Our third dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, and here’s our second) includes more TIFF world premieres than any of our others so far: Armondo Iannucci’s Dickens adaptation, The Personal Life of David Coppefield; Alice Winocour’s astro not-in-space movie…
Depiction of extreme pain is not the most distressing thing about Finnish BDSM comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. Frequent scenes of a dominatrix strangling a bereaved man until he’s near death don’t even register as outré after the first time. No, what’s hardest to…
Early on in The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, the title character quotes film critic Arlene Croce on The 400 Blows: “You are no longer looking at the film – the film is looking at you.” Debut director Ali LeRoi certainly has aspirations to this,…
With Resin, director Daniel Borgman explores the beauty and the terror of escaping a dysfunctional society and returning to something more simplistic. The film is very much about the clash between calm, placid surfaces and the violent ruptures that disturb them. Jens (Peter Plaugborg)…
With the distinct air of an artist desperate to cobble together a personal story out of some old rusty parts, III is a film absolutely devoid of inspiration that nevertheless spills over with aspiration. Ever since Beyoncé dropped Lemonade, pairing an album release with…
