ATTENTION: THE REVIEW FOR THIS ARTICLE IS SPOILER-FREE BUT THE “ENDING THEORY” SEGMENT IS VERY SPOILER HEAVY. PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Let me get something out of the way before I begin discussing Blade Runner 2049. The first time I saw the original Blade Runner, I was about eleven or twelve years old and my father had […]
Reviews
“Loving Vincent” Review – Gigantic Achievment in Storytelling But Not Very Much Else
There’s a clear sense of ambition that film-making duo, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, holstered while going about making this project. For those of you who didn’t know, Loving Vincent is the worlds first feature film animated entirely from oil-paintings. Over a hundred artists helped create over sixty thousand paintings that brought the visuals in this film […]
‘First They Killed My Father’ Review: Angelina Jolie’s Labour of Love is Difficult, but Necessary
Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father is clearly a labour of love and a deeply personal project for her (her adopted son, Maddox, is from Cambodia and served as an executive producer). She has been outspoken in her obligation to use her fame to shed a light on this dark part of Cambodia’s history […]
‘American Made’ Review: Too Confident For It’s Own Good
True crime movies have had a massive boost in the last few years, and films in the genre seem to often please audiences. For this very reason, I was excited for American Made. Unfortunately, the film achieves very little of what it attempts to do, and disappoints- especially considering the caliber of the talent involved. […]
TIFF 2017: ‘Pyewacket’ Review
It feels like Adam Macdonald has greatly improved on the tone and stylistic decisions he made on his directorial debut, Backcountry. With Pyewacket, a film about a girl and her friends exploring black magic and Satanism, he is definitely much better at putting together an intense and gritty horror narrative (thanks to its characters) than he is at crafting […]
TIFF 2017: ‘Indian Horse’ Review
Indian Horse tells the story of a boy who’s taken away from his family and thrown into a residential school. He experiences unimaginable horrors in his early years and it’s not until he finds the game of hockey that his life starts to change. Directed by Stephen Campanelli Indian Horse is an honest look at […]
TIFF 2017: ‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’ Review
Craig S. Zahler is back with his first film since the phenomenal Western Bone Tomahawk and man did he knock it out of the park. Brawl in Cell Block 99 follows Bradley (not Brad) who’s played by longtime comedic actor Vince Vaughn. Bradley is a drug runner for his friend Gil because of a need for money to provide […]
‘American Assassin’ Review: A Fine Popcorn Flick
There are really great action movies. And there are some really horrible action movies. And then there’s American Assassin, which isn’t on either end of the spectrum, but sitting pretty at the “it’s fine” marker. Based on the Vince Flynn novel of the same name, American Assassin opens in Ibiza (sans pills and Avicii) where our protagonist, […]
‘Let There Be Light’ Review: Big, Bright and Beautiful
Let There Be Light is an elegant reminder of a distasteful truth: we are yeast. We are continually multiplying while hungrily eating up all the available resources until eventually dying in our own excrement, as physicist Mark Henderson expresses in a grisly metaphor. Thanks to a steady diet of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, […]
TIFF 2017: ‘Breathe’ Review
Andy Serkis is finally making his move to behind the camera. Breathe, his directorial debut (even though he actually filmed The Jungle Book first), is a beautiful love story… Wait, no. It’s an inspirational story of perseverance… Actually, maybe it’s a story about living life to its fullest. I’m not quite sure, but I also don’t really […]