Christopher Machell
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Toronto 2018: American Dharma review
★★☆☆☆ Errol Morris tackles his most disturbing and slippery subject to date, Steve Bannon, in new documentary American Dharma. Morris paints a frighteningly apocalyptic figure, but in depicting Bannon as the kind of subject Satanic king-maker that he clearly admires, one wonders how much the tail is wagging the dog. Set in an abandoned hangar,…
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Toronto 2018: Gloria Bell review
★★★★☆ Gloria (Julianne Moore) is in her fifties, divorced and lives alone. A mysterious cat keeps finding its way into her apartment and the guy upstairs seems permanently in the throes of a nervous breakdown. When Gloria meets Arnold (John Turturro), life suddenly seems exciting and full of possibilities again in the latest from Chilean…
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Film Review: Widows
★★★★★ At first glance, the heist movie plot of Widows couldn’t be further from the arthouse work of director Steve McQueen’s early career. But in his hands, a fairly typical premise becomes something else entirely: simultaneously a genre flick, emotive melodrama and political satire. At the centre of the film is Viola Davis as Veronica…
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Film Review: Meeting Gorbachev
★★★★☆ Acclaimed documentarian Werner Herzog spent a year interviewing the last President of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. Over the course of ninety minutes, Herzog takes us through a potted history of the decline of the Soviet Union and the achievements of one of the 20th century’s greatest political figures. In typical Herzogian style, Meeting…
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Toronto 2018: Maya review
★★★☆☆ When French war reporter Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) is released from being held hostage by ISIS, he insists that he’s fine, refusing help from his hospital-appointed counsellor. But when his relationship with his girlfriend breaks down, it’s clear that Gabriel needs time to reflect on his ordeal. Gabriel heads to Goa, where he spent some…
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Toronto 2018: Kursk review
★★★☆☆ In August 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk suffered two devastating explosions during a test firing of torpedoes. Many of the crew were killed in the explosions, but as the wrecked sub sank to the seabed, twenty-three of the crew were trapped alive in one of the vessel’s remaining compartments. Thomas Vinterberg’s retelling of the…
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Film Review: High Life
★★★★★ If there’s a single design choice that could give us the key to Claire Denis’ challenging, esoteric science fiction High Life it’s the spacesuits. Invariably, the suits found on the starships Enterprise and Nostromo are sterile things made of sleek, impermeable material, shielding their wearers from the void. The suits in High Life, however, serve…
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Film Review: A Million Little Pieces
★★☆☆☆ Following her dalliance with the Fifty Shades franchise, Sam Taylor-Johnson turns her hand to addiction drama in A Million Little Pieces, starring husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The results, despite some very nice directorial flourishes, are rather disappointing in this rote and reductive portrayal of substance abuse. The film begins well enough, with Taylor-Johnson’s James throwing himself…
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Film Review: The Predator
★★☆☆☆ Shane Black returns to the series he co-wrote in 1987, now in the director’s chair, for this fourth instalment in the Predator franchise. Long-term fans will be pleased that The Predator is a soft reboot – Predator 2 and even 2010’s Predators are still canon – but the magic formula of the original remains elusive.…
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DVD Review: Free Solo
★★★☆☆ Among the most extreme of thrill-seekers, Alex Honnold is a climber who favours the “free solo” method, ascending cliffs without the aid of ropes. Meru directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin record Honnold’s unprecedented attempt to scale the 3,000 foot-high El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in their hair-rising documentary. Honnold is a very…
