Written by 
TIFF is often a home for potential Oscar contenders and celebrities who look great on a red carpet but there’s another thing that’s easy to find every year in Canada: very serious subject matter. A trio of films that premiered there this year work with themes of survival, trauma, abuse, school shootings, and much more. … Continue reading “TIFF 2021: The Survivor, Montana Story, Lakewood”
My continued coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival’s African cinema programming included three more gems: Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s coming-of-age short film “Astel” from Senegal, Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s romantic drama “The Gravedigger’s Wife” from Somalia, and Jean Luc Herbulot’s genre-defying thriller “Saloum.” Finding raw emotions in both subtle familial drama and larger-than-life situations, these filmmakers each explore how location … Continue reading “TIFF 2021: Astel, The Gravedigger’s Wife, Saloum”
Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which won an award at Berlin earlier this year before a limited theatrical release from Bleecker Street next week, is a clever little movie, a film that defies its set-up as a familiar, quirky rom-com to become something deeper and more poignant about the human condition. Of course, using unimaginable technology … Continue reading “I’m Your Man”
Clint Eastwood will be 92 next May. Now. To take a particular kind of stock of this fact. The Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira lived to be 106. And he completed his final film in 2015, the year he died. So when we are talking about Eastwood’s ostensibly late filmography, and we consider the speediness … Continue reading “Cry Macho”
B.J. Novak’s new anthology series “The Premise” is something of a hot-button “Black Mirror,” in that it takes different major topics and explores them over 30 minutes with twisty, sometimes funny narratives. But while the similarities to that www.skits.ng Netflix hit are evident, the excitement of “The Premise” is in how it seems to create its … Continue reading “B.J. Novak’s The Premise is an Inspired Satire of Modern Issues”
