure, Maya Zinshtein follows the controversial 2012 season, when Beitar recruited…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (Errol Morris, US) — TIFF Docs
By Jay Kuehner As a portrait of a portrait artist, Errol Morris’ framing of Elsa Dorfman is scaled with commensurately intimate and life-sized means, perhaps surprisingly given the director’s predilection for the everyday uncanny (you’d suspect Diane Arbus to be the more fitting subject). Morris drops in on Dorfman’s studio for a guided tour of…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Below Her Mouth (April Mullen, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Nomi Malone’s swimming-pool gyrations in Showgirls (1995) have nothing on the scene in Below Her Mouth where fashion editor Jasmine (Natalie Krill) brings herself to orgasm via a full-blast bathtub faucet while perched perilously over the porcelain basin; if nothing else, it’s quite a display of upper-body strength. So, credit director April…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Queen of Katwe (Mira Nair, Uganda/South Africa) — Gala Presentations
By Robert Koehler Disney’s second African movie of the year since The Jungle Book is set in India, Queen of Katwe is deep-dish Disney of the live-action variety, the kind that parents take their kids to to make them better and make themselves as parents feel better. Director Mira Nair, operating far from her Indian…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Jeffrey (Yanillys Perez, Dominican Republic/France) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski From its aerial opening shots of the massive urban crunch of Santo Domingo, zeroing in on one particular family in a corner of the slums, Jeffrey looks at first as if it’s going to provide a Dominican riff on City of God (2002). Thankfully, first-timer Yanillys Perez foregoes most of the clichés…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Trespass Against Us (Adam Smith, UK) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman In a film filled with significant canines—from an accidentally immolated mutt to a prize police-unit sniffer to a redemptive purebred puppy—Michael Fassbender’s hangdog eyes are best in show: after all, acting Shame is right in our hero’s wheelhouse. As Chad, a reckless, criminally-inclined traveller caught somewhere between his firebrand father’s (Brendan Gleeson)…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
ARQ (Tony Elliott, US/Canada) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Bearing a surface resemblance to Primer (2004) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), ARQ thrusts its viewers into a vaguely futuristic world that [REBOOT] Bearing an unnervingly derivative resemblance to Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004), which did much more with considerably less, the debut feature by TV writer Tony Elliott (most recently of Orphan…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Weirdos (Bruce McDonald, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Having given Bruce McDonald a pretty rough ride in this space last year for the so-bad-it-had-to-be-contractually-obligated horror movie Hellions, I’m inclined to go easier on Weirdos, which has the same rambling, open-road sensibility of the director’s very best movies. Not that this gentle period comedy (dateline: Antigonish, 1976) ever really challenges the…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Burn Your Maps (Jordan Roberts, US) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler A small tale of a boy’s obsession realized, writer-director Jordan Roberts’ Burn Your Maps is the perfect movie for TIFF audiences who want to do some armchair travelling but don’t want to bother with those pesky subtitles. Albertan visitors to the festival will be doubly happy: the landscapes of their wealthy and…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Gaza Surf Club (Mickey Yamine & Phillip Gnadt, Germany/Palestine/US) — TIFF Docs
By Josh Cabrita Whether it’s admirable wish-fulfillment or just plain dishonest, Mickey Yamine and Phillip Gnadt’s Gaza Surf Club is a “feel-good” documentary that wants to be—and is about being—distracted from injustice. Focusing on the bourgeoning surfing culture in the Gaza Strip, the film follows three interconnected individuals: a female adolescent who can’t swim because…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Giant (Johannes Nyholm, Sweden/Denmark) — Discovery
By Aurelie Godet Johannes Nyholm has forged his own path, bending techniques to suit his personal vision in a number of astonishing music videos and short films, including the award-winning Las Palmas, which featured marionettes and his own baby daughter. An artisan in spirit, he has continuously experimented, mixing genres in a style both rough…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Park (Sofia Exarchou, Greece/Poland) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Given that we’re now about ten years into the Greek New Wave, it stands to reason that we would begin to see some younger directors rejecting the rigour and clinical distance that characterized the best-known films of the movement. Park shares the bleak attitude of 21st-century breakdown that we find in Dogtooth…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Heartstone (Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson, Iceland/Denmark) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski Heartstone is the type of debut film that is brimming with good intentions but ultimately doesn’t make a strong enough case for its existence. Trading in coming-of-age tropes and stock markers of identity, Heartstone at least has the courtesy to spread its youthful anxieties over a stunning Icelandic coastal landscape, allowing its…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Road to Mandalay (Midi Z, Taiwan/Myanmar/France/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer Like most things in The Road to Mandalay, the border crossing happens quietly: a small group assembles at a rural meeting point, a girl named Lianquing takes the front seat and the men the trunk, they drive through the night, a deal is made at the checkpoint, and by the next morning…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Levelling (Hope Dickson Leach, UK) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski A promising debut hobbled by the perhaps inherent difficulties of making a first feature, Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling has the mood, tone, and overall feel of so many British TV procedurals of late. Granted this is a family tale, not a police story, but like recent entries such as Southcliffe, The…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Blessed Benefit (Mahmoud al Massad, Jordan/Germany/Netherlands) — Discovery
By Steve Macfarlane The inmates are running the asylum in Blessed Benefit, a dissection of Jordan’s masculinist pecking order that—if documentarian-cum-satirist Mahmoud al Massad is to be believed—runs entirely on graft/dumb luck/both. An easygoing contractor named Ahmad (Ahmad Thaher) finds himself jailed over an uncompleted job, to the tune of 1800 dinars (roughly $2500 American),…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Let’s stick to what’s on screen here, and say that Nate Parker isn’t the first multi-hyphenate to conflate artistic megalomania with authentic heroism—a pre-damage control Mel Gibson got an Academy Award for it, for instance. At the risk of praising with faint damnation, The Birth of a Nation is roughly on a…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Catfight (Onur Tukel, US) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro Is it all right that I derive pleasure from watching Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beat the living shit out of each other? I promise I have nothing against either actress. It is simply not often that you get to see normal-looking women both exact and absorb Lone Survivor-levels of corporeal punishment.…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Godspeed (Chung Mong-hong, Taiwan) — Vanguard
By Shelly Kraicer Hong Kong comic idol Michael Hui defined Hong Kong comedy (and, to a large extent, a specifically local Hong Kong Cantonese identity) in the late 1970s and 1980s with classics like The Private Eyes, Chicken and Duck Talk, and Teppanyaki. Now he is back on screen in festival habitué Chung Mong-hong’s latest…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
American Pastoral (Ewan McGregor, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Only Philip Roth could conceive an epic in which a Jewish patriarch is literally blameless and figuratively guilty for the sins of the Greatest Generation—self-flattery and self-flagellation conveniently interlaced. That said Jew is played, in this new cinematization of Roth’s American Pastoral, by the Scots-born Ewan McGregor (pulling double duty behind the…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Snowden (Oliver Stone, Germany/US)
By Robert Koehler If Snowden, director Oliver Stone and screenwriter Kieran Fitzgerald’s version of the Edward Snowden affair, is remembered for anything, it will be as the first Hollywood movie that turned Barack Obama into a bad guy. Time was, back in the day when Obama walked on water, there was a thing you could…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Currency, From Cinema Scope Magazine, TIFF 2016
The Magnificent Seven (Antoine Fuqua, US) — Gala Presentations
By Robert Koehler Diversity, thy name is The Magnificent Seven 2016: what was once a group of white guys saving a town of poor Mexican campesinos is now a veritable United Nations of the West. The assemblage of these gunfighters is the apotheosis of the Obama Era in the movies. The assemblyman and leader is…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Karl Marx City (Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker, US/Germany) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski An impressive outing from the pair who made the rather shambolic Gunner Palace back in 2004, Karl Marx City is that rarest of objects: an exploration of family history that avoids solipsism and manages to connect the personal to much broader things. Petra Epperlein and her family grew up in the GDR;…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Interchange (Dain Iskandar Said, Indonesia/Malaysia) — Vanguard
By Adam Nayman The supernaturally-inflected police procedural is a subgenre with international traction (as evidenced by the recent success of The Wailing), but while there’s surely something trendy about Malaysian director Dain Iskandar Said’s new thriller, it draws on local culture in a way that suggests its inspirations predate and supersede True Detective. Said shows…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Free Fire (Ben Wheatley, UK) — Midnight Madness
By Angelo Muredda A canny genre filmmaker with a Situationist’s knack for how people’s surroundings sculpt their blinkered worldview, Ben Wheatley is wise to make Free Fire, his first film set in the US, a crime caper with big-mouthed braggarts shooting off their guns in a confined space just large enough to let them…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Woman Who Left (Lav Diaz, Philippines) — Wavelengths
By Lorenzo Esposito If there’s someone who thinks that The Woman Who Left is a minor Lav Diaz film—because it’s the second one this year, or because, at 227 minutes, it’s “short” for him (film critics’ clichés are both endless and predictable)—let’s say up front that this is one of his best. And this is…
By Lorenzo Esposito | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Journey (Nick Hamm, UK) — Special Presentations
By Jennifer Lynde Barker “Politics is a long game,” remarks Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) near the beginning of The Journey, and for the two main characters of the film—McGuiness and Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall)—it is a game deeply embedded in nationalist and religious fervour. The film is based…
By Jennifer Lynde Barker | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Souvenir (Bavo Deferne, Belgium/Luxembourg/France) — Special Presentations
By Robert Koehler A movie bonbon that melts in your hand before you can pop it in your mouth, Souvenir tries to package its kitsch as dressed-up fun, but all it does is give Isabelle Huppert something to do between her real movies. Huppert, like any actor, needs breathers between the heavy assignments; for example,…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) (Ann Marie Fleming, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Though it’s a bit scrappy on first glance, Window Horses director Ann Marie Fleming’s drawing style has a good story behind it. After surviving a car accident while she was an animation student, Fleming resorted to the barest of shorthands in her minimalist sketches of a character she called Stick Girl, made…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
I Am Not Madame Bovary (China, Feng Xiaogang) — Special Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer “The local police are idiots: there are no idiots in Beijing” is just one of the rather unusual lines of dialogue in Chinese blockbuster director Feng Xiaogang’s newest film I Am Not Madame Bovary. This one is different: a) there’s acid dripping from every line and shot, although Feng clearly wants to…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Chasing Trane (John Scheinfeld, US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro If you own one jazz record, it’s probably Kind of Blue; if you own two, the other one’s probably A Love Supreme. John Coltrane plays on the former and is composer and bandleader on the latter, and it is not unremarkable that the legacy of this once popular musical form is now…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour, US) — Vanguard
By José Teodoro In the future and/or some parallel universe, the US will reject numerous citizens for unspecified reasons and banish them to some arid stretch of Texas-Mexico borderland. On one side of this desert of the forsaken is an airplane graveyard where elaborately tattooed bodybuilders glisten in the sun while the limbs of less…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Orphan (Arnaud des Pallières, France) — Special Presentations
By Aurelie Godet Arnaud des Pallières’ visually powerful and cerebral works have kept critics intrigued and hopeful for the day that these qualities would espouse a certain narrative efficiency for which he consistently demonstrates a clear distrust. One of his weapons in this internal struggle is an irrepressible penchant for dislocation, which is all over…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
A Decent Woman (Lukas Valenta Rinner, Austria/South Korea/Argentina) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews Decency, decorum, politesse, virtuous social mores—all are rigidly upheld in the gated community in Buenos Aires where Belén (Iride Mockert) finds herself gainfully employed as the live-in housekeeper for an affluent woman and her college-aged son on their huge estate. One day while cleaning, she catches a glimpse of the adjoining property…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Mimosas (Oliver Laxe, Spain/Morocco/Qatar/France) — Wavelengths
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) By Jay Kuehner A Sufi western? In the parole of Cannes’ critical taxonomy, the designation bestowed upon Oliver Laxe’s desert-fevered, Semaine de la Critique-winning allegory would seem reductive if it didn’t allude, paradoxically, to the film’s radically expansive nature. This leads one to wonder just what “a Sufi western”…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Jackie (Pablo Larraín, UK) — Platform
By Tommaso Tocci In his first English-language production, second unconventional biopic of the year (after Neruda), and third impressive film since February 2015, Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín keeps racking up successes. He hits the ground running in Jackie by prefacing the opening shot with the strange, self-collapsing flute-and-violin notes that will accompany his portrayal of…
By Tommaso Tocci | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, US) — Special Presentations
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) By Richard Porton Cannes 2016, if nothing else, presented viewers with object lessons in the rudiments of political cinema—from the hoariest agitprop to films that might not even have been perceived as overtly political. I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner, personifies a certain brand of over-determined, melodramatic…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Ember (Zeki Demirkubuz, Turkey/Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski In 2003, TIFF showed three of Zeki Demirkubuz’s very best films in a Turkish cinema showcase (a kind of forerunner to the current City to City programme). What made Fate, Confession (both 2001) and especially The Third Page (1999) so lively and inventive was the sense that the director was still figuring…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Singularity (Albert Serra, Spain) — Wavelengths
From Cinema Scope #63 (Summer 2015) By Andréa Picard First presented in the 2015 Venice Biennale at the off-site collateral event “Catalonia in Venice,” Albert Serra’s Singularity, a sumptuous, monumental film projected on five screens, reveals a seductive, barren, yet baroque beauty over its consistently engaging three-hour duration. This is a feat of prolonged attention-grabbing…
By Andrea Picard | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki, Argentina) — Wavelengths
By José Teodoro Gastón Solnicki’s third feature and first fiction film is, like its predecessors, named after a piece of music: Kékszakállú is Hungarian for “Bluebeard,” and Solnicki has cited Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle as a key source of inspiration. The film is, however, only related to the oft-adapted folktale in the most tenuous manner…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Zoology (Ivan Tverdovsky, Russia) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Boris Nelepo Kids engage in erotic asphyxiation. Students with special needs gang-rape a girl in a wheelchair. A lonely, middle-aged woman suddenly sprouts a tail. These are, respectively, synopses for the short documentary Space Dog (2013), the first feature Corrections Class (2014), and now Zoology (2016) by Ivan Tverdovsky, a 27-year-old rising star of…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Cinema Travellers (Shirley Abraham & Amit Madheshiya, India) — TIFF Docs
By Shelly Kraicer Mohammed, Bapu, and Prakash are three cinema magi: half wizards, not-quite-ghosts, intelligent and hard-working men who have been keeping the art of film (and we mean celluloid) projection alive in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The first two run travelling cinemas, where ancient 35mm projectors show old films inside tents to rural…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Foreign Body (Raja Amari, France/Tunisia) — Special Presentations
By Josh Cabrita The 2014 Palme d’Or winner Dheepan was torn between being a traditional art-house film about lower-class immigrants and director Jacque Audiard’s genre fixations; the film is boilerplate social realism until it ends with disorienting, internalized violence that recalls the climax of Taxi Driver (1976). Something similar happens in Raja Amari’s Foreign Body.…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, US ) — Platform
By Angelo Muredda “No place in the world ain’t got no black people,” Mahershala Ali’s good-hearted drug dealer and surrogate father Juan tells prepubescent Chiron (Alex Hibbert) in the opening act of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ accomplished but fussy sophomore feature. Juan’s attempt to instill a sense of black masculine pride in a boy mercilessly teased…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
A Death in the Gunj (Konkona Sensharma, India) — Special Presentations
By Alysia Urrutia Konkona Sensharma’s first stab at directing after a long and prolific acting career proves her to be a well-intentioned emerging filmmaker, though the impact of the film itself is somewhat dulled by its predictability and lack of focus. Often reminiscent of Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly (2009), A Death in the Gunj is…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Blind Sun (Joyce A. Nashawati, France/Greece) — Vanguard
By Mark Peranson In a festival with almost as many world premieres as Canadian Tim Hortons franchises, Joyce A. Nashawati’s debut feature Blind Sun is an anomaly in that it premiered all the way back in Thessaloniki last November (and played numerous semi-illustrious international and fantasy festivals since). So, then, is this a special case,…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Bleeder (Philippe Falardeau, US) — Special Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska The showboating Apollo Creed in Rocky (1976) was clearly a (non-Muslim) version of Muhammad Ali, but who was the real-life Rocky Balboa? Whether you have always asked this question of yourself or not, here comes Philippe Falardeau’s The Bleeder to give you your answer regardless. Liev Schreiber is fantastic as Rocky’s real-life…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, France/Spain/Portugal) — Wavelengths
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) By Blake Williams With birds singing above, a 71-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud sits dressed as the 76-year-old Sun King, pale and powdered under his big wig, nobly stationed amid a twilit rose garden in his wheelchair, finally bidding to his two eager valets: “Onward.” Thus begins Albert Serra’s fifth and…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, UK/US) — Masters
By Blake Williams Some have called Terence Davies’ second (and better) film to be unveiled in the last 12 months the best Whit Stillman film of the year—the gleeful indulgence in the sound of the English language matches and arguably surpassed that on display in Stillman’s Love & Friendship—while others have proclaimed it the best Dreyer…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, US)
From Cinema Scope #68 (Fall 2016) By Steve Macfarlane It arrives as both throwaway moment and photo-historical anachronism: dozens are adorned in white on a sand dune, whiling away the hours before dusk; a girl is passed a 19th-century stereopticon, brings it to her eyes, and sees images in motion—glimpses of a city on “the…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Currency, From Cinema Scope Magazine, TIFF 2016
Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (Joseph Cedar, US/Israel) — Gala Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Anyone who’s ever felt like a fraud will find much to relate to in Joseph Cedar’s tale of personal bankruptcy, the spectrum of identification spanning the exhilaration of getting away with it to the humiliation of being exposed. The architecture of influence and exploitation is the stuff of which movies are made,…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford, US/UK) — Special Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska A bunch of naked, pudgy woman are dancing in a very glamourous and sensual way, flaunting their adipose imperfections. More than a Tom Ford movie, this frankly seems like the beginning of ein film von Ulrich Seidl. For a man of such fashionable taste and background, the sequence is provocative and disturbing.…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, UK/France/Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Mark Peranson Not that anyone cares at this point, but this year’s Palme d’Or went to probably the best film of Cannes’ sorry lot of award winners—and when we’re talking about Ken Loach, you know that lot is pretty sorry. The first questioner at the jury press conference hit the nail on the head…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Neruda (Pablo Larraín, Chile/Argentina/France/Spain) — Special Presentations
By Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria It is not easy to face a national (and even international) myth and emerge unscathed. Pablo Larraín, who has spent years confronting the ghosts of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in his homeland of Chile, speaks in one of his two new films this year about one of the quintessential Chilean poets:…
By Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (Khyentse Norbu, Bhutan/Hong Kong) — Platform
By Robert Koehler As the world’s only Buddhist lama who also makes movies that screen at major international festivals and have received commercial releases, Khyentse Norbu is quite the operator. Under his Buddhist name Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, he conducts sessions in India and his native Bhutan and, as he is thought to be the incarnation…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Heal the Living (Katel Quillévéré, France/Belgium) — Platform
By Dominik Kamalzadeh If melodrama as a genre is concerned with the suffering of the heart on a metaphorical level, French director Katell Quillévéré’s third feature Heal the Living takes the matter in an inventive turn, rather literally. In the fluently directed opening sequence, we see a group of teenagers ride away to a remote…
By Dominik Kamalzadeh | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Home (Fien Troch, Belgium) — Platform
By James Lattimer Is giving a film an abstract noun as its title ever a good idea? Shorn of context, words like “love,” “happiness,” or indeed “home” automatically become grand statements of intent, attempts to speak to the universal nature of things that all too often land closer to the blunt or the facile rather…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Throughout his career, as both a documentarian and the director of two feature films, Sergei Loznitsa has explored various facets of one fundamental subject: the way the human race records its own history. At times, this has led him toward excavation and re-examination of the footage of others, in films such as…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Bezness as Usual (Alex Pitstra, Netherlands) – TIFF Docs
By Robert Koehler Dutch filmmaker Alex Pitstra’s mother Anneke, trying to bounce back from a bitter divorce, vacationed in a Tunisia beach resort in the late ’70s, where she met and fell for local playboy Mohsen Ben Hassen. Together, back in the Netherlands, they had little Alex, soon after she had learned that Mohsen was…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Graduation (Christian Mungiu, Romania) — Masters
By Blake Williams The only thing more preordained than the direction, narrative structure, rhythm, colour palette, and general sense of morality on display in Cristian Mungiu’s latest film is that you are going to see it—because it is an Important Work of World Cinema from the man who is still the only Palme d’Or-winning director…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Le Ciel Flamand (Peter Monsaert, Belgium) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski The particular circumstances of Le Ciel Flamand turn its plot twists into a rather dire matter of politics. If Peter Monsaert’s film were about an ordinary workplace—if Sylvie (Sara Vertongen) and her mother Monique (Ingrid De Vos) ran a diner or a print shop rather than a brothel—then of course there would…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, South Korea) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Park Chan-wook dresses up his naughtiness under the ritzier coats of period drama and metafiction in The Handmaiden. More well-oiled machine than movie, The Handmaiden adapts Welsh historical novelist Sarah Waters’ Booker Prize-shortlisted 19th-century throwback Fingersmith, about a petty thief commissioned to act as a maid to a mentally unwell heiress, the…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
L’Avenir (Mia Hansen-Løve, France)
By Adam Nayman A decade after her youthful debut Tout est pardonné (2007), the now-35-year-old Mia Hansen-Løve has become a veteran. But she’s always been an old soul. Her films are rife with scenes of teenagers being forced to confront hypocrisy and loss well ahead of schedule, and she’s very good at capturing the split-seconds…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Currency, From Cinema Scope Magazine, TIFF 2016
Unless (Alan Gilsenan, Canada/Ireland) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda The last novel and late-career manifesto of Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields gets a visceral but disjointed adaptation in Alan Gilsenan’s Unless, which, like its source, follows the mysterious transformation of Norah (Hannah Gross), a college student who suddenly goes silent and abandons her life of middle-class comfort to camp out on…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (Juho Kuosmanen, Finland/Sweden/Germany) — Discovery
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) By Jason Anderson Of all the fleet-footed scenes in The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, the one that best demonstrates the virtues of Juho Kuosmanen’s debut feature may be the first press conference sequence. Though the event’s ostensible purpose is to hype the fight that takes place at…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Denial (Mick Jackson, US/UK) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman As the notorious and famously discredited Holocaust denier David Irving in Denial, Timothy Spall deadens his eyes, twitches his jowls, masticates his dialogue and scrunches himself into truly ghoulish configurations. Not since Jeremy Irons played Claus Von Bulow has a gifted English actor thrown himself so bodily into a role as a…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, US) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda The elegant swan to Margaret’s (2011) ugly duckling, Manchester by the Sea is a moving but less arresting follow-up to Kenneth Lonergan’s career best. At his strongest when he is least governed by discipline and good taste, Lonergan seems a bit too tentative in this unmistakably well-crafted study of the way grief…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
General Report II: The New Abduction of Europe (Pere Portabella, Spain) — Wavelengths
From Cinema Scope #67 The Changing of the Age: Pere Portabella on Informe General II By Jerry White I have always thought of Pere Portabella as the most French filmmaker outside of France—though “French” in the specific sense of the long-standing Gallic idealization of l’artiste engagé. The summit of this ideal, in cinematic terms, would…
By Jerry White | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, France) — Masters
By Blake Williams Upon its premiere in Cannes last May, Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper quickly became defined by its centerpiece SMS marathon, in which Maureen (Kristen Stewart) engages in a days-long texting back-and-forth with what might be her dead twin brother’s ghost (all while travelling from Paris to London and back), and the scene is indeed probably…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Nelly (Anne Émond, Canada) — Vanguard
By Ethan Vestby Curiously placed in Vanguard despite a biopic pedigree seemingly guaranteed a spot in the bottomless pit of the section known as Special Presentations (unless the programmers of Midnight Madness’ “cooler older sister” thought sexploitation was the “genre” supposedly being turned on its head), Nelly is, regardless, a case of a film that…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Red Turtle (Michael Dudok de Wit, France/Belgium/Japan) — Discovery
By Jordan Cronk The iconic Studio Ghibli logo introduces Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, this year’s Un Certain Regard Jury prizewinner, and it’s easy enough to see why the storied animation studio would select the film as its first international co-production following the retirement of Miyazaki Hayao and the appointment of Suzuki Toshio…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
We Are Never Alone (Petr Vaclav, Czech Republic/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Robert Koehler “Miserablism” has long been a term tossed around by lazy critics, mainly when they feel overworked at festivals, and aimed at movies they feel miserable having to sit through. Béla Tarr and Pedro Costa, to name two of the highest on the depth chart, have long been slapped around as “miserablists” by…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone (Fred Peabody, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Alysia Urrutia Taking its title from legendary independent journalist I.F. Stone’s guiding maxim, Fred Peabody’s All Governments Lie expands its critical scope by tracking down other deceptive public institutions whose credibility also deserves debunking, mainly corporate organizations and the mass media. Despite money and power being common denominators among the suspected liars, the…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (Wim Wenders, France/Germany) — Masters
By Clara Miranda Scherffig It seems that Wim Wenders has found his special medium, and, for better or worse, he will keep experimenting with it. After Pina (2011) and Everything Will Be Fine (2015), once again the German director employs 3D to frame his adaptation of a 2012 play by Austrian writer Peter Handke, his…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Rehearsal (Alison McLean, New Zealand) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ian Barr Based on Eleanor Catton’s acclaimed 2008 novel, The Rehearsal largely transpires under perpetually overcast Auckland skies or within sterile drama classrooms, in direct correlation with its story’s murkiness. First-year acting student Stanley (James Rolleston) is seen early on receiving a humiliating dressing-down from his teacher Hannah (Kerry Fox) for repeatedly offering a…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Little Wing (Selma Vilhunen, Finland/Denmark) — Discovery
By Josh Cabrita Realizing a tightly telegraphed narrative with on-the-fly camerawork and spontaneous realism, Finnish director Selma Vilhuen’s Little Wing is equal parts sensitive and senseless. The story’s set-up is based on a dichotomy that, thankfully, the film complicates as it goes on. Varpu (Linnea Skog) is a 12-year-old wise beyond her years, and her…
By Josh Cabrita | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Hello Destroyer (Kevan Funk, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman It’s either genuinely ballsy or calculatedly smart for a young Canadian director to attack the culture and codes of junior hockey. The fact is that Kevan Funk’s Hello Destroyer is set to get a lot of attention at TIFF and beyond, and it’s constructed sturdily enough to stand up to any forthcoming…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
In the Blood (Rastus Heisterberg, Denmark) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews “The highbrow part of me likes to call the film a requiem for youth,” writes Rasmus Heisterberg in his director’s note for In the Blood, a film which comes off as more of a kiss-off to the arrested development of young men. The Danish screenwriter’s directorial debut focuses on the friendship between…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues, Portugal/France/ Brazil) — Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson In Trás-os-Montes, the majestic part of northeastern Portugal where António Reis used to make movies, solitary ornithologist Fernando (the body of Jason Statham lookalike Paul Hamy, the voice of director João Pedro Rodrigues) kayaks along a river peering through his binoculars in search of rare birds, especially the endangered black stork. Distracted,…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, France/Germany/Belgium)
By Blake Williams To waste no time: Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama has nothing to say about either Nick Cave or the Bad Seeds, and, more crucially, is not a film about terrorism. Perhaps a strange assertion, the latter, given that the movie spends all 130 of its sublime, stomach-churning minutes in the company of a crew…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Currency, From Cinema Scope Magazine, TIFF 2016
The Stairs (Hugh Gibson, Canada) — TIFF Docs
By Shelly Kraicer Hugh Gibson’s fascinating documentary The Stairs takes us into the lives of three harm reduction workers in Toronto’s Regent Park, a housing project now under hopeful renewal that has long represented Toronto’s most disadvantaged communities. Martin, Greg, and Roxanne are all current or past drug users who also work at the Regent…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Mali Blues (Lutz Gregor, Germany) — TIFF Docs
By Alysia Urrutia You might remember her minor but memorable performance in the Oscar-nominated Timbuktu (2014), but in Lutz Gregor’s Mali Blues singer Fatoumata Diawara’s electrifying pizzazz rightfully earns her the spotlight. Gregor documents Fatou’s journey of self-discovery on a concert tour of her native land, a country whose occupation by radical Islamists separated its…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
La La Land (Damien Chazelle, US) — Special Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska Alfred Hitchcock once said that a “good film should start with an earthquake.” Damien Chazelle must have kept that in mind, because La La Land kicks off with a bang, an energetic musical sequence that transforms a Los Angeles traffic jam into the coolest place on earth, a modern-day fantasy variation on…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Frantz (François Ozon, France/Germany) — Special Presentations
By Tommaso Tocci Almost a decade after the disappointing Angel, François Ozon is again stepping out of France to direct a film abroad in a different language. Fortunately, he fares much better this time around with Frantz, a post-WWI black-and-white melodrama dealing with duality, deceit, and distance as fuel for the obfuscating power of the…
By Tommaso Tocci | TIFF 2016
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, US) — Gala Presentations
By Clara Miranda Scherffig Sci-fi is a hospitable genre, as it allows filmmakers to both experiment within and reinforce its outer conventions. Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival creatively positions itself within that relationship. Based on Ted Chiang’s short tale “Story of Your Life,” the film employs a voiceover commentary that holds together its major motifs: science and…
By Clara Miranda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Divines (Houda Benyamina, France/Qatar) — Discovery
By Aurelie Godet Houda Benyamina grew up with a lot of anger in her, directed at a society unwilling to let its poor climb up the ladder and at people in positions of authority who, instead of helping, contribute to reinforcing those glass ceilings. She channelled that sentiment in two acclaimed medium-length films which pictured…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France) — Special Presentations
By Richard Porton Each new film by the Dardenne brothers is soothingly familiar, in the sense that the directors masterfully recycle tried-and true-motifs. For their detractors, the Dardennes are in danger of making formulaic art films, while their equally fervent supporters maintain that, by continuing to plough familiar terrain, they are enriching an already distinguished…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Jesús (Fernando Guzzoni, France/Chile/Germany/Greece/ Colombia) — Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Dear Jesús, are we not yet tired of uninspired coming-of-age movies? This one is of the Chilean variety (supported by a massive co-production effort), telling the tale of the eponymous troubled high school senior (Nicolás Durán) who falls in with the wrong crowd and clashes with his widowed father Héctor (Alejandro Goic).…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Fixer (Adrian Sitaru, Romania) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman “The Romanian Nightcrawler” is probably not the most accurate description of Adrian Sitaru’s new film, but it captures something of its commitment to attacking present-tense fifth-estate ethics. The media critique is a sub-genre that’s historically been the sole provenance of American filmmakers, but The Fixer makes a valid claim on the territory.…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Mean Dreams (Nathan Morlando, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Early in Nathan Morlando’s Mean Dreams—a Canadian production with American aspirations—kewpie-doll runaway Casey (Sophie Nélisse) gets moony-eyed as she remembers her dead mother’s wish to get away from the dour country that entrapped her and light out for the ocean. It might be a testament to the film’s restrained Northern ethos (in…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Apprentice (Boo Junfeng, Singapore/Germany/France/Hong Kong/Qatar) — Contemporary World Cinema
By James Lattimer It’s rare to come across a film as utterly, ruthlessly plot-driven as Apprentice, particularly in the at least theoretically rarified environs of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. Boo Junfeng’s second feature tells the wearingly predictable story of Aiman, a buff young ex-army officer who has taken a job at a Singapore prison…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Prevenge (Alice Lowe, UK) — Vanguard
By Adam Nayman In Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (2012), Alice Lowe created a role and gave a brilliant performance as a woman slowly but enthusiastically embracing her own latent psychosis – going crazy as a state of grace. Her feature directorial debut Prevenge mines similar territory with less robust but still relatively healthy returns. Lowe’s thing…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Wanderer: Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge
By Leo Goldsmith From the bottom of the sea, across a city, and into the stratosphere; from the moon, through a deserted city, deep into the forest, and down into a hole in the Earth. Argentinian director Eduardo Williams’ recent short films—Could See a Puma (2011) and I forgot! (2014)—follow strange trajectories both over and…
By Leo Goldsmith | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Features, From Cinema Scope Magazine, Interviews, TIFF 2016
Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) Termite Art: Kleber Mendonça Filho on Aquarius By Robert Koehler The Year of Trump now has its movie. In Kleber Mendonça Filho’s second feature, Aquarius, a property developer tries to force the last resident to move out of an old but hardly decrepit apartment building on a prime beachside…
By Robert Koehler | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Ma’ Rosa (Brillante Mendoza, Philippines) — Masters
By Blake Williams Brillante Mendoza—always less than brilliant—has clearly made it his mandate to project the ugliness of modern Manileño life by making films that embody said ugliness, which invariably results in films that are a) ugly, and b) predetermined, single-minded, and boring. (Others prefer to call it ‘neorealist’, because everything sounds prettier as an…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Sehnsucht: Ruth Beckermann on The Dreamed Ones
By Andréa Picard “This longing, these sighs from soft pillows, I am happy, endlessly happy, to be so filled with this thought. Maybe you will come, maybe you will walk through the door and take from me. I am so ready to give.”—Ingeborg Bachmann, Letters to Felician (July 6, 1945) Cinema is synonymous with longing.…
By Andrea Picard | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Features, From Cinema Scope Magazine, Interviews, TIFF 2016
My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras, Switzerland/France) — TIFF Kids
By Jordan Cronk Don’t let the TIFF Kids designation fool you: Swiss animator Claude Barras’ My Life as a Courgette, one of the bright spots of this year’s Quinzaine, is one of the most emotionally acute and sharply observed films in recent memory. Scripted by Céline Sciamma (director of Girlhood and Tomboy) from a novel…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, Romania/France) — Masters
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) By Jordan Cronk At the dawn of the decade, a brief break appeared in the first wave of New Romanian Cinema. Though of similar historic and cinematic concern, a number of the films produced during this period––including Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Second Game (2013), Cristi Puiu’s Three Interpretation Exercises (2012),…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Godless (Ralitza Petrova, Bulgaria/Denmark/France) — Discovery
By James Lattimer When is winning the Golden Leopard a hindrance and not a help? You can’t blame Godless for the Locarno jury’s decision to award it the main prize, nor for the fact that their decision links first-time director Ralitza Petrova to such an illustrious list of recent prizewinners that expectations are almost bound…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
I Had Nowhere to Go (Douglas Gordon, Germany) — Wavelengths
By Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria Perhaps the only possible reading of any memoir is a blind reading—one made in the dark without the light of images, letting oneself be lulled by the voice, real or imagined, of its author or protagonist. Memory—the source of inventions, lies, errors and misunderstandings—is a fascinating and dangerous space, too…
By Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Hermia & Helena (Matias Piñeiro, Argentina/US) — Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson In Matias Piñeiro’s most surprising and breezy “Shakespearette” to date, he circles the Bard’s work via the issue of translation, an idea mapped onto the project in its entirety: the comedy Hermia & Helena (the title comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is Piñeiro’s first film shot overseas, a large percentage in…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Safari (Ulrich Seidl, Austria) — Masters
By Christoph Huber No film in the history of cinema has showcased the folding of dead animals as diligently as Ulrich Seidl’s Safari, in which the audience can witness the mind-boggling sights of a (presumably) killed giraffe—its gigantic, twisted, fragmented-looking body more surreal than any art installation, yet seemingly a “perfectly natural” image within the…
By Christoph Huber | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy/France) — Masters
By Alysia Urrutia Hailing from the same breed of striking experimentation that initially garnered Italian director Gianfranco Rosi international acclaim, this riveting new essay on the European migration crisis became the first documentary ever to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Steeped in verité yet still novel in its approach, Fire at…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Jean of the Joneses (Stella Meghie, Canada) — Discovery
By Ethan Vestby Perhaps it’s not fair to Jean of the Joneses to interpret it as a direct answer to the lily-white “millennial artistic type makes their way through Brooklyn” narratives of recent times, be it Girls, Frances Ha (2012) or Listen Up Philip (2014). Yet as it opens on its eponymous Jamaican-American heroine (Taylour…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Werewolf (Ashley McKenzie, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman The title’s a metaphor, of course. New Waterford-based Ashley McKenzie’s feature debut, after a string of sterling shorts, tracks two methadone-swigging wastrels whose chemical dependencies have them eking out a feral existence in small-town Nova Scotia. The narrative materials are generic—plenty of down-in-the-mouth Canadiana out there—but the filmmaking is vivid and specific.…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Christine (Antonio Campos, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman A perfect exemplar of a bad good movie, Antonio Campos’ Christine traps (an excellent) Rebecca Hall in a series of impeccably composed frames as the famously ill-fated Sarasota local news anchor Christine Chubbuck. One good way to gauge your patience for this exercise in high-handed dread is how you react to seeing…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Loving (Jeff Nichols, US) — Gala Presentations
By Richard Porton There’s little question that Jeff Nichols’ Loving deals with one of the most fascinating, and little known, incidents in the history of American racial strife. Inspired by Nancy Buirski’s documentary The Loving Story (2011), Nichols retells the remarkable saga of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Ruth Negga), an interracial couple whose…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Clair Obscur (Yesim Ustaoglu, Turkey/Germany/Poland/France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mallory Andrews Long before they ever meet onscreen, Chenaz (Funda Eryigit) and Elmas (Ecem Uzun) are in conversation with each other. Chenaz, a resident psychiatrist at a hospital, is a thoroughly modern woman contentedly living with her boyfriend Cem (Mehmet Kurtulus) in their thoroughly modern, minimalist home. By contrast, Elmas is a young bride…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong, Thailand/France) — Wavelengths
By Jay Kuehner To call what happens in By the Time It Gets Dark a “plot” is to do it a disservice of sorts, such is the beguilingly self-reflexive nature of Anocha Suwichakornpong’s becalmed, trippy, historically conscious fungus of a film. That the film strays from its central conceit—the Thammasat University massacre of 1976, here…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
American Honey (Andrea Arnold, UK/USA) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman Following Andrea Arnold’s third consecutive Cannes Grand Prix, allow me to suggest another award, this one for lifetime achievement: Most Literal-minded Use of Pop Music. Determined to top the deployment of Nas’ “Life’s a Bitch” at the climax of the 2009 Fish Tank (in which life was a bitch), Arnold kicks off…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
After the Storm (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk Even for a director whose work seems to go out of its way to avoid provocation, Kore-eda Hirokazu’s most recent film Our Little Sister (2015) achieved a rare serenity. In a way, it was almost impressive: here was a film not only lacking an antagonist, but one completely bereft of conflict. After…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Marija (Michael Koch, Germany/Switzerland) — Discovery
By James Lattimer Even without all the many handheld tracking shots that trail the eponymous heroine of Marija through the streets of Dortmund, the parallels to the work of the Dardennes would still be impossible to ignore: a post-industrial setting that’s seen better days; a protagonist in such desperate economic straits that nothing is taboo;…
By James Lattimer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Girl With All the Gifts (Colm McCarthy, UK) — Midnight Madness
By Ethan Vestby With its dystopian setting housing superhuman teens and zombies, The Girl With All the Gifts seems like a movie generated by a Young Adult Entertainment algorithm. And though it begins with the promise of possibly resembling Joseph Losey’s monster-child science-fiction horror classic These Are the Damned (1962), it unfortunately (and, given its…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Two Lovers and a Bear (Kim Nguyen, Canada) — Special Presentations
By Richard Porton A decidedly whimsical take on amour fou, Kim Nguyen’s Two Lovers and a Bear stretches a thin premise to its limits. Lovers with daddy issues Roman (Dane DeHaan) and Lucy (Tatiana Maslany) reside in the Canadian Arctic. Supremely photogenic, as well as inseparable, the couple weathers a crisis when Lucy decides to…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Green White Green (Abba Makama, Nigeria) — City to City
By Alysia Urrutia Despite its patently patriotic title, Green White Green is surprisingly uncertain about what it means to be Nigerian. Beneath an almost prankish, David Attenborough-esque voiceover that sets up the sociopolitical backdrop, the film explores the potential of a new generation of young visionaries—imagine American Graffiti (1973) reworked as an articulation of contemporary Nigerian culture.…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Close Relations (Vitaly Mansky, Latvia/Germany/ Estonia/ Ukraine) — TIFF Docs
By Alysia Urrutia Adding to the robust shelf of documentaries that have scavenged Ukrainian soil in the wake of the Euro-Maidan Revolution, Vitaly Mansky’s Close Relations takes a sharp turn away from a propagandist approach and steers into the up-close-and-personal framework of a home movie. Its intimate and conversational nature, along with Mansky’s bold decision…
By Alysia Urrutia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Gimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch, US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro As with Year of the Horse (1997), Gimme Danger is an outlier in Jim Jarmusch’s filmography in that it’s both a documentary and a temporary vacation from the strictures of a signature style for this most style-conscious of filmmakers. Combining interviews executed in laundry nooks and public washrooms with archival materials…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Saying Something: The Films of Angela Schanelec
By Blake Williams “The everyday is platitude (what lags and falls back, the residual life with which our trash cans and cemeteries are filled: scrap and refuse); but this banality is also what is most important. It brings us back to existence in its very spontaneity and as it is lived—in the moment when, lived,…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Features, From Cinema Scope Magazine, Interviews, TIFF 2016
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, Germany) — Special Presentations
From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) A Battle of Humour: Maren Ade on Toni Erdmann By Mark Peranson Of all the notable omissions in the Cannes awards this year, zilch for Maren’s Ade’s third feature Toni Erdmann stands out as the most egregious in the 15 years I’ve been attending the festival. To nobody’s surprise,…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Hissein Habré: A Chadian Tragedy (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, France/Chad) — Masters
By Richard Porton At a time when documentaries are increasingly resorting to gimmicky ruses, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s simple and austere film on the bloody legacy of Hissein Habré, the Chadian dictator who was found guilty of war crimes by a court in Senegal in May, is a breath of fresh air. Completed before the trial ended,…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
X Quinientos (Juan Andrés Arango, Canada/Colombia/ Mexico) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman The sinister shadow of Iñárritu hangs over Juan Andrés Arango’s tripartite character study, which doesn’t explicitly interconnect its stories Babel-style but nevertheless seems similarly intended as a commentary on universal issues of displacement and alienation (sans international movie stars, of course; this is a Canadian co-production after all). As such, it’s pretty…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi, Iran) — Special Presentations
By Richard Porton “Attention must be paid”—the most famous line from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman might well sum up the narrative trajectory of Asghar Farhadi’s latest. The protagonists of The Salesman are both performers in an amateur production of Miller’s play that functions as a de facto framing story, and the late American…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) — Masters
By José Teodoro A melodrama draped in reds and blues, Almodóvar’s 20th feature spans decades and geography to spin a mother-daughter love story populated by sickly women, meddlesome housekeepers, and virile but inconstant men. Bobbing in the heart of this tempest is the eponymous madrileña whose only child, Antía, went to some spiritual retreat in…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces (Yousry Nasrallah, Egypt) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Ethan Vestby In the small Egyptian town of Belqas, two brothers work for their father’s catering service: Reefatis a lovable oaf; Galal lives with the disgrace of being a draft dodger. Polar opposites, they’re nevertheless both defined by their romantic entanglements: Reefat has his eyes on Shadia, a rich divorcee who can’t bring herself…
By Ethan Vestby | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan, Canada/France) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman As in Tom at the Farm (2013), It’s Only the End of the World finds Xavier Dolan more or less on his best behaviour, humbly (as much as that’s possible for him) adapting a pre-existing play (by the late Québécois writer Jean-Marc Lagarce) rather than weaving his melodrama out of whole…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
After Love (Joaquim Lafosse, France/Belgium) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Aurelie Godet One of the boxes automatically checked by most critics on the occasion of After Love’s Cannes premiere was high praise for the film’s lead actors, Bérénice Béjo and Cédric Kahn. (See such comments as “they carry the film.”) Indeed, this account of the final stages in a couple’s separation is permanently focused…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Ta’ang (Wang Bing, Hong Kong/France) — Wavelengths
From Cinema Scope #66 (Winter 2016) Wang Bing Films Souls: On Ta’ang and Other Recent Work By Shelly Kraicer The violent convulsions in the Middle East and Africa and grotesque asymmetries of wealth and poverty between north and south have put fundamental pressures on wealthier, conservative, defensive societies of Europe and North America. Refugees are…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, Australia) — Platform
By Ian Barr The eponymous setting of Ivan Sen’s Goldstone—the director’s follow-up and loose sequel to Mystery Road (2013), which sees the return of Indigenous detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen)—is a small Outback Australian locale that’s less a town than a palimpsest. Within the tenuously bordered area and its scattering of dilapidated shacks, caravans and demountable…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, US) — Masters
By Blake Williams Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women was the best film I saw this year in Park City, and is sure to wind up on my shortlist of the year’s truly beautiful things. Reichardt has tended to train her attention on subjects trying, and inevitably failing, to navigate the world outside of the established order.…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
Death in Sarajevo (Danis Tanović, Bosnia-Herzegovina/France) – Contemporary World Cinema
By Diana Dabrowska In Death in Sarajevo, Danis Tanović directs his camera towards his homeland and its tragic history, still torn between a traumatic past and a fragile present. Although the story is loosely inspired by Bernard-Henri Lévy’s theatrical piece Hotel Europa, Tanović incurs deeper debts to another artist, as his multiplicity of overlapping themes…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
The Rules of the Game: Paul Verhoeven’s Elle
By Adam Nayman In Elle, Michèle (Isabelle Huppert) slaps her adult son in the face, sleeps with a hammer under her pillow, deliberately smashes into her ex-husband’s car and later pepper-sprays him, accidentally crashes her own car, buys a gun, and forces a much younger male employee at her video-game company to show her his…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, CS68, Features, From Cinema Scope Magazine, Interviews, TIFF 2016
Mister Universo (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel, Austria/Italy) — Contemporary World Cinema)
By Jay Kuehner An unfit lion tamer quits his circus and sets out on the road in rural Italy in search of a lost iron amulet, bent by a notorious strongman years before. So goes the wandering premise of Mister Universo—seemingly descended from the stock mythology of Fellini but quite contrarily possessed of its own…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2016
TIFF 2015 | My Skinny Sister (Saana Lenken, Sweden/Germany)—TIFF Kids
By Michael Sicinski Although some critics will undoubtedly refer to Saana Lenken’s film about teenage bulimia as Afterschool Special material, let’s be clear: no American or Canadian film would approach the seriousness or cruelty with which Lenken addresses her Swedish audience. More than once, the relationship between Stella (Rebecka Josephson) and her sister Katja (Amy…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Northern Soul (Elaine Constantine, UK)—City to City
By Michael Sicinski Given that these online reviews offer a comments section, I’d like to invite readers to chime in here, as if we were doing a radio call-in show: did anyone who attended TIFF this year, critic or regular filmgoer, actually see any of the City to City films? Honestly, I haven’t heard a…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | It All Started at the End (Luis Ospina, Colombia)—TIFF Docs
By Steve Macfarlane Long before “poverty porn” was popular parlance, a tight-knit network of filmmakers and artists in Colombia made Agarrando Pueblo (The Vampires of Poverty), a satiric mockumentary about Latin American documentarians “selling images of poverty to Europe” to boost their own careers. The 28-minute short gets a few minutes’ special attention in Luis…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | No Men Beyond This Point (Mark Sawers, Canada)—Vanguard
By Tom Charity Providing a welcome counterpoint to the pregnant pre-teen boys in Evolution, Mark Sawers’ documentary traces the rise of the Virgin Birth in the latter half of the 20th century, the redundancy of the male sex, and anticipates man’s imminent extinction as womankind inherits the planet. This is all in jest, of course—a mockumentary,…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Sunset Song (Terence Davies, UK/Luxembourg)—Special Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane There is no such thing as a “minor” Terence Davies. If anything, the divisive response at Toronto to the Liverpool-born master’s new Sunset Song (based on a 1932 novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon) verifies the preciousness with which critics have been holding Davies’ auteurism, and perhaps their own experiences of his work,…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (Soi Cheang, China)—Midnight Madness
By Michael Sicinski It’s been ten years since Wilson Yip’s SPL (unceremoniously retitled Kill Zone for its North American home video release), and apart from the reappearance of Simon Yam in a completely different role, there’s not much connection between the first film and this supposed sequel. Helmed by Milky Way protégé Soi Cheang (Accident,…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Parisienne (Danielle Arbid, France)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Diana Dabrowska An abusive uncle tries to rape his beautiful Lebanese niece, Lina (Manal Issa). The Lebanese girl manages to defend her dignity and runs away from home. She gets lost in the darkness of the night, while Paris in the background begins glow. Meeting different men and lovers, young Lina discovers the faces…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallée, US)—Gala Presentations
Special TORONTO FILM REVIEW Guest Edition (N.B. This is presented absent any editorial intervention.) By David Davidson It’s a gift for his public how that in recent years Jean-Marc Vallée has been bringing each year a new film to TIFF. Demolition in particular is unique in that instead of using the premiere platform to build…
By Toronto Film Review | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Desierto (Jonás Cuarón, Mexico/France)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman “Welcome to the land of the free,” growls self-styled border patrolman Sam (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), mere moments after shooting up a group of Mexicans trying to sneak into the United States. With his pickup truck, sleeve tattoo, antenna-mounted Confederate flag and “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker—not to mention his high-powered rifle—he’s the…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Demon (Marcin Wrona, Poland)—Vanguard
By Diana Dabrowska Five years after The Christening, young director Marcin Wrona returns with Demon, a meditation on Polish memory that hints at the need to exorcise the past. He’s attempting to make a serious movie within a genre framework, and he succeeds in balancing the right amounts of fear, humour, and grotesquerie. Peter (Itay…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | My Name is Emily (Simon Fitzmaurice, Ireland)—Discovery
By Michael Sicinski This story of a troubled teenaged girl (Harry Potter actress Evanna Lynch) taking a road trip to retrieve her father (Michael Smiley) from a mental institution seems to have the potential to break with the clichés of the coming-of-age template. Emily’s mother died when she was young, and Dad eventually became so…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Lace Crater (Harrison Atkins, US)—Vanguard
By Steve Macfarlane A queasy demise is the best-case scenario on the other side of a one-night stand in Harrison Atkins’ Lace Crater, a s-s-s-s-s-s-spooky and inventive indie debut that’s best seen, if possible, in a packed theatre. The ever-reliable Lindsay Burdge stars as Ruth, a twentysomething in the aftermath of a heinous breakup with…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Magallanes (Salvador del Solar, Peru/ Argentina/ Colombia/Spain)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Roger Koza Extortion, kidnapping, violence, corruption, brutality—all those nouns are applicable to a whole vein of Latin American films celebrated in almost all the international film festivals that follow the successful and much trodden path of squalour and sordidness. In this adaptation of Alonso Cueto’s novel La pasajera, cab driver and ex-soldier Magallanes (Damián…
By Roger Koza | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Maggie’s Plan (Rebecca Miller, US)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman No, it’s not an alternate title for the Thatcherite satire of High-Rise: Rebecca Miller’s abrupt slide into conventionality after a string of spiky efforts follows the Machiavellian machinations of a thirtyish single gal (Greta Gerwig) who steals the writer husband (Ethan Hawke) of an eccentric academic (Julianne Moore) and then tries to…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Mississippi Grind (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, US)—Gala Presentations
By Aurélie Godet Having long self-diagnosed myself with an addictive personality, combined with a rather unhealthy relationship with money, I dread movies about gamblers. So while watching Mississippi Grind, I spent half an hour standing at the back of the theatre, ready for my exit. But I never left, eyes drawn to the screen as…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Hurt (Alan Zweig, Canada)—Platform
By Adam Nayman Real-life stories don’t come much more metaphorically resonant than that of Steve Fonyo, the B.C.-born amputee who followed in Terry Fox’s footsteps in a cross-Canada run for cancer research in 1985—an inspirational route that has led him 30 years later into total ruin. The mystery of how a national hero was so…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Sector IX B (Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, France/ Senegal)—Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Based on the work of Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris (in particular his controversial volume L’Afrique fantôme), this featurette by post-colonial artist Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc begins in the theoretical realm and soon veers into the dense thicket of fantasy. Sector IX B centres on an academic researcher (Betty Tchomanga) who travels to the…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Yakuza Apocalypse (Miike Takashi, Japan)—Midnight Madness
By Boris Nelepo Yakuza, martial arts, vampires, romance, and a devious villain dressed up as a frog. This cursory summary might just be the most accurate one, seeing that in Yakuza Apocalypse, Miike Takashi reaches new heights of disregard for narrative coherence, even for him. Changing its course throughout, this ebullient mess of a movie…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Hellions (Bruce McDonald, Canada)—Vanguard
By Adam Nayman One hopes that Bruce McDonald’s heart wasn’t in Hellions. At times, it’s feeble enough to be mistaken for backyard filmmaking, except that it lacks the joy—the getting-away-with-somehing giddiness—of kids remaking Halloween with a consumer-grade camcorder. John Carpenter’s classic is evoked a half-dozen different times over the course of the truly incomprehensible storyline,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Men & Chicken (Anders Thomas Jensen, Denmark / Germany, Vanguard)
By Michael Sicinski Not only Anders Thomas Jensen’s best directorial effort by a country mile (faint praise, that), but far more satisfying than many of his scenarios for other, better directors, Men & Chicken is a black comedy about extreme family dysfunction. What begins as a kind of odd-couple brothers’ tale soon goes way off…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Rabin, the Last Day (Amos Gitaï, Israel/France)—Masters
By Manu Yáñez In a meditative and torrential fashion, Rabin, the Last Day thoroughly analyzes the socio-political environment that, according to Amos Gitaï, triggered the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the last reliable hope for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Avoiding the languor and affectation of many Gitaï films while remaining faithful…
By Manu Yanez | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala/ France)—Discovery
By Jay Kuehner Like its eponymous volcano, Ixcanul smoulders. A lavishly raw ethnographic fiction with documentary elements set among a Kaqchikel Mayan community on the Guatemalan plateau, Jayro Bustamante’s debut follows the rituals of a coffee-farming village in his native country that sits in elemental proximity to an active volcano, the surrounding landscape both blackened…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Story of Judas (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, France)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Aurélie Godet Three years ago, French-Algerian filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, a consistently ambitious auteur, played the title role in his film Les chants de Mandrin (Smugglers’ Song), a beloved outlaw of pre-Revolutionary France who was barbarically executed in a public square. In a sort of amplification of that project’s scope, the writer-director proposes with Story…
By Aurelie Godet | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Full Contact (David Verbeek, Netherlands/Croatia)—Platform
By Tom Charity Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek adopts an (initially) opaque, almost Apichatpongian tri-partite structure in this boldly visualized response to the alienated nature of the War on Terror. French-born lieutenant Ivan Delphine (Claire Denis fixture Grégoire Colin) “pilots” drones, calling down missile strikes on unsuspecting al-Qaeda targets in the Middle East from the security…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Devil’s Candy (Sean Byrne, US)—Midnight Madness
By Ian Barr Sean Byrne’s 2009 prom-night chamber-horror comedy The Loved Ones was a promising debut feature. This belated follow-up—a satanic haunted-house chiller, with Shining references galore and a droning Sunn O))) score—is equally promising, further suggesting that Byrne will eventually deliver a film worthy of his already distinctive wit and stylistic virtuosity. One’s enjoyment…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Journey to the Shore (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan/France)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Müge Turan Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu) is a young piano teacher. One night Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano), her husband who went missing three years ago, materializes out of the blue in their apartment. He confirms that he’s dead and invites her to go on a journey to meet the nice places and people who showed him…
By Muge Turan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Afternoon (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)—Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Following the release of his 2013 film Stray Dogs (a work that some consider his masterpiece), Tsai Ming-liang announced his retirement from feature filmmaking. He’s been busier than ever since this alleged bowing out, producing a stage play and the Walker series of medium-length films (Tsai released the latest one, No No…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Event (Sergei Loznitsa, Netherlands/Belgium)—Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Following Maidan, last year’s impeccable the-revolution-is-live bulletin from Ukraine, Sergei Loznitsa returns to the found-footage format with which he first came to international prominence. The Event is in many respects a logical follow-up to Maidan, and attentive viewers will detect certain formal and ideological echoes. Centred on the military coup that represented…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson, US)—TIFF Docs
By Boris Nelepo After being approached by Arte three years ago, renowned musician Laurie Anderson started developing a personal film essay in memory of her beloved rat terrier Lolabelle, who died in 2011. Though the pet had gone blind not long before death, Anderson still managed to teach her painting, sculpture, and music. Initially conceived…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier, Norway/ France/ Denmark)—Special Presentations
By Müge Turan Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s leaden English-language debut is a study of a dysfunctional family in turmoil, surveying grief, lack of communication and painful secrets (as well as the generational gap) between a schoolteacher father (Gabriel Byrne) and his sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid) as they cope with the loss of the…
By Muge Turan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Jack (Elisabeth Scharang, Austria)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Tom Charity About three-quarters through Elisabeth Scharang’s film about the Austrian murderer turned literary sensation Jack Unterweger, the reformed and released killer is excited to meet with a leading European filmmaker (identified as “Neumann”). Neumann receives him politely, but not with the enthusiasm Jack has become accustomed to. “Don’t try to be an artist,”…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Disorder (Alice Winocour, France/Belgium)—Gala Presentations
By Blake Williams Alice Winocour’s Disorder—that’s of the post-traumatic stress variety, no pigs unleashed on congested Guangzhou highways here—occupies a point on the line one could conceivably trace between Claire Denis’ cryptic, visceral genre pictures and Kathryn Bigelow’s post-“Shock and Awe” work. Which is to say, stylistically speaking, this has nowhere near the same DNA…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | A Young Patriot (Du Haibin, China/US)—TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski Hey, look! A film from the New Chinese Documentary Movement! Usually when this happens, it’s because a Wavelengths slot has been given to the latest from Wang Bing. But this somewhat rare appearance in TIFF Docs by a Chinese doc makes a bit more sense once you discover that it’s co-produced by…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson, Canada)—Wavelengths
By Mark Peranson Wherein Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson give Paul Gross’ wannabe populist war epic Hyena Road a right and proper cuadecuc-ing. Who would have thought Pere Portabella’s legendary experiment shot on the set of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) would inspire not one, but two films at this year’s TIFF—well, three,…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Hyena Road (Paul Gross, Canada)—Gala Presentations
By Adam Nayman Canada, Fuck Yeah. Written, directed, starring, and narrated by Paul Gross—close-shorn and bearded like a badass—Hyena Road tries to show that war and war movies aren’t just for Americans. Our boots are on the ground and filled by strapping specimens like Rossif Sutherland, cast here as a northern cousin to American Sniper’s…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Santa Teresa and Other Stories (Nelson De Los Santos Arias, Mexico/ Dominican Republic/ US)—Wavelengths
By Leo Goldsmith Nelson De Los Santos Arias’ Santa Teresa and Other Stories is a (very) loose adaptation of parts of Roberto Bolaño’s epic novel 2666 which the filmmaker interweaves with the stories of friends and collaborators. The title is a hint: Santa Teresa and Other Stories is something of a grab-bag, shot on a…
By Leo Goldsmith | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Man Down (Dito Montiel, US)—Gala Presentations
By Adam Nayman Dito Montiel’s Man Down is a visionary work of abstract cinema—a haptic masterpiece that overwhelms the viewer through the sheer scale of its imagery. Then again, I was sitting in the front row of a press screening held in an IMAX cinema, so your mileage may vary. Chances are that those audience…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Our Last Tango (German Kral, Germany/Argentina)—TIFF Docs
By Tom Charity We all know it takes two to tango, and that’s a problem for this mildly engaging but lop-sided strut down memory lane with Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, the Ginger and Fred of Argentine tango. Maria, at 80, is eager to revisit the past, reminiscing about dancing with the broom…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Our Brand is Crisis (David Gordon Green, US)—Special Presentations
By Steve Macfarlane A fictionalized, present-day reimagining of Rachel Boynton’s terrific 2005 documentary of same name, Our Brand is Crisis would have an uphill battle on its hands even if it were a masterpiece, which it most certainly is not. David Gordon Green’s latest is instead a pleasant enough if decidedly un-hip studio diversion starring…
By Steve Macfarlane | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Homesick (Anne Sewitsky, Norway)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Ian Barr The catch-all programme title “Contemporary World Cinema” carries with it a threat of homogeneity, and films like Anne Sewitsky’s incest drama Homesick do little to dispel that impression. The film’s first warning bell is an overly convenient therapy-session opening scene, in which Charlotte (newcomer Ine Marie Wilmann) attempts to evade her shrink’s…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | 11 Minutes (Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/Ireland)—Masters
By Manu Yáñez In his unorthodox answer to Hollywood action movies, Jerzy Skolimowski has made a film that is more than (or maybe exactly) what it seems. In narrative terms, there’s the (unconscious) battle for survival of a human pack that faces its destiny between 5:00 and 5:11pm on a given day. The extraordinary here…
By Manu Yanez | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Steps (Andrew Currie, Canada)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman For generating the mental image of Chad Kroeger getting head from Sloane from Entourage, The Steps warrants scorn; it’s a weak Canadian movie indeed that has to namecheck Nickelback in order to get a laugh. Actually, the funniest moment in Andrew Currie’s film is when Big Apple broker Jeff (Jason Ritter) phones…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, US)—Special Presentations
By Boris Nelepo Charlie Kaufman has been sorely missed. It’s hard to believe that following his series of screenwriting smashes in the early 2000s, and his underrated directorial debut Synecdoche, New York (2008), he slipped under the radar for a good seven years. His comeback feature Anomalisa has grown out of the eponymous play he…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Price of Love (Hermon Hailay, Ethiopia)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Hermon Hailay’s third feature is a somewhat puzzling melodrama centered on Teddy (Eskindir Tameru), a young Addis Ababa cab driver with a chequered past. His attempt to keep on the straight and narrow is disrupted by a chance encounter with Fere (Fereweni Gebregergs), a beautiful sex worker who is “owned” by Marcos…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | I Smile Back (Adam Salky, US)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman “Do you want to hear about the daddy issues or the drugs?” queries Laney (Sarah Silverman) to her doctor on the first day of rehab; 28 days later, she’s had ample time to talk (and think) about both, but it’s unclear as to whether or not she’s been healed. Because Laney is…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Honor Thy Father (Erik Matti, Philippines)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Erik Matti’s recent actioner On the Job (2013) was a big hit at home and even got a moderate release in North America, not that the film managed to bring in those coveted Crouching Tiger, Heroic Grandmaster crossover dollars. But there is a sheen of transnational professionalism that coats Matti’s work—quite distinct…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Invention (Mark Lewis, UK/Canada)—Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Considering the degree to which Mark Lewis’s work has evolved over the years, its origins in the Vancouver art scene of the ’80s and ’90s can go only so far in explaining it. But however inadequate such periodization may be, perhaps one way to consider Invention is as a kind of conceptual…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Desdé Alla (Lorenzo Vigas, Venezuela/Mexico)—Discovery
By Diana Dabrowska Alfredo, a wealthy, middle-aged man, travels by bus, tempting underage teenagers with large sums of money. They don’t even have to sleep with him or touch him. Alfredo only watches as a harmless voyeur. The rules are very simple: turn around, lean against the wall, pull off your t-shirt and slightly slide…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Frenzy (Emin Alper)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Diana Dabrowska Turkish cinema currently lives under the sign of Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Frenzy throws a new name into the ring. Emin Alper’s 2012 debut Beyond the Hill was a family drama that transformed repressed violence into a sociological parable; his follow-up is a metaphorical study of madness and paranoia as an expression of…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Into the Forest (Patricia Rozema, Canada)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman It’s the Time of the Wolf, Canadian-style. But where big bad Michael Haneke quickly gets his apocalypse on the Road, Patricia Rozema keeps her characters in the Cabin in the Woods—all the better to see them emote, my dear. Adapted from Jean Hegland’s allegorical novel about an unspecified near-future catastrophe that leaves…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Trumbo (Jay Roach, US)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman All Dalton Trumbo ever wanted was his name on an Academy Award, and the same goes for the people who’ve been entrusted with telling his life story. This is not to impugn Bryan Cranston or the other crackerjack actors cast as (in)famous faces from Hollywood’s past—chances are that Otto Preminger would have…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Beasts of No Nation (Cary Fukunaga, US)—Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Lodged somewhere in spirit between two defining moments of its protagonist’s horrific trajectory into a child-soldier abyss—a swift machete blade etched, thunk, into a suspected enemy’s skull, and a corruptive, charismatic leader’s luring of a young disciple to his abusive lair—Beasts of No Nation holds sway with cogent, putrid effect, at once terrifying and…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Wait (Piero Messina, Italy)—Discovery
By Diana Dabrowska A despairing mother, Anna (Juliette Binoche), mourns the death of her beloved son, Giuseppe; a Sicilian community is drowning in a black haze of grief and sorrow. But suddenly the beautiful Jeanne (Lou de Laâge), Giuseppe’s French ex-girlfriend, arrives in the countryside. She doesn’t know about the tragedy and wants to meet…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Martian (Ridley Scott, US)—Gala Presentations
By José Teodoro Don’t say Twentieth Century Fox has no taste for the meta: concerned as it is with the thorny ethics of expending unimaginable resources and risking multiple lives for the slim possibility of saving a single lost foot soldier in the colonization of the angry red planet, The Martian not only revisits the…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Song of Songs (Eva Neymann, Ukraine)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski This is an unusual case, an exceedingly brief (only 76-minute) film that still manages to feel overstuffed and meandering. This could be the result of director Eva Neymann’s decision to freely adapt Sholem Aleichem’s short fiction, yoking together characters and scenarios from no less than ten stories from the eponymous collection. As…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Remember (Atom Egoyan, Canada/Germany)—Gala Presentations
By José Teodoro How much of our sense of duty, resolve or morality is merely the aggregate of decisions we made long ago—or decisions that were made for us? From the start of Remember we’ve no reason to feel certain that Zev (a sublimely baffled Christopher Plummer) is acting of his own free will. He…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood, UK)—Gala Presentations
By Adam Nayman “In war, truth is the first casualty,” Aeschylus assures us on the opening crawl of Eye in the Sky, which only partially accounts for why Gavin Hood’s dramatic thriller feels mostly phony. Actually, there’s something authentically Greek—Socratic, even—about the film’s structure, which toggles between various American and British political and military authorities…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Sparrows (Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland/ Denmark/ Croatia)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Max Goldberg A shoegazer’s kitchen-sink drama, Sparrows trails a sensitive Reykjavik teenager to his father’s home in the hardscrabble north. The land of the midnight sun lends this coming-of-age story a nice bleary texture, and second-time director Rúnarsson is every bit as attentive to the interiors of the fishing village—crappy wood-panelled homes strewn with…
By Max Goldberg | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Return of the Atom (Mika Taanila & Jussi Eerola, Finland/Germany)—TIFF Docs)
By Michael Sicinski There are plenty of small-town industrial malfeasance stories that could serve as a valid point of comparison for the blinkered corporate idiocy profiled in Return of the Atom, but since it’s the most recent (and most sorely mishandled) let’s choose True Detective Season Two. Instead of the imaginary town of Vinci, California,…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Women He’s Undressed (Gillian Armstrong, Australia)—TIFF Docs
By Mallory Andrews The biographical documentary presents a number of problems for a filmmaker, primarily the fact that the genre’s standard format—the forward plodding of the subject’s life events punctuated by their notorious claim-to-fame moments—is staid and tired. But Gillian Armstrong’s attempt to shake things up on a formal level in her Orry-Kelly doc Women…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (Evgeniy Afineevsky, Ukraine/US/UK)—TIFF Docs
By Boris Nelepo The Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity by now has been the subject matter of a slew of movies, each dramatically different from the other. There was Sergei Loznitsa’s auteur project Maidan; the reportage Kiev/Moscow by Alexander Rastorguev and Pavel Kostomarov; and the chronicle Stronger Than Arms by the #BABYLON’13 collective. Winter on Fire:…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Endless River (Oliver Hermanus, South Africa/France)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Diana Dabrowska After the radical, frigid and well-received Beauty (2011), young director Oliver Hermanus creates another study of obsession, this time about the fine line between victimhood and blame in the midst of a vendetta. Once again set in present-day South Africa, where racial tensions have hardly receded since the time of apartheid, The…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman, US)—TIFF Docs
By Boris Nelepo Frederick Wiseman’s modus operandi was perhaps best described by German film critic Olaf Möller: “[His] work is about civilization and its creation, the work it takes.” In Jackson Heights adds another chapter to Wiseman’s monumental ongoing treatise while also offering another installment in a separate cycle devoted to various isolated communities (a…
By Boris Nelepo | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Endorphine (André Turpin, Canada)—Vanguard
By Adam Nayman Freed from the constraints of shooting Instagram-style for Xavier Dolan, André Turpin amply fills the wide screen in this, just his third feature in 20 years. Hopefully, he didn’t spend too much of the time since Un crabe dans la tête (2001) fretting about the substance of this ostensible subconscious odyssey, which…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Legend (Brian Helgeland, UK)—Gala Presentations
By Adam Nayman Last year, Tom Hardy came to TIFF with The Drop, a drab Brooklyn crime film that afforded its star the opportunity to talk like Adam Sandler; this year, with the Kray brothers biopic Legend, we get two strenuous Hardy vocal performances for the price of one. Perish the thought that our man…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | This Changes Everything (Avi Lewis, Canada/USA)—TIFF Docs
By Tom Charity Apocalyptic fantasies are in heavy rotation these days at both the multiplex and the art-house. In this climate-change documentary, anti-capitalist crusader Naomi Klein pronounces herself a late convert to saving the world, and gets things rolling with the disconcerting admission that she doesn’t much care for climate-change documentaries. Heck, next thing you…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Girls Lost (Alexandra-Therese Keining, Sweden/Denmark/Norway)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Here we have a film that begins as mere hackwork, and finishes as something actually quite offensive. A teen movie from Sweden that for all its sincerity displays all the subtlety of pulpy Hollywood entries like The Craft or even the recent low-budget B-picture The Sisterhood of Night, Girls Lost has no…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | The Mask (Eyes of Hell) (Julian Roffman, Canada)—TIFF Cinematheque
Put the Mask on Now! By Samuel La France Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). When it premiered in North American cinemas in 1961, Julian Roffman’s The Mask—released in the USA as Eyes of Hell, and returning to theatres this fall in a new digital restoration produced by TIFF and the 3-D Film…
By Samuel La France | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzmán, Chile/France/Spain)—Masters
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: The Films of Patricio Guzmán By Max Nelson Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). At one point in his new film The Pearl Button, Patricio Guzmán visits a friend’s painting studio and asks the artist to unroll one of her current projects: an immense, to-scale cutout model of Chile.…
By Max Nelson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Exquisite Corpus (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria)—Wavelengths
Strip Tease: Peter Tscherkassky and The Exquisite Corpus By Daniel Kasman Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Sex seems the inevitable returning controversy du jour at the Festival de Cannes, every couple years another auteur revealing some supposedly new transgression set to scandalize an international press corps wholly ignorant that, outside their bubble,…
By Daniel Kasman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | We Monsters (Sebastian Ko, Germany)—Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Don’t have kids—that may be the only valuable takeaway from Sebastian Ko’s first feature, in which two awful people reckon with the awful acts committed by their awful daughter. Paul (Mehdi Nebbou) and Christine (Ulrike C. Tscharre) have separated and moved on to new partners, which has been understandably hard on their…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The White Knights (Joachim Lafosse, France/Belgium)—Platform
By Adam Nayman Everything about this fact-based account of French aid workers plotting to transport African orphans back across the Atlantic to pre-paid adoptive parents—under the guise of a fictitious NGO whose mandate is geared towards in-country education—is scrupulously realistic. And the questions it asks about Western altruism in the Third World are pertinent and…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, UK)—Special Presentations
By Diana Dabrowska Copenhagen, 1926. Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) are happily married. He is a painter of muddy, sad-looking landscapes inspired by his childhood memories, while her interests are portraits, although her husband believes she’s still searching for inspiration. In truth, though, it’s Einar who’s waiting to be thunderstruck:…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Spear (Stephen Page, Australia)—Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Australian choreographer Stephen Page has made his name as the director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, reinvigorating Aboriginal dance for a modern audience. His feature-film debut Spear plays out like a minimalist musical, loosely following Djali (Hunter Page-Lochard) as he navigates the fluid and complex space between his indigenous heritage and a…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Apostate (Federico Veiroj, Spain/ France/ Uruguay)—Contemporary World Cinema
By José Teodoro Federico Veiroj’s A Useful Life (2010)—in which a middle-aged programmer finds himself out of a career after his Montevideo cinematheque fades to black—considered a post-cinema existence and decided it was just fine. Yet the film’s irreverence with regards to its own medium was undercut by a formal elegance and sense of play…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | One Floor Below (Radu Muntean, Romania/ France/ Germany/ Sweden)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Müge Turan The “New Wave” tag can feel like a little arbitrary, even crude, when applied to the diverse array of recent Romanian films, but it’s interesting to note how frequently the Dostoyevskian themes of morality, guilt, and criminality feature as the central preoccupations of these works. At the core of these narratives lies…
By Muge Turan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Minotaur (Nicolás Pereda, Mexico/Canada)—Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Nicolás Pereda’s recent work, particularly his last two features Greatest Hits (2012) and Los ausentes (2014), already represented a substantial reduction of means when compared to the relatively action-packed Perpetuum Mobile (2009) and Summer of Goliath (2010). But with his latest, Pereda has achieved a genuine comedy of stasis. How much further…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Eva Doesn’t Sleep (Pablo Agüero, France/ Argentina/ Spain)—Wavelengths
By Angelo Muredda Evita Perón’s luminous corpse gets exhumed for dubious ends in Pablo Agüero’s intermittently engaging Eva Doesn’t Sleep, a mixed-media survey of Argentinean history since the fall of the Perónist government in the mid-1950s. Agüero’s method is to explore the persistence of Perón’s iconography for the disenfranchised by tracking it across a series…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Al Purdy Was Here (Brian D. Johnson, Canada)—TIFF Docs
By Angelo Muredda An old CanLit staple whose braggadocio feels out of tune with the relative civility of contemporary Canadian letters, Al Purdy is a fitting subject for Brian D. Johnson’s doc, which also feels a bit out of time. Al Purdy Was Here operates as both an extended eulogy for the scrappy poet as…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | How Heavy This Hammer (Kazik Radwanski, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda There’s a moment in Kazik Radwanski’s impressive feature debut Tower (2012) where a dentist tells thirtysomething man-child Derek (Derek Bogart), a better-adjusted, Torontonian Travis Bickle, that he has an impacted tooth coming in from the side long after most people’s wisdom teeth cease to bother them. Radwanski looks to another late bloomer…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, UK/ France/ Germany/ Malaysia/ Thailand)—Masters
By Kong Rithdee Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Midway into Cemetery of Splendour, Jenjira Pongpas visits the Shrine of the Two Goddesses with her American husband to make offerings: she gives the goddesses a cheetah figurine for blessings on her bad leg, a gibbon for her strong limbs, and a tiger for…
By Kong Rithdee | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, Colombia/Venezuela/Argentina)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Blake Williams Ciro Guerra, taking after Werner Herzog, understands the influential power of research narratives when it comes to representing a nation’s colonialist past—especially with regards to meticulous details. Why else would the chief selling points in the loglines of his last two features boast of these productions’ pedantic commitments to, e.g., a surplus…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | Bleak Street (Arturo Ripstein, Mexico/Spain)—Masters
Eternal Damnation: Arturo Ripstein’s Bleak Street By José Teodoro Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). There is no such thing as ambient sunlight in Bleak Street. The sun’s rays descend from high above, diffused by a latticework of electrical cables, metal stairs, frayed tarpaulin, and urban flotsam, or slam down in hard sheets…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Francofonia (Alexander Sokurov, Germany/France/Netherlands)— Masters
By Michael Sicinski [SPOILER: James Franco does not appear in this film.] There was no reason to expect something playful from Sokurov, especially after his excruciating take on Faust (2011). But with Francofonia we find Russia’s melancholic master offering up an essay-film take on the Louvre that’s downright breezy. After setting up a contemporary framing…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | A Heavy Heart (Thomas Stuber, Germany) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda Student Oscar nominee Thomas Stuber makes his first tentative mark in features with A Heavy Heart, a close-quarters profile of unsmiling musclehead Herbert (Peter Kurth), whose heyday as a boxer in East Germany—he almost but didn’t go to the Olympics, as his friends remind him—is long gone post-reunification. Now a hired goon…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Lamb (Yared Zeleke, Ethiopia/ France/ Germany/ Norway)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Müge Turan This year there are two films titled Lamb on the festival circuit. Both are coming-of-age tales. Both have lambs. Kutluğ Ataman’s Lamb is about a boy in rural Turkey who needs to be circumcised, and is told that he’ll be slaughtered and eaten if they can’t buy a lamb for the celebration…
By Muge Turan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Murmur of the Hearts (Sylvia Chang, Taiwan/Hong Kong)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Shelly Kraicer Sylvia Chang’s newest film is the illustrious actress-director-writer-producer’s best since Siao Yu (1995). Murmur of the Hearts is a sophisticated family drama whose emotional force sustains a narrative of ambitious power and range. Nan (Lawrence Ko) and Mei (radiant Macanese star Isabella Leong, in a long-awaited return to the screen) are a…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Room (Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland/Canada)—Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda The first thing a reader of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room will notice about Lenny Abrahamson’s mostly sturdy adaptation is a problem of perspective. The impressionistic early montage of mundane objects (a sink and a toilet, which soon become known to us as the talismanic idols Sink and Toilet) quickly gives way to…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Blood of My Blood (Marco Bellocchio, Italy)—Masters
By Diana Dabrowska The eternal rebel still has fists in his pocket. In his most recent films, Marco Bellocchio has challenged some of the central pathologies of Italian 20th-century history, including the Aldo Moro case in Good Morning, Night (2003) and the rise of Mussolini in Vincere (2009). Unfortunately, in the quirky and rather bizarre…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers, UK—Wavelengths
Leeching Upon the Lifeblood of the Real: Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers By Leo Goldsmith Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). Ben Rivers’ recent short, Things (2014), is an intimate tour of the filmmaker’s own domestic space and personal effects. Including…
By Leo Goldsmith | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Looking for Grace (Sue Brooks, Australia)—Platform
By Diana Dabrowska It begins in an innocent way: wwo teenagers on the road, Grace (Odessa Young) and Sappho (Kenya Pearson), meet Jamie (Harry Richardson), a nice guy with a rebel-without-a-cause vibe. Grace is attracted to him; director Sue Brooks provides the foreplay, a gentle build of excitement and erotic tension. We accompany Grace through…
By Diana Dabrowska | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, US)—Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Cinema has a thing for journalism, but any reciprocal adulation must certainly be attenuated by the swift, sensational work that movies make of the press’ labours. No small irony then that Spotlight’s story—about a crack but underperforming team of Boston Globe investigative reporters trying to expose the Massachusetts Catholic Church sex abuse…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Dégradé (Arab Nasser & Tarzan Nasser, Palestine/France/Qatar)—Discovery
By Adam Nayman As ambulatory mammalian metaphors go, a manacled and toothless lion is pretty shaggy stuff: chained passively outside a Gaza Strip hair salon operated and populated by a group of women, the poor beast stands in for a society under the thumb of violent ideologues. A kind of distaff Dog Day Afternoon shot…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Der Nachtmahr (AKIZ, Germany)—Vanguard
By Adam Nayman What Kim Gordon is doing in an arty, Berlin-set German genre movie is anybody’s guess, but the strangeness of her extended cameo as an empathetic high-school English teacher at least interrupts the surrounding monotony. In his feature debut, pseudonomynous German video artist (and Banksy associate) AKIZ stages the same scene over and…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Stranger (Yermek Tursunov, Kazakhstan)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman With Kazakhstan going to the dogs, young Ilyas decides to run with the wolves. Stranger isn’t officially an adaptation of The Jungle Book, but there’s more than a pinch of Kipling to its wild-child set-up. The notion that a feral lifestyle on the outskirts of the steppe is preferable to village life…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, UK)—Platform
By Tom Charity Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” That, friends, is an opening sentence: J.G. Ballard at his best. And…
By Tom Charity | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Treasure (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania/France)—Contemporary World Cinema
Digging for History: Corneliu Porumboiu on The Treasure By Adam Cook Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Corneliu Porumboiu has always been the joker of the Romanian New Wave, as well as its most consistent and formally rigorous director. Employing the slow pace, long takes, and non-professional actors that have become the calling…
By Adam Cook | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Les êtres chers (Anne Émond)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman Anne Émond bests fellow French-Canadian whippersnapper Xavier Dolan in the Now-That’s-What-I-Call-’90s-Music department in Les êtres chers, as Blind Melon and Elliott Smith give way to Pulp (“Common People,” naturellement). That the first two (dead) artists specialized in songs about suicide and the latter made a habit of we-love-life anthems offers a hint…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Ninth Floor (Mina Shum, Canada)—TIFF Docs
By Mallory Andrews It’s an all-too-common predicament when viewing a documentary to have to overlook a work’s technical flaws in order to appreciate the potency of its subject matter. To wit, Double Happiness (1994) director Mina Shum’s first nonfiction outing is yet another example of an inherently interesting topic existing within the body of an…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Schneider vs. Bax (Alex van Warmerdam, The Netherlands/Belgium)— Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman Double Dutch hitmen, separated by a swamp and gunning for each other at the behest of a mutual colleague with his own agenda and no scruples: the set-up for Alex van Warmerdam’s comic thriller is lean and mean. The follow-through, though, is cramped, convoluted, and downright cruel, at times in ways that…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Office (Johnnie To, China/Hong Kong)—Special Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer If Hou Hsiao-hsien can make a martial-arts fantasy, then Johnnie To can damn well make a glossy musical. And with Office he has, and it’s splendid. More of a musical than Hou’s The Assassin is a swordfest, Office has, if I counted correctly, ten new songs (some only a few bars long), all…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/ UK/ Greece/ France/ Netherlands)—Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda You’d be hard-pressed to think of a more singular contemporary filmmaker than Yorgos Lanthimos, whose off-kilter satires are perfectly attuned to humanity’s endless capacity for self-delusion. It’s a shame, then, that to this critic Lanthimos’ English-language debut The Lobster recalls nothing so much as My Blueberry Nights (2007), in which Wong…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones, France/US)—TIFF Docs
By Adam Cook One of the most sacred texts in cinephilia and certainly for auteurism, François Truffaut’s 1967 Hitchcock/Truffaut (based on a week-long interview Truffaut conducted with Hitchcock in 1962) isn’t just an invaluable in-depth study of one of cinema’s greatest masters, it’s also an incredible text about two artists who admired each other. As…
By Adam Cook | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | A Flickering Truth (Pietra Brettkelly, New Zealand)—TIFF Docs
By Richard Porton New Zealand documentarian Pietra Brettkelly’s A Flickering Truth focuses on some of the most intrepid preservationists to ever apply their talents to resuscitating celluloid: the staff of Afghan Film, the national film institute dedicated to housing Afghanistan’s imperilled film heritage. Brettkelly’s protagonists are a bickering group of cranky but idealistic film buffs,…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Equals (Drake Doremus, US)—Special Presentations
By Manu Yáñez On its surface, Equals is a modern take on 20th-century dystopic science fiction: a mix of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, full of characters who feel like they’ve sprouted from Body Snatchers’ pods. At its core, the third episode of Drake Doremus’ sentimental trilogy—after the memory-based Like Crazy (2011) and present-tense…
By Manu Yanez | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Koza (Ivan Ostrochovský, Slovakia/Czech Republic—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Ivan Ostrochovský, up to now exclusively a documentarian, draws heavily on that experience for his debut feature, a hybrid work in which the principals play lightly fictionalized versions of themselves. To the credit of all concerned, this was in no way obvious while watching Koza. Ostrochovský worked out the film’s rather slight…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke, China)—Masters
By Mark Peranson At the start of JZ’s new joint, following the forest-green Chinese Film Bureau censorship logo and toot-tooting fanfare comes the admonition to “Go West” from the Pet Shop Boys, in good old 1.33. I doubt the Boys ever though they’d be addressing the Chinese masses yearning to break free, together, of the…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, Canada)—Wavelengths
Lost in the Funhouse: A Conversation with Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson on The Forbidden Room and Other Stories By Mark Peranson Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Like being sloppily slapped by a wet salmon to the point of submission, such is the impact of Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s inventive, audacious,…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Closet Monster (Stephen Dunn, Canada)—Discovery
By Adam Nayman Murder, masturbation, melancholy, molly—this is one overstuffed Canadian debut feature. Perhaps they should have cut the talking hamster. That said rodent squeaks with the voice of Isabella Rossellini marks a casting coup for this low-budget Newfoundland production about the growing pains of a moody teen. The arch campiness of Rossellini’s bits blends…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Love (Gaspar Noé, France)—Vanguard
By Blake Williams Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). It’s been both amusing and disheartening to watch fellow critics lash out against Argentine-born “French extremist” Gaspar Noé’s new movie, a 3D porno un-ironically titled Love, for failing to achieve such “good movie” goals as “acting excellence,” “believable chemistry,” or “naturalistic dialogue.” Admittedly, Love’s…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino, Canada)—Discovery
By Jason Anderson Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Almost 90 per cent of Canada is uninhabitable. Of those who live in the rest, the overwhelming majority live within 500 miles of the US border. So maybe it’s not so surprising that the nation’s filmmakers—themselves largely clustered in the same few square miles…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan)—Masters
By Jordan Cronk Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). The sounds of silence reverberate loudest in The Assassin, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first feature in eight years. The film’s opening image, of a donkey quietly grazing in a field, immediately suggests an acute awareness of natural ambience. This impression manifests itself as the…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Te Prometo Anarquía (Julio Hernández Cordón, Mexico/Germany)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Mark Peranson Ciudad de México. Skateboarding compadres and casual lovers, Miguel and Johnny have known each other since they were kids—Johnny’s mother, Brenda, is still the maid for Miguel’s well-off family. The two kids spend most of their wasted days skating through the streets of the city, along the overpasses and through the markets…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | 45 Years (Andrew Haigh, UK)—Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Andrew Haigh branches out from his chronicles of transitory love among gay male urbanites with 45 Years, one of the shrewdest follow-ups to a calling-card picture in recent memory. The filmmaker trades the Nottingham setting of Weekend (2011) and the San Francisco clubs of his HBO series Looking for the flatlands of…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (Jafar Panahi, Iran)—Masters
By Adam Cook Jafar Panahi’s third “film” since being banned from making movies in his native Iran is a complete contrast to both the melancholy yet empowering This Is Not a Film (2011) and the powerful yet navel-gazing Closed Curtain (2013). Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (as it now seems to be called for North American release)…
By Adam Cook | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Youth (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy)—Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front While allegedly accessing the higher echelons of world cinema, thus benefiting from bigger budgets, many recent Italian films resemble fruitless advertising campaigns, advertising nothing but themselves. In the case of Paolo Sorrentino, what might have been initially mistaken for talent has regressed into an airtight container of formulaic empty gestures, self-parodies…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | An (Naomi Kawase, Japan)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Müge Turan In An, Naomi Kawase returns from the ocean she explored in her ambitious, ultimately stillborn Still the Water (2014) to take up residence in the far more cloistered location of a Tokyo kitchen. Named for the sweet red bean paste that goes in the middle of a dorayaki pancake, An focuses on…
By Muge Turan | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes, Portugal/ France/ Germany/ Switzerland)—Wavelengths
Cock and Bull Stories: Miguel Gomes on Arabian Nights By Mark Peranson Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Cinema Scope: Miguel Gomes, you need no introduction to the readers of this magazine. Here you are back in Cannes with a three-part, six-hour epic inspired by the Arabian Nights. There’s general consensus among critics…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | In the Shadow of Women (Philippe Garrel, France)—Masters
By Richard Porton Like other recent Philippe Garrel films (e.g., Frontier of Dawn, Jealousy), In the Shadow of Women is a ruminative tale of a love triangle gone awry. What makes this latest installment in Garrel’s ongoing faux-autobiographical saga slightly different is the contribution of veteran screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Best known for his work on…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Body (Malgorzata Szumowska, Poland)—Special Presentations
By Richard Porton One of the dreariest films to receive a showcase as a “Special Presentation” at TIFF in recent years, Malgorzata Szumowska’s Elles (2011) starred Juliette Binoche as a journalist investigating the plight of students earning a living as prostitutes, the resulting farrago illuminating neither the intricacies of the French sex industry nor the…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, US)—Special Presentations
By Richard Porton For those who heaped praise on Sicario after its Cannes premiere, all that mattered—in no particular order—were the virtues of Roger Deakins’ cinematography, Emily Blunt’s kick-ass performance as a FBI agent, and Denis Villeneuve’s assured command of the material. What became lost as critics endorsed the most vapid sort of formalism was…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | My Mother (Nanni Moretti, Italy)—Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front If there is any accomplishment to be ascribed to Nanni Moretti’s cinema at all, it would be that it celebrated the irony-less cult of the self long before the word “millennials” entered the vocabulary of marketing gurus. Though already suffering from an indigestible dose of self-obsession, Moretti’s early films were about…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Turkey/ France/ Germany/ Qatar)—Special Presentations
By Jordan Cronk As a film about adolescent girls, told from the perspective of adolescent girls, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut feature Mustang immediately stands out amidst the largely male-dominated efforts of contemporary cinema, its concerns distinctly feminine in constitution, its context specific in circumstance yet universal in scope. In a secluded Turkish village along the…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, France)—Special Presentations
By Richard Porton Jacques Audiard is up to his old tricks. Just as Un prophète, his 2009 art-house success, cynically recycled an admixture of motifs from old prison films cross-fertilized with a dollop of Scorsese-like pizazz and a superficial veneer of social commentary, Dheepan sheds a few crocodile tears for the plight of a burnt-out…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | The Club (Pablo Larraín, Chile)—Special Presentations
By Quintín Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). The Club, the fourth feature by Pablo Larraín, is set in a small town in coastal Chile. There’s an unassuming house in this town that the Catholic Church runs as an open prison for priests who have committed serious crimes, sheltering them from the prying…
By Quintin | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman, Belgium)—Wavelengths
Film/Art | We Can’t Go Home Again: Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie By Andréa Picard Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). “It is in a house that one is alone. Not outside of it, but inside. In the park there are birds, cats. Maybe even a squirrel, a ferret. We are not alone…
By Andrea Picard | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | 88:88 (Isiah Medina, Canada)—Wavelengths
Necessary Means: Isiah Medina on 88:88 By Phil Coldiron Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). One of the enduring problems of the cinema is that André Bazin’s answer to the question, “What is it?” is so convincing that he was able to pass off an ontology of one of its modes, namely realism,…
By Phil Coldiron | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello, Italy)—Wavelengths
Archive Fever: The Films of Pietro Marcello By Blake Williams Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). As is true for many of the more interesting Italian filmmakers currently working outside of the country’s “thriving,” increasingly globalized film industry, Pietro Marcello’s films liberally fuse a range of vérité and metaphysical elements to contemplate the…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | La Belle saison (Catherine Corsini, France)—Special Presentations
By Mallory Andrews There is no discernible reason for Catherine Corsini’s La Belle saison to take place in the early 1970s other than the fact that the timeframe adds a historically authentic sense of conflict to this lesbian love story set in rural France. Delphine (Izïa Higelin) is a farmer’s daughter who takes off to…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil/Uruguay/Netherlands)—Platform
By Max Goldberg Expanding upon the sensual neorealism of his dramatic debut August Winds (2014), Gabriel Mascaro sets his follow-up behind the scenes of northeast Brazil’s vaquejada circuit. A few cowhands ready the bulls for rodeo, sanding tails, branding, cursing. They camp alongside the bullpen with a mother and daughter living in their truck, and scene…
By Max Goldberg | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous (Christopher Doyle, Hong Kong)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Michael Sicinski Christopher Doyle’s status as one of the greatest living cinematographers in the world seems utterly beyond dispute at this point, but his two previous at-bats as a director have been uneven affairs, to put it kindly. This experimental nonfiction film—one can’t really call it a documentary, for various reasons—is easily Doyle’s finest…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Mekko (Sterlin Harljo, USA)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Jordan Cronk The once fresh idea of integrating a vérité sensibility into drama has grown, in recent years, into one of the most recognizable trends in independent cinema. Adding to this modest lineage is Mekko, an agreeable if unremarkable work of indigenous realism whose familiarity of form is ably offset by the singularity of…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Whispering Star (Sion Sono, Japan)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Max Goldberg Sion Sono continues to imaginatively engage Fukushima’s irradiated landscape in The Whispering Star, a surprisingly sedate space odyssey from the longtime enfant terrible. Megumi Kagurazaka is mostly alone as a Cast Away-like robot on an interplanetary delivery route. Her spaceship is done in the style of a traditional Japanese house, and the robot in turn seems…
By Max Goldberg | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Beeba Boys (Deepa Mehta, Canada)—Gala Presentations
By José Teodoro The new Deepa Mehta movie chronicles a territorial war between competing Sikh gangs in modern-day Vancouver. While based, to whatever extent, on a true story, it is rigorous in its adherence to genre clichés. We’ve got a bunch of guys who curse a lot and kill a lot and boast a lot—the…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Clan (Pablo Trapero, Argentina)—Platform
By Quintín When it was released in mid-August, Pablo Trapero’s new film had the highest opening box-office of any Argentine film of all time, and, shortly afterwards, reached one million tickets sold. The key to that success is simply that The Clan is based on one of the most shocking crimes in the country’s history, the Puccio…
By Quintin | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Our Little Sister (Kore-eda Hirokazu)—Masters
By Adam Nayman Surely the most demure manga adaptation in cinematic history—there isn’t a single bad-touching tentacle in sight—Our Little Sister finds Kore-eda Hirokazu in Ozu mode. With its numerous floor-level views of women sitting in repose and its structuring motif of changing seasons, the film could be taken as a tribute from one Japanese…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | ma ma (Julio Medem, Spain/France)—Special Presentations
By José Teodoro This batshit-crazy mega-weepie from Sex and Lucia (2001) director Julio Medem begins with Madrid schoolteacher Magda (Penélope Cruz) newly unemployed, her philandering philosophy professor husband vacationing on the Costa del Sol with his younger blonde lover, and the discovery that the lump in Magda’s breast is malignant and a mastectomy is required.…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Keeper (Guillaume Senez, Belgium/ Switzerland/ France)—Discovery
By Mallory Andrews Maxime and Mélanie are in love. Maxime and Mélanie get pregnant. Maxime convinces Mélanie to keep the baby. Maxime and Mélanie are all of 15 years old. This is the primary dramatic thrust of Belgian director Guillaume Senez’s debut feature, an unsentimental look at teen pregnancy about a couple (ably played by…
By Mallory Andrews | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The People vs. Fritz Bauer (Lars Kraume, Germany)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Max Goldberg The People vs. Fritz Bauer narrows its focus to the period when West German attorney general Fritz Bauer (Burghart Klaussner), working covertly and against the wishes of the many former Nazis in his government’s ranks, aided the Mossad in the capture of Adolf Eichmann. It’s fine material for a procedural, but director…
By Max Goldberg | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Witch (Robert Eggers, US/Canada)—Special Presentations
By Blake Williams Robert Eggers’ debut feature The Witch—one of the big talking points to emerge from this year’s Sundance US Dramatic Competition—is a mythopoeic horror film that uses a wealth of unidentified 17th-century journals, records, and myths to construct a slow-burning descent into hysteria. Eggers opts for a cool, autumnal mise en scène (you…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | My Internship in Canada (Philippe Falardeau, Canada)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman Good commercial Canadian directors are hard to find—except in Québec, where money and audiences exist to make the effort seem worthwhile. Yet none of the province’s hitmakers have accrued the critical cred of Philippe Falardeau, whose cinema perches an agile seriocomic sensibility atop sturdy mainstream structures: the coming-of-age nostalgia of It’s Not…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman More funny games from the ringleaders of the New Greek Cinema: in a country that invented bread and circuses before Rome was even a gleam in a she-wolf’s eye, Athina Rachel Tsangari and her merry band are willing and able to make their own fun. In lieu of comparisons to Yorgos Lanthimos’…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Brooklyn (John Crowley, UK/Ireland/Canada)—Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman A textbook example of international co-production funds well spent—note the flashy film-festival slots from Park City to Manhattan—Brooklyn arrives duly hyped, and disappoints just as reliably. Encouraged by her prematurely spinsterish sister to flee the Emerald Isle for the figuratively greener pastures of America, Ellis (Saoirse Ronan) spends her first year Stateside…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Son of Saul (László Nemes, Hungary)—Special Presentations
By Richard Porton Originally published in Cinema Scope 63 (Summer 2015). Dennis Lim’s Artforum dispatch from Cannes pauses briefly to ponder the merits of László Nemes’ Son of Saul and concludes that, either despite or because of Nemes’ “showboating” tendencies, it’s a film that will “spawn a thousand think pieces.” If the ruminations that follow…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Cinema Scope 64 Preview | Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)—Masters
Repetition and Difference: Hong Sangsoo on Right Now, Wrong Then By Roger Koza Interview by Francisco Ferreira & Julien Gester Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). Set in Suwon, about 30 kilometres south of Seoul, Hong Sangsoo’s Golden Leopard-winning masterpiece is divided into two sections which are almost exactly the same. Even the…
By Roger Koza | Cinema Scope Online, Interviews, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Other Side (Roberto Minervini, Italy/France)—Wavelengths
By Celluloid Liberation Front Away from the gangrenous nepotism and mafia-like favouritism that govern the film industry in Italy, Roberto Minervini has found a way to transcend his accidental birthplace and its current idea of cinema. The Other Side is set in Louisiana, among the communities of white lumpenproletariat very much removed from the redeeming…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Waiting Room (Igor Drljaca, Canada)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman The past is rear-projected in Igor Drljaca’s sophisticated second feature; while the exact nature of the (student?) film being shot on a soundstage in the film’s centrepiece sequence is unclear, it’s obvious that Yugoslavian actor Jasmin (Jasmin Geljo, who was also in the director’s earlier Krivina) is uncomfortable pantomiming a drive through…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | James White (Josh Mond, US)—Discovery
By Blake Williams On paper, Josh Mond’s personal and almost unbearably sad debut James White seems to exhibit the same tendencies that have become the signature brand of his Borderline colleagues, whose intelligent and precocious output has been driven by a depraved depiction of human nature with a grim sensibility that already feels out of…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Every Thing Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders, Germany/ Canada/ France/ Sweden/ Norway)—Masters
By Adam Cook Once numbered in the same company as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog as masters of the New German Cinema—and still counted a Master by TIFF—Wim Wenders has long since plummeted from the position of art-house reverence he earned with works like Wings of Desire (1987) and Paris, Texas (1984). Every Thing…
By Adam Cook | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | The Daughter (Simon Stone, Australia)—Special Presentations
By José Teodoro The Daughter begins with Henry (Geoffrey Rush), patriarch of his Australian village’s wealthiest family and proprietor of its century-old sawmill, unable to shoot a wild duck. Is there a metaphor here? Of course there is—this is Ibsen!—though the metaphor I’m thinking of applies to writer-director Simon Stone’s inability to shoot The Wild…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2015 | Rams (Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland)—Contemporary World Cinema
By Jordan Cronk Rams, the second narrative feature by Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson, represents the kind of thematically familiar, stylistically anonymous filmmaking that comfortably achieves consensus sympathy. Indeed, the film won the top prize of the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year, and against some rather formidable competition at that. As per this…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2015
TIFF 2014 | Elephant Song (Charles Binamé, Canada) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro There are in fact multiple elephants in the room in this adaptation of Nicolas Billon’s play: the awkward struggle to cinematize a story designed to generate tension through sustained enclosure in a single location; the repeated deployment of an overarching metaphor to the point of exhaustion; and the showboating of Xavier Dolan…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Villa Touma (Suha Arraf, no national origin) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski This is the directorial debut by Arraf, who is best known as the writing partner of Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis on his two most successful films, The Syrian Bride (2004) and Lemon Tree (2008). At the moment, Villa Touma is most notable for being a film that is “stateless,” officially speaking. Set…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | A Dream of Iron (Kelvin Kyung Kun Park, US/South Korea) — City to City
By Michael Sicinski To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, the chief business of cinema is business. As a general rule, festivals like films that can sell; Oscars and acquisitions provide high-level film programmers with industry niches that we critics will never really understand. But now and then, those thoughtful public servants manage to smuggle in something decidely…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Confession (Lee Do-yun, South Korea) — City to City
By Michael Sicinski One of the stronger entries in this year’s showcase of Seoul-based filmmaking, Confession, by first-time helmer Lee Do-yun, takes a while to display its true intentions. Following a prologue in which we meet our three main characters as adolescents and witness a traumatic event that cements their long-term friendship, Confession jumps ahead…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Songs from the North (Soon-Mi Yoo, US/South Korea) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski Songs from the North is a work that practically mirrors the provenance pattern of another film in this year’s festival, Kelvin Park’s A Dream of Iron: an essay film from a Korean-born, US-educated multimedia artist. However, Yoo is a more experienced filmmaker, and as a result Songs is a far more nuanced…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, US) — Special Presentations
By Angelo Muredda Stephen Hawking falls in love, gets disabled, and becomes the world’s best-selling cosmologist in James Marsh’s mostly undistinguished The Theory of Everything, the sort of cautious, unoffending profile that tends to arrive in swarms this time of year. For what it’s worth, Eddie Redmayne is fine as the young Cambridge scholar with…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | I Am Not Lorena (Isidora Marras, Chile/Argentina) — Discovery
By Michael Sicinski This is an exceedingly slight debut film about an actress named Olivia (Loreto Aravena) beset by an endless barrage of calls from collection agencies, all looking for someone named Lorena Ruíz. In reality, there are some fairly basic steps to take if one finds oneself in a similar predicament. (I speak from…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Le beau danger (René Frölke, Germany) — Wavelengths
By Michael Sicinski “In a world where everything seems programmed, even chaos, chance, or surprise, you’ve got to defy logic and bewilder people.” This is but one of the many lines of prose presented, without overt comment, in Le beau danger, written by the film’s subject Romanian author Norman Manea. However, this sentence seems as…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Wild (Jean-Marc Vallée, US) — Gala
Special TORONTO FILM REVIEW Guest Edition (N.B. This is presented absent any editorial intervention.) By David Davidson There is a real problem when even Steven Spielberg is confused about the state of modern cinema. It needs to be said: The old ways of doing things is over. And there needs to be the creation of…
By Toronto Film Review | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Foreign Body (Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland/Italy/Russia) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski This is a complete mess, but I cannot honestly say whether Zanussi constructed Foreign Body to be exactly the film he wanted it to be and thus he’s just off his rocker, or if he has simply lost control of the medium. How best to describe this unhinged but futile film? In…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Little Death (Josh Lawson, Australia) — Discovery
By Ian Barr If nothing else, this Antipodean mash-up of Love, Actually and Neil LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors—a combo surely everyone was clamouring for—makes a convincing argument that “edginess” is the least appreciable thing that any text in any medium can strive for. Kicking off the first of its four not-really-criss-crossing subplots, Paul (played…
By Ian Barr | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, UK) — Vanguard
By Adam Nayman A stray line about a “Dr. Viridiana” early in The Duke of Burgundy gives the game away: after the giallos humour of Berberian Sound Studio, Peter Strickland is chasing Luis Buñuel. Not with too much urgency, mind you: on the basis of his three features to date, the British writer-director is less interested in precise pastiche than evoking…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Adult Beginners (Ross Katz, US) — Discovery
By Sean Rogers Had this movie actually centred on the late-in-life learning-to-swim class alluded to in its title (though never depicted onscreen), maybe some of the excellent bit players horsing around its edges could have jumped in and stirred things up a bit. I imagine a film in which the wearable-tech guru portrayed by Nick…
By Sean Rogers | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Editor (Adam Brooks & Matthew Kennedy, Canada) — Midnight Madness)
By Adam Nayman The Editor could have used one. Much like the previous Astron-6 production Manborg, this passionately scrawled love letter to Argento, Fulci et al makes a fetish of both its cheapness and its knowingness, neither of which seem very endearing after a while (let’s say about 30 minutes, to be generous). Co-director Adam…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson, Sweden/Norway/France/Germany) — Masters
By Celluloid Liberation Front A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is Roy Andersson’s third installment in his trilogy of films “about being a human being.” Regrettably, said trilogy has been on a downward trajectory from the original brilliance of Songs from the Second Floor through the less impressive but still enjoyable You,…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Gemma Bovery (Anne Fontaine, France) — Special Presentations
By Sean Rogers Adapted from the literate, gently sardonic graphic novel by Guardian cartoonist Posy Simmonds, Anne Fontaine’s Gemma Bovery retains little of the source material’s Renoirian humanism and none of its murky thematic and visual greytones, but regrettably most of its plot. Since the outlines of Simmonds’ Gemma were themselves lifted from Flaubert’s Bovary—in…
By Sean Rogers | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Revenge of the Green Dragons (Andrew Lau & Andrew Loo, US) — Special Presentations
By Bart Testa This film is credited as an American production through the enabling of producer Martin Scorsese, and is set in the Flatbush section of Queens during the 1980s, when Mainland Chinese immigrants flocked there and young gangs flourished—as did human trafficking, centred there on the notorious “snakehead” Sister Ping. But this is all…
By Bart Testa | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Pasolini (Abel Ferrara, France/Italy/Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front Willem Dafoe takes on Pasolini’s last three days on earth in a difficult, almost impossible film that Abel Ferrara directs with respectful audacity. Seventy-two hours in the life of the heretical Catholic and erotic Marxist poet, columnist, theorist, filmmaker, and tumultuous and gentle earthling. We get to see enacted glimpses of…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Sound and the Fury (James Franco, US) — Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front Oh boy! Where to even start? Let’s try from the beginning: a Shakespeare quote opens the film, which tells us that James Franco reads the preeminent Elizabethan playwright or Wikiquotes, which as far as the film is concerned doesn’t make that big of a difference. The guy has actually had the…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke, US) — TIFF Docs
By Michael Sicinski “He’s a very deep guy … It’s like Zen and the Art of Archery, or whatever.” Oh my God, shut up. Ethan Hawke, who has made a very lovely portrait of virtuoso pianist and teacher Seymour Bernstein, is going to be his own worst enemy in terms of getting people to actually…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Goodnight Mommy (Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala, Austria) — Vanguard
By Christoph Huber Don’t be fooled by the inane Haneke comparisons lavished by lazy critics on the first fiction feature by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, who previously made the beautiful portrait-essay Kern and the underseen drinking-game short Dreh und Trink (full disclosure: they are also my best friends, but that’s not why I…
By Christoph Huber | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Rosewater (Jon Stewart, US) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Political film without a politics of filmmaking, Jon Stewarts’s earnest directorial debut repurposes journalist Maziar Bahari’s memoir about having spent 118 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after he was accused of being an American spy into a palatable polemic about Iran’s theocratic rule circa the 2009 elections. The London-based, Iranian-born Bahari…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Red Amnesia (Wang Xiaoshuai, China) — Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front Deng, an aging but relatively sprightly old woman, spends her retirement taking care of her house and her grown-up children, who nonetheless appear to be better off when she is not around (one is busy building a successful heterosexual family, the other slacking about in front of the computer). Only the…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Return to Ithaca (Laurent Cantet, France) — Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front A nausea-inducing film of simplistic primitivism, Return to Ithaca is Laurent Cantet’s contribution to the debunking of the myth of Caribbean socialism (as if there were any illusions left). We are in the sado-Marxist island of Cuba, where any human right is cruelly crushed bar those of being able to have…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Gyeongju (Zhang Lu, South Korea) — City to City
By Michael Sicinski The deeply antisocial protagonist of Gyeongju, Choi Hyeon (Park Hae-il), is a well-regarded poli-sci professor in Beijing, back in Korea for the funeral of an old colleague. Recalling a memorable time he, the deceased, and another scholar had in the title-city many years ago, Hyeon returns to wander around in a doomed…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Phoenix (Christian Petzold, Germany) — Special Presentations
By Mark Peranson In a loose adaptation of Hubert Monteilhet’s 1961 novel Le Retour des cendres, Berlin School stalwart Christian Petzold has decided to move further back in history, leaving East Germany behind (a fine decision as far as I’m concerned) for Germany 1945, and asking what it takes to rise from the ashes in…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Equalizer (Antoine Fuqua, US) — Gala
By Michael Sicinski Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Training Day was as watchable as it was. (And it isn’t faulty memory or collective knuckle-dragging on racial issues. I caught it on cable a while back and it’s fine.) But Antoine Fuqua can’t direct, and this is abundantly clear in the opening seconds of…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski Recently, some South Korean masters have made significant inroads into the English market. (We can call them “masters,” if you prefer a grain of salt in your bibimbap: Kim Jee-woon and Park Chan-wook are inevitably problematic figures to some. But I’ll accept no guff regarding Master Bong and his Piercer of Snow.)…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Teen Lust (Blaine Thurier, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman If Satan came back and saw the movies that were being made in his name, he’d never stop throwing up (pea soup, probably). Our Dark Lord is invoked routinely in Teen Lust, in which the virginal son of suburban Baphomet-worshippers endeavours to get laid before he becomes a sacrificial lamb—a premise already…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Li’l Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman It’s not HBO, it’s (French) TV, and it’s also paradoxically the best movie that Bruno Dumont has made since L’humanite (1999)—a good point of comparison because Li’l Quinquin is basically a remake, give or take. Rural religious community? Check. Wobbly, possibly retarded police officer? Check. A random, ritualistic slaying? Check. Meditation on…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Heartbeat (Andrea Dorfman, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman In which a lapsed Halifax folkie very gradually gets her groove back. It’s every bit as thrilling as it sounds. Look: it’s clear that writer-director Andrea Dorfman—making her first feature since the well-liked Love That Boy (2003)—adores her star Tanya Davis, whose droopy eyes and dopey smile don’t seem like a put-on,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Bird People (Pascale Ferran, France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Adam Nayman A film ideally screened at film festivals—where its scenes of characters logging into hotel wi-fi on their laptops and thrashing around in the throes of jetlag will pack an affective punch—Bird People has divided critics as neatly as its own bifurcated, his-and-hers narrative. Set almost entirely inside the confines of a Parisian…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | [REC] 4: Apocalypse (Jaume Balaguero, Spain) — Midnight Madness
By Adam Nayman Call it the [REC] of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This third and (I’m guessing) worst sequel to the 2007 Spanish found-footage horror flick is set at sea, for no good reason other than that the franchise hasn’t gone there yet. So a year after World War Z gave us Zombies on a Plane,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Merchants of Doubt (Robert Kenner, US) — TIFF Docs
By Jason Anderson There’s a wealth of valuable and urgent info in Robert Kenner’s study of how business and ideological interests—and, of course, the Koch brothers, the favourite boogeymen of American liberals—create the illusions of debate and doubt over such issues as climate change in the media arena when none ought to exist. At the…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Men, Women & Children (Jason Reitman, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman With Labor Day, Jason Reitman announced his intentions to become the new Sam Mendes. People should be careful what they wish for. Men, Women & Children could have easily been titled Fall Prestige Picture, or maybe Oscar Movie—you know, something with that nice, concise Seltzman/Friedberg ring. But that would promise a comedy,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve, France) — Special Presentations
By Kiva Reardon For the first time, Mia Hansen-Løve hasn’t made a movie about a woman. But Eden isn’t about a man either, but rather a sort of man-child. This is an important distinction, given that for this particular creature there’s nothing more terrifying than the inevitable passage of time, which brings with it the slow…
By Kiva Reardon | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Coming Home (Zhang Yimou, China) — Special Presentations
By Shelly Kraicer Admirers of Zhang Yimou’s ground-breaking work from the late 1980s and early 1990s might puzzle over his transformation from innovative artist to state-sponsored populist after seeing his latest domestic hit, Coming Home. A film not without interest, particularly considering it reunites him with his actrice fetiche Gong Li, star of those influential ’90s masterworks (Red Sorghum, Ju…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Los Hongos (Oscar Ruiz Nava, Colombia) — Discovery
By Alexandra Zawia Los Hongos translates to “The Mushrooms,” and while there are a couple of joints smoked in Oscar Ruiz Navia’s follow-up to his acclaimed debut feature Crab Trap, the alluded-to hallucinogens never arrive. Metaphorically speaking, young graffiti artists Ras (Jovan Alexis Marquinez Angulo) and Calvin (Calvin Buenaventura Tacon) might be mushrooms; their street-art…
By Alexandra Zawia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Guest (Adam Wingard, US) — Midnight Madness
By José Teodoro Still grieving the loss of their son Caleb to some unspecified military misadventure, the Peterson family finds their lives rejuvenated by the unexpected arrival of David Collins (Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens), a handsome, polite young veteran claiming to have been “very close” to Caleb while serving abroad. David says he’s come all…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Cut Snake (Tony Ayres, Australia) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Jason Anderson Though the title of Tony Ayres’ slow-burn thriller is borrowed from an Australian expression for a wild and crazy sort of fella, any potentially phallic connotations cannot be considered accidental. In fact, Ayres ultimately depends too heavily on Cut Snake’s most carnal element—a relatively novel re-ordering of the typical sexual dynamics between…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Backcountry (Adam McDonald, Canada) — Discovery
By Adam Nayman The obvious point of reference for Adam McDonald’s feature debut is The Edge, except that there’s (more) sexual chemistry between the two leads. (Sorry, Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.) Stubbly Jeff Roop and springy Missy Peregrym star as a city couple who make the (possibly, but no spoilers here) fatal mistake of…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, US) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman “I’m not going to hire a fucking thief,” exclaims a character early on in Nightcrawler, and while the name-check of Michael Mann’s debut feature is likely entirely coincidental, it serves to place Dan Gilroy’s debut feature in the proper context. As in Mann’s Heat, Los Angeles plays itself here, a star turn that’s…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | A Hard Day (Kim Seong-hun, South Korea) — City to City
By Michael Sicinski Part of the difficulty of City to City is uneven programming sensibility. It’s a difficult task, and an unenviable one, to try to represent any city or nation’s cinematic output with an eight-film snapshot, and diversity of approaches has to be a watchword. You can’t program a slate composed entirely of…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Alive (Park Jung-bum, South Korea) — City to City
By Michael Sicinski As with his debut film, 2010’s The Journals of Musan, Park not only wrote and directed but also stars in Alive, his second feature, which would be an impressive enough feat even if the film weren’t a gruelling three-hour workout. It could be overselling Park’s work just a bit to claim…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Tales of the Grim Sleeper (Nick Broomfield, USA/UK) — TIFF Docs
By Adam Nayman Nick Broomfield’s limey knight-errant act has had its moments of wearing thin—as in the terrible Sarah Palin: You Betcha!—but at its core it’s clever, endearing and effective. Shamelessly brandishing the tools of his trade (i.e., his ever-present, conspicuously dangled boom mic) everywhere he goes, Broomfield stylizes himself into a caricature of the…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Black Souls (Francesco Munzi, Italy) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Celluloid Liberation Front Italian films on the mob seem to do pretty well at the box office, be they about the cultural mafia that hangs out on the elegant rooftops of Rome sipping cocktails and talking crap, or the more venial kind that sees poor people exchanging fire in the suburbs of Naples. Black…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Ned Rifle (Hal Hartley, US) — Special Presentations
By Jason Anderson It’s too much to expect a heroic final-quarter-Hail-Mary moment for Hal Hartley. Though arguably the most distinctive and promising of the original Sundance kids, he has already spent too many years chasing past glories as his amalgam of Godardian irony and existential burlesque lost all spark, form and purpose. Nevertheless, there’s something…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Red Army (Gabe Polsky, US) — TIFF Docs
By Blake Williams American director Gabe Polsky’s timing really couldn’t have been worse. Arriving in Cannes only three months after the Berlin debut of Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Second Game—which delivered a radically minimal yet effective variation on the politically-minded sports documentary as Porumboiu has his father, a former soccer referee, provide commentary over the entire broadcast…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Kabukicho Love Hotel (Hiroki Ryuichi, Japan) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Mark Peranson Not-so-fun times abound in this love hotel over the course of 24 hours. A sad-sack manager, who aspires to something more than cleaning up used tissue paper and stained sheets in his black Adidas jumpsuit, is the victim of a perfect storm of sexual embarrassment: his girlfriend shows up to sleep with…
By Mark Peranson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Journey to the West (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France) — Wavelengths
By Shelly Kraicer A small miracle of a movie, Tsai Ming-liang’s insanely slow mid-length film is also one of his most beautiful. For 56 non-action-packed minutes, we watch Tsai’s acteur fetiche Lee Kang-sheng, head shaved and dressed in red crimson monk-like robes, walk as slowly as possible through various urban spaces in and near Marseilles.…
By Shelly Kraicer | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014, Top Ten Films 2014
TIFF 2014 | Alleluia (Fabrice Du Welz, France) — Vanguard
By Blake Williams One wonders: did the world really need what is at least the fourth film treatment of the Lonely Hearts Killers case, after Todd Robinson’s utterly useless 2006 (Lonely Hearts), Leonard Kastle’s influential vérité shit-show The Honeymoon Killers (1969) and Arturo Ripstein’s rather mannered Mexican melodrama Deep Crimson (1996)? The source material—an unhinged yet commanding woman…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Revivre (Im Kwon-taek, South Korea) — Masters
By Michael Sicinski A number of TIFF 14’s Korean films are about the working poor or the criminal class eking out an existence on the mean streets of Seoul. Judging from Hwajang, a.k.a. Revivre,being on top of the capitalist mountain is no guarantee of happiness (although I’m sure any peasant would be glad to give…
By Michael Sicinski | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014| Manglehorn (David Gordon Green, USA) / The Humbling (Barry Levinson, USA) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro David Gordon Green’s recovery from misadventures in the mainstream began in earnest last year with Prince Avalanche and Joe, films that echo the ebullient eccentricities and immersive sense of place of Green’s earliest features while retaining the stars he began using for financial leverage (Paul Rudd, Nicolas Cage) when he was riding…
By Jose Teodoro | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Fires on the Plain (Tsukamoto Shinya, Japan) — Wavelengths
By Jason Anderson Few things bode less well on paper (or at least a page of the TIFF program book) than the prospect of the director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and A Snake of June adapting Japanese literature’s most famous anti-war novel, a book that already yielded an equally venerated, Criterion-sanctioned film version by…
By Jason Anderson | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Tu dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur, Canada) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Angelo Muredda Slight as it is, next to the garrulous shoutiness of much of its Canadian brethren at the festival, Stéphane Lafleur’s Tu dors Nicole feels like a minor oasis. Nicely lensed in minimalist black and white by the filmmaker’s usual collaborator (and Bernard Émond vet) Sara Mishara, the film follows the post-grad ambles…
By Angelo Muredda | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Trick or Treaty? (Alanis Obomsawin, Canada) — Masters
By Kiva Reardon Since Alanis Obomsawin began her work with the NFB in the late 1960s, her style hasn’t much changed: talking-head interviews, heavy on narration, pedagogical to the core. True to form, the Masters-ratified Trick or Treaty? offers more of same—but rather than scanning as the work of a stymied veteran institutional filmmaker, Trick…
By Kiva Reardon | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Adam Nayman “You exist,” says Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) to his wife Sandra (Marion Cotillard) in the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night—a line which echoes another in Ms. Cotillard’s other recent auteur-film turn in James Gray’s The Immigrant (“You are not nothing”), a movie with which Two Days, One Night otherwise shares very little,…
By Adam Nayman | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/Germany/France) — Masters
By Jordan Cronk From Cinema Scope #59 Seemingly preordained, director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s overdue Palme d’Or win provided a nonetheless satisfying conclusion to a rather undramatic Cannes film festival—and, further, to a closing awards ceremony of otherwise empty gestures and mostly uninspired selections. A previous two-time recipient of the Grand Prix for Distant (2002) and…
By Jordan Cronk | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | From What Is Before (Lav Diaz, Philippines) — Wavelengths
By Alexandra Zawia Golden Leopard winner Lav Diaz’ From What Is Before is (pace Michael Haneke) the chronology of a mass murder. It’s the anatomy of a barrio in the rural remoteness of Manila’s coast, and a reflection on individual and collective strength and failure when outward conditions change. It’s an associative analysis of a…
By Alexandra Zawia | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014, Top Ten Films 2014
TIFF 2014 | Madame Bovary (Sophie Barthes, UK/Belgium) — Special Presentations
By Jay Kuehner Renoir, Chabrol, Oliveira and Minnelli, among a host of others, have all taken a cinematic crack at Flaubert’s realist chef d’oeuvre, but surprisingly, the young French director Sophie Barthes—for whom the book is part of an inherited cultural DNA—is the first woman to adapt the original “modern realist” novel, and not for…
By Jay Kuehner | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | The Search (Michel Hazanavicius, France) — Special Presentations
By Blake Williams The Search is what happens when winning awards supersedes making cinema. It’s what happens when pastiche is mistaken for art; when Bérénice Bejo and Annette Benning have Best Actress prizes on their résumés; when the context informing a movie is only other movies. It’s the kind of war picture you get when your…
By Blake Williams | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, US) — TIFF Docs
By Kiva Reardon After a quick establishing shot of the stone lions that guard the British National Gallery, Frederick Wiseman plunges into the building itself with a rapid-fire montage of the iconic works that hang on its walls. The effect is nearly overwhelming—especially for a viewer like me who dropped the one Art History class…
By Kiva Reardon | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Ossama Mohammed & Wiam Simav Bedrixian, Syria/France) — TIFF Docs
By Richard Porton Susan Sontag once observed how war photography enables us to both regard and consume the “pain of others.” Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedrixian’s powerful film confronts this quandary head on by challenging its audience not to be numbed by a series of horrific images, most of them culled from mobile-phone videos…
By Richard Porton | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | 99 Homes (Ramin Bahrani, US) — Special Presentations
By Celluloid Liberation Front Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) lives with his mother and son in a home he thinks belongs to them, until one day one the ominously named Mike Carver (Michael Shannon), accompanied by a couple of zealous policemen, informs him and his family that it actually belongs to the banks. Kindly invited to…
By Celluloid Liberation Front | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | I Am Here (Lixin Fan, China) — TIFF Docs
By Wu Ming China has nothing on the West when it comes to glossy televised star-making contests. The Super Girl contest in 2005 broke television viewing records and transformed the way Chinese youth audiences engaged with pop culture. Along comes the inevitable Super Boy contest, to which award-winning filmmaker Fan Yixin (Last Train Home) has been given…
By Wu Ming | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2014
TIFF 2014 | Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, France) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Jordan Cronk Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, the opening night selection of this year’s Quinzaine des réalisateurs, is a case study in overestimating the capacity of an established methodology. Following the two modest, unassumingly insightful features (the sexual coming-of-age chronicle Water Lilies and Tomboy, an observant examination of adolescent gender awakening), Sciamma’s latest doesn’t expand her…