The Teachers’ Lounge
By: Jolie Featherstone Ilker Çatak’s award-winning feature The Teachers’ Lounge is a scintillating, modern-day fable.
Drama
Freud’s Last Session
Movie goers who have claimed big screen adaptations of stage plays are stilted may be ready to dismiss Freud’s Last Session, but I hope they give it a chance. This two-hander between Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (as neurologist Sigmund Freud) and Matthew Goode (as British author C.S. Lewis) is riveting and reminds viewers about the power of great acting.
The Sweet East
The Sweet East is a coming-of-age tale told by unreliable narrators (screenwriter Nick Pinkerton and director Sean Price Williams, making audacious feature debuts), and centred around a conceited anti-hero with a personality disorder. Your feelings towards that concept alone will reflect how you will react to the film itself. You can try giving it the benefit of the doubt if you’re already feeling irritated, but I’m afraid your efforts will all be for naught.
Blood in the Snow 2023: ‘My Animal’
My Animal, the feature-length directorial debut from music video cinematographer Jacqueline Castel, is a dramatic horror that offers a unique breath of fresh air to the coming-of-age sub-genre.
Raging Grace
Joy (Max Eigenmann) is a Filipina immigrant living in the UK with her young daughter, Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). Because of her undocumented status, Joy struggles to make ends meet and provide a safe, stable home for Grace — often living secretly in the homes she cleans while the wealthy families who live there are away on vacation. But when the aloof and uptight Katherine (Leanne Best) hires Joy as a live-in care-worker for her…
Hands That Bind
Kyle Armstrong’s sophomore feature Hands That Bind is a western that’s more introverted than expected.
The Delinquents
A reclusive bank employee, Morán (Daniel Elías), is tempted to use his privilege to take advantage of his workplace. His plot to rob the bank is on standby until the perfect moment – cue Román (Esteban Bigliardi), a teller who leaves work early and is used as an incidental accomplice once Morán steals $650,000. Román, now more aware, is brought into the fold by the amateur thief and is told to hold the money while…
Toronto After Dark 2023: ‘The Deep Dark’
Nobody “phones it in” for Mathieu Turi’s subterranean thriller The Deep Dark, although their efforts are for naught; simply because this movie isn’t a good fit for their work.