Early in Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy, based on the best selling novels by David and Nic Sheff, David (Steve Carrell) is told that relapse is to be expected in addiction recovery – even thought of as one of the…
‘A Star is Born’ Review: This Musically Inclined Romance is Uneven but Undoubtedly Evocative
A Star is Born,as the fourth iteration of this story, needed to breathe new life into the reincarnatio, an idea that the film references when talking about the familiar and repetitive nature of music. There are only so many notes…
Album Reviews: Joyce Manor – “Million Dollars to Kill Me”
There seems to be a balance to the equation of pop-punk. Not exactly a chemical compound, but there is a mixture that most pop-punk bands seem to follow. The volume level of the guitars has to balance with the level…
The Film Canon: Lucía (1968)
Alongside Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964), Humberto Solás’ Lucía (1968) was one of the formative texts of the new Cuban cinema established in the wake of Fidel Castro’s 1959 Cuban Revolution. Where Kalatozov’s film was a Mosfilm Soviet co-production,…
Assassination Nation Movie Review: A fun but forgettable play on genre
In its 110-minute runtime Assassination Nation covers as much depressing, violent and timely content as your local cable news channel covers in a week. You see all of these topics and issues from the perspective of high school students with the…
‘Burning’ Review: Lee Chang-dong’s Newest Masterpiece is Haunting and Magnificent | TIFF 2018
How complacent are we in our ability, or lack thereof, to retain memory in the fashion in which it is materialized? How complicit are we when inability to see past our own desires, our own justifications and belief systems leads…
‘Boy Erased’ Review: A Strong Ensemble Stabilizes Joel Edgerton’s Adaptation | TIFF 2018
Based on Garrard Conley’s memoir Boy Erased: A Memoir, writer director and Joel Edgerton does fine work in adapting from the source material a story of familial and internal strife that intrinsically works onscreen in the micro scale opposed to the macro.…