Movie Reviews of films that will be playing at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) in 2017. Go to TIFF 2017 Movie Reviews and read reviews of films showing at the festival.
The carefully balanced (albeit deranged) life of a freelance, black-market pet euthanizer begins to come apart at the seams in this loopy exploitation-movie throwback from Finland, which evokes the brazen psychological insights and aesthetic brio of such grungy genre classics as Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter and Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To.
Director: Teemu Nikki
Writer: Teemu Nikki
Stars: Alina Tomnikov, Santtu Karvonen, Jari Virman
Review by Gilbert Seah
The EUTHANIZER is Veijo, (Matti Onnismaa), an older man with glasses always smoking a pipe who runs a black-market operation euthanizing people’s ailing pets.
The people who go to Veijo either cannot afford having their pet put down by the local vet or have no guts to perform the killing themselves. Each commission also comes with a brutal lecture, as Veijo spills over with Old Testament–style indignation about what shoddy and appalling people his patrons are and how their pets have been mistreated.
Veijo is in reality an animal lover. When his father is hospitalized, he meets the young nurse caring for him. They begin a strange affair, a bit too uncomfortable, I bet to many an audience’s liking.
He also encounters a seedy garage mechanic, Petri (who’s mixed up with a vicious gang of neo-Nazis) who call themselves ‘Soldiers of Finland’ which provide most of the film’s suspense and thrills.
Veijp’s insight and theory of life is intriguing and serves to propel the difficult to fathom plot. But the film works, as director Nikki has the audience constantly rooting for Veijo in this black comedy of manners.
After an unexpected death in the family, a mother and son struggle to find spiritual healing at a beachfront summer home.
A faithful Jehovah’s Witness is forced to shun her own sister because of a religious transgression. As the separation draws out, she starts to question the meaning of God’s love.
Sixteen year-old Nisha lives a double life. At home with her family she is the perfect Pakistani daughter, but when out with her friends, she is a normal Norwegian teenager. 
Summer of 1983, Northern Italy. An American-Italian is enamored by an American student who comes to study and live with his family. Together they share an unforgettable summer full of music, food, and romance that will forever change them.
A couple going through a divorce must team up to find their son who has disappeared during one of their bitter arguments.
After suffering a near fatal head injury, a young cowboy undertakes a search for new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.
Against oppression, change, and seismic political shifts, a father and his daughter find solace in the seemingly clandestine act of kite flying, in the latest by Afghan filmmaker Tarique Qayumi.
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