#TIFF23: “FLORA AND SON” REVIEW
By Amanda Gilmore
Flora and Son is the feel-good film of the year.
Dubliner Flora (Eve Hewson) is a young mother struggling to connect with her teenage son Max (Orén Kinlan). Max has stolen and been caught one too many times. If caught again he’ll be sent to juvie. Knowing Max has an interest in music, Flora brings home an acoustic guitar with the hopes it’ll keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately, Max doesn't take the bait. Stuck with the guitar, Flora decides to learn it and takes ...
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#TIFF23: “LIMBO” REVIEW
By Amanda Gilmore
Australian auteur Ivan Sen delivers a slow-burning Crime Drama that plays as a commentary on the justice system.
Detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) arrives in the Southern Australian mining town of Limbo to investigate the 20-year-old cold case of Charlotte, a local Indigenous girl. Travis has a hunch that the killer may still live locally.
Charlotte’s murder was met with apathy by the investigating officers and the non-Indigenous townsfolk at the time…and ...
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#TIFF23: “THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE” REVIEW
By George Kozera
Germany's official entry for Best International Feature for the 2023 Academy Awards, THE TEACHERS LOUNGE is an extraordinary movie that tackles issues as diverse as racism, teenage rebellion, and misinterpreted events or comments with aplomb and startling finesse. Due to a series of thefts at a high school, a seventh-grade Turkish student is interrogated by school executives, where new math teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch in a hypnotic performance) is an unwilling ...
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#TIFF23: “LEE” REVIEW
By: Amanda Gilmore
Kate Winslet delivers another superb performance in this biopic about model-turned war-correspondent Lee Miller.
The Film follows Lee from the start of her photography career in 1938. The Second World War is just beginning and Lee has a desire to be more than a former model. When she moves to London with her partner Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), the blitz begins and Lee knows she must show the destruction of war.
She became a Photojournalist for ...
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#TIFF23: “LA CHIMERA” REVIEW
By Amanda Gilmore
Set in 1980s Tuscany, the latest from Alice Rohrwacher follows a group of tomb raiders who seek old relics of the Etruscans. All in the group are hoping to strike it rich except their gifted leader, Englishman Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who’s on a spiritual quest into these tombs.
As the title suggests, Arthur is quite literally searching for a chimera: something hoped for but near impossible to achieve. Still grieving over his partner Beniamina’s passing, Arthur ...
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#TIFF23: “A DIFFICULT YEAR” REVIEW
By George Kozera
A DIFFICULT YEAR opens with a series of televised clips, spanning decades, where French government officials warn the citizens of France that they will be facing a difficult year. The audience then is thrown into a frantic “Black Friday’ sales event at a store where shoppers stampede over each other in a frenzied attempt to score a big screen TV or air fryer at affordable prices. We see Albert (Pio Marmai) get one of the last televisions, then arrive at the home of ...
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#TIFF23: DAY DAY FIVE SIGHTINGS – ETHAN HAWKE, LEE BYUNG-HUN, PARK BO-YOUNG, PARK SEO-JOON, BEN BARNES, GEMMA ARTERTON AND ALFRED ENOCH
We've reached that point of the Festival where things begin to wind down as some of the major trade publications begin to pack-up and head home. This however means more movies to see, and this perhaps is my favourite part of the Festival.
Day Five actually was quite intense. Earlier in the day we were lucky to spot right away the Cast of THE CRITIC en route to their midday Premiere. The whodunit stars Sir Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Enoch and Ben Barnes, who was a last minute ...
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#TIFF23: “THE ROYAL HOTEL” REVIEW
By Amanda Gilmore
Director Kitty Green and Actor Julia Garner, who worked together on critically-acclaimed The Assistant, reunite to deliver one of the most intense films of the year.
When Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick), who are backpacking across Australia, run out of money they take the only job available which is at a pub in the outback. Every day the two are forced to serve rowdy, sexist men who come into The Royal Hotel. Soon, Hanna becomes unsettled by the unwarranted ...
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#TIFF23: “HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDE PERSON” REVIEW
By Amanda Gilmore
Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is a teenager — who is really a 68-year-old vampire stuck in a teenage body because vamps age slowly — who has an empathy problem. This problem started at a childhood birthday party when her entire family drank and killed a clown she adored. Now in teenage form, Sasha hasn’t killed a single human. She survives on blood bags from victims of her family.
With the hopes of getting Sasha to finally kill someone, her parents send her to live with ...
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#TIFF23: “FRYBREAD FACE AND ME” REVIEW
By David Baldwin
The year is 1990. Benny (Keir Tallman) lives in the city but has just been informed by his parents that he will be spending the summer at his Grandmother’s house on Navajo Nation. She only speaks Navajo and all the customs and activities are a mystery to Benny. When his bilingual cousin Dawn (Charley Hogan) – or as she is known to the rest of the family, Frybread Face – comes to stay unexpectedly, things start tense and then slowly dissipate into a strong familial ...
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