In the press notes for “New Order”, director Michel Franco announces that the film is a warning: “If inequality is not addressed by civic means, and if all dissenting voices are silenced, chaos ensues.”
There’s a brief sequence that follows the end-credits of the Nasser brothers’ “Gaza mon amour” that puts the previous 85 minutes into perspective.
Cinema continues to be a reflection of society, and the social and racial disruptions of the current times have been reflected in key titles of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Just over halfway into “Lovers Rock”, at a party where the music has been bursting through the sound systems for much of the runtime, the DJ stops the music and lets the crowd ‘vibe out’ a cappella.
There’s a moment that comes in the final act of “The Kid Detective” that made me yearn for movie theatres more than anything I’ve seen at TIFF this year.
In Philippe Lacôte’s moody “Night of the Kings,” telling stories becomes an act of survival.
In “Monday,” Argyris Papadimitropoulos takes the uncertainty that comes with exploring a new relationship and mines it for two hours as we watch a couple experience the highs, lows and everything in between of a new relationship.
In “Quo Vadis, Aida?” Jasna Đuričić stars as a Srebrenica resident whose position as a translator at a Dutch-run UN base becomes essential when members of the Serbian army encroach on the town.
Last year at TIFF, Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms” presented the experience of an Israeli man acclimating to France as a frenetic, sensual bacchanal of chaos.
Four men walk into a room on a night in February 1964, unaware of how their shared – and distinct – legacies will come to define the best half century in American history.
I’m not sure I’ll see an opening-credits sequence this year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that’s better than that of “Akilla’s Escape”.
This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting the film industry, a smaller slate of films has been rolled out for the virtual TIFF 2020.
There’s a montage sequence in Gavin O’Connor’s “The Way Back” that presents a fascinating distillation of alcoholism.
If viewed as an allegory, or as a film with any philosophical profundities to offer about the world, “The Burnt Orange Heresy” seems to collapse before our eyes.
In “How to Build a Girl”, Johanna Morrigan is a teenaged girl who reinvents herself as a worldly music critic, Dolly Wilde, complete with red hair and a scathing penchant for tearing down musicians.
In “Summerland”, Alice Lamb is entrusted with the care of a young boy seeking safety from his London home in her Kent cottage during the height of World War II.
The social and cultural implications of the present pandemic are so incisive, it feels impossible not to see it in any media that we consume.
Ambition is a tricky thing. On its face, the word, which means “a strong desire to do or achieve something,” is innocuous.
There is scene that comes a little over halfway into “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”, where director/writer Eliza Hittman reveals the meaning and value of the film’s title in one of the most searing moments in cinema of 2020.
Max Barbakow’s directorial debut is another entry in the long line of media about time loops.
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