This review contains spoilers for the film The Life of Chuck. 

Filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s genre-bending adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same name is both uplifting and poignant. Best known for his bone-chilling work (Oculus, The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep), it’s not a surprise that this movie contained elements of horror, yet still managed to maintain a resounding feeling of optimism. 

Split into three acts, and narrated by Nick Offerman, the story is unorthodoxly told in reverse chronological order. 

Beginning with Act Three, titled “Thanks Chuck,” we see the entire planet on the verge of collapse. There is a worldwide environmental crisis and the earth is burning. California has faced a massive earthquake that has left the majority of the state in ruins and underwater. Volcanoes have erupted in Germany. China is facing a disastrous famine. It’s the end of times, and the light is dimming on humanity. 

Despite the dreadful circumstances, school teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor)

attempts to hold conferences with parents, all of whom are uninvested in their childrens’ student affairs and instead devastated that the internet has completely shut down. Just the mere thought of the extinction of PornHub is enough to move one parent to tears. 

The sounds and projections of catastrophe are soon drowned out by vague billboard, radio, and television ads, all thanking some guy named Charles Krantz – A.K.A. Chuck – for 39 great years. Thirty-nine great years of what? What are we thankful for? WHO is he? Unfortunately, no one knows and the film makes no effort to disclose this key information too prematurely. 

The height of the devastation brings Marty and his ex-wife Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), a nurse overseeing so many deaths that her team has nicknamed itself “The Suicide Squad,” closer than they ever had been in marriage. Watching the world implode around them, the pair rely on each other for comfort in the final hours of doomsday.  

The city has gone completely dark. The moon, Mars, followed by all of the stars in the solar system quickly begin to vanish one-by-one. There’s a feeling of hopelessness in the atmosphere. The only glimmer of light are projections of Chuck, donning a thin smile, onto the windows of homes in the neighbourhood. 

As life as we know it comes crashing down and the two await their undetermined fate, Marty is about to tell Felicia he loves her one last time just before the screen suddenly cuts to black. 

The abrupt end of the first act leaves the viewer bewildered with more questions than answers, including one blaring query: who the heck is Chuck?! 

Act Two, entitled “Buskers Forever,” opens to a brighter scene in the midst of a bustling outdoor shopping centre. 

We’re introduced to Taylor Frank (Taylor Gordon), a Juilliard drop-out and extremely talented busking drummer, Janice Halliday (Annalise Basso), a woman that happens to be on the receiving end of a recent break-up, and finally, we meet Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), a white-collar accountant on a business trip casually passing through the plaza. 

The beat of Taylor’s punchy drumming strikes the seemingly straightforward Chuck, prompting him to stop, set down his briefcase, and treat the audience to a surprisingly remarkable seven-minute dance break. The evidently gifted Chuck reels in Janice, and the pair put on an extraordinarily upbeat performance for the surrounding crowd worthy of an encore.  

The trio, brought together at random by the liberating joy of music and dance, part their separate ways forever. Their chance encounter is a heartfelt reminder that some of life’s greatest moments can appear from the most unexpected places.

It’s revealed that Chuck is suffering from a terminal illness and has less than one year left to live, but he doesn’t know it yet. All he knows is that this one ordinary day was perhaps one of the best days of his life. 

Act One, titled “I Contain Multitudes,” is the longest of the three and finally gives the audience a full explanation for their burning questions.

Chuck was orphaned at the age of seven following a tragic car accident that claimed the life of his parents and unborn sister. 

He’s raised by his loving grandparents, Albie and Sarah Krantz (Mark Hamill and Mia Sarah) – affectionately dubbed Zayde and Bubbe. While his grandfather contained all the discernable traits of a bookkeeper – orderly and slightly rigid – his grandmother on the other hand was full of life, a traditional stay-at-home wife that secretly loved rock-and-roll music. 

Sarah taught Chuck everything about dancing, in which he proved to be a natural. From busting moves together in the kitchen to watching classic musicals, he was well equipped to eventually join the school dance club and become the most gifted among the other students. 

Albie, however, brings Chuck back to reality, reminding him that he’d be better off pursuing a more practical profession instead. 

“The world loves dancers, but it needs accountants,” he explained to Chuck. 

In school, Chuck seeks understanding in Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem “Songs of Myself,” particularly interested in the meaning of the line “I am large, I contain multitudes.” His teacher, Miss Richards (Kate Siegal) powerfully broadens his view, defining the complexities of the world and everything he knows within it as a part of him that he’s in divine control of. 

The staggered tale begins to fall in place with this clarity; the planet is crumbling metaphorically because the world as Chuck knows it is fading in reality. As the title of the film suggests, we’re experiencing his universe, as he’s in the process of dying after living for 39 great years. 

The Life of Chuck is a sentimental story of life rather than death. It profoundly explores the emotional depth of the human experience through love, friendship, family, loss, and grief. By the end, the viewer can’t help but be enthralled by the eponymous Chuck, whom at first we did not know, but will now mourn. 

The film’s initially perplexing storytelling is rewarding to those who are patient and invested in taking time to unravel the multiple layers of Chuck. His awe-inspiring story serves as a reminder to be appreciative of the little things in this fleeting life and to dance like nobody’s watching. 

The Life of Chuck initially premiered at TIFF on Sept. 6, but it’s uncertain when it will be released in theatres. 

The post TIFF Review: Award-winning ‘The Life is Chuck’ captures bittersweet dance of life and death, as well as the hearts of viewers appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This article contains spoilers for the movie Flow.

Flow is an animated fantasy film about a lonesome cat who is forced to work with a whole range of animals after a great flood overtakes all of their habitats. 

On Sept. 14, the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and wowed both adults and kids alike given that it was one of the few animated movies that made it to the festival. 

Although the movie is animated and has absolutely no dialogue, this is not a film that can just be put on the background while mindlessly scrolling on social media. You have to pay extra attention because the sounds are from nature and the animals. 

Flow was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. 

Before the film started, Zilbalodis confessed to the audience he identified with the main character, a nameless cat, because of his fear of working with others and self-sufficient nature. 

I, too, nodded my head in agreement and was even more intrigued by the title of the movie and the journey we were about to embark on.

Aesthetically, the film feels like an RPG video game with the blend of pixelated animals and realistic landscapes. I was surprised the graphics weren’t as high-tech as a lot of other animated films, but I also liked the grainy imagery at the same time. 

The beginning focuses on a small cat with wandering eyes, but who mainly likes to keep to himself. However, all of the other animals are willing to help him right away with the unexpected hurdles he’ll have to face.

The flow of the movie starts immediately. After wandering around the forest, the kitty hears a rumbling and a team of moose rummage through along with a group of barking dogs. Instead of taking the warning, the cat just looks beyond the horizon to see what happens. 

There were moments in the movie that forces you to pay attention because you’re in a world of various animals and species who can only communicate through sounds. I’lll never forget the moment the cat was caught up in a rush of water that eventually damaged his home and took him out into a deep lake he could barely swim in. 

I enjoyed the playful use of stereotypes of animals throughout Flow, like when one of the dogs was so happy-go-lucky that all he wanted to do was bark and play around, despite the entire forest basically being under water. It shows us that sometimes the best attitude to have in adverse situations is to just be grateful to be alive. 

Most of the movie takes place on a raft that continues to flow wherever the water takes them. The crew of animals have to face weather challenges, figuring out if they should go back to their own clans, and how to navigate life both individually and together.

Teamwork was at the centre of the movie. I thought it was interesting that the cat kept resisting that he was part of the team, while everyone had already accepted that they needed each other if they wanted to survive. 

The audience gets to see the beautiful world that the Latvian director and writers created, from tropical rainforests, lush swamps, and European-inspired boat corridors. Flow encapsulates the beautiful landscapes and timing of Mother Nature. 

One of my favourite parts of the movie is when a large bird selflessly serves as the cat’s protector. The cat is almost afraid of everything because he doesn’t trust anyone other than himself. When he was sprinting because he didn’t know what was happening around him, the large bird decided to protect him. 

However, it was at the expense of being humiliated in front of his tribe and even getting one of his wings injured. For the rest of the movie, there’s this image of the bird hovering over the cat. I was touched by his behaviour because he fought for a cause that he believed in regardless of what his own species thought of him. 

In fact, all of the animals leave their own tribes to help each other. The lemur was a shadow character to the cat with his obsession of collecting material possessions. It was almost like a safety mechanism that we humans resort to, where keeping or taking care of something makes us feel like we have some sort of control and protection over ourselves. 

That idea was disbanded too when several glass bottles and mirrors either broke or floated away in the flowing waters. 

Eventually, the direction of the water took the animals back to their own tribes, leaving the cat almost heartbroken. But then, they all came back to each other out of their own choice, rather than when the flood first forced them together. 

This really had me thinking about the idea of free will and sometimes how we have a choice and other times we just have to obey what life presents us. 

What I found the most interesting is that the cat is usually the only one yearning for a specific outcome, whether that’s wishing his home was never destroyed or that the other animals don’t leave him. Meanwhile, everyone else is simply accepting what’s happening and then deciding what they’re going to do based on the current circumstances rather than focusing on what they want in the future. 

The last bit of the movie blew me away when the cat and one of the other animals were about to die. 

The animals, including the dog, and the dog’s friends joined up to help the cat. However, the dogs that weren’t on the journey got distracted by chasing rabbits instead of saving the cat, showing the power of focus and undoubtedly believing in a larger purpose even if that means sacrificing those little impulses that can cloud your judgment. 

Flow is a movie for all of us who are questioning if we are truly in control of our lives, and  teaches us that sometimes, all we need to do is step back, breathe, and go with the flow.

The post TIFF Review: Animated film ‘Flow’ explores free will and teamwork through the eyes of a lonesome cat, without using any dialogue appeared first on NOW Toronto.

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 12, the film is as equally eerie as it is alluring, bringing you on a wrestling internal battle of trying to decipher reality from fantasy, with a compelling Sarah Paulson at the centre. 

This article contains spoilers for the film ‘Hold Your Breath.’

Opening in a field, the sight of three little girls innocently playing amongst the tall grass is abruptly cut by the sounds of wailing, aggressive coughing and the darkness of dust. 

It was all a dream, albeit induced by heavy sleeping pills, and Paulson’s character Margaret Bellum, thankfully sighs. 

The year is 1933, set in a nearly barren, dirt-ridden town in Oklahoma. 

The first few minutes set the tone for an environment on the brink of apocalypse: the crops are dry, the farm animals are running out of supply, the children are getting sick and dying, and no one can breathe due to constant suffocating dust storms.  

Margaret’s daughters, who we saw in the beginning, are often kept inside because of the deadly storms. There are only two girls now; the youngest, Ada June Bellum, died from scarlet fever years prior. Regardless, Margaret loves her girls dearly and protects them with all of her resources (including her shotgun), especially being the only parent present in the household since their father travelled to Philadelphia. 

Eldest daughter Rose (Amiah Miller) keeps her younger deaf sister Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins) entertained (and scared) with the spine-chilling story of “The Gray Man.” The tale follows an ominous, faceless man that hides himself in the dust. He seeps into the cracks, and if you breathe him in, he’ll do terrible things. 

Their ghastly storytime is cut short however, with Margaret insisting that the story is not real. 

From there, several unexplainable incidents occur; Ollie begins to see a figure in the shadows, the family’s cow is set loose, and there are constant footsteps in the barn. 

The latter turns out to be a man, who identifies himself as Wallace Grady (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), allegedly sent by Margaret’s husband Henry to check on the family. 

Wallace claims to be a healer – a “man of the cloth” if you will. Although facing much doubt and hesitancy from Margaret, he earns his keep in the household after curing Rose’s constant nose bleeds from the dust. 

However, a letter from Henry vindicates Margaret’s intuition. Wallace is a thief and a murderer on the loose who has come to rob the family. After facing the barrel of Margaret’s shotgun, he leaves, but not before promising one thing: they’re not going to be able to stop “The Gray Man.”

All hell breaks loose. Nightmares ensue. The girls’ beds are set on fire. Paranoia is at an all-time high. The house is completely covered up, not even the light of day can intrude. Is that Wallace at the door again or is it the dust knocking? Who knows. 

Between Margaret’s now nightly bouts of hallucinating sleep-walking leading to terrifyingly jumpy awakenings and the menacing whirrs from the dust storm breaking the frequent silence, the audience was on edge as the story unfolded. This is perhaps the most engaging yet disorienting part of the film. 

From here, we were all shaken by some deeply disturbing moments, such as Margaret slitting her thigh with a knife and using her blood as cheek blush or sewing a needle directly through her palm. As I looked around, audience members watched through their hands covering their eyes, some looking away entirely. At this point, Margaret feels no pain, and instead we as viewers are tormented by the gore. 

Margaret’s state of confusion, unaware of the difference between real life and slumber, leads her on a journey so petrifying that the townspeople are concerned and even her children are afraid. The mother they adored is nothing but a vessel that “The Gray Man” has now inhibited.

Realizing the damage she’s done, Margaret decides it’s time to reconnect with Ada in the afterlife. Distributing her crushed sleeping pills in bowls of soup, she wishes to bring the girls with her too. 

Refusing to fall into her mother’s fatal trap, Rose makes the heartbreakingly brave decision to trick her mother, sending her outside during a dust storm in search of Ollie. Recognizing the only way to love her mother is to let her go, Rose cuts the rope that connected Margaret to the home, leaving her lost and suffocating in the stifling environment. 

The film has an inspirational ending, with the girls aboard a train, leaving their past behind, but not before we see shots of dust dwindling, a reminder of the trauma that will always live inside of them. 

Hold Your Breath was quite literally breathtaking. As unsettling as the atmosphere was, it was also starkly beautiful. As someone who isn’t very fond of horror movies, the psychological aspect kept me locked in, wondering just how far Margaret would be willing to go to protect her family. 

With this film, Sarah Paulson has solidified herself as this generation’s scream queen. Past roles such as in American Horror Story, Run and Ratched were all a warm-up to becoming Margaret in Hold Your Breath, which is yet another convincingly chilling character that showcases her depth and flexibility as a horror movie icon.  

Hold Your Breath will be released by Searchlight Pictures as a Hulu original film in the U.S. on Oct. 3.

The post TIFF REVIEW: ‘Hold Your Breath’ offers a dark insight into the depths of a mother’s love, keeping you on the edge of your seat the whole time  appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This article contains spoilers for the movie Saturday Night.

Saturday Night is a dramedy about the last ninety minutes right before the opening night of Saturday Night Live in 1975, starring legends like Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, and Lamorne Morris, along with Gabriel Labelle, Rachel Sennott, Dylan O’Brien, and Jon Batiste. 

On Sept. 13, the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and definitely didn’t disappoint. 

What I appreciated most was that the cast of characters was entirely based on the original 1975 cast, which made the audience feel like they were going on the same journey as those actors did back then. 

The movie encapsulated the culture and social fabric of the mid 70’s with SNL’s first musician Billy Preston played by Jon Batiste, who’s currently an in-house jazz musician for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

Labelle was the star of the movie, playing a young and hopeful Lorne Michaels along with Sennott who played Rosie Shuster, Michaels’ wife at the time. 

Michaels’ character was both inspiring and delusional, two qualities necessary for a successful showrunner ready to put forth creative work that had never been done before on major American television network NBC.

Immediately, Saturday Night inserted the audience into the world of what it was like on that 1975 rainy New York evening. Groups of grown up “theatre kids” pranced around in the hallway, comedians from all over the world submitted their skits and were standing with cats and unusual props, and stereotype-defying young women were eager to prove their acting skills. 

There was a whiteboard filled with Michael’s sloppily organized, pastel-coloured post-it notes that started to overlap one another. A supportive yet concerned Rosie emulated a midwife character, who was committed to birthing the first episode no matter what it took. 

That included sucking up to who would be known as Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets), played by Nicholas Braun. He threw one of the largest adult tantrums because he was forced to dress up in a bumblebee costume. 

Although I felt like that part was a bit dramatic, the cinematography was on point with the zoomed-in focus of blowing a cigarette to the pouting of Henson, showing the Hollywood pompousness of actors feeling like they’re too good to be playing certain roles. 

That whiteboard signified what would shape SNL for the rest of its time. The audience kept seeing it as a place where post-its would fall off while characters would just stare at it with their fingers crossed that they wouldn’t be cut from the show.

 Eventually, Michaels completely wiped everything off the board altogether. 

That disorganization and constant on-edge feeling of “what if we get sent home?” made you care about all of the crew that Lorne had brought together. They were young actors trying to make a difference and stand up to old men who were more preoccupied with playing reruns of Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show.”

Dafoe and Whiplash’s J.K. Simmons came into Saturday Night as rough top network executives showing the pressure and glass ceilings that many of today’s writers and directors in Hollywood have to face.

Dafoe owned his role as the charismatic theatre businessman and publicist David Tebet. His mind games with Michaels were meant to turn the TV writer off, but Michaels maintained an innocent charm and faithfulness to what he was doing. 

It honestly reminded me of a child-like attitude where children don’t fight back when they truly believe in something, but they just smile and say “you’ll see.”

This was perfectly depicted in all of the cast and a designated crew taking turns laying down a brick flooring, where all of those final gaps cemented in place for Michaels. To me, this is almost like a cry out to Hollywood decision makers where their investments should focus on unique ideas instead of prioritizing numbers and money all the time

Meanwhile, Milton Berle, nicknamed Mr.Television, was played by  Simmons and one of the most memorable scenes he had was with two of the cast members who were also a couple. 

It touched on how romantic couples in the industry can be swayed by others with a more established entertainment career and the confidence boost a successful entertainer could bestow upon an up-and-coming performer. 

Saturday Night had the pacing of an actual episode of SNL with in-between moments that forced both the characters and audience out of moving from one stress to the next, from fake blood splattering all over Michaels’ dress shirt to leaving for a breath of NYC air at a dingy dive bar to randomly find a comedian with a book full of jokes at an open mic. 

Those little moments of the characters being human and sharing their flaws made me want to believe in the mission even if they didn’t know where exactly they were heading to. 

As a fellow creative person watching everything happen all at once, the movie’s BTS feel is what gave Michaels the final spark for what SNL was actually going to look like despite NBC execs not having a full-time stamped rundown and who exactly was going to be on air.

Michaels and Shuster’s on screen relationship was intriguing as it touched on what it’s like to work in the industry as a couple, especially when Shuster was debating whether to use her maiden name or her married name. 

The last few moments in the movie were some of my favourite. A confident Michaels stood in front of his crew members with his hands on his hips facing the executives and declared “you can’t expect people to recognize what they haven’t seen before.” 

However, I itch to know exactly why the show was such a mess less than two hours before it was supposed to be aired. 

No wonder why Micheals quoted Greek God of fire Prometheus in Saturday Night because he definitely brought fire to the people before and after that first airing.

The post TIFF Review: Jason Reitman’s ‘Saturday Night’ shows the madness behind the magical birth of SNL appeared first on NOW Toronto.

In this gruesomely chaotic film, we witness what happens when one woman is deprived of these three elements and the lengths she will go to to reclaim them.

This article contains spoilers for the movie The Substance.

The Substance is a body horror film starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, that made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in May, where it won the prize for Best Screenplay and received a 13-minute standing ovation. 

On Sept. 5, the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for the festival’s Midnight Madness section and later went on to win the People’s Choice Award for best Midnight Madness film.

Since its premiere, the film has received massive praise and overwhelming hype. I’m here to tell you that it meets and exceeds your wildest expectations. The film follows the story of fitness star and celebrity icon Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) with her own aerobics show called “Sparkle your life with Elisabeth.” On her 50th birthday, she gets fired by her sleazeball boss, Harvey (Quaid), who feels the company needs a younger and hotter host.

In a desperate attempt for youth while simultaneously saving her career, she decides to try a black-market medical procedure called “The Substance.” The drug has three sets of rules to follow, the activator, the stabilizer and the switch. Upon activating it, Sparkle births a new and younger version of herself which she names Sue (Qualley). 

Though the pair are technically one and the same in two co-dependent bodies, it remains clear in the film, their consciousness remains far apart. Despite a strict order that the two must swap every seven days, doppelganger Sue becomes enriched with her new life and in turn is reluctant to switch. Instead, she plays with the rules and reserves more time for herself, leaving Sparkle to slowly decompose. 

First things first, this film is exquisitely well-shot in terms of camera positions, movements, composition, sound, editing and light and colour. French writer-director Fargeat, best known for her 2017 debut feature film Revenge, does not shy away from tight and uncomfortable close-ups, and grabs the audience with her exaggerated use of vibrant bright colours, intense cracking sounds, fast-paced flow and heavy emphasis on the five senses.

However, a warning to viewers, this film is not for the faint of heart. It is extremely graphic, violent, bloody and gory and will surely make stomachs turn. But to me, its grotesqueness had the opposite effect, it only made it difficult to look away and added to the spectacle. Now, body horror is not exactly a new genre in film. Those who are familiar with Canadian film director David Cronenberg’s work would know that he is the blueprint of this genre.

Given this, I still believe we’re on the cusp of seeing a resurgence in body horror films from thriving directors (ex. Brandon Cronenberg 2023 film Infinity Pool and Max Minghella’s latest 2024 film Shell) and I would even argue it’s being done at the perfect time. 

Currently, in our modern society where Ozempic and plastic surgery are at a concerning demand, I personally think there’s an even grander obsession with beauty and youth due to the rise of social media and pop culture. The Substance has arrived at a time where women need to be reminded to love themselves for who they are.

Fargeat not only created a masterful body horror film, but she also had an explicitly bold message to convey about Hollywood. Throughout the entire film, Sparkle and Sue have to constantly deal with sexist comments by misogynistic men from boyfriends to slimy industry executives, all while maintaining the ideal male perspective of the idealized woman. “Pretty girls should always smile!” as Harvey’s lowlife character emphasizes in the film. 

This brings me to my next point, Fargeat is a genius for casting Moore, an iconic actress who gained prominence during the mid-1980s and who also was a victim of misogyny at the peak of her fame. 

It’s no wonder Moore, along with her unholy spawn Sue, gave a sensational performance of two unhinged women battling beauty standards and the harsh expectations of the entertainment industry. It’s even more impressive given that Moore has never acted in this genre before and completely dominated the new territory. 

The eye-catching duo were the pulse of this film and made it profoundly compelling to watch. Some of the best scenes include the first seven days of Sue and Sparkle’s life, two completely contrasting perspectives. In Sue’s life, she is the centre of attention and the epitome of glitz and glamour, meanwhile Sparkle depressingly rots on the couch stuffing her face with food as she steadily turns into a monstrosity. 

With every switch to Sue’s life, Sparkle increasingly grows hatred and jealousy for the other glorified version of herself and becomes inherently disgusted with her real self. Pent-up anger and animosity consumes her and suddenly seven days as Sparkle quickly develop into the loneliest days of her life. 

One of the most striking scenes in the film was midway through when Sparkle chooses to go on a date with an old friend, the only person in her life who still viewed her as “the most beautiful girl in the world.”

The process in which she attempts to feel beautiful again is both hopeful yet painfully melancholic to observe. As she gets ready, the thoughts of Sue are haunting her. After attempting to put on makeup twice, she ends up aggressively taking it off in front of a mirror in an act of female rage, a symbolic feeling which some women can definitely relate to, when you simply can’t feel pretty no matter what you do. 

The sequence of events that happen in this film is a unique experience with every shocking event superseding the other. The last 20 minutes, in particular, had my jaw on the floor and had me shaking to my core. 

The Substance cleverly sprinkles comedic moments in between high intensity moments and also serves excellent satirical, social commentary on ageism, feminism and the consequences of an eternal youth facade. 

This disturbing, traumatizing and highly entertaining film is the hyperbolic product of body horror and is nothing you’ve ever seen before. The film will simply have you putting five stars on Letterboxd, much like the viewer in front of me who couldn’t even wait to leave the theatre without submitting his rating.

The Substance releases in theatres everywhere on Sept. 20. 

The post TIFF Review: ‘The Substance’ shamelessly scrutinizes Hollywood’s obsession with beauty using youth as a deadly pursuit appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This review contains spoilers for the movie ‘All We Imagine as Light.’

Cannes’ Grand Prix winner All We Imagine as Light had its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 11 at TIFF Bellbox. 

Directed by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, the film explores the lives of two Malayali nurses, Prabha and Anu, in the bustling metropolitan of Mumbai. 

The movie opens with a series of montages that capture the city’s hectic pace, interspersed with voices sharing their perspectives on Mumbai, leading us to our central characters.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a seasoned nurse, lives with Anu (Divya Prabha), a trainee nurse in a tiny apartment in the city. 

Despite her husband’s absence in Germany and their long-standing silence, Prabha maintains her independence while grappling with loneliness and a yearning for affection. 

Meanwhile, Anu, secretly seeing a Muslim boy, faces her own struggles as she navigates the pressures of an arranged marriage.

Kapadia introduces a striking comment on Mumbai’s “city of dreams” label, suggesting it’s more a “city of illusions,” reflecting the stark class divide seen throughout the city. This divide is embodied in the story of Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Prabha’s friend, who faces losing her home to a wealthy builder due to lack of documentation.

For those unfamiliar with the city, the contrast between five-star hotels right next to slums starkly illustrates the deep divide between the wealthy and the poor.

Since the film predominantly features scenes in Malayalam, it highlights the language barriers faced by non-Hindi speakers in India. Kapadia depicts this through a scene where Prabha speaks with a doctor who expresses his frustrations about the difficulties of learning Hindi while practicing medicine in the city.

In this scene, Dr. Manoj’s (Azees Nedumangad) affection for Prabha is evident as they interact outside work, though Prabha keeps her distance despite her own loneliness, as she remains hopeful for her husband’s return.

While Prabha navigates her loneliness with quiet strength, Anu’s free-spirited approach to relationships contrasts sharply with Prabha’s more traditional outlook. 

Anu’s relationship with Shiaz, a Muslim man, and her struggle against familial pressure for an arranged marriage exposes the deep-seated religious divides, especially under the current political climate in India.

Kapadia illustrates this divide through the interreligious couple, showing how societal and religious norms continue to shape and restrict personal relationships. A pivotal scene in a cave in Ratnagiri, a port town in Southern India, where Anu and Shiaz discuss their fears about their love being deemed unnatural due to their different religions, underscores this theme.

The film also challenges conventional portrayals of women in Indian cinema by depicting Anu’s openness about her sexual desires and her defiance of societal expectations, presenting characters that break from traditional Bollywood norms.

On the other hand, Prabha’s storyline involves her growing connection with Dr. Manoj, who proposes staying in Mumbai if their relationship has a future. Prabha declines and channels her energy into helping Parvaty seek compensation and build a case against the builders by taking her to a reputable lawyer. 

When their efforts fail and Parvaty decides to return to her village in Ratnagiri, the three women embark on the journey together where their sisterhood flourishes as they share moments of camaraderie on the beach, sipping alcohol and dancing to an old Bollywood song.

Parvaty’s character, portrayed with remarkable strength and conviction by Chhaya Kadam, emerges as a standout, embodying a form of carefree feminism and resilience that is both rare and compelling.

The film’s cinematography captures every frame with a postcard-like quality, employing a grainy and often dark aesthetic that mirrors the characters’ internal struggles.

In the film’s concluding scenes, Prabha becomes more open, symbolically letting go of her emotional burdens. She also witnesses Anu and Shiaz together in the forest and has a poignant, almost imaginary conversation with her husband through a man she helps in the village, declaring that she has had enough.

The film closes with the three women at the beach, where Prabha’s gesture of inviting Shiaz to join them signifies a maternal role she adopts for Anu, offering her a sense of freedom in her relationship.

I really enjoyed this film because it was a refreshing and bold piece of art that explores the power of womanhood, and the deep cultural, class and religious divisions that continue to haunt the country till now.

The post TIFF Review: ‘All We Imagine as Light’ fearlessly explores women’s desires and India’s class and religious divides appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This article contains spoilers for the movie The Wild Robot.

Directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods), the film is far from the average animated children’s comedy. Through the extraordinarily vibrant scenery to the impactful delivery of both a hysterical and heartwarming storyline, The Wild Robot proves itself to be a narrative enjoyable for all ages. 

Lupita Nyong’o lends her voice to the lead character, an eccentric robot named ROZZUM unit 7134 – or, Roz, for short. Shipwrecked after a crashing storm, Roz finds herself among beasts on an uninhabited forested island. As curious otters come close to access the disturbance, the initially stunned robot quickly perks up, telling them that she’s ready to receive her first task. 

Coming from a line of helper robots curated to serve humans (which she only later discovers), Roz attempts to do what she’s programmed to do: assist her customers with tasks. She seeks clientele in the forest animals, who often cruelly brush her off. After multiple bouts of being kicked by deer and sprayed by skunks, Roz recognizes an evident language barrier between her and the rambunctious beasts, and instead, chooses to sit while observing them in a system setting called “learning mode.”

Finally being able to communicate with the others, she learns they believe she is a monster trying to kill them. A series of attacks from the frightened animals leads to a literal life-or-death battle, and a bird’s nest unfortunately gets caught in the brutal crossfire. Unintentionally destroying the nest and most of the life in it, one lucky egg is saved. Once hatched, awe-inspiring oohs and ahhs ripped through the audience as the gosling and Roz seem to have a tender bonding experience… until Roz unemotionally asks the newborn to complete a customer satisfaction rating for her. 

The star-studded cast of The Wild Robot ceases to take away from the grandeur of the film, but instead, weaves seamlessly into the story. 

Toronto’s own Catherine O’Hara earnestly takes on the voice of Pinktail, an intelligent and witty opossum who offers motherly advice to Roz after she unsuccessfully attempts to rehome her baby bird into the marsupial family. 

“I don’t have the programming to be a mother!” Roz complained frustratingly. 

“No one does,” Pinktail replied emphatically. 

To Roz’s delight, Pinktail gives her the ultimate task: the gosling must learn how to eat, swim, and fly on its own by fall’s migration season. 

In comes the stellar Pedro Pascal as the sneaky and generally disliked foe-turned-friend fox, Fink, to help out Roz on her new mission. Though proposing to eat the bird at a few points, he encourages her to give the gosling a name. After several nonsensical, numerical variations, Roz lands on the name Brightbill. Together, Roz and Fink work on getting him ready to fly south for the winter.

Brightbill, played by rising British actor Kit Connor, is raised to be just like Roz – robotic and extremely analytical. When he eventually meets fellow geese like him, they don’t accept him, especially with Roz as his adoptive mother. 

The embarrassing interaction leads Brightbill through the motions of feeling like an outcast, a lack of belongingness, and resentment, growing pains that many children and adults know all too well. 

Eventually, Brightbill, with the assistance of Roz and falcon Thunderbolt, played by Ving Rhames, learns to soar the skies, persevering in the air from dusk until dawn even when his wings became tired. He quickly earns the respect of Long Neck, an elder leader of the migration, who also commends Roz on her efforts in teaching Brightbill how to be a goose. 

Hesitantly getting ready to take off for the season into the unknown, Fink gives Brightbill an important piece of advice, a confidence boost that can resonate with many, “Fly like you, not them,” Fink said encouragingly. 

As the geese depart, Roz feels something unexplainable, a process she had never received the coding to read before: love. Unfortunately, it’s too late before she gets a chance to tell Brightbill how she feels. 

However, with this newfound affection, Roz saves the animals in the forest, protecting them from a bitterly cold frost during hibernation season. To their surprise, even when they had been so opposed to her presence, she chose benevolence. 

As springtime rolls in, the geese return and Brightbill has become a hero amongst his community. His wish to reconnect with Roz is nearly cut short as a ship with robots is deployed to bring her back to corporate headquarters. 

“I am a wild robot!” Roz exclaims to the mothership, resisting their force while the animals band together with her on the frontlines. 

The technological interference unfortunately burns down the forest, but it doesn’t sway the faith of the animals. The beasts, now friendly with Roz and each other, learn that the symbolic circle of life is less about the survival between predator and prey, but instead a constant loop depending on their connectedness and trust. 

Roz and Brightbill eventually exchange the ever-anticipated “I love you” to each other, a mother-and-son encounter so touching that even the backdrop of vivid destruction could not hinder. 

In a run time of 101 minutes, The Wild Robot effortlessly succeeds in reeling the audience into a tear-jerking and relatable story of parental love, hope and believing in yourself. The lead character Roz shows a growth of emotions, from her initial cold calculatedness to her eventual warm tenderness. The movie has replayability, where viewers could tirelessly watch it over again several times and still certainly find themselves connecting with multiple characters – through Pinktail’s motherly instincts, Fink’s supportive friendship, and Brightbill’s coming-of-age journey. 

This film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will open in theatres worldwide on September 27.

The post TIFF REVIEW: ‘The Wild Robot’ cast effortlessly shines in capturing essence of love, persistence and sacrifice in the animated, coming-of-age film appeared first on NOW Toronto.

But before it began, the Oscar nominated director captivated the audience with a brief yet impactful speech about his fictional feature debut.

This film is about “obscuring ourselves, from ourselves,” he told a packed Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre Wednesday evening. 

However, it soon came to light that for some audience members obscuring oneself from oneself meant leaving halfway through the movie.

Even a string of stand out performances from the film’s illustrious cast, which includes George Mackay, (1917, How I Live Now, Peter Pan) Tilda Swinton, (We Need to Talk About Kevin, Trainwreck, The Chronicles of Narnia) Michael Shannon, (The Shape of Water, Take Shelter, Revolutionary Road) and Moses Ingram, (“The Queen’s Gambit,” The Tragedy of Macbeth) could not stop disappointed movie buffs from scuffling away. 

They had made up their minds, the bizarre bleakness of this indulgent, snail-paced musical-thriller wasn’t for them, and I understand why.

Nonetheless, unlike the early escapees, I was hopeful that The End would resurrect itself.

Though peppered with great moments, Oppenheimer’s endeavour to marry two diametric genres is ultimately ill-fated. 

The film follows a fabulously wealthy family who made their fortune through morally bankrupt means, and are partially to blame for a slew of environmental catastrophes that rendered them the last known people on earth.

Nevertheless, they continue to live lavishly in an elaborately constructed subterranean bunker. 

But their inherently icky existence is abruptly upended by a survivor who stumbles across their kitschy cave.

Much to the stranger’s surprise, unfathomably valuable paintings cling to the walls of the family’s underground mansion. Food and resources remain inexplicably in abundance, and staff, including an in-house doctor, chef and butler are permanently on hand.

But their home’s ornate furnishings and ample supplies fail to fill the hollowness of their hearts or the cavernous nothingness that surrounds them. I suspect this is why none of the characters are named, an apt creative choice, given their lack of substance. 

It is precisely this that brings me to the film’s most impressive feature; the desolate dugout encasing their living quarters, which bears likeness to a skeletal rib cage enmeshed in a network of bloodless veins that feed a soulless cavity. 

The End is speckled with flashes of brilliant imagery like this. In one scene, Swinton and Shannon’s characters engage in an icy, sing-songy conversation in their bathroom. 

Her reflection is visible in every mirror and in all directions, while only his back and face can be seen; her infinitely reflected frame serving as a visual marker of her self-absorbed nature, put simply, wherever she looks, she sees herself.

However, its best bits are overshadowed by painfully on-the-nose political commentaries, dialogue that awkwardly trips over itself, and unsettling musical numbers that seemed to send some viewers into authentic fits of laughter and others into uncontrollable bouts of snickering.

Except for an objectively hilarious moment where MacKay and Ingram’s characters engage in an impromptu farting contest, I fell into the latter category, unsure whether to laugh at or with the film, which left me feeling confused and uncertain of what it was trying to achieve. 

While genre-bending movies can produce something novel and superb, The End does not achieve this. 

It was clear to me that some viewers found The End’s non-conformist elements deeply funny and profound, but to others they were embarrassing and silly. 

Despite this, the film is well-acted, visually spectacular and bolstered by a handful of genuinely amusing comedic turns that bind an otherwise very long and quite dull sequence of disjointed scenes together.

If the goal of The End is to divide audiences to such a degree that some are deeply moved and others utterly dazed then I suppose it’s an excellent film. But, if Oppenheimer’s aim was to collectively suspend moviegoers in profound amazement, The End, for lack of a better phrase, is a poorly conceived flop.

The post TIFF Review: Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic thriller-musical ‘The End’ is as questionable as it sounds appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This article contains spoilers for the series Disclaimer. 

Adapted from Renée Knight’s novel into an almost six-hour series, “Disclaimer,” is grippingly captured by co-cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, The Revenant, Gravity) and Bruno Delbonnel (Darkest Hour, Amélie, The Tragedy of Macbeth) and follows two families whose lives are mysteriously entangled.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) audiences were treated to three episodes of Cuarón’s steadily paced adaptation at its North American premiere, which track the plot’s meandering narratives and shifting time frames with finesse and clarity.

“Disclaimer” casts two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Ocean’s 8, Don’t Look Up) as the lead, who gracefully takes on the role of Catherine Ravenscroft, a polished journalist and documentarian revered for exhuming the ugliest parts of her subject’s lives.

Whether audiences will view Ravenscroft as awful or gravely misunderstood is yet to be seen, but one thing is certain, her guiltless relishing in the luxuries of her upper-middle class life serve as a stark reminder of how privilege, in the minds of the privileged, absolves them from punishment. 

But, off the back of winning a prestigious accolade, Ravenscroft’s life abruptly spirals into a frenzied crisis fuelled by an old encounter with the 19-year-old son of Stephen Brigstocke; a disillusioned widower and school teacher at the tail end of his career, who is played with humour and profundity by a brilliantly cast Kevin Kline (Sophie’s Choice,The Big Chill, A Fish Called Wanda). 

Intent on curbing the impacts of a catastrophic fallout engineered by Brigstocke, Ravenscroft employs her investigative skills to smother her secret that drives him. Consumed by his insidious and stealthy tactics, she scrambles to keep her husband and son from filling in the blanks.

Ravenscroft’s doting, albeit slightly feeble spouse, Robert, played by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Les Misérables, The Trail of the Chicago 7,) lives in her shadow. He is inwardly intimidated by the extent of her sexual experience and suspicious of her reasons for marrying him, but presents as overly supportive and comfortable in his role as a beneficiary of her far-reaching success.

As the plot thickens the protagonists become increasingly troubled and compelled by their own versions of the truth, which are spoken through an impactful and anonymous third-person narrator, who reveals the innermost musings of each character with mounting regularity and well-timed comic relief. 

With the help of this atypical narrative device, Cuarón delves into the grubbiest nooks and crannies of each character’s psyche, adding depth and dimension to a sprawling and masterfully constructed story. 

Strange visual cues forge a deeply unsettling tone. For example, Ravenscroft, when at home, is almost never in shot without her cat, who menacingly and repeatedly claws its way into her path. Animals are famously tuned in to human emotion, perhaps the cat’s incessant invasion of her space is its way of telling her it knows what she’s hiding.

The series is a curiously fashioned thriller that plays with narrative form and is peppered with dark humour, as well as examinations of people’s tendency to make ill-informed, emotionally-charged judgments, dodge accountability and manipulate circumstances in the interests of personal gain.

“Disclaimer” also stars Louis Partridge, Leila George, Lesley Manville and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

The post TIFF Review: Cate Blanchett leads Alfonso Cuarón’s TV thriller ‘Disclaimer,’ that will have you hooked from the get-go appeared first on NOW Toronto.

This story contains spoilers for the documentary “The Last of the Sea Women.”

The Haenyeo, or “women of the sea,” practice a fishing technique unique to the South Korean island province of Jeju. The women, many of them in their 60s, 70s and 80s, free dive for seafood including sea urchin, conch, octopus and seaweed. 

The occupation is almost exclusive to the island’s female elders, most of whom qualified out of necessity in their teens and early twenties. 

Despite their UNESCO-recognized status today, when many of the remaining Haenyeo started out decades ago they were ashamed to rely on what was deemed a dishonourable form of manual labour to survive. But “The Last of the Sea Women,” directed by Sue Kim and produced by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, doesn’t cling to the past, instead it honours the reality of the present and boldly confronts the future. 

It does so through its adept examination of how to preserve age-old tradition via contemporary means. The film’s two youngest Haenyeo, who vlog their dives, but also work jobs more conducive to modern life, are central to this enduring tension. 

Young or old, to become a Haenyeo the women embark on a rigorous training program that begins in childhood; they are perhaps the closest to real-life mermaids humans will ever get.

Once qualified, the very best of the Haenyeos can hold their breath for up to two minutes and make daily dives, more than ten metres deep, without oxygen tanks, into the sea. However, their way of life faces a burgeoning assembly of problems.

In one scene, palpable rage usurps the screen as the Haenyeo learn of the Japanese government’s outrageous decision to release radioactive water being stored from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the seas they fish in.

Their impassioned protestations capture widespread attention leading one formidable Haenyeo to the chambers of the United Nations in Geneva to make a statement on behalf of the group.

Despite their best efforts to stop it, the Japanese government began releasing contaminated water into the sea in August 2023, as numerous environmental, social, political and economic concerns continued to threaten the time-honoured practice of the Haenyeos.

From the struggle to recruit the next generation, to dwindling sea-life, shrinking incomes, the possibility of injury, and no government provided health insurance, the Haenyeo’s worries manifest in hard-hitting, heartbreaking bursts of emotion, through evocative anecdotes, and organically captured moments of them chatting, joking, laughing and crying.

While the hour-and-a-half long documentary explores both the imminent and ubiquitous dangers faced by the Haenyeo with a heavy heart, its overarching celebration of the shared tenacity and thick-skinned character of this small but mighty band of fisherwomen is what makes the film a resounding success.

Intercut with intimate insights into the women’s inner lives are shaky shots of the Haenyeos cautiously climbing into trawlers and dragging their fishing nets along jagged cliffs, the unsteady camera work mimicking the frailness of their elderly bones. But as their wetsuit-clad limbs meet the waves, aged gaits give way to elegant strides; their bodies effortlessly twisting and turning with the tide as they hack at the ocean floor.  

Cinematic underwater imagery of the Haenyeo hard at work is bolstered by a sweeping symphonic score, resulting in a compelling and eloquent nod to the astonishing strength of the “women of the sea.”

“The Last of the Sea Women” underscores the crucial role the Haenyeo play in preserving our oceans with ever present urgency. It hails them as nature’s keepers and as women destined to maintain balance within the ecosystem, their own lives and beyond.

The post TIFF Review: Radioactive water threatens the livelihood of a group of South Korean fisherwomen in ‘The Last of the Sea Women’ appeared first on NOW Toronto.