TIFF 2023: ‘Origin’
By: Jolie Featherstone Origin is Ava DuVernay’s latest film and it is, quite simply, a masterpiece.
NEON
Moonage Daydream
Brett Morgen is a brilliant documentarian as seen in The Kid Stays in the Picture, Jane, and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – the last flick mentioned being, what I believe, is one of the best movies ever made about a musician. His latest endeavour Moonage Daydream, a documentary about enigmatic artist David Bowie, is cut from the same cloth as Montage of Heck with the movie resembling a mixture of mediums but, this time,…
A Chiara
A family’s secret unravels in A Chiara, much to the surprise of a formally unaware titular teenager (played well by newcomer Swamy Rotolo, confidently leading the film). Chiara is worried and paranoid about her family’s safety, but she’s also angry that nobody will explain the situation to her. She receives reassurance, but that isn’t enough when she’s witnessed her father fleeing a scene before their family car was blown up.
Pleasure
Pleasure is an incredibly explicit movie about the porn industry. The filmmakers and the cast are allegiant to the movie’s cause and, by doing so, allow boundaries to be crossed in terms of what a movie can usually show. The results are eye-opening, thought-provoking, absurd, disturbing, and sometimes too hard to watch. However, I can’t imagine a “clipped” or “watered down” version of Pleasure. Without its mature assurance and commitment, Ninja Thyberg’s movie wouldn’t strike…