The Master Cleanse (DIR. Bobby Miller) The Master Cleanse is such a small film, it’s easy to see why it would slip under someone’s radar. It’s 79 minutes long, contains a seemingly underdeveloped plot, and the film doesn’t seem to provide much in way of cultural presence. This is why Bobby Miller’s movie was such a pleasant surprise – it was so endearing.
After a blow-up at a house party over a drunken bad decision, brothers Luke and Travis (Andrew Rotilio and Charlie Hamilton) drive home in a huff and are struck by a pick-up truck. Travis receives minor injuries, but The Hotel Dieu follows a blinded Luke as he endures a strenuous recovery and discovers romance while staying at the hospital.
The People vs. Fritz Bauer is a good film driven by a stellar central performance by Burghart Klaussner (Good Bye Lenin!).
The David Dance is a stage-to-film adaptation from actor/screenwriter Don Scimé. I haven’t seen his original stage play, but I can figure out a couple of things from the movie: Scimé is a passionate artist who cares very deeply about the themes acknowledged in his work, but not enough compromises have been made by director Aprill Winney to make his original material fill feature film britches.
Who Gets the Dog? is destined for cable. And, not even for high profile airtime. It’s the type of fodder that plays in the background while you wrap this year’s Christmas gifts.
Now, this is more like it! Let Her Out is the type of movie I want to see from Canadian filmmaker Cody Calahan.
Alexander Skarsgård (The Legend of Tarzan) and Michael Peña (Ant-Man) are two of New Mexico’s worst cops, yet they’re the kings of their castle in War on Everyone. Their delusion intimidates pedestrians and perps, and their shallowness makes their supervisor Lt. Gerry Stanton (Paul Reiser) confused and ultimately indifferent. However, their false royalty is disrupted when they’re overshadowed by a more diabolical threat, Lord James Mangan (Theo James of The Benefactor and the Divergent series).
The Toronto After Dark Film Festival is one week away, but programmer Justin McConnell wants a head start in frightening you.
Uncle Kent 2 is completely off-the-wall and off-its-rocker. Then again, it’s exactly what one would expect from animator Kent Osborne, whose back catalogue consists of Adventure Time episodes and a co-writer credit on The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
Nicolas Winding Refn makes something out of nothing with his subversive satire The Neon Demon. Most movies do the same, but Refn’s latest grabs ahold of seemingly vacuous source material and manages to build a world within it where decisions are outrageously vain and scary but oddly comprehensible.