Reviews - Page 157

Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.

Review: ‘The Judge’

/

The Judge (Palestine/USA, 82 min.) Dir. Erika Cohn Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   Erika Cohn’s The Judge is a captivating and stirring documentary, which chronicles the story of the first female Sharia judge in the history of the Middle East, Kholoud Faqih. It’s particularly interesting that this documentary, which bares the nuances of Palestinian life and culture, is directed by an American Jewish filmmaker. This combination of cultural diversity and conspicuous female presence on both sides of the camera enlivens the film with riveting and emboldening energy. Once Faqih appears on the screen, she immediately forms a durable connection

Read More

Review: ‘I, Tonya’

/

I, Tonya (USA, 121 min.) Dir. Craig Gillespie, Writ. Steven Rogers Programme: Special Presentations (World Premiere)   “Everybody has their own truth, and life’s what you fucking make of it,” says Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) towards the end of I, Tonya. Harding likes to make her own version of the truth and there’s a lot to enjoy in the warped retelling of her life as the notorious ex-figure skater who holds dual honors as the first American woman to land a successful triple axel and the only athlete to be banned from the sport after (allegedly) conspiring to oust her

Read More

Review: ‘Jim & Andy – The Great Beyond’

/

Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond – the story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman with a very special, contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton (USA/Canada, 95 min.) Dir. Chris Smith Programme: TIFF Docs (North American Premiere)   Please give Milos Forman a round of applause for restraining himself from punching Jim Carrey in the face while shooting Man on the Moon. One sees the two-time Oscar winning director plead with the Canadian-born actor several times to reign in his onset behaviour while inhabiting late comic Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon. Evidence of Carrey’s erratic and exasperating on-set

Read More

Review: ‘The Gospel According to Andre’

/

The Gospel According to Andre (USA, 94 min.) Dir. Kate Novack Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   In The Gospel According to Andre, Kate Novack offers a long needed and detailed examination of Andre Leon Talley’s life and career. Born and raised in the segregated American South, Talley, a six-and-a-half-foot tall black man with a loud voice and decipherable Capote-esque style, has risen through the ranks of the world’s most recognized fashion editors, becoming a fashion legend. Through a set of interviews with his close friends and colleagues, Novack draws a multifaceted portrait of the fashion editor. The film features

Read More

Review: ‘Grace Jones Bloodlight and Bami’

/

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (UK/Ireland, 115 min.) Dir. Sophie Fiennes   Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is the only documentary I’ve ever seen that cites a hat designer in its opening credits. The title card is well earned for hat master Philip Treacy, since Grace Jones brings a fierce chapeau game in nearly every scene of Bloodlight and Bami. Director Sophie Fiennes finds a heck of a subject in the enigmatic style icon from Jamaica, and the range of hats and headgear is just one facet of her singular presence. The film also credits a corset designer, if one

Read More

Review: ‘Jane’

/

Jane (USA, 90 min.) Dir. Brett Morgen Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   I went into Brett Morgen’s doc Jane with some trepidation. Did we really need a new Jane Goodall movie? This one’s different, though. The deal here is that National Geographic gave director Morgen 140 hours of footage of Jane Goodall shot from the 1960s by someone noted in TIFF’s program guide only as “photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick.” Going into the screening, I’m thinking that some German filmmaker found some reason or another to go to Africa in the 1960s—maybe, like Peter Kubelka, he took a

Read More

Review: ‘Gaga: Five Foot Two’

/

Gaga: Five Foot Two (USA, 100 min.) Dir. Chris Moukarbel Programme: Special Events (World Premiere)   A special event lit up the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 8 when Lady Gaga turned Festival Street into a red carpet runway and then transformed the VISA Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre into a rock concert before the premiere of the documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two. Gaga offered a soulful and spine-tingling rendition of “Bad Romance” played only with the accompaniment of a piano and while the overture to the feature presentation might have been stronger than the

Read More

Review: ‘Caniba’

/

Caniba (France, 90 min.) Dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel Programme: Wavelengths (North American Premiere)   “Bring a barf bag,” was a warning I heard from a TIFF insider before I saw Caniba. This wasn’t exactly surprising to hear. I knew two things already about the film in question: one, that Caniba is the new film by Sensory Ethnography Lab-affiliated filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, whose 2012 film Leviathan is, for my money, one of the most inventive, immersive, provocative and nauseating films of recent memory; two, that it’s a film about the cannibal Issei Sagawa, who, in Paris

Read More

Review: ‘Dragonfly Eyes’

/

Dragonfly Eyes (China/USA, 81 min.) Dir. Xu Bing Programme: Wavelengths (North American Premiere)   Xu Bing is a Chinese artist of Ai Weiwei’s vintage—they were even roommates in New York—whose most famous work seems to be Book from the Sky (1987–91), a massive manuscript of beautiful calligraphy that looks like Chinese but is actually gibberish. They say it’s a commentary on Chinese identity’s foundation in the classics and the language. In interviews, Xu seems almost Maoist, calling Mao a great avant-garde artist who spoke the language of the people and moved China out of useless antiquity. The book looks neat,

Read More

Review: ‘One of Us’

/

One of Us (USA, 95 min.) Dir. Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   TIFF Docs programmer Thom Powers calls One of Us a “documentary thriller” in his programme notes for the film. The description couldn’t be more appropriate. This suspenseful, gripping, and incendiary film by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Detropia, Jesus Camp) pulses with urgency as it chronicles the plight of three New Yorkers. The trio of subjects are individuals trying to extricate themselves from the suffocating insularity of the city’s Hasidic community. The need to escape is immediately palpable in this riveting film

Read More

1 … 155 156 157 158 159 … 195
0 $0.00