AFCC selects Everything Everywhere All at Once as 2022’s film of the year
This year’s big winners include Eveything Everywhere All at Once, RRR, Top Gun: Maverick, and Banshees of Inisherin.
Author: Hannah Lodge
With NOPE, Jordan Peele takes his biggest risk yet by playing it safe
Every now and then, a film comes along that defies everything that came before.
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON is a tiny miracle
More than a decade ago, a small anthropomorphic shell with a squeaky voice caught the collective eyes of the internet. Marcel, a shell with crude googley eyes and glued-on shoes, charmed in a series of stop-motion shorts where he described the world from his small point of view: a slice of life mockumentary about how he drives a bug for a car, wears a lentil for a hat, and uses human toenails as skis.
MEN – shock and awe or shock and blah?
When Alex Garland made the jump from writing to directing, he was one of the few to successfully make the leap. Known for penning acclaimed films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine, Garland’s directorial debut of Ex Machina in 2014 turned heads. And if his follow up – the 2018 adaptation of the novel Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer – didn’t outright turn heads, it at least tilted them.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE revives an exhausted multi-verse
Leave it to Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – the writer/director duo behind Swiss Army Man, which showed us Paul Dano using Daniel Radcliffe’s corpse as a fart-powered motorboat, because why not – to find a fresh spin on the concept that occupies critical darling territory.
Though uneven, MASTER still manages to horrify
Freshman year of college is a once-in-a-lifetime set of memorable and unique experiences. But that set of experiences varies widely from one person to the next. Will you win the roommate lottery, or will your shared occupancy of your tiny room be a living hell? Will you thrive in a bigger, deeper pond, or will you flounder?
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS: the cure for what ails the modern blockbuster
After this mindfuck of a year, it only feels fitting that we close out the film side of things not with the simple joys of resurrecting comic book characters, but with the more mind-bending and existential experience of wrestling with a revisit to The Matrix.
BEING THE RICARDOS is a tale of two performances
I’ve had insomnia since I was young. It comes and goes, and I’ve found ways to manage or even predict it over the years. It first struck while I was about 10 years old, where I suddenly found myself with a novel issue: lots of time to kill in the …
Don’t let C’MON C’MON fly under your radar
One of this year’s best films is a black-and-white portrait of memories-in-the-making. And, no, I’m not talking about Belfast. Sure, Belfast will be a top Oscar contender – it’s a crowd-pleasing, generic film filled with Oscar-bait performances. But I’m talking about the other, better black-and-white film of this Oscar season: C’mon C’mon.
Don’t Judge THE LAST DUEL on its Looks
Let’s just state it plainly: The Last Duel looks awful. There’s the hair, to start with the superficial – Matt Damon sports a horrendous medieval mullet, while Ben Affleck’s tresses are bleached to oblivion and shaped into a childish bowl cut. It’s not the kind of thing you’d normally comment on, except these haircuts are so supremely and distractingly awful even the cast wondered if director Ridley Scott knew what he was doing with them.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is in on the joke this time around
You can’t really talk about Venom: Let There Be Carnage without talking about what started it all: Venom. When Venom came out in 2018, I didn’t know what to make of it. It felt like it was a random, mad-libs-generated version of a film powered by a strange combination of earnestness and chaos.
TIFF 2021: Terrorizers
This new Terrorizers has a large, but not overwhelming, ensemble cast, focusing on six teenagers in Taipei. It unfolds in chapters, each focusing on a specific character’s point of view, in turn recontextualizing our understanding of events. It’s a fascinating bit of audience immersion in that our expectations are consistently upended the further down the rabbit hole we go and the more characters we’re introduced to. In all, a riveting experience and the best film I’ve seen at TIFF so far.
TIFF 2021: Violet
A few years ago, I was shocked to learn for the first time that not everyone has an inner monologue narrating their life causally running in the background of their minds. You know (or maybe you don’t) – that voice that chimes in to dole out advice, snark, fear, and whatever else we’re thinking but can’t always vocalize. I’ve had one all my life and assumed it was a basic function of living, like hearing and smell. But estimates are that about half of us do, and half of us do not.
Violet is a movie crafted for that half of the movie that knows what the voice sounds like. Or for anyone else curious about how the other half lives.
TIFF 2021: Aloners
A strong first feature debut for writer and director Hong Sung-Eun, Aloners is the perfect ode to the universal feeling of loneliness and isolation that was so deeply intensified during the pandemic.
TIFF 2021: Petite Maman
Clocking in at around 70 minutes, this follow up from Celine Sciamma, the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, was my most eagerly anticipated film of TIFF. Petite Maman explores family relationships, grief, and other emotional arcs through a more playful lens of a child.