By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. South African filmmaker Jenna Bass has made somewhat of a splash with her third film, Flatland, as it makes its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival after it opened the Panorama section of the Berlinale earlier this year. Aside from previous features Love the One […]
Bringing the Magic To Her Music: Linda Ronstadt – The Sound of My Voice
Elias Savada
September 23, 2019
By Elias Savada. No, Linda Ronstadt is not dead. While Parkinson’s Disease has sadly removed her from the public and concert stage for over a decade, the joy of her music is heartwarmingly captured in this greatest-hits-and-more salute from award-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The extraordinarily talented artist, […]
A Young Woman’s Noble Fight: Ms. Purple
Yun-hua Chen
September 22, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Justin Chon, the American actor of Korean descent who made his name since his role as Eric in The Twilight Saga a decade ago, has established an increasingly distinct directorial voice addressing Asian-American stories and strikes a chord with ethnic minorities who rarely enter the mainstream in […]
Hitler is Not Your Friend: Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (Toronto International Film Festival)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
September 19, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit functions as the final installment of the filmmaker’s informal trilogy that focuses on the subjective experience of boyhood. In 2010’s Boy, the eponymous protagonist is an 11-year-old played by James Rolleston, while in 2016’s […]
Portrait of a Lady on File: Seberg (Toronto International Film Festival)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
September 19, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Although often unspoken, there is a frequently assumed “right” and “wrong” way to approach an artist’s body of work, be they a novelist, composer, director or actor. In this sense, I came to Jean Seberg all wrong. My first encounter with her was not the default “essentials” […]
Drenched with Grim Teen Angst: Monos
Elias Savada
September 19, 2019
By Elias Savada. There’s a certain phantasmagoria at play in Alejandro Landes’ Monos, in which a group of eight teenagers are living an odd communal life in the mountains of Latin America. Maybe it’s the altitude – they live in a spartan, often muddy, encampment high above the clouds and […]
Think You Know the Syrian Conflict? Think Again: For Sama
September 16, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Many years ago, I attended a scientific conference in Damascus. I was touched by the beauty of the place and hospitality of its people. Many of the conference delegates stayed a few extra days to visit Aleppo. They described as a truly historical city of unrivalled beauty […]
On Mutants, Monsters and Mushroom Clouds – Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese Atomic Cinema, 1951-1967 by Mike Bogue
September 13, 2019
A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Apocalypse Then (McFarland, 2017) is an informative and entertaining examination, and comparison, of science fiction films from the U.S. and Japan with both indirect and direct ties to the “nuclear threat,” such as testing, accidents, fallout, radiation, and war. The author Mike Bogue, an American […]
A Hidden Gem: Interview with Trương Minh Quý (Nhà cây / Tree House, 2019)
Yun-hua Chen
September 10, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. A hidden gem in the sidebar section “Concorso Cineasti del presente” at Locarno Film Festival, Trương Minh Quý’s Nhà cây (Tree House) is a co-production from Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, France and China which sets in the futuristic 2045 but recounts a story of the past. In the imagined […]
They’ve Come to Save Us!: Gothic Inspiration Returns in Toy Story 4
September 9, 2019
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By Matthew Sorrento. Like all films in the series, the fourth installment of Toy Story (2019) concerns kids’ fears of abandonment, with lost toys working in place of children. Once again, the toys get lost for an adventure, for some form or return/reconciliation at the conclusion. There’s only so much […]