All Toronto articles – Page 154
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News
Noah Cowanmoves sidewaystoTIFF's Bell Lightbox
Toronto International Film Festival co-director Noah Cowan is giving up his position to assume responsibility for year-round programming at the Toronto International Film Festival Group's (TIFFG) new headquarters, Bell Lightbox, with the title of artistic director. Cowan, who joined TIFFG CEO Piers Handling as co-director four years ago, will be ...
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Reviews
Battle for Haditha
Dir. Nick Broomfield . United Kingdom, 2007. 94 minsBattle for Haditha dramatises one of the most notorious atrocities of the Iraq War, the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis by American marines in the city of Haditha on November 19, 2005 , for which five marines stand trial at Camp Pendleton ...
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Reviews
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Dir. Eddy Moretti, Suroosh Alvi. Canada/US. 2007. 84 min.Its title promises little but this big-hearted documentary delivers much. Beginning as a misguided if not utterly foolhardy travelogue - risking one's life in the world's most dangerous city to track down an amateur music group - it segues into a potent ...
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Reviews
Flash Point (Aka City With No Mercy)
Dir. Wilson Yip. Hong Kong/China. 2007. 87 mins.Wilson Yip's new martial arts extravaganza is action-packed and honed along well-tested genre formulas, with an adrenalin-pumping soundtrack and a story that moves ahead with the speed and ruthlessness of a runaway train. It will leave its audience breathless after seeing so much ...
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Reviews
Intimate Enemies (L'ennemi intime)
Dir: Florent Siri. France . 2007. 108 min.A gritty and realistic depiction of a French platoon during the final stages of Algeria 's war of independence, Intimate Enemies is an assured and well-crafted drama that is sure to cause a stir in its native France . Featuring strong lead performances ...
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Reviews
The Passage
Dir: Mark Heller 2007 USA . 95 mins.A likable cast and the exotic backdrop of Morocco provides first-time feature director Mark Heller with the tools to make a tense thriller about Western tourists in danger but he fails to build much-needed suspense. While pretty to watch, The Passage never scares ...
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Reviews
Young People Fucking
Dir: Martin Gero. Canada, 2007. 91 MinsYoung People Fucking is quite clearly a title that's out to grab one's attention. Neither documentary nor hardcore, it's an ingeniously constructed pastiche of sexual encounters presented affectionately and with humour. Reminiscent of American independent movies of the 1980s, the film should really be ...
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Reviews
Gone with the Woman (Tatt av Kvinnen)
Dir. Peter Naess. Sweden/Norway 2007. 92 min.Picked by Norway to carry its flag at the Oscars this year, Peter Naess' new screwball romance takes off a vivacious, though rather misogynistic tone, but soon settles down to a pedestrian pace which it follows the rest of the way. Naess, whose irreverent ...
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Reviews
Glass
Dir: Scott Hicks. Australia . 2007. 122mins.The critical relationship of subject to filmmaker is the tipping point for most documentary portraits. It is the primary distinction between a probing and objective analysis and hagiography. In Scott Hicks' Glass, the composer Philip Glass has allowed the director unmediated exposure to his ...
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Reviews
Normal
Dir. Carl Bessai. Canada . 2007. 100 min.With Normal , Canadian filmmaker Carl Bessai delivers his most accomplished film yet. An intense psychological portrait of lives shattered by a sudden death, it does everything well. Although it explores familiar terrain - comparisons with the daisy-chain of Paul Haggis' Crash are ...
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Reviews
Rails & Ties
Dir. Alison Eastwood. US, 2007. 96 mins.The feature-film directorial debut of Clint Eastwood's 35-year-old actress daughter, Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties is an always serviceable, professionally accomplished film. Unfortunately, its ambitions are hampered by a central situation that is redolent of too many made-for-TV films, as well as by implausible ...
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Reviews
Man From Plains
Dir. Jonathan Demme. US 2007. 125 mins.Man from Plains follows the former US president Jimmy Carter from his sprawling family peanut farm in southern Georgia to a national book tour on which the earnest man who brokered the Camp David Accords defends his controversial view that Israel imposes rules akin ...
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Reviews
Shake Hands with the Devil
Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Canada 2007, 113 Mins.The tragic recent history that informed Hotel Rwanda is viewed from another angle in Shake Hands with the Devil. Viewed from the perspective of General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded United Nations forces during the 1993 crisis, it paints a picture of broader dimension that ...
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Reviews
Erik Nietzsche - The Early Years (Erik Nietzsche - De Unge Ar)
Dir.Jacob Thuesen. Denmark . 2007. 91 min.Lars von Trier's revenge on the Danish film industry is a very funny inside joke. A not-so-fond evisceration of film school, filmmakers, actors (more precisely oversexed Danish actresses), technicians, guilds and unions, the picaresque film follows its eponymous hero through a circus of cinema-related ...
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Reviews
Shadows
Dir/Scr: Milcho Manchevski. Macedonia 2007. 120mins.A ghost story that draws on the irrational to explore the historical and cultural redress of displaced Macedonians, Milcho Manchevski's third feature Shadows is ambitious and capably mounted. However it is too fastidious for its own good, and is damaged by dramatically contradictory parts that ...
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Reviews
Love Comes Lately
Dir. Jan Schutte. Germany/Austria/US 2007. 86 min.Jan Schutte's adaptation of three short-stories by the Yiddish writer and Nobel-prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer will attract mostly mature audiences who will identify with its central character, octogenarian writer Max Kohn. Like most adaptations of works by great authors, the picture faces the ...
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Reviews
Reclaim Your Brain (Free Rainer-Dein Fernseher Lugt)
Dir. Hans Weingartner. Germany . 2007. 132 minsAnyone who has ever railed against the pernicious poison of reality television should derive a scattering of wry chuckles from Reclaim Your Brain, a Capra-esque call to arms from writer/director Hans Weingartner. Taking aim at some obvious targets, it is slow to warm ...