The Nightingale
The Nightingale is Jennifer Kent’s filmmaking follow-up to her cult hit The Babadook. Continuing her career in discovering horror threaded within suppressed memories, Kent weaves a period drama about redemption after trauma.
Mongrel Media
Knives Out
By: Jolie Featherstone Director Rian Johnson (Looper, Star Wars: Episode XIII – The Last Jedi) makes a triumphant return to his whodunnit-loving form with Knives Out. Fourteen years after his much-loved debut feature, Brick, a passionately-told film noir set in a modern-day Southern California high school, Johnson’s Knives Out charmed audiences with one of the most talked-about films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Pain and Glory
By: Trevor Chartrand Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory is a well-crafted melodrama; an emotional piece weighed heavily by its evocation of sadness and regret. The film stars Antonio Banderas as Salvador Mallo, an aging filmmaker who reflects on his past and the mistakes he’s made – mistakes that seem more clear through older, wiser eyes. Almodóvar explores themes of life, love, family, regret, and retribution, all through the lens of the classic mantra: ‘hindsight is…
After the Wedding
By: Jessica Goddard In the delightful tradition of remaking films and gender swapping the leads – which no one is getting tired of at all – After the Wedding struggles to be convincing in its premise.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld
By: Trevor Chartrand Danish filmmaker/journalist Mads Brügger hits an incredible home run with his latest intense and heartbreaking documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. The film sets out to explore a fifty-year-old unsolved mystery, which is intriguing enough, only to end up unravelling a much larger, gut-churningly appalling conspiracy.
Mike Wallace Is Here
Just as a thoughtful retirement video or an in memoriam can do, Avi Belkin’s well produced outside-the-box doc Mike Wallace Is Here encapsulates its subject’s career and tells a personal story through archival footage.
Maiden
By: Jolie Featherstone Maiden opens in the middle of a cold and unforgiving ocean. Waves as tall as houses tumble and crash. A preternaturally calm voice is heard over the roar: “the ocean is always trying to kill you.” The roar continues. A storm brews in the increasingly agitated sky. “It doesn’t take a break.”
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is an efficient documentary, even if it’s as standard as biopic docs get.
Dogman
By: Trevor Chartrand In Dogman, a mild-mannered dog groomer named Marcello (Marcello Fonte) struggles to make ends meet in his Italian slum. He gets by in his community, which is populated by a variety of small-time crooks, by dealing cocaine to support his ex-wife and their daughter. After standing up to a notorious citizen however, the former boxer and town bully Simoncino (Edoardo Pesce), Marcello loses the respect of his neighbors and is forced to…