Sisu, from director Jalmari Helander, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival at Midnight Madness in 2022. For anyone not familiar with Midnight Madness, the energy is quite different from the regular festival. Audiences will clap along to the music in the ubiquitous ads of the festival and the typical “Argh!” during the obligatory warning against piracy is louder than at the regular screenings. Typically, genre features that play well for enthusiastic cinephiles are programmed during this time slot, and…
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline 2022
Andreas’ Malm How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire was meant to be an expression of the frustration Malm felt towards the current state of climate activism. He felt that the philosophy of nonviolence was compromising the effectiveness of real, life-changing reform. Malm’s book is an impassioned work of nonfiction that taps into his audience’s feeling of helplessness to do anything about the state of our planet on a large scale.
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Brewster McCloud 1970
Wild wild movie that might not be his debut but almost feels like it. So much stuff is crammed in, the visual gags, the odd characters and breaks in narrative as it gets increasingly more surreal. It doesn't exactly coalesce into a coherent narrative and many of these characters are pretty off-putting but its fragments feel so bold and fresh, like a young filmmaker going hard with a decent budget for the first time. MASH felt like well-executed bro humor that has aged poorly but the scenes he comes up with just smack you in the face with their brashness, cynicism and just plain weirdness.
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Whore 1991
This movie sounded like a trainwreck when Karina Longworth talked about it on "You Must Remember This" and I can confirm that it is. Ken Russell is a skilled provocateur at the best of times but here, his usual edge feels clumsy and blunt. I think Theresa Russell's character narrating the entire time is a big mistake and honestly, it feels like she's trying too hard to be "tough" or a cartoonish variant of it. It certainly does explain the…
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Freedom Writers 2007
I saw this movie way before my experience with social justice teaching. It's pandering in a way that is supposed to make privileged audiences feel good about themselves. Instead of addressing the systemic flaws that created the harsh world these students live in, it falls into the trap of white woman savior saving the poor illiterate kids of color, which is condescending at best, straight up racist at its worst. I don't think Hollywood will ever get a movie about teachers right if this kind of crap passes as verisimilitude.
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Black Panther 2018
I kind of forgot I was watching a Marvel movie and that was so welcome. It's an incredible, beautiful vision of Black empowerment and influence, but it's also complex and influenced by current knowledge and issues. It also manages not to be didactic and gives us some of the best staged action scenes in any Marvel movie. A big studio like Disney should not be afraid to let artists have their voices heard, and this is proof.
Edit: Just heard…
