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DVD Review: David Lynch: The Art Life
★★★★★ David Lynch hasn’t embarked on a major film project since the release of Inland Empire back in 2006. Eleven years is a long time to wait for inspiration, but as is made clear in the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, he’s a patient man.After first enrolling at the School of the Museum of…
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Toronto 2017: Molly’s Game review
★★★★☆ Molly Bloom once ran the world’s most exclusive underground poker games, attracting A-list celebrities, hedge fund magnates and, eventually, the Russian mob. After she began raking her own operation she was indicted by the FBI along with the Russian mafia.The majority of Molly’s Game is told from inside the office of Molly’s reluctant lawyer,…
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Film Review: Mary Shelley
★★☆☆☆ Mary Shelley was among the most important writers of the Romantic period, a time of intense political and social upheaval. But you wouldn’t know it based on this tepid biopic, which reduces the author of one of the most important gothic novels ever written to a simpering teen. It’s 1814, London, and a 16-year-old…
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Toronto 2017: Custody review
★★★★☆ Making its way to this year’s TIFF following an award-winning debut at the Venice Film Festival, French director Xavier Legrand’s Custody is a powerful domestic drama of a toxic father who continues to terrorise his family following an unsavoury marital separation. The minute we meet Antoine (Denis Ménochet), there’s a sense of menace. He…
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Film Review: Youth review
★★★★☆ Feng Xiaogang’s epic Youth is a sumptuous telling of a familiar tale. Our story begins in 1970 with He Xiaoping (Miao Miao) joining the elite Arts Troupe, who perform elaborate dances and idealised revolutionary displays to keep up Chinese morale. Coming from a poor family and bullied by her sisters, Xiaoping hopes that the…
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Toronto 2017: You Disappear review
★★★☆☆ Based on a novel by Christian Jungersen, Danish director Peter Schønau Fog’s second feature You Disappear is an intriguing, if not wholly satisfying, family melodrama, buoyed up by decent central performances and an unsentimental directness.Following an epileptic fit, Frederik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is diagnosed with a brain tumour. Though the prognosis is not terminal,…
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Film Review: Stronger
★★★☆☆ On 15 April 2013, two terrorists detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds. Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal), waiting at the finish line for his girlfriend (Tatiana Maslany), lost both his legs yet also identified the culprits. David Gordon Green’s Stronger is one half of a nuanced, intimate depiction of…
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Toronto 2017: Occidental review
★★★☆☆ Screening in the Wavelengths strand at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, Neïl Beloufa’s bonkers Occidental may not offer much in the way of coherence or thematic depth, but its surreal and charming qualities are more than enough to recommend this bizarre farce.Two very shifty looking guys posing as Italians rent a room at the…
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Toronto 2017: Euthanizer review
★★★★☆ As a sideline to his day job, motorbike mechanic Veijo (Matti Onnismaa) puts sick animals down on the cheap, chastising the owners for their indifference to their pain. Teemu Nikki’s Euthanizer reveals itself to be an affecting examination of cruelty.In the film’s opening scene, a young woman brings her old, anaemic cat to be…
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Toronto 2017: 1% review
★★☆☆☆ There are things to like about 1%, Stephen McCallum’s debut feature about the head honchos of biker gang The Copperheads MC, scheming and duking it out in a power struggle. It’s just that sadly, there’s not a great deal to love, with the film never transcending its rote premise. The Copperheads’ President, Knuck (Matt…
VENICE 2026
