By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation In some ways a return to form for acclaimed indie filmmaker Chloe Zhao in terms of subject matter, Hamnet is positioned on the surface as a much deserved victory lap film after her Best Picture winning Nomadland swept audiences away and her divisive MCU flick Eternals confused those same audiences…
By Matthew Moorcroft Arguably the first movie to have Toronto be a main character in it’s own right, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie begins with a stunt so ludicrous and insane that you would think that they would save it for later on in the film as the big show stopper – parachuting…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation The second film adaptation of the Japanese novel, All You Need is Kill is in a strange scenario that doesn’t happen often in the medium – specifically that of the American version being the first one out of the gate. Having previously been adapted as the great Tom Cruise vehicle…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation Primate is one of those movies that tells you everything you need to know about it basically right away before you even see it. A pet chimpanzee, named Ben, has gone rabid (quite literally, actually) and his loving family is now the target of his aggression. And if you know…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Marty Mauser has a dream. He wants to not just a champion, but THE champion; a name to be remembered by history and the rest of the world. A tall order, and it’s for table tennis no less, a sport that at this point in history was only starting to…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation One of the best things about modern day cinema is that every couple of years, without fail, there is a new Benoit Blanc mystery available to us. The latest, Wake Up Dead Man, is probably the biggest swerve of them yet, removing itself from the class critiques of the prior…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The Sully family is grieving. This also means, due to the nature of Pandora and it’s interconnected ecosystem, the entirety of Pandora is grieving in unison, and that’s the moment we start off with in Avatar: Fire and Ash. James Cameron has always been as ambitious and intense of a…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation The biggest challenge of adapting Wicked was always going to that pesky second act, wasn’t it? I’m not really sure how to review or look at Wicked: For Good (which should really be called Wicked: Part II frankly but that’s neither here nor there), which is a film that ultimately…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation Taking another stab at adapting one of Stephen King’s most provocative novels, The Running Man takes it’s title almost entirely literally as it hits the ground at top speed and never really slows down for a minute. It makes sense then that Edgar Wright – a director known for his…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The master of uncomfortable cinema returning for another round, Yorgos Lanthimos’ gleefully dark and cynical Bugonia opens with a long discussion about the nature of the honeybee worker. Jesse Plemons’ Teddy, who is the focus of the picture, describes honeybees and their service to their queen and how they function…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The bleakly funny and overtly stressful – almost painfully so – If I Had Legs I’d Kick You starts with a flooding, both metaphorically and literally. Literally in that Linda, the at her wit’s end mother and therapist trying to balance having a sick kid, an out of touch husband,…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation I have spent a lot of time mulling over The Secret Agent. Out of all the films I saw at WIFF this year, it’s the one that has most intrigued me from both a technical and analytical perspective. It’s not my first rodeo with Brazilian cinema – far from it…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Kiyoshi Kurosawa really doesn’t like the internet. As far back as the late 90s Kuorsawa has tapped into his own personal fears about what it’s like to live away from people, attached to too much technology and not enough attachment to the people around us. And while he hasn’t really…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Families are complicated. The latest from Joachim Trier, fresh off of international acclaim with the absolutely sublime The Worst Person in the World, directly confronts those complicated families with the level of panache and attunement that we see from him on a regular basis. And what is more complicated then…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Wired like the best built moustraps just waiting to ensnare you in it’s grasp, No Other Choice is maybe the most Park Chan-wook movie ever made in a long line of Park Chan-wook films. With every trademark here – brief bursts of gory violence, pitch black comedy, and impressively jaw-dropping…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation There is a moment early on in Reze Arc, the feature length sequel to one of the most popular anime of the past decade, where our lead Denji – fresh off his defeat of one of his toughest foes yet in Katana Man – goes to the movies with his…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation At this point, it’s easy to call every single Guillermo del Toro film a passion project. If there is one thing consistent about him as a filmmaker, it’s that his personal interests and what kinds of films he wants to make intertwine so seamlessly that you can almost predict what…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation A heist film is not exactly the thing you would expect from Kelly Reichardt on first glance. The slow cinema auteur known for her meticulously and lesiurely paced stories is, on paper, the anti-crime movie filmmaker; not nearly energetic enough to allow for the high intensity needed for a film…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation For a movie about the notions of sound and how it surrounds us almost constantly, The History of Sound is achingly quiet. Nobody really speaks above a whisper, and when they do it’s less about the things they do say and the things that they don’t. It makes sense though,…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Political art is not always flashy. Normally when people think of it it’s through the banner of protests or government buildings or actively discussing political figures or regimes. There is a tendency then to view said political art as a very specific kind of feature, but that could not be…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation With a slow, almost unsure beginning, Omaha is a film that leaves it’s viewer at a distance almost immediately. This is on purpose, clearly by design from a newcomer filmmaker with something to prove. It takes it’s time getting going, just like the car that our core trio are driving…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Just like the music that pumps through the sound systems at a rave, Sirat moves at it’s own pulsating, intricate rhythm. In fact, the first and final images of Sirat are like a loop, showcasing the beginning setup of the sound system itself followed by the desolate leftovers of what…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It’s not hard on the onset to see Rental Family, Hikari’s sophomore feature outing and her first major one in the Hollywood sphere after making a name for herself thanks to her work on Beef, as an easy star vehicle for Brendan Fraser post-Oscar win. Fraser’s own personal persona as…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation There really isn’t another filmmaker quite like Jafar Panahi, whose essential work in Iranian cinema is, of itself, an act of supreme defiance and rage. But while he isn’t the only director in recent memory who has been doing this type of work – just take a look at Mohammad…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation A strange, almost self-analytical “murder” mystery that’s honestly more about it’s investigator then the supposed crime itself, A Private Life certainly has it’s work cut out for it. It wants to be a sophisticated character study that plays with time, perspective, and dream logic, but it also has it’s tongue…
By Matthew Moorcroft Unsure Disney can’t seem to figure out what to do about Tron, huh? The 80s cult hit, which languished in mostly cinephile history books as a strange but important note in the development of VFX, became one of those films that persisted almost by chance. It’s vocal fandom, made up of mostly…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The chance to review a new Paul Thomas Anderson flick is something of a rare opportunity. One of the greatest living American filmmakers – maybe one of the last if AI seemingly has it’s way within the studio system and beyond – and one of our best living auteurs, Anderson…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Bleakness is the name of the game in The Long Walk. Even from it’s first scene, which showcase a mother desperately trying to get her son to not participate in the violent game. But they have no choice – after all, it’s either die trying for a future on the…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Despite their importance being on the same level as characters like Spider-Man or Superman, The Fantastic Four have strangely had something of a rougher time getting adapted. To be fair, it’s not like people haven’t tried – they’ve tried 4 times in fact – but Marvel’s First Family has been…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation The cinematic comedy is in trouble, or at least the film industry seems to think so. Whether it be the rise of streaming, the changing tastes of moviegoers, the rise of mainstream blockbusters embracing comedy as part of their main appeal – for better or worse, depending on the flick…
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