gilbert seah

TIFF 2016 Movie Review: UNA (UK 2016) ***|

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

una_poster.jpgUNA (UK 2016) ***|
Directed by Benedict Andrews

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn

Review by Gilbert Seah

Though UNA is based on the David Harrower play and directed by stage director Benedict Andrews, the film does not feel like a play. But it does remind one of the plot of Mamet’s OLEANA, a two handler where a student accuses her professor of sexual assault.

In UNA, Rooney Mara plays Una, and Ben Mendelsohn is Ray, the neighbour who sexually assaulted her when she was 13.

A decade later, Una tracks Ray, now married with a pre-teen daughter, down in search of answers — but she doesn’t find the ones she’s searching for. The reason given is that she has fallen in love with her assailant.

The film is a bit slow moving with a lot of brooding by the players. The film also does not provide all the answers leaving the audience to fill in the blanks, which I assume is the purpose of the film.

Not entirely satisfying as a psychological thriller or mystery thriller but performances are super including Riz Ahmed’s in the support in role of Scott. Ray’s employee caught up in the drama.

Trailer: http://www.movie-trailer.co.uk/trailers/2016/una/

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: SEARCHERS (Canada 2016) ***

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

searchers_poster.jpgSEARCHERS (Canada 2016) ***
Directed by Zacharias Kunuk

Starring: Benjamin Kunuk, Karen Ivalu, Jonah Qunaq

Review by Gilbert Seah

Director Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) returns with this Arctic epic inspired by the classic John Ford western, THE SEARCHERS. though it feels at times like an Inuit version of TAKEN.

An Inuit woman is kidnapped by her own people. A family is torn apart in the vast spaces of the cold barren landscape of the Arctic, when marauding men desperate for conquest break into an igloo with intent to kidnap.

When the husband returns to find his home ransacked, he vows revenge TAKEN style. The husband (with his son) track the kidnappers and finally rescue the wife and daughter. There is not an intricate plot with a twist but it is an absorbing film nonetheless. On wonders how they got the camera and other equipment up there in the cold.

True Canadian filmmaking by the First Nations. The audience gets a dose of Inuit culture as a bonus.

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: WULU (France/Senegal 2016) ***

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

wulu_poster.jpg WULU (France/Senegal 2016) ***
Directed by Daouda Coulibaly

Starring: Quim Gutiérrez, Dembele Habib, Ndiaye Ismaël

Review by Gilbert Seah

Malian director Daouda Coulibaly’s debut is a no-nonsense tense crime drama/political thriller that traces the rise and fall of a low-level transit worker turned drug trafficker.

When the film opens, the audience sees Ladji (Ibrahim Koma) advising his apprentice on how to load a bus with customers – to maximize fare. The ambitious Ladji forces himse on his boss who smuggles drugs. Ladji succeeds but more money means more responsibilities and more debt.

Director Coulibaly ties in the political unrest ion the story as well as Ladji’s rites-of-passage. The trial of the film WULU is the dog’s rite, one part of 5 rites, that the audience is to figure out what it is about.

Coulibaly’s film is absorbing but it occasionally attempts to achieve much more than it can chew. Coulibaly always has the audience rooting for handsome Ladji, whether he is doing right or wrong.

The audience will be able to experience drug trafficking in the environment of West African poverty.

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: MASCOTS (USA 2016)

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

mascots_posterMASCOTS (USA 2016) **
Directed by Christopher Guest

Starring: Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Guest

Review by Gilbert Seah

MASCOTS is an original Netflix movie, which is a warning. For those who have seen Guest’s previous ensemble comedies like WAITING FOR GUFFMAN and BEST IN SHOW, MASCOTS provides much more of the same but not really dished out any better.

With this latest film, the director and his extended family of gifted collaborators usher us into the milieu of professional mascots, those energetic individuals who bravely don ridiculous oversized costumes to excite sports fans and cheer on their team with slapstick antics.

Chronicling the competition for the World Mascot Association’s Gold Fluffy Award, MASCOTS is an inspired showcase for the comic antics of Guest and company.

Not much effort is put into assembling a strong narrative. The performances appear just lumped together, some funny (Sid the Hedgehog) and some not so funny (Alvin the Armadillo).

The film looks like an extended version of a MASCOTS variation of the TV show “America’s got Talent”, only funnier and with a little less talent. But there should be enough laugh-out loud moments for Christopher Guest fans.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swTWozTxQ-E

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: LA LA LAND (USA 2016) ****

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

la_la_land_poster.jpgLA LA LAND (USA 2016) ****
Directed by Damien Chazelle

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Amiée Conn, J.K. Simmons

Review by Gilbert Seah

LA LA LAND marks the return of the Hollywood musical but done here with a fresh take. The film tells of the conflict between following ones dreams against sacrificing them up for love.

This is what a couple Ryan Gosling, a budding jazz musician and rising play actress Emma Stone face. The film begins with an impressive set up of an extended song and dance number that takes place on a busy highway in Hollywood where the drivers exit their cars to do their thing.

The film offers two alternative endings but the one to be followed is the most likely but not the most obvious one.

The songs especially “City of Stars” are catchy and this song should have one humming in the aisles. Gosling and Stone make a lovely couple.

A few cliched parts like the meeting of the couple (chance argument on the highway and in coffee shop before chance meeting again) mar an almost perfectly executed romantic musical.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0aAf2f8XQ

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: FRANTZ (France/Germany 2916) ***1/2

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

frantz_poster.jpg
FRANTZ (France/Germany 2916) ***1/2
Directed by Francois Ozon

Starring: Pierre Niney, Paula Beer, Ernst Stötzner

Review by Gilbert Seah

What would be TIFF be without another film from French director Francois Ozon who has a new film very festival?

FRANTZ is Ozon’s elegiac tale of love and remembrance set in a small German town in the aftermath of World War I, where a young woman mourning the death of her fiancé forms a bond with a mysterious Frenchman who has arrived to lay flowers on her beloved’s grave. Anna was engaged to Frantz, who was killed, and the people in her German home town are just beginning to emerge from the shadow of horrendous conflict.

Frantz’s parents are shattered over their son’s death. The stranger reveals himself to be Adrien (Pierre Niney) who knew Frantz in the pre-war period, when the two of them became fast friends over their shared love of art and, in particular, music. But there is much more in the story, which is revealed a bit at a time in Ozon’s carefully calculated though slow moving tale of redemption.

This is Ozon’s most emotional film and though might be tedious to some, succeeds in the very end. Shot in both German and French, black and white and in colour.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO_z5BRsFnM

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: DEEPWATER HORIZON (USA 2016)

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

deepwater_horizon_poster.jpgDEEPWATER HORIZON (USA 2016) **
Directed by Peter Berg

Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Mark Wahlberg, Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez, Ethan Suplee, John Malkovich

Review by Gilbert Seah

Based on the true-life worst U.S. oil disaster in history, DEEPWATER HORIZON is nothing more than a super expensive a re-enactment of the disaster using special effects with a cliched story line framed by testimonies of the survivors at a hearing.

Director Peter Berg who made some original films in his time like VERY BAD THNGS and KINGDOM seems to be out of touch here. The film is a complete bore from start to finish with cardboard performances from Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez and Kate Hudson.

Even John Malkovich dishing, out his usual side nastiness cannot save the day. Another disaster film that proves that disaster films (THE TOWERING INFERNO, THW SWARM, both POSEIDON ADVENTURES) are pure disastrous rubbish!

Lots and lots of pyrotechnics but repeated again and again with lots of screaming actors. See it in IMAX for a larger than human headache experience.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-UPJyEHmM0

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: RAW (France/Belgium 2016) ***

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

raw_poster.jpgRAW (France/Belgium 2016) ***
Directed by Julia Ducournau

Starring: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella

Review by Gilbert Seah

As a first time director of a horror feature, Julia Ducournau gets her facts straight. At the introduction of RAW at TIFF Midnight Madness, she told a full house that when she asked a fellow filmmaker about Toronto audiences, she had been told which she did repeat, to huge cheers, that Toronto has the best audience in the world.

Her film about a new graduate in a vet medical university reminds one immediately of Dario Argento’s SUSPIRA. The vet school environment is fully utilized with the blood of animals constantly splattered on the freshies, sights of bottled carcasses as well party happenings (the music track from the club is amazing!). Shy 16-year-old Justine (Garance Marillier) is following in the footsteps of her entire family when she enrols at veterinary college, where she finds herself in the shadow of her distant and dismissive older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf ).

To make matters worse, she is thrown into the humiliating traditions of the school’s wild and vicious hazing rituals. A strict vegetarian like her parents, Justine is confronted with a moral dilemma when she must eat a raw rabbit liver as part of an initiation rite.

When she does, her tastes transform to the desire for more flesh including human ones. The film traces her roots and transformation. A neat subplot has her falling in love with a gay Arab. French FX master Olivier Afonso (who was also responsible for Midnight Madness horror favourite À L’INTERIEUR) again does marvellous work.

The paramedics had to be called during the screening. The most gruesome segment is the finger eating scene.

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: CITY OF TINY LIGHTS (UK 2016)

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

city_of_tiny_lights_poster.jpgCITY OF TINY LIGHTS (UK 2016) **
Directed by Pete Travis

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Billie Piper, James Floyd

Review by Gilbert Seah

The city referred to in the title is London. And Travis’ moody film about a brooding detective is a film noir set in this city.

A down-at-heel private eye, Tommy (Riz Ahmed) is drawn into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue as he investigates a missing persons case. (What other cases are there for Private Investigator film noirs?) One day Melody (Cush Jumbo) walks into his office, like the typical classic femme fatale. Her friend Natasha has gone missing. Tommy helps and the rest is the rest of the story.

Based on his own novel and writing the script, Patrick Neate shows the solution to the mystery is just as important as the atmosphere created of the city. But Travis’ over serious film is too ponderous, with this genre done so much better in countless films. Riz Ahmed’s performance, however is excellent as is Roshan’s Seth’s.

Seth plays Tommy’s cricket obsessed father who saves the day a the climax.

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TIFF 2016 Movie Review: FOREVER PURE (Israel/UK/Norway/Ireland 2016) ***

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Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2016. Go to TIFF 2016 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.

forever_pure_poster.jpgFOREVER PURE (Israel/UK/Norway/Ireland 2016) ***
Directed by Maya Zinshtein

DOCUMENTARY

Review by Gilbert Seah

Sometimes you have to show that racism wins in order to put it down. Zinshtein’s controversial documentary does just that. The audience will be disgusted at how the Israeli Beiter football club got its way.

The title FOREVER PURE refers to the Beitar Jerusalem Football club that the fans said lost their purity when they brought in two Arab footballers.

This is the true story of the club, which became a flashpoint for controversy in 2012 when the signing of two Muslim players brought down the racist wrath of the team’s long-time fans. Team owner Arcadi Gaydamak, a Russian-born billionaire and failed mayoral candidate in Jerusalem, signs two Muslim players from Chechnya.

Their presence turns La Familia into opponents of their own team and initiates an ideological contest with wide ripples. The doc also reveals the owner’s real motive in hiring the two Muslim players and also contains some precious shost of the Israeli Prime Minister having his say.

FOREVER PURE is the most racist themed film of TIFF and likely one that will affect audiences the most. Not a dull moment from start to finish.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/146790418

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