TIFF Journal: ‘Yakuza Apocalypse’
After being the premiere voice in extremist cinema in the 2000s, Takashi Miike (‘Audition‘, ‘Ichi the Killer‘) took about a decade off from delivering his usual cinematic assaults of absolute madness. Howev...
After being the premiere voice in extremist cinema in the 2000s, Takashi Miike (‘Audition‘, ‘Ichi the Killer‘) took about a decade off from delivering his usual cinematic assaults of absolute madness. Howev...
In only a handful of movies, director Ben Wheatley has established himself as one of the most fascinating and unpredictable filmmakers working today. Titles like ‘Kill List’, ‘Sightseers’, and ‘A Fiel...
The Danish filmmaking industry isn’t exactly renowned for its comedies. The culture that produced filmmakers like Lars Von Trier, Nicolas Winding Refn and Thomas Vinterberg doesn’t exactly seem like a laugh factory. Ye...
After taking six years off following the fairly underwhelming ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’, Michael Moore is finally back with his latest cinematic political essay. Unfortunately, some of the rust built up from that time...
It’s been a long, tough seven-year wait for Charlie Kaufman to follow up his directorial debut. There’s no one else out there who can match the morbid wit and surreal emotional honesty of the ‘Being John Malkovic...
With ‘I Smile Back’, Sarah Silverman joins the legion of comedians who have stripped away their funny to deliver a straight and dark performance that showcases the tears behind the smile.
In just a handful of movies including ‘Half Nelson’ and ‘Sugar’, co-writers/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have established themselves as filmmakers dedicated to tales of fumbling outsiders. They appro...
Hey! Here’s a 2015 bio-pic about Hollywood overcoming adversity, so I guess we’re officially in awards season! Fortunately, this is actually a decent one thanks to a deft sense of humor from all involved. You just have...
With ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ and ‘Wild’, Montreal filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée has been on a hot streak of movie-star led character studies that conceal their crowd-pleasing, feel-good nature just long enough to...
As always, just when you think you’ve got a handle on where the hell you think director David Gordon Green is going in his career, he throws in another monkey wrench. After spending time in mainstream comedy following the st...
The tale of Boston crime lord James “Whitey” Bulger is so good that it’s surprising it took this long for someone to make a movie out of it… or at least an official bio-pic anyway. Martin Scorsese flavored his ...
‘Good Kill‘ might have been the first of an inevitable trend of drone warfare movies, but ‘Eye in the Sky’ qualifies as the first actually worth seeking out. Even though director Gavin Hood (‘X-Men Or...