Matthew Anderson
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#LFF 2017: Princess Cyd review
★★★★★ Billed as the coming-of-age story of an adolescent American teenage girl, Princess Cyd is so much more. Told with tenderness and a perceptive humanist eye by writer-director Stephen Cone, his latest film is an affecting exploration of loss, love and trauma.Disproving any kind of ludicrous notion that a male director is incapable of crafting…
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#LFF 2017: Mountain review
★★★☆☆ Inexpressibly beautiful, breathtaking yet terrifying images from snow-capped peaks and vertical cliff faces dominate Jennifer Peedom’s latest documentary Mountain, which explores the magnetic pull exercised by these perilously dangerous summits. A meditation on the potential held, respect demanded and inherent risks in scaling such heights is coupled with a swift history of human kind’s…
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Film Review: My Friend Dahmer
★★★☆☆ “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A common question to pose to a group of teens approaching the end of high school. But in Marc Meyers’ My Friend Dahmer, the words reverberate chillingly thanks to its now notorious principal subject. Sitting uncomfortably with the knowledge of what Jeffrey Dahmer would…
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#LFF 2017: The Final Year review
★★★★☆ Chronicling the last twelve months of Barack Obama’s tenure, Greg Barker’s The Final Year is an intimate, earnest and insightful expose of the key players of his departing administration and the legacy left in his wake as the world enters the Trump era.From charting the day-to-day workings of Obama’s close-knit team of advisers as…
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Film Review: The Breadwinner
★★★★☆ Delighting in the ancient tradition of storytelling as a means of education and understanding as well as entertainment, Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner is a richly animated jewel set in the desolate, Taliban-ruled Kabul of 2001 in the run-up to war. Parvana, voiced with maturity and conviction by Canadian newcomer Saara Chaudry, is caught between…
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Film Review: Battle of the Sexes
★★★☆☆ Tennis drama Battle of the Sexes is a retelling of Billie Jean King’s famous titular match against Bobby Riggs in 1973. It’s also an exploration of the off-court issues of chauvinism, inequality and prejudice which enveloped the high profile encounter. Ably handled with humour, tenderness and sincerity by the directorial doubles pairing of Jonathan…
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Film Review: Strong Island
★★★★☆ The anguished gaze and furious composure of bereaved sibling Yance Ford makes his film, Strong Island, a deeply personal essay on grief. Two decades after the fatal shooting of his brother, the restraint he employs in telling his family’s quest for justice leaves its mark.“Are you uncomfortable?” Ford asks, framed in close up, addressing…
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Film Review: The Work
★★★★☆ Breaking literal and figurative barriers of freedom, and opening new channels for self-awareness and enlightenment, Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous’ The Work is a rousing, arresting and ultimately cathartic call-to-arms for the power and value of rehabilitation.Filmed over four exhausting, emotionally-devastating days, this documentary goes inside the walls of California’s Folsom State Prison and…
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Film Review: Wind River
★★★☆☆ With the first-rate scripts of Sicario and Hell or High Water already under his belt, American actor and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan once again levels his pen at a great social injustice of the Land of the Free with his auspicious sophomore feature Wind River.Bleak portrayals of the War on Drugs and the desperate measures…
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Film Review: Moon Dogs
★★☆☆☆ As with most road trip movies, the journey undertaken by quarreling step-brothers Michael (Jack Parry Jones) and Thor (Christy O’Donnell) and lost soul Caitlin (Tara Lee) in Phillip John’s coming-of-ager Moon Dogs is of greater significance than their destination.A cliché, yes, but apt nonetheless for a voyage of discovery from the far reaches of…