In Joker: Folie à Deux, the long-awaited sequel to Todd Phillips’s Oscar-winning 2019 film Joker, failed comedian turned spree killer, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), strikes up a romance with fellow Arkham Asylum inmate, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga). Their relationship unfolds over the course of Arthur’s legal trial where the defense attempts to answer the question:…
TIFF 2024 Review: Queer Buries Its Narrative of Longing and Loneliness Under Surrealist Nightmares
Adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by Beat writer William S. Burroughs, Queer follows William Lee (Daniel Craig), a gay man living in Mexico, who longs for love and thinks he’s finally found it in a young man. But has he?
TIFF 2024 Review: Eden Rides on Strong Performances But Needs More Tension
Ron Howard’s Eden is set soon after the First World War, where a doctor and his partner have been living alone on an island in the Galapagos. When new neighbours arrive, the sanctity of their haven is disturbed and all hell breaks loose.
TIFF 2024 Review: Harbin Is a Spy Thriller Aiming to Educate
Harbin, set in 1909 Korea, then a protectorate of Japan, follows a group of resistance fighters trying to gain independence from Japan by assassinating the Prime Minister. For the freedom fighters, the fight for Korean independence has been long and arduous with countless lives lost, and this one last mission could end the Japanese occupation…
TIFF 2024 Review: The Assessment Asks What Makes a Good Parent
In The Assessment, a couple living in a post-apocalyptic future try to pass a series of tests to determine whether they can qualify to have a child. But as the tests become increasingly dangerous and abstract, the couple begins to question their relationship and what they want from their world.
ESSAY: Dead at 55: Survival of the Dead (2009)
Concluding a series that celebrates the fifty-fifth anniversary of Night of the Living Dead with a look at the classic zombie film and its many follow-ups.
TIFF 2024 Review: In Without Blood, the Characters Wage a Personal War After Victory Is Declared
Without Blood is a long conversation between a woman and a man. They could be strangers. Siblings. Friends. Lovers. But what connects them is a nightmare that has changed the course of both of their lives and of so many others. Neither accepts that they’ve been waging their own personal wars, long after the real…
TIFF 2024 Review: Went Up The Hill Can’t Handle Its Dark Subject Matter
Went Up the Hill is an ambitious attempt to metamorphose a ghost story into something deeper and darker. Unfortunately, the film tries to juggle far too many themes and ends up unable to flesh out any.
TIFF 2024 Review: Daniela Forever Warns Against Skipping the Grieving Process
In Daniela Forever, a couple in the honeymoon phase of their relationship is torn apart by circumstances beyond their control. The surviving partner finds that bereavement is too overwhelming; he’d rather skip it altogether.
TIFF 2024 Review: The Life of Chuck Searches For Joy in Small Moments
The Life of Chuck tells the three-part story of one man’s life and the memories he left with the people in his life. Based on a Stephen King novella, the Mike Flanagan film aims to make joy in a cynical world. Does it succeed?
TIFF 2024 Review: Can I Get a Witness? Begs Humanity to Fix Itself Before We Need to Make Extreme Sacrifices
How far will humanity go to save itself and the planet? Are we willing to make the sacrifices called for to ensure the next generation doesn’t suffer like ours? In Ann Marie Fleming’s Can I Get a Witness?, the audience is asked to bear witness to the extreme choices humanity must make to survive.
TIFF 2024 Review: Love in the Big City Is Full of Cliches and Tropes, But It Somehow Makes You Love It
Based on the novel by Korean author Sang Young Park, Love in the Big City is a coming-of-age and coming-out story set in Seoul, against a backdrop of a society too rigid to accept people who are different.