Bleak Street makes Blue Velvet look like The Sound of Music. Mexican director Arturo Ripstein shares key artistic touches with David Lynch: surreal longueurs, a sense of claustrophobia, settings that feel tawdrily contemporary and enigmatically retro at the same time. But Bleak Street trawls through a far deeper level of brutal desperation than Blue Velvet. […]
The World of Kanako is not a film that produces a lukewarm reaction. It’s pretty much a love or hate kind of situation. Of course, you can do both. Connections to films can be like relationships, and this is one you can absolutely despise loving. In fact, it’s a response the movie practically demands. There […]
Those who have protested against how Sicario portrayed Mexico as overrun with brutally violent drug cartels, corrupt law enforcement, and distrusted politicians may not be any happier with Kingdom of Shadows. Bernardo Ruiz’s documentary includes all those familiar elements through news montages and sound bites, as well as coverage of the missing and presumed murdered. […]
Based on real events, the story portrayed in this layered film occurs in 1996 in Ethiopia, just three years after women were granted equal rights under the law. In the capitol city of Addis Ababa, social services have been established to assist women and girls, including free legal aid. Meaza Ashenafi (Meron Getnet) heads the […]
One challenge at the Toronto International Film Festival is having enough time to check out films and directors that you may not know, in search of a gem that you (and thousands of others) can discover and claim as your own. Fortunately, a handful of shot-in-the-dark experiences were among the most memorable this year. A […]
The first 10 minutes of Momentum features a ludicrously awful bank heist. The thieves are dressed all in black with motorcycle helmets, and their jumpsuits have what look like computerized, pulsating reflector tape. They all speak through voice distorters, presumably to skirt identity, but in actuality they sound like Cylons from the old Battlestar Galactica. […]
Gimmicks and tricks have been around since the birth of cinema, whether it be Cinemascope, 3-D, or Smell-o-Vision (thank you, John Waters). The ones that stood the test of time generally enhance the overall cinematic experience. Others, such as the Dogme 95 movement and, please God, found footage films, fade into the collective memory of […]
There’s a sequence in the narco thriller Sicario where we’re just watching characters driving. More specifically, it’s protagonist Kate (Emily Blunt) in a big black SUV in the midst of other big black SUVs and Mexican police patrol cars barreling through Juarez, Mexico. They’re transporting a criminal kingpin who’s part of a Mexican drug cartel. […]
In Ashby, clichés and tongue-in-cheek quips abound. Set in a high school where students strictly adhere to stereotypes, the jocks and the geeks keep to themselves. But lo, one Very Special Boy (Nat Wolff) has just enrolled. Will he be doomed to geekdom forever or will he man up and ascend the high school social […]