#‘Spring Blossom’ Review: A Controversial Subject is Tackled With Grace, Humor, and Wisdom [TIFF 2020]

#‘Spring Blossom’ Review: A Controversial Subject is Tackled With Grace, Humor, and Wisdom [TIFF 2020]

“#‘Spring Blossom’ Review: A Controversial Subject is Tackled With Grace, Humor, and Wisdom [TIFF 2020]” The most striking thing about Spring Blossom, in which a 16-year-old girl falls in love with a man in his mid-thirties, is that it stars 20-year-old director Suzanne Lindon in the leading role. The 2020 Cannes and TIFF selection is…

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#Fireball Visitors From Darker Worlds Review – /Film

#Fireball Visitors From Darker Worlds Review – /Film

“#Fireball Visitors From Darker Worlds Review – /Film” There are few things more soothing and sardonic than hearing Werner Herzog opine about an impending apocalypse. Along with collaborator and co-director Clive Oppenheimer, the filmmakers provide a science-rich documentary freed from the didacticism of the genre, reveling instead in the true wonder and weirdness of our…

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#‘Inconvenient Indian’ Review: An Illuminating Documentary About Cultures Often Ignored [TIFF]

#‘Inconvenient Indian’ Review: An Illuminating Documentary About Cultures Often Ignored [TIFF]

“#‘Inconvenient Indian’ Review: An Illuminating Documentary About Cultures Often Ignored [TIFF]” In 2012 Thomas King published The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, a compendium of his writings about what it means to be Native, and the types of stories both ascribed to, and told by, the various individuals broadly…

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#A Conspiracy and a Family – /Film

#A Conspiracy and a Family – /Film

“#A Conspiracy and a Family – /Film” We live in a time that fetishizes a post-truth. In our post-fact world, suspicion of institutions is at an all time high, and citizens on both left and right find ways to pretzel themselves into believing in grand conspiracies as the mundane facts of incompetence and hubris feel…

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#A Film That Needs an Audience – /Film

#A Film That Needs an Audience – /Film

“#A Film That Needs an Audience – /Film” During these times of social-distancing, it’s impossible to know how Get The Hell Out, part of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness slate, would have played to a boisterous and welcoming crowd. It’s fair to say it would have been a lot more fun with…

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#Rare Food & the Men Who Seek It – /Film

#Rare Food & the Men Who Seek It – /Film

“#Rare Food & the Men Who Seek It – /Film” Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw have crafted a near fairy tale look at the life of some irate Italians as they clamber through the forest seeking a delicacy that by weight is more valuable than gold. The Truffle Hunters is a beautiful, experiential documentary, taking…

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#A Total Misfire on Every Level – /Film

#A Total Misfire on Every Level – /Film

“#A Total Misfire on Every Level – /Film” I did not care for I Care A Lot. J Blakeson’s tonally deft and awkward thriller begins by introducing us to Marla (Rosamund Pike), a taut, chilly figure tasked by the court to provide care to those who have fallen through the cracks. Ostensibly a legal guardian,…

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#Anthony Hopkins at His Best – /Film

#Anthony Hopkins at His Best – /Film

“#Anthony Hopkins at His Best – /Film” One of the main joys of film festivals is to go into a film knowing as little as possible, guided by the hopes that the programmers have selected something worthy of your time. I’d missed Florian Zeller’s film The Father at its Sundance premiere, conflating it with another…

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