By: Shannon Page Hunting Elephants certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout, but don’t go into this film expecting a passive movie going experience. The film boasts an impressive international cast that includes Iraqi-born actor Sasson Gabai (who audiences may recognize, or not, from his role in 1988’s Rambo III), Moni Moshonov of Israel, as well as the incomparable Patrick Stewart as a struggling English actor looking for…
By: Shannon Page One of the great things about film festivals is their potential to showcase and foster emerging talent. The Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival’s Local Heroes short film screening is aimed at drawing attention and giving space to local filmmakers. It’s a space where audiences can see what is being created in their own back yards, and where beginning filmmakers have the opportunity to see their work screened alongside more established artists….
Sand Dollars (DIR. Israel Cárdenas, Laura Amelia Guzmán) By: Shannon Page Like the Dominican Republic of its setting, Sand Dollars is both ugly and beautiful; it is complex and often overwhelming in its starkness, yet showcases a landscape that most would equate with paradise. Written and directed by Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, Sand Dollars stars Geraldine Chaplin (daughter of the legendary Charlie Chaplin) as an aging European woman who falls in love with a much…
Fourth Man Out (DIR. Andrew Nackman) By: Shannon Page In many ways, director Andrew Nackman’s first feature length film is a typical “bro comedy”. The central characters are a group of blue-collar men who have been friends since childhood it, and the film emphasizes the value of male friendships. Fourth Man Out focuses on a small-town car mechanic named Adam (Evan Todd) who decides on his twenty-fourth birthday to come out as gay to his three…
Everlasting Love (DIR. Marçal Forés) By: Addison Wylie Everlasting Love is a depressing time at the movies. It’s not scary, all the characters are unlikable, and it slowly shuffles to its grisly finale. With its familiar theme of cruising in an eerie world, I’m reminded of Stranger by the Lake. Though I didn’t particularly like Alain Guiraudie’s slow burn, his film has an edge on Everlasting Love. Stranger by the Lake had elements of conviction in a faceless…
By: Shannon Page It’s not exactly uncommon to find comedic actors who have made the transition, or at least attempted the transition, to more serious acting roles. Nick Kroll’s latest creation, the indie-comedy Adult Beginners, is an undeniably sharp departure from the character-based sketch comedy that the comedian’s fans have come to expect from his Comedy Central show, Kroll Show. Though it has its comic moments, Adult Beginners, which explores the relationship between two estranged…
By: Shannon Page You could be forgiven for feeling like you’ve seen Adult Beginners before – you probably have. Directed by Ross Katz, the film follows 30-something entrepreneur Jake (Nick Kroll) as he loses everything on the eve of his company’s launch and is forced to move in with his somewhat estranged and pregnant sister Justine (Rose Byrne) and brother-in-law Danny (Bobby Cannavale)in the suburbs. Desperate to stay away from Manhattan and his former business…
Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi (DIR. Neil Broffman) By: Shannon Page If you own a computer, have a Facebook account, frequent Twitter, or read the news – basically, if you interact with information and technology at all – you should watch Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi. The emotional and thoughtful film, directed by Neil Broffman, tells the story of a Brown University student who went missing one month prior to the Boston Marathon bombings and…
Elephant’s Dream (DIR. Kristof Bilsen) By: Addison Wylie As Kinshasa’s struggling economy heals after the civil war in the DRC, its population waits for stable change. People try to march on with their community through unfortunate situations with limited resources, but it’s achingly hard. A sequence featuring a reckless fire burning downtown shows the audience how dire Kinshasa’s firefighting team is. Supreme danger spirals out of control, the help is flustered, and panicked pedestrians criticize. …