TIFF 51: Andrew Scott delivers an Oscar-worthy performance in “Elsinore”

by Eurocheese

Heading into my screening of Elsinore on the last day of the festival, I had heard a number of mixed things on the ground. Some said the film pulls too readily at heartstrings without much plot. I’d heard rumblings that it was likely to win an audience prize, and it ended up taking the International People’s Choice Award before I saw it (yes, it’s eligible since it’s a UK production and La Bola Negra became automatically disqualified for the honor when it won TIFF’s general People’s Choice Award). There were those who thought Olivia Colman didn’t have enough to do, and I heard folks say it flat-out didn’t work. Since this was one of my most anticipated titles heading into the festival, I was beyond curious about how I would ultimately feel…

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TIFF 51: Best Actress Watch – “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!” and “Prima Facie”

by Eurocheese

Rinko Kikuchi could become the first Japanese Best Actress Oscar nominee ever if HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! goes all the way.

Continuing our quest to find potential Best Actress contenders among TIFF screenings, we have already seen nomination potential in The Debut, Being Heumann and Onwards and Sideways. Next up, we have the Canadian premiere of Rinko Kikuchi’s performance in Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! after its Sundance competition slot earlier in the year, and the international premiere of Cynthia Erivo’s work in the film adaptation of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play, Prima Facie…

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TIFF 51: “Tangles” packs a personal punch, wrestling with Alzheimer’s through animation

by Eurocheese

One of the top reasons to attend festivals is to find surprises, films that far exceed expectations and become unforeseen favorites. I had no plans to write up Leah Nelson's Tangles, though I knew it was getting good reviews. When I stumbled out of the theater, unable to keep tears from streaming down my face, I knew it deserved a reaction here at The Film Experience. This animated gem is not only for those who have been impacted by Alzheimer's directly, but for anyone who has loved ones aging into their final years, when we begin the difficult process of learning how to say goodbye...

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TIFF 51: “A Long Winter” leads Andrew Haigh up the Rocky Mountains

by Cláudio Alves

The human figure against the grandeur of the natural world has obsessed visual artists for centuries, if not millennia. In A Long Winter, his latest film and follow-up to the highly popular All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh follows the footsteps of those that came before him and delivers what can only be described as an exercise in landscape cinema. It’s perhaps his work where shot composition and the blocking of actors have most to say. At the same time, the text barely raises its voice above a whisper, whether it is to flesh out character or spell out theme, to engage or entrance or alienate the viewer sitting before the coldness of a big screen overcome by frost. 

Depending on the sort of film lover you are, this will either make A Long Winter a slog as hard to go through as the unforgiveness of its titular season, or it’ll have you breathe a sigh of relief that the Andrew Haigh of Lean On Pete has, at last, made his return after nearly a decade in absentia…

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TIFF 51: “The Difficult Bride” takes body horror to the bridal salon

by Cláudio Alves

Women are often called difficult when they’re just standing up for themselves, refusing mistreatment, expressing anxiety openly and unmasked. When it comes to the matter of weddings and the cottage industry built around them, we can even point to the term "bridezilla," which came to be as a way to mock some of these so-called difficult women whose transgressions are often nothing of the sort. In Rubaiyat Hossain’s The Difficult Bride, Zai both fits and doesn’t fit the descriptor the film’s title imposes on her. After all, she’s a bright young woman marrying the man she loves and continuing her studies in the hopes of a golden future ahead. This Bangladeshi drama is quite forthcoming about how many of her inevitable issues arise from social pressures, and how her self-image collapses in slow motion as gendered expectations demand.

That being said, she is haunted by visions of wild beasts encroaching upon her, as well as a mysterious figure, perchance a monster from the beyond or the product of a fractured mind falling apart. So, “complicated” might be more generous monicker than “difficult.” Regardless, she’s certainly something outside the norm, a cursed bride out of South Asian horror tradition, slipping into madness and pulling the film along with her…

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