Catching up with some premieres from Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival including Reptile, Woman of the Hour, and the Dead Don’t Hurt.
Category: Reviews
Telluride 2023: dispatches from Anatomy of a Fall, Poor Things, and El Conde
For the fourth day of the Telluride Film Festival, we caught screenings of fresh takes on familiar myths in the form of Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, and El Conde.
Telluride 2023: dispatches from The Taste of Things, All of Us Strangers, and The Royal Hotel
For the third day of the Telluride Film Festival, we caught screenings of The Royal Hotel, All of Us Strangers, and The Taste of Things.
Telluride 2023: dispatches from the Zone of Interest, A Strange Way of Life, and Nyad
For the second day of the Telluride Film Festival, we caught the world premiere of Nyad plus A Strange Way of Life and Cannes Grand Prix winner The Zone of Interest.
Telluride 2023: dispatches from premieres of The Bikeriders, Rustin, and Saltburn
Telluride Film Festival kicked off the 50th edition of “The SHOW” on Thursday afternoon, complete with a luchador erupting from a giant cake on the town’s main thoroughfare and a host of world premiere screenings sprawling out over an extra day. Quick takes below, with updates throughout the festival.
The Moon is Korea’s answer to Apollo 11 on steroids
As two seasoned space men are out fixing the damage on their lunar-bound rocket, a catastrophic explosion sends one out into oblivion and punctures the others’ suit leaving the rookie Hwang Seon-woo (Kyung-soo Do) to fend for himself in an increasingly dangerous thrill-ride of a mission.
Landscape with Invisible Hand creates a weird, yet apt look at inequity but falls a bit flat
Aliens have made contact. They aren’t the grey, lanky kind so often portrayed, but a flat, squishy rectangle… think pink, fleshy end table with eyestalks. The Vuvv communicate through scratches and scrapes via pads at the end of their front appendages. Neither have they “come in peace” or aggression, they’re here to get access to humanity and our resources using commerce as the common language.
Seong-hun Kim’s Ransomed isn’t your typical political thriller
Based on the true story of an eager South Korean diplomat, Min-joon (Ha Jung-woo) who risks his life to save a colleague. Set in the 1980’s at the height of Lebonese warring factions, Min-joon is leaving the Korean Diplomatic office in Seoul for the night and happens to pick up a call containing a coded message. A colleague who’d been given up for dead after being kidnapped in Beirut long ago managed to make contact in hopes of finally being rescued.
Dreamin’ Wild revisits the curious revival of the Emerson Brothers
Dreamin’ Wild (2022 | USA | 110 min. | Bill Pohlad) Like Bill Pohlad’s Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy, his retelling of what happened when …
Cowabunga dudes! TMNT: Mutant Mayhem sparks a second-wave of Turtle Mania.
What a time for Nineties Kids to be alive with access to massive studio filmmaking budgets! In what’s been a pretty great summer of adult filmmakers playing with (and recontextualizing) their childhood toys on the big screen, comes another strong nostalgia play in the form of TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Spearheaded by “permanent teenager” Seth Rogen, we get a satisfying reboot of the teen turtles who cowabunga’ed their way into pop culture ubiquity when they made the jump from comics into morning cartoons, film, video games, and action figure adaptations in the late 1980s.