Posts tagged 2019
[VIFF 2019] REVIEW: 'Just Mercy' is just good enough

That’s about the extent Just Mercy is willing to go as far as a critique of America’s justice system, otherwise it’s a fine legal drama that plays like so many other of them do. Based on a true story, Michael B. Jordan plays Bryan, a young black lawyer who studied at Harvard and has started his own practice, the Equal Justice Initiative, in 1980’s Alabama.

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[VIFF 2019] REVIEW: An unwelcome 'Guest of Honour'

The audience is forced to sit through this convoluted tale and half-baked ideas about loss and revenge, conveyed by a multitude of characters with baffling motivations. It’s difficult to encapsulate what each of the characters represent because they spin in all sorts of directions and their motivations seemingly change from scene to scene.

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[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: ‘Lucy in the Sky’ blows up on the launch pad

But in Hawley’s hands, the proceedings are a little bit too experimental to help us develop compassion for Lucy (Natalie Portman). By the time the movie wraps up, Lucy has fallen incredibly far - blasting her former lover in the eyes with insect spray and fleeing the cops in an airport parking garage - but her story is only unintentionally funny, instead of moving.

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[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood', or Episode 913 of the beloved show

It's charming, but at the end of it all we know nothing more about Pittsburgh, Mr. Rogers or his show that we don't already know. (I had a similar critique of Won't You Be My Neighbor?). In this regard the film feels disappointing, because it's only after the credits roll that we realize we sat through a 107-minute episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

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[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: No real feeling to 'Saturday Fiction'

Exposition is generally frowned upon, but in a film featuring double agents, double crosses and a multitude of characters and languages, it lacks a scene that explains everything to the viewer. Perhaps we've been dumbed down by clear struggles between good vs. bad in the superhero genre, but Lou Ye's black-and-white film noir fails to really tie a neat ribbon around its convoluted plot and too-mysterious femme fatale

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[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: ‘Uncut Gems’ unleashes cosmic chaos in the Diamond District

Everywhere Howard goes is a riot of emotion and crosstalk: boasts and deals are made, and (less frequently) apologies are offered. Just as you need a lot of pressure and energy to ignite a star, or to form a gemstone, it’s clear that you need something similar (albeit on a more human scale) to survive in Howard’s world.

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[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: ‘Black Conflux’ zooms in on loneliness

Few emerging filmmakers are quite as confident as Dorsey with how she isolates visuals and sounds, like an insect crawling along the ground while high-school-aged girls chat about boys, or the almost unsettling amplification of the sounds of people chewing or drinking. It’s a technique that suggests the film wants to take a detailed, magnified look at hard-to-spot details in everyday life; a method that echoes the feeling that drives the two main characters: pervasive, almost crippling loneliness.

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TV REVIEW: 'Mindhunter' Season 2 raises the bar and makes you think

There is so much care, thought and detail put into the show it’s mesmerizing even on second watch. The era-specific cars, restaurants, technology and social issues is compelling television. This is absolutely Fincher’s doing, whose characters are often investigators, and by extension pays a lot of attention to details in his scenes.

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REVIEW: 'The Farewell': Say hello to the Asian-American experience

The struggle is real; not only is she hounded by questions about her private life (“are you married yet?”), she also has to put on a brave face to keep the family secret because – as her own family members keep pointing out – she’s far too emotional to be able to hide anything. It’s a low-key shot at “western” values that place more emphasis on being open and free-speaking, compared to stoicism as the more widely-accepted ideal in most Asian cultures.

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REVIEW: ‘The Lion King’ is neutered in more ways than one

It’s funny, though, that this would be the detail that the studio would censor in Jon Favreau’s film, because it’s symbolic of the problem in the release as a whole. Every painstakingly recreated scene feels like a crucial piece of it was sliced out to suit a modus operandi of making a version of The Lion King that might feasibly occur in the real Africa.

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REVIEW: 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' is a familiar welcome-back hug

So much of Tom Holland’s second solo venture as Spider-Man is tied to Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame that you half-expect another superhero to show up, and it’s oddly weird that no one does. The end result is another competent entry in the MCU, the final chapter in the universe’s Phase 3, but a film that doesn’t stand out on its own.

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REVIEW: ‘Men in Black International’ can’t be bothered to save the series

The key ingredient of the original film is the relationship between J and K: one an over-confident, rule-eschewing newbie, the other a grizzled veteran. Even though the screenwriters try to fit Hemsworth and Thompson into a similar dynamic, their characters are paper-thin by comparison

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REVIEW: 'Pokémon Detective Pikachu' discovers nostalgia, but not much else

The kids are the target audience, so all of the Pokémon have to look cute and cuddly. Pikachu is all sorts of fluffy and sassy, the travelling group of squeaking Bulbasaurs are a delight, and the giant earthquake-inducing Torterras really give you a sense of awe and wonder, the kind that kept so many kids (including yours truly) hooked.

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