By: Trevor Chartrand The poor, misguided filmmakers behind Up on the Glass use this film as an opportunity to show off amateur movie-making skills at their most mundane. The entire execution of this motion picture – from the script, to the cast, to the camerawork, and beyond – is a masterpiece of dull.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a melancholic psychodrama with spurts of deliberate awkwardness, but should you expect anything else from writer/director Charlie Kaufman?
Lisa Langseth’s Euphoria, which premiered at TIFF three years ago, quietly yet poignantly explores the estranged relationship between two sisters amidst news that one of them is dying. Beautifully written and elegantly directed, Euphoria is as emotionally devastating as it is moving.
I don’t think it’s always required for a filmmaker to have an opinion about war if their movie is about war. Sometimes, the movie simply exists to entertain or educate about a significant historical event. But, if a filmmaker was to tell a story about the effects of war (primarily the long-term psychological impact), I feel like the filmmaker should use the platform to send a message about the value of combat.
Things I Do For Money could be compared to 2004’s You Got Served, which is a movie I thought I wouldn’t be referencing 16 years later. Yet, here we are.
The title She Dies Tomorrow refers to a line spoken by the film’s lead character Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) to her sister Jane (Jane Adams) early on in the movie. Jane shrugs it off, but then slowly becomes obsessed by the possibility that she too could die tomorrow. She goes to a birthday party where she passes on her distressed theory to a group of four (Chris Messina, Katie Aselton, Jennifer Kim, and Tunde Adebimpe),…
“Soapy” is usually a word with a negative connotation, but The Burnt Orange Heresy seems to challenge that. The film is a to-do list of soapy thematic tropes, such as using sex, deception, and even murder to drive its story, yet director Giuseppe Capotondi, screenwriter Scott B. Smith, and a great cast get away with it because the central drama is so interesting and the characters are so beguiling.
By: Jolie Featherstone Based on a true story, as told in the best-selling non-fiction book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, Rod Lurie’s The Outpost is a striking tribute to the U.S. soldiers of Troop 3-61 Cavalry, who went on to become the most decorated unit in the war in Afghanistan.
My experience with the minimalist work of Kelly Reichardt is limited. I had disliked her drab period piece Meek’s Cutoff, but I seemed to be in the minority; I gave her the benefit of the doubt. But after watching her latest drama First Cow, another dull yet highly acclaimed period piece, I’m sticking by my guns but I’m not so forgiving.
