Kuessipan sneaks up on you. For awhile it feels like a familiar story of race and class and wanting freedom from the confines of family and community as you teeter on the precipice of adulthood.
Continue readingKuessipan (2019)
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For its imagery alone, this bleak and beautiful drama by Ivan Ostrochovský is worth a look, although it’s love of an exquisitely composed frame distances you from the characters.
Continue readingShirley (2020)
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Josephine Decker gives us a rich and textured exploration of feminism and patriarchy, wrapped around a fictionalised account of real-life gothic horror writer Shirley Jackson.
Continue readingThe Killing of Two Lovers (2020)
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Having just watched Black Bear (2020), which explores gender roles in its arty maelstrom of a story, The Killing of Two Lovers shows how to nail it. Robert Machoian immerses us in the head and heart of husband and dad David as his marriages crumbles.
Continue readingBlack Bear (2020)
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I’m not sure what message director Lawrence Michael Levine was ultimately trying to convey in Black Bear but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.
Continue readingBloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)
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This quite astounding docudrama by brothers Bill and Turner Ross seems to coalesce all that is precious and precarious about the US on the brink of the 2016 election that saw Trump come to power and the lives of the powerless crumble.
Continue readingSuk Suk (a.k.a. Twilight’s Kiss) (2019)
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Ray Yeung’s sad and beautiful drama sensitively shows the genteel oppression of family in contemporary Hong Kong.
Continue readingPrayer for a Lost Mitten (Prière pour une Mitaine Perdue) (2020)
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I’m not sure what I was expecting with this low-key Canadian documentary by Jean-François Lesage that uses the lost and found office at the Montreal metro as a jumping off point for a meditation on loss. From the first bleak and beautiful scene of snow falling against a night sky as a clarinet mournfully plays, you know this is going to be about more than a lost mitten.
Continue readingSongs of Repression (2020)
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A documentary about Colonia Dignidad, the German fundamentalist evangelical cult based in a Chilean rural compound and led by subsequently convicted paedophile Paul Schäfer, seems to promise shock and horror at the uncovering of the many atrocities that happened there in the 60s and 70s. Directors Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner manage instead to craft a contemplative and non-didactic meditation on human nature, trauma and denial.
Continue reading9to5: The Story of a Movement (2020)
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Who knew that the comedy 9 to 5 (1980) was based on an actual grassroots organisation that began in the 70s to advocate for fair work conditions for (mainly female) clerical workers?
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