What if men no longer served any purpose on Earth? That’s more or less the hook of the mockumentary No Men Beyond This Point, which presents an alternate universe where, in the 1950s, women suddenly gained the ability to reproduce asexually (it’s called parthenogenesis, as one of the talking heads explains). As the years went on, and the population of women kept increasing (since they’re reproducing asexually they only use the X chromosomes, meaning no more males being born), men eventually became of no use. No Men Beyond This Point starts in the present day, where the documentary crew follows 37-year-old Andrew Myers (Patrick Gilmore), now the youngest man in the world.

Writer/director/editor Mark Sawers uses a standard documentary approach to his absurd subject matter, employing talking head interviews, archival footage and black-and-white re-enactments, among plenty of other old tricks found in any average middlebrow doc made today. The familiar and banal approach works here because of its pairing with a fantasy/sci-fi concept, and the way Sawers focuses on some of the more nuanced changes that would come from the switch in dominant gender roles makes it easy to go along with his dystopian (or utopian, depending on how you look at it) vision.

Aside from playing out his big “What if?” scenario through social and political contexts, Sawers also focuses on Myers and his situation as the youngest man in the world. With the World Governing Council—a new body of government running the planet—sending men off to sanctuaries across the world to live out their remaining days, Myers manages to get a job as a servant for partners Terra (Tara Pratt) and Iris (Kristine Cofsky). Eventually, Andrew and Iris being showing an attraction for each other, and Sawers uses their flirtations to delve into the messier aspects of his universe.

It’s when No Men Beyond This Point starts exploring sex that the mockumentary begins to falter a bit. Especially giving a rather bland attempt at poking holes in the idea of how women would handle being in power. Earlier on, when Sawers highlights how the stubbornness of men in power ultimately led to their downfall, the idea works. But once women take charge and rule in a reactionary way towards men, essentially trying to speed up their extinction, Sawers portrays their rule as a conservative, sex-shaming authority, where women are not allowed to speak about their feelings of attraction whatsoever. It gives off an implication that women are inherently repressive when it comes to sexuality, a point that some people may take offense to. And with gender and sexuality turning into prominent issues recently, there’s something a little old hat about Sawers’ film operating within the same standards that are being constantly challenged today.

But still, anyone who tries to tackle gender is bound to get into a sticky situation of some sort, and for the most part No Men Beyond This Point is enjoyable despite its issues. It may be a little too deadpan for its own good, but even when the laughs aren’t there it’s fascinating to see just how much Sawers has thought out his idea of a world where women rule everything. I can’t say that No Men Beyond This Point lives up to the mockumentaries of the likes of Christopher Guest (and I’m sure some people will grow tired of Sawers’ premise pretty fast), but I can’t deny that I wasn’t entertained for the most part.

This review was originally published on September 14, 2015, as part of our coverage of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Adapted from a short film that played at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, Sleeping Giant quickly turned into a Canadian indie success story when it was selected to play at the Cannes Film Festival in the Critics’ Week sidebar. Several months later, Sleeping Giant finally came back home to have its North American Premiere at TIFF in September 2015.

The film takes place over the summer in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where teenager Adam (Jackson Martin) spends his summer vacation with his family. At the start of his trip, he befriends Nate (Nick Serino) and Riley (Reece Moffett), two cousins from the area living with their grandmother. It’s immediately apparent that the friendship between the three boys only makes sense in the context of this vacation, with Adam coming from a sheltered, upper-middle-class life, and Nate and Riley coming from a lower class background. As the summer continues, tensions rise between Adam, Nate and Riley until they tragically boil over.

It’s been said many times already, but Cividino has made an impressive directorial debut with Sleeping Giant. As someone who has made similar trips up north as a kid, it was surprising to see how accurate Cividino portrays that unique feeling of spending your days away from home as an adolescent. In advance of Sleeping Giant’s North American premiere at TIFF, I had the chance to talk to Andrew Cividino about his film. Read on for the full interview below, where Cividino talks about his personal connection to the film’s location, learning how to work with young, nonprofessional actors, his feelings on finally bringing the film home and much more.

Sleeping Giant is currently out in limited release in Toronto, Ontario from D Films.

I never thought of the trip up to Northern Ontario as a rite of passage for kids in Ontario until I saw your film. I did it, my parents did it…I’m assuming this film had to come from a personal place for you.

I grew up spending my summers on the shore of Lake Superior in the exact locations that the film is set in. Every year at the end of the school year [my family] would go up the day school ended, and we could come back on Labour Day. It was like that well into high school, until I had to get a job. I made friends up there that occupied a kind of a special place because we grew up together but separate from our other lives. I think it was a chance every summer to go up and, as your identities form, have this separate group of friends that you’re spending this intense amount of time with. But you’re free from all the expectations of whatever hat you’re trying to wear in your high school in Southern Ontario.

To have that kind of an unsupervised playground hanging out with friends over the summer, you’re really just left to your own devices. You’re in the middle of nowhere. All of the sorts of risks that are associated with living in a more urban setting aren’t there. You just have to come for dinner basically, and that’s about it. You’re free to roam and explore, and that was kind of the genesis for me, wanting to capture what it was like to spend those years up in that place.

Your film feels more about capturing a specific sense of time and place than focusing on a narrative.

I think tone was something that was very important to me from the genesis of the project. There’s something that I saw mirrored that’s inherent to the landscape up there. It’s beautiful, but it’s also foreboding. If you know Lake Superior well, you know that you never feel fully at ease because it’s called Thunder Bay for a reason. There are always storms that could be rolling in, and it’s like the ocean in how the waves will whip up out of nowhere. There was this tension between it being like a romantic postcard view of nature and something much more, if not menacing, certainly indifferent to your existence. I thought was really well mirrored with what adolescent boys are like, the kind of tumult, the lack of empathy and that energy.

I feel like the editing is vital to the film because you’re combining intimate shots of nature, but you’re getting bigger macro shots as well. How did you find that specific rhythm going back and forth between the two types of shots?

I think it was in our philosophy from shooting it on the outset that we wanted to capture the grand scope and the intimate details, from sweeping aerial vistas to fighting insects on bark, and to do the same thing with our characters. It was important to step back far enough with our visuals to get a sense of space and location. It totally affects your understanding of what this story is, what it’s like for these characters to be here, and to get a sense of how isolated they are. There’s something under the surface. Like I mentioned before, [there’s] this idea of the romantic, European version of nature as this inviting thing, and there’s this other side of it which is more nature as a state of chaos. I really wanted to play that duality, both in terms of nature and how we shot it close and wide, and mirroring that with the two sides of the human story.

I’m assuming you had to have a lot of patience while making this in order to capture some of those shots up close, like the insects fighting on the bark.

I think, more than patience, it was about an openness to what’s around you. To recognize that you may be shooting a scene, but if you happen to see two bugs fighting on the tree, you have to run across the island and get your crew, and have them understand that it’s important enough to run with the camera on their back and to stop everything to shoot it. On the day [of shooting] it sounds totally insane, but you need people who can bind to that understanding and philosophy. For instance, we wanted to do a lot of stuff with crayfish. I used crayfish in the short film. We spent a day and a half trying to catch crayfish, but it was not a good year for them. We caught one in total. We couldn’t do it, and we had to re-envision the material. On the other hand, the bugs fighting on the tree was something that was just noticed, and we were able to stop and pay attention and actually capture it.

Did that openness apply to the rest of the production?

The narrative was nailed down, but what happens within scenes, and certainly where scenes happen, was something we had to be very much open to because the weather would repel us from the island. We were constantly having to adapt and reorganize our schedule, but the real openness was within scenes. To be open to allowing the actors to bring their own voices, and being open to explore possibilities while making sure that we don’t get off track of the number of narrative threads and character arcs that have to come together.

How did you approach working with these young, nonprofessional actors?

I was fortunate to do the short and develop a strong relationship with Nick Serino and Reese Moffett. There was a familiarity there, and I learned a lot about working with younger actors. I think the biggest thing of all was casting people who felt close enough to the characters. Not necessarily in terms of the details of their lives, but in terms of their personalities. [It’s] finding those people, and then being willing to change your own understanding of your character to allow them to bring their own element to it. You’re not going to get amazing craft performances out of young actors who usually don’t have any experience, but if you set things up properly, you may have put yourself in a situation where they feel comfortable to bring themselves to that role, to lose themselves in that scene or moment, and to draw on their own experiences if you can find those relatable things. It was about making sure it was a collaboration, and for them bringing their own perspective to it was important.

I wanted to ask specifically about Jackson Martin who plays Adam, because his role is so pivotal.

Jack was the most experienced of the three actors going in. We cast him in a traditional casting session out of Southern Ontario.

Did you deliberately choose a more experienced actor for the role of Adam?

I deliberately wanted a professional actor to play the role of Adam because I felt that the character was going to have to shoulder a lot more of the burden in that way, especially in the earlier drafts of the story. And I also wanted to cast someone who would be a fish out of water. For the other boys, it was essential that they were up there naturally and that was their environment. But I wanted to bring somebody up who felt like this was not their natural habitat.

I did want to talk about the homoerotic aspect between Adam and Riley. What made you decide to put that in the film?

I didn’t want to make a standard love triangle specifically, but I wanted to make something that kind of explored the complexities of sexuality coming online in a person. To me, Adam is not somebody who is necessarily going to land at gay or straight or who knows where on that spectrum. He’s somebody whose sexuality is just coming online, and who has a great deal of…pressure. Not intentional pressure, but expectations around heteronormative behaviour from everybody. There’s nobody in the film that’s homophobic, but the entire world assumes heterosexuality of him. That makes his admiration for Riley confused with [his] affection for Taylor, who’s his female friend as well. All of these things create this intense confusion for him as he’s trying to find his way.

2015 has been pretty exciting for Toronto-based filmmakers. There’s you, Kazik Radwanski (How Heavy This Hammer), and Adam Garnet Jones (Fire Song) to name a few playing at TIFF this year. It feels like a whole new generation of Canadian filmmakers is finally arriving.

I feel like it’s an incredibly exciting time to be making films in Toronto. I feel like I’m part of a community of people who are making really incredible and unique pieces. We share crews, we support each other’s work, we’re inspired by each other’s films, yet the voices are all quite distinct at the same time. I’m not sure exactly why it’s happening right now. I’ve been told by others, and I certainly feel it myself, that it’s something that hasn’t happened in a while. It’s this generation of filmmakers poking through at the exact same time and getting this kind of international recognition. I don’t know what the common threads are, other than the fact that it’s like “by any means necessary.” We go out and we find stories that compel us, and we’re not going to be constrained by financial resources. I’m really excited about where it will go.

You’ve made a film that feels very specific to an experience for people in Ontario, yet this is the first time your film will screen for audiences in Canada. You’ve screened the film at Cannes and Karlovy Vary already. Have you been surprised by the reaction from international audiences, and what do you expect from audiences at TIFF once they see it?

I was really surprised by the international response to the film. I always felt that the location for the film was incredibly beautiful but worried that was always just because of my personal bias towards it. I was really surprised to see how much the setting seemed to speak to people strongly when the film premiered internationally, and it how seemed exotic to them in a way. The colloquialisms, the way the boys speak in the film is so regional in a way that I wondered if that could have ever registered internationally, and I couldn’t believe it fully could. So I’m really curious to bring the film home. I hope that it rings true to people. I hope that it’s more than nostalgia too, I hope that the story connects. I’m curious and a little bit anxious to see how it goes over at home because, for us, this is the home crowd. I’m hopeful and a little bit scared. [Laughs]

A version of this interview was originally published on September 7th, 2015, as part of our coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The news of yet another horror anthology coming out doesn’t inspire the same amount of excitement as it used to several years ago. The arrival of V/H/S, a fun blend of the anthology gimmick with found footage (the horror subgenre du jour), rejuvenated an interest in multiple directors collaborating on different, loosely connected short films. But now, after two V/H/S sequels, two ABCs of Death films, and with more “anthrillogies” on the way, the format is starting to get a bit tired again. That feeling must have been on the minds of the team behind Southbound, who also made V/H/S. They’ve gone in a different direction from their previous film, creating a more collaborative effort that intertwines Southbound’s five stories on both a narrative and thematic level. While the film can’t escape some of the inevitable issues that always plague these episodic movies, its consistency makes it the best horror anthology to come out since Trick ‘r Treat.

Things start with The Way Out directed by Radio Silence, who handle both the opening and closing stories. As an opening, the short really serves little purpose other than reeling viewers in with a deliberately hidden story that will be revealed in the concluding chapter (cleverly titled The Way In). Two men (Chad Villela & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin) are covered in blood and fleeing after escaping from someone (or something) that has them freaked out. After driving for a while, they notice a large, floating, skeletal demon following them, and despite their best efforts to escape they find themselves stuck in a sort of closed loop (also serving as a hint towards the film’s overall narrative structure). The purposefully vague plot makes this segment easy to forget, but it does a fine job establishing the major elements that run through the rest of the stories: the long stretch of highway in the Californian desert, and themes of regret, guilt and retribution.

Next up is Siren, Roxanne Benjamin’s directorial debut (she worked as a producer on V/H/S). Sadie (Fabianne Therese), Kim (Nathalie Love) and Ava (Hannah Marks) are a touring band whose van breaks down on the highway, and after getting offered a ride by a polite couple to stay at their house for the night Sadie begins noticing something seriously wrong with their hosts. Benjamin’s segment kicks off the strongest stretch of Southbound, with a fun little horror story that has a few devilish twists, along with a grim yet funny ending that segues into the film’s high point. David Bruckner’s Accident opens with Lucas (Mather Zickel) calling 911 to help someone injured in a car accident he caused. Bruckner hits a sort of twisted groove that none of the other films come close to reaching, and does a far better job at creating a sense of mystery that generates intrigue instead of frustration. And Brucker’s hook to the story is simple but effective: Lucas does the right thing, only to discover that he’s within a realm where morals don’t exist. It’s a brilliant short, with a low-key ending that provides the film’s best transition.

Unfortunately, the next story, Patrick Horvath’s Jailbreak, starts a slight downward trajectory due to its half-assed attempts to build out a mythology around the film’s location. Danny (David Yow) comes to one of the small towns along the highway in search of his missing sister, and it amounts to a lot of elements getting introduced without explanation as a way to imply some elaborate, complex supernatural society or system within this stretch of the desert. Horvath’s specificity only breaks the compelling illusion of something sinister in Bruckner’s previous short, suddenly showing there are weird back alleys and tattoo parlours all around. And the final short plays out as a riff on The Strangers before trying to explain what exactly was going on earlier in The Way Out.

But the less successful shorts in Southbound’s latter half don’t tank the film because of the overall thematic and visual through line. It’s hard to make desert locations look bad, and the film’s four directors of photography do a great job enhancing the isolated and dangerous qualities of the barren landscapes these characters can’t find their way out of. Southbound can act like an argument for why anthologies can benefit from a more collaborative effort, because even when one filmmaker might handle a theme or idea in a way that falters, the echoes of the stronger segments still ring through. It’s a big benefit in Southbound’s case, and helps make an increasingly stale format feel refreshing again.

A version of this review was originally published on September 18th, 2015, as part of our coverage of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Note: This is a review of an earlier cut of The Forbidden Room that screened at Sundance and Berlin. It has since been cut down by approximately ten minutes.

For Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, film isn’t just a thing people make. It’s a living thing. A universe existing right next to ours, where time and space collapse into a giant stew of celluloid and pixels. There’s no describing The Forbidden Room, Guy Maddin’s latest film which he co-directed with Johnson. I can merely state facts about it, but to actually attempt to describe the experience of watching it? That’s a fool’s errand because the only way to know about The Forbidden Room is to experience it for yourself. Is it Guy Maddin’s best work to date? Probably. Is it a masterpiece? Definitely. Maddin, who’s known for having a progressive and spiritual perspective towards cinema, has made what might be the purest representation of his mindset on film to date.

How did The Forbidden Room get here? You could say it all started back at the invention of film itself (for dramatic purposes), or five years ago (for practical purposes). Maddin created an installation called Hauntings that had him researching abandoned projects by master filmmakers and re-creating scenes from these “lost” films. Eventually, Maddin’s interests turned from the figurative to the literal; he began looking (with Johnson) into real films that are forever lost, either destroyed or unintentionally abandoned. After researching these films, Maddin began remaking them, recruiting a cast of big, international arthouse names (Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Roy Dupuis, Ariane Labed, Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros and lots more) to come in and “channel” the spirits of these lost films, acting them out in a series of short film remakes. How do you remake something you haven’t seen? Watch The Forbidden Room and find out.

So what is The Forbidden Room about? Rather than go for an episodic structure, Maddin and Johnson link every story together through a nesting doll structure that goes so deep it makes a film like Inception look like a pop-up book. It all starts with an old man in a bathrobe (Louis Negin, who winds up in almost every “remake” in some sort of role) giving advice on how to take a bath. The camera then goes under the bath water, where it reveals a submarine full of trapped men. Their captain is missing, their cargo of blasting jelly can explode at any minute, and their oxygen supply is low, requiring them to suck on pancakes to try and get oxygen from the air pockets. Suddenly, a lumberjack (Dupuis) finds his way onto the submarine, and when the men ask how he got there, the film flashes back to tell his story: while chopping trees in the forest, he decides to rescue the beautiful Margot (Clara Furey) from The Red Wolves, described as “the most feared forest bandits in all of Holstein-Schleswig.” The lumberjack goes off to rescue Margot who then has a dream where she’s an amnesiac bar singer, a bar where an indescribable singer performs a song about a man (Kier) obsessed with grabbing asses, which transitions into a dreaming volcano, and then a newspaper article within the volcano’s dream, and then the inside of an x-ray of a pelvis, and then…

The amount of transitions, digressions and leveling up and down within storylines just goes on and on, to the point where trying to make heads or tails of anything loses its meaning. Everything co-exists and stands alone. High art and low art combine into one. Dreams, memories, fantasies and nightmares weave in and out of each other. Maddin and Johnson put the bulk of their efforts into the post-production process, taking the digitally shot footage and dousing it with every possible imperfection or antiquated method from both analog and digital eras: two-strip Technicolor, warped stock, burn marks, title cards, data moshing, colour dyes, and whatever else they could pull out from this cinematic stew they conjured up. And through all of this madness, Maddin and Johnson have created an exhaustive and hilarious masterwork. The sort of film where a hysterical title card like “The skull-faced man and his gang of Skeletal Insurance Defrauders” gets lost in the shuffle of the seemingly endless ideas thrown on-screen from start to end. It’s a film that has endless rewatch value because it’s impossible to remember every detail from it. It’s one of the most perfect collections of imperfections ever made. It is, quite simply, The Forbidden Room.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Thomas Bidegain, the screenwriter of well-renowned French films A Prophet, Rust and Bone and this year’s Palme D’Or winner Dheepan, makes his directorial debut with Les Cowboys, which might be the first “French western” I’ve heard of. In what might be a cheeky acknowledgment of his appropriation of the Western, Bidegain opens his film at a country-western festival in France. Alain (Francois Damiens) and his family attend, with Alain having a ball as he sings “Tennessee Waltz” for the crowd and dances with his 16-year-old daughter Kelly (Iliana Zabeth). But when it’s time to leave Kelly is nowhere to be found, and after several days of searching a letter written by Kelly comes in the mail saying she’s run off with her Muslim boyfriend Ahmed. Kelly tells her family not to look for her, but Alain never stops searching, taking his son Kid (Finnegan Oldfield) with him throughout Europe as he spends years trying to track down Kelly.

It’s surprising that Bidegain’s screenplay turns out to be the weakest link in Les Cowboys given his writing background. While he’s undeniably inspired by Hollywood classics like The Searchers, it’s like he’s confused a basic and lacking approach with a classical one. Alain is a one-note character, more or less repeating himself throughout (find a lead, aggressively interrogate people about his daughter, freak out, get another lead, wash rinse repeat). Damiens does a fine job as Alain, but his intimidating presence vanishes as the monotony of his character sinks in. And then Bidegain, possibly aware of his own story going nowhere, suddenly changes things up by switching the focus to Kid in the second half as he heads off alone to Afghanistan. It would be a nice change of pace and setting if Oldfield didn’t have the charisma of a wooden block, mostly keeping his face expressionless and his mouth shut while travelling with an American he encounters on his trip (John C. Reilly in a wasted cameo). At least the scenery looks quite nice, thanks to cinematographer Arnaud Portier.

But if Bidegain wants viewers to join in on his film’s long, plodding journey, he has to make his characters worth following. Alain and Kid are too underdeveloped and stale to bother caring about, and even though Les Cowboys shouldn’t really be about the mystery surrounding Kelly, her whereabouts become the most involving element of the film. Putting aside Bidegain’s other problems—like his awkward attempt to shoehorn 9/11 into the narrative—Les Cowboys never gets out of the gate because, as a character-based drama, it fails to provide a single character worth investing in.

It only takes several minutes for Danielle Arbid’s Parisienne to throw its main character into a seemingly never-ending struggle to live her own life. Lina (Manal Issa) has just arrived in France several weeks earlier from Lebanon, staying with her distant aunt while attending university in the city. In the opening scene, Lina flees her aunt’s home after her uncle tries to have sex with her, and from there she faces one hurdle after another in her attempts to start anew in Paris. Whether it’s befriending students to find a place to stay or taking on odd jobs that could violate the conditions of her residence permit, Lina never stops hustling in the hopes of settling down.

Arbid tends to keep things simple for the most part, knowing that watching her protagonist’s struggle to do things on her own terms is compelling enough. What’s even more compelling is Issa’s performance as Lina, which walks a fine line between earning sympathy for her situation and keeping viewers at arm’s length with Lina’s stubbornness (a brief detour in the narrative where Lina goes back to Lebanon makes the character, and Issa’s performance, all the richer). She’s far from a perfect or idealistic character, and Arbid’s ability to give Lina room to fail or wrong others in her pursuits prevents the film from turning into a sappy story about overcoming adversity.

The somewhat lackadaisical approach Arbid takes in the second half, with the introduction of a new boyfriend that suddenly pushes other aspects of Lina’s story to the backseat, can get a little frustrating, especially considering the somewhat bloated two-hour runtime. But Issa’s magnetic presence makes it hard to lose interest, and Arbid never loses sight of her film’s strong thematic core. No matter how many friendships Lina makes and breaks, how many romantic interests come in and out of her life, or how many obstacles get thrown her way, her goal to achieve happiness through independence never wavers. Arbid understands the power of that sort of narrative, and by approaching it with a naturalistic eye, Parisienne makes for a satisfying experience.

No one can say that Anne Émond doesn’t have ambition after watching her sophomore feature Our Loved Ones. Taking place over two decades and following three generations of a family in rural Quebec, Émond opens her film with the family’s patriarch hanging himself. From there, she focuses on David (Maxim Gaudette), the youngest son who ends up getting married and having two children as the film quickly moves through time. David eventually starts showing signs of an intense depression as his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay) grows up and goes off to college, and soon finds himself facing a battle that’s similar to the one his father lost.

Émond’s film is remarkable in its unflinching and realistic portrayal of the cumulative power of depression. The way she handles time, and how she uses seemingly innocuous and naturalistic moments between characters to develop such a strong, sensitive and moving film is the sort of thing one would expect from a well-established master instead of an up and coming filmmaker. It’s a bold work, especially in the way Émond is willing to suddenly switch the focus from David to Laurence partway through the film and not lose momentum. We’ve already raved about the film, and after having its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival we were able to sit down with Anne Émond (who’s already in the middle of production on her third feature) to talk about Our Loved Ones.

Tell me about the origin of your film.

For about 15 years, I’ve been wanting to tell this story. I did another film before this called Nuit #1, but this could have been my first film. Our Loved Ones is quite complicated because the structure is elliptical, and it’s a bigger film with a lot of actors, so in terms of production it was easier for me to finance it as a second feature. It’s a very personal story. I think all movies are a little autobiographical, and this one is very autobiographical. It’s quite a dark and complex subject, but all those characters in the movie, I know them. I had the feeling that I could talk about this subject with legitimacy, so I felt that I could truly make this film.

What was autobiographical about it?

That’s hard. In fact, I don’t want to talk about it. I think what was really important to me was to make a movie that people will love and understand and feel even if they don’t know that it happened.

What struck me immediately about the film is how you handled time, and how elliptical the film is. Did you always intend to make the film this way?

I knew I wanted to make a film about life passing by. It’s a film about memory and what parents give to children, so in this way I was sure it would be a long period of time. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure how to tell it. I wrote the screenplay with flashbacks, where we’re in the present with Laurence and then the story would come out through flashbacks. It didn’t work for me. The chronology was more interesting. I think it’s quite cruel because we lose the main character and the film is not over. David is the main character and then Laurence is the main character. But it’s quite elliptical and it’s a challenge. Some people like it, but for other people it’s hard to accept. I tried to make it soft. I think it’s quite a simple story, it’s easy to follow, so I could do these jumps in time.

Did you feel that by having such a large scope it would be more respectful to the themes you were covering?

There are a lot of films about suicide, some good and some bad. Usually when people kill themselves in a film there is always a very precise reason, like his wife is gone or he has cancer, something like that. There’s always a precise reason. But I wanted to make a film about a man who has everything and who just has this melancholy. To me, this is over a lifetime. I want to show a man who is so happy to have children, but it comes with the fact that they grow up, and it’s eventually like a cruel story because you can’t do anything. Life goes by, and you will lose some people that you love. So that’s why time was so important.

You start the film off with David, his mother and four siblings finding out about their father’s death, but you eventually hone in on just David. The only other sibling we really see a lot of other than David is his brother André. What made you want to keep the focus on just one family member?

At the beginning [of writing] there were 13 brothers and sisters. It was a very big family, but it was too complicated to shoot so I chose those 5 characters. I think it’s perfect because you feel they are really close. And it’s important André is there because I think he has everything to commit suicide. He’s the one who’s drinking, he has no family and no job, and he also [found his father] at the beginning, so it’s a little bit surprising that it’s David who’s suicidal.

What made you choose to set the film in the Lower Saint-Lawrence region of Quebec?

Well, I was born there! [Laughs] I love this place. Since I was young I knew those landscapes, and I wanted to shoot them. Nature is very important in the film because David feels safe in this place. He has the river, the house, the mountain, the forest, and in this small area he feels safe. To me, he’s okay, but it’s a small perimeter of security. And it’s important because once Laurence is able to [go into] the world things becomes bigger. She can go to Montreal, she can go to Barcelona, and she can get out of this little place.

David has this melancholy and heaviness in his life. It’s an issue that’s entirely internal for him, and it’s difficult to communicate it to others. How did you make sure viewers would be able to understand what David is going through?

For some people, it seems to work. They feel it, they feel this melancholy. That’s what I wanted. I think it has to do with acting. Maxim Gaudette is quite nice. Even when he is smiling, he has these sad eyes. We started shooting the movie about 2 weeks after Robin Williams killed himself, and we talked about him so much. We watched interviews with Robin Williams, and you can see it in his eyes. It’s easy to see now because he’s dead, but when you look back you see this man is smiling and laughing, but he’s not okay. I tried to give David moments alone in the film to show people he’s not fine, but he cannot say that to his family. He’s not able to share this depression.

What was the casting process like to find Maxim Gaudette and Karelle Tremblay?

It was quite important because this film is about a family. We started with David. I chose [Maxim] because I was completely in love with his acting. He’s perfect to me, and I think he’s very sensitive. And then we chose Karelle Tremblay, but we looked for Karelle for one year. We saw maybe 45 young girls. I wanted a small, blue-eyed blond girl, and Karelle is not like that at all. She’s brown haired and strong and a little bit boyish, but I liked her so much. She’s 19 and has quite a difficult part in the film, and she’s very good.

[Maxim and Karelle] had fun together. They are like father and daughter now. The shooting was magical, all of the cast became like a family because we were on location far away from our families. We were sleeping in small campers for two months, drinking beers and having fun, so we were a family by the end of shooting.

You have a pretty memorable soundtrack with songs like Blind Melon’s “No Rain” and Pulp’s “Common People.”

The songs were chosen at the writing stage. I already knew I wanted those songs. I don’t know how it happened. One night I was with my friend and we remembered this song by Blind Melon. It was like we never heard this song anymore, and we were so happy and dancing to this song at 33 years old [Laughs]. And I thought that’s the song the characters should listen to.

To me, it’s nostalgia. I thought that maybe not every family has this particular drama, but every family has dramas, memories, and songs. I also needed music to [establish] the period of time. I use it for that, and also because they’re just good songs.

The film feels very complex in the way it handles characters. Things are never black and white. There’s a lot of sensitivity toward everyone in the film. What was it like trying to achieve this while writing the screenplay?

It was hard. Nuit #1 was a dark, cruel, in your face kind of film. It was easy to be edgy. I think Our Loved Ones is not an edgy film. It’s quite different in terms of themes and direction. When I screened Nuit #1, a lot of people walked out in the middle because they couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to do that again. To me, the subject in Our Loved Ones is so important, so serious and realistic that it had to be generous. It had to be for a lot of people. But I didn’t want to make this perfect family story. I worked a lot on the writing about that.

Our Loved Ones is currently seeking US distribution.

Leave it to the Danes to take what looks like a big ole quirk-fest and turn it into something much more disturbing. At the start, Anders Thomas Jensen’s film has all the makings for a light, quirky comedy about brotherhood. Brothers Gabriel (David Dencik) and Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) have a strained relationship but have to reunite once their father dies. Upon his death, the two watch a video left to them where their father reveals they were adopted and only half-brothers, sharing the same father but not the same mother (both mothers died during childbirth). With only the name of their biological father to go by, Gabriel eventually finds out that he lives on a tiny island with a population of just over 40 people. Gabriel and Elias head off and discover a series of dark, twisted and morbidly funny revelations about their family’s past.

The film’s introduction to its two main characters, with Gabriel missing his father’s death due to a gag reflex and Elias taking a break during a date to jerk off in a public washroom, implies that Men & Chicken will play out as a bland and juvenile comedy of eccentricities. Thankfully Jensen doesn’t go down a predictable route, instead changing the film’s location to the secluded island and making things get a lot weirder with the introduction of three other half-brothers (Nicolas Bro, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Soren Malling) that have basically been raised as animals. Quirks and peculiarities soon give way to slapstick hijinks once the five siblings begin operating on the same abnormal wavelength, and Jensen introduces more sadistic pieces of information until, by the end, Men & Chicken is like a Cronenberg film crossed with your average Sundance family drama. Jensen and his game cast (especially Mikkelsen, who’s hard to recognize at points) make it work too, and turn Men & Chicken into a film that’s just as strange as it is entertaining.

An early scene in Homesick finds the protagonist, Charlotte (Ine Wilmann), at her best friend’s wedding reception. After a series of relatively mundane conversations and wedding activities, the DJ drops the beat and many of the guests begin to let loose, and the dance floor erupts into chaos. It’s quite metaphorical of what’s to come, as Homesick is a slow-burning character study that eventually reaches an intense boiling point, but not until director Anne Sewitsky meticulously constructs some of the most uncomfortable circumstances imaginable.

Charlotte, a dance instructor who seems to be sleepwalking through her twenties, yearns for the traditional family she always dreamed of having. When Henrik (Simon J. Berger), the half-brother Charlotte had never met, unexpectedly arrives to Charlotte’s dance studio, she’s given the chance to have the familial bond she always wanted. As the two siblings get to know each other, their feelings quickly transition from friendly to sexual, and Charlotte and Henrik are forced to come to somewhat disturbing terms about their relationship.

Intelligently, Sewitsky never outright judges the characters for their incestuous tendencies. Incest is such a wildly taboo subject that the safe route would easily have been to demonize the siblings, but Sewitsky takes an almost documentarian-like stance on the matter. Strangely enough, Charlotte ends up becoming quite a sympathetic character. All she wants in life is to feel the love of her biological family; she just goes about attaining it in an unconventional way.

Wilmann is nothing short of brilliant in the lead role, and it’s hard to believe that Homesick is her first film acting experience. Naturalistic performances across the board result in some deeply flawed characters who are easy to cheer for and all too relatable at times. Thankfully, there are no caricatures or one-dimensional characters found in the film. Charlotte has plenty of issues, sure, but she’s also a contributing member of society who cracks jokes, runs her own business, and seems to love working with children. These admirable character traits make it even more impactful when her true intentions with Henrik are revealed, and we discover that the young woman has quite a few issues.

Given that the stakes aren’t particularly high—nor is there an actual physical antagonist in the film—Homesick is surprisingly suspenseful at times. It’s a different kind of sexual thriller, the tension lies in the unknown—in the future of Charlotte and Henrik’s disturbing relationship. As they grow closer, Charlotte realizes that Henrik isn’t the kind-hearted family man she expected. Instead, he’s an occasionally abusive hot head with selfish tendencies. Still, Sewistky avoids slipping into overdramatic Lifetime movie territory by keeping the story grounded and honest.

Beautiful, effective editing from Christoffer Heie helps the film keep a steady, methodical pace. Heie and Sewistky deserve major kudos for making the brilliant, albeit dangerous, decision to frequently use jarring transitions. Thankfully, almost all of these cuts make up for their lack of fluidity with a sincere, emotional outcome. There’s a certain bravery on display in the quick transitions from lighthearted scenes of Charlotte teaching young children dance routines to sweaty, grimy sequences of her having sex.

Homesick is a very different kind of story, and is sure to polarize viewers who may feel uncomfortable with its incestuous subject matter. But those who approach it with an open mind are sure to be able to appreciate the immense technical skill that is put on display from start to finish. Homesick is a wonderful, audacious film that challenges its audience, and serves as a brilliant debut for its lead actress and director.

The ecological dangers of the Australian outback are widely known, but it’s the evil nature of its occupants that sets the stage for Grant Scicluna’s Downriver. An Aussie mystery thriller that relies heavily on its fascinating characters, the film is consistently suspenseful, despite occasionally overstaying its welcome.

Shortly after being released from juvenile detention for the drowning death of a young boy, James (Reef Ireland) returns to his hometown to an expected lack of open arms. Maintaining his innocence, James ventures out in search of the truth, in hopes of bringing the real murderer to justice. His journey leads him to his old friend Anthony (Tom Green), a sociopathic young man who seemingly has a stranglehold on many of the townsfolk.

One of the most noticeable aspects of Downriver is the fact that despite being set in a small community that includes an ensemble cast, it’s bereft of young women. The handful of females in the film are middle-aged, and it’s almost as if it’s set in some sort of weird dystopian society where teenage girls aren’t allowed. Perhaps this is due to the fact that a majority of the main characters are gay or bisexual males—and therefore choose to associate themselves with other boys—but it’s a strange aspect, regardless. At times it feels as if Scicluna is crafting a social commentary on homophobia in Australia, but exactly what he’s saying—if anything—seems to go over my head.

Superb performances from a talented young cast keep Downriver engaging for the most part. There are a few moments that drag during the second act, but the finale makes the occasionally slow-paced journey worthwhile. An eerie discovery wraps up the film’s intense and unsettling conclusion, which borders on becoming downright frightening. It’s not quite as graphic or dangerous as some of the other recent thrillers out of Australia, but Downriver is still a welcome import from one of cinema’s most underrated countries.

In cinema, it seems almost impossible to raise the stakes any higher than by putting an infant child in a dangerous situation. Many have argued that this is a cheap trope that is exploited to create suspense and elicit an emotional response from audiences. While that criticism may very well be true in some cases, there is nothing cheap about David Farr’s startling directorial debut The Ones Below.

After a decade-long relationship, Kate (Clémence Poésy) and her husband Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore) get pregnant with their first child. Shortly thereafter, new neighbors move in to the flat below them. Jon (David Morrissey) and Theresa (Laura Birn), another married couple expecting their first child, immediately express their desire to befriend the somewhat hesitant Kate and Justin. In typical psychological thriller fashion, a series of traumatic events follow. Kate grows increasingly paranoid, convinced that Jon and Theresa have sinister plans. Of course, Jon thinks his wife is delusional and overreacting. Fearing for the wellbeing of her newborn son, Kate becomes determined to uncover the truth about the couple below before it’s too late.

Longtime film fans will quickly notice an apparent Polanski influence, as the film is Rosemary’s Baby meets Carnage, with a healthy does of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle thrown in for good measure. Farr never pulls his punches, resulting in an emotionally draining film that remains equally woeful and unsettling. When it’s not tugging at the heartstrings with sequences of bleakness and family drama, it’s creeping under the skin with some genuinely suspenseful moments that feel anything but safe. There’s a legitimate sense of danger throughout that gives The Ones Below a truly alluring nature.

It doesn’t avoid the cliché moments that are found in similar movies, but Farr manages to keep suspense high regardless. Even the wildly cliché moment where the unsuspecting mother hears a frightening noise through the baby monitor is crafted with severe tension. Once Kate determines that there’s something horrifyingly wrong with the downstairs couple, she breaks into their home and discovers loads of incriminating evidence of their ulterior motives. Of course, it is all quickly hidden before her husband manages to see it—making Kate appear as though she is completely losing her mind. We’ve all seen these exact scenes time and time again in film—yet Farr has a way of making them not only feel fresh but also strangely unpredictable and tense.

A haunting, eerie score sets the stage for Kate’s crippling descent into madness. From there, Farr questions if Jon and Theresa are completely innocent and Kate is just a paranoid woman who is having difficulty entering into motherhood. Normally, this would come across as a red herring, but The Ones Below is such a daring, intelligently crafted film that it feels completely possible for all expectations to be violently subverted.

Set in the United Kingdom, there’s a classic England feel to The Ones Below in more ways than one. From the atmospheric, often dreary setting, to the overt classiness of the characters, there’s an almost sophisticated aura. Effective cinematography, with an excellent use of zooms, is perhaps the biggest technical highlight of the film. Director of photography Ed Rutherford (A Long Way from Home) truly rises to the occasion.

Farr’s debut is impressive, delivering everything that one would desire out of a modern thriller. Complete with multiple unexpected twists, empathetic characters, and an unshakable darkness, The Ones Below is one of the most suspenseful films of the year—and one that shouldn’t be missed by fans of the genre.

I recently had the great privilege to program a small film festival at my local theater. The theme I chose was “Directed By Women,” in an effort to celebrate and spotlight women directors. I tried to make the offering of films as varied as possible, presenting everything from Oscar-winning fare to indie documentaries—and films both foreign and domestic. The directors whose films I chose ranged from Ida Lupino (The Hitch-Hiker) to Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). If only I had seen Our Loved Ones before then, I would have begged to include Anne Émond’s film on the roster.

The story begins with the death of a family’s patriarch. Of the decedent’s five children, two are sons. The elder son, André (Mickaël Gouin), who discovers his father’s body, lies to his younger, more sensitive brother David (Maxim Gaudette), as well as other family members who were not present, about the circumstances surrounding their father’s death. There is no malfeasance behind the false explanation, only a desire to shield the younger son and others from the painful truth.

As years and decades pass, David grows up, grows older, and comes into his own. He has both professional and artistic success as a maker of marionettes, he is able to employ André (at their mother’s behest—but still), and he has two beautiful children of his own. That said, and setting aside these successes, David still lives with the specter of his father’s passing, and his relationship with his teen daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay) presents challenges he doesn’t expect.

Our Loved Ones (Les êtres chers) is only the second feature from writer/director Anne Émond, but what she puts onscreen shows such tremendous confidence—the film feels like it has come from someone with 10 times her experience.

It starts with the film’s narrative (or the lack thereof). Our Loved Ones doesn’t tell a story so much as it observes one man’s life; that man is David. It hits the two key points in his life it needs to hit (and early) to get the observation going: his father’s death and his introduction to the woman in his life, Marie (Valérie Cadieux). From there, Émond takes something of a highlight reel-approach to her film, skipping huge chunks of David’s life and presenting moments along his timeline. These moments, however, are not typical highlight reel fare. They aren’t the kind of “this is your life” moments many have come to expect from films. They are, however, meaningful later in the film.

This is the real magic of the screenplay. The film has a definitive beginning and, more importantly, a definitive end. But the middle, despite being critical to the conclusion, isn’t driving the film to the end. Émond selects moments that are key to the life she wants us to observe, not the life’s moments we think we should see.

More of that confidence shines in the way Émond presents David’s life, as it demands a lot from the viewer in terms of intelligence and faith. This 102-minute tale spans decades (which is so ambitious for most veteran filmmakers, let a lone a sophomore). As such, Émond must make great leaps forward in time, but when she does, those leaps aren’t announced. There is no subtitle or title card presenting the year in which the new action is taking place; it simply happens. For example, there is a scene early where David and Marie have just met, and they are carefully walking on a frozen lake at night. Cut to the next scene, and not only is it warm and sunny, David and Marie are living together. Cut to the scene after that, and they are at his mother’s house with their baby.

It’s jarring at first because it’s an approach that belies the usual spoon-feeding most movies offer viewers and instead requires the viewer to pay close attention for things in the film that indicate where it is along David’s timeline. This jumping—sometimes far, sometimes not—to points in David’s life that aren’t the usual key moments in a person’s life also requires faith from the viewer that Émond has planned on the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It is.

Despite this praise (which is wholly earned), Émond’s confidence is a little higher than her storytelling skill. There is an event early in the film that aches to be addressed and never is. There is a shocking moment late in the film that comes as some considerable surprise—a moment that is key to the film’s end—but it feels contrived, like Émond wasn’t sure which points to insert into David’s timeline to support this particular moment and instead decided the viewer would simply make some necessary connections to earlier, tangentially related moments. In a film that demands a lot, this is asking for a little too much. Kudos to Émond for not wavering on her approach, but that kind of resolve comes with a price.

Still, this film is mesmerizing in the story it tells and the way it tells it, with a wonderfully soulful performance from acting veteran Gaudette as David, as well as a captivating turn from relative newcomer Tremblay as Laurence. There is great father/daughter chemistry between the two, which is also key to the film’s success. With Our Loved Ones, Anne Émond boldly makes the movie she wants to make, not the movie she thinks the audience is expecting.

Ask a random sampling of movie buffs to name a famous costume designer and the first response will most likely be Edith Head, and rightfully so. With 35 Oscar nominations to her name (eight of which went on to win), Head is synonymous with high-calibre movie fashion. Ask for additional names, and the hardcore film fans will reveal themselves, offering names like Irene Sharaff, Charles LeMaire, and Milena Canonero. Another designer they might mention is Orry-Kelly, son of Australia, winner of Academy Awards, and a man whose story is as fascinating as they come. That story is told to remarkable effect by filmmaker Gillian Armstrong in her documentary, Women He’s Undressed.

The linear bio starts with the boyhood days of Orry George Kelly, the son of a tailor from Kiama, New South Wales, Australia. Those early days reveal two key things that will forever shape Kelly’s career and life: his natural and immense artistic flare, and his homosexuality. Living in a land during a time when the latter was not tolerated, Kelly abandons the banking career he had begun and departs Australia in 1922 to set sail for America. In his early years in New York City, Kelly makes his bones as an artist and costumer for Broadway productions. It’s also during this time he begins a romantic relationship with Archie Leach, a struggling (but unspeakably handsome) actor who eventually goes on to change his name to Cary Grant.

The two make it to Hollywood together, but where their individual careers began to thrive, their relationship died. Cary Grant goes on to be, well, Cary Grant, while Orry-Kelly goes on to costume some of Hollywood’s greatest stars (Bette Davis-calibre) in over 280 films (including a little picture called Casablanca), winning three Oscars in the process.

There is some deft storytelling from Gillian Armstrong in Women He’s Undressed. This isn’t just another biopic about a kid from the middle of nowhere making it big in showbiz, nor is it just some revelation about another unsung Hollywood behind-the-scenes great, nor is it just a name-dropping clip reel of Hollywood history. It’s actually all of these things and more. And it’s dazzling.

Women He’s Undressed might struggle to get out of the gate of his childhood, but during those early minutes of the film, his homosexuality is established. This is key not only because it makes him who he is, but because the position and evolution of the entertainment industry (somewhat Broadway, mostly Hollywood) as it relates to same-sex relationships has considerable consequences. The greater narrative then radiates from Orry-Kelly: he’s gay, others in Hollywood are gay, here is how Hollywood handled gay. (The approach towards his sexual orientation, by the way, is never disrespectful, nor does it ever pander.)

Bringing Archie Leach/Cary Grant into the story might sound scandalous (and it is), but it is also critical to the designer’s tale in that: (a) Leach/Grant is a major love of Orry-Kelly’s life, and (b) the actor is responsible for Orry-Kelly making it to Hollywood. This isn’t just a kiss-and-tell; Leach/Grant has real purpose to who Orry-Kelly is as a person and as a costume designer.

Once the story moves inside Hollywood’s gates, Armstrong really shows what she’s made of as a documentarian.

The Orry-Kelly thread about his homosexuality turns into the fabric of a Hollywood history lesson. Like the same-sex narrative, the Hollywood history narrative radiates from Orry-Kelly, puts context around the time and the business, then returns to put Orry-Kelly into history’s context and vice versa.

The history radiates to the groundbreaking work that Busby Berkley did and then brings it back to Orry-Kelly’s equally impressive costumes for the filmmaker’s pictures. The history radiates to the tawdriness of pre-code films and crosses over to the more subdued post-code films, using Orry-Kelly as a bridge between the two eras and focusing on what he did as a costumer during both eras (including what he got away with, post-code). Then to some of the titans of the times: Bette Davis, Jack Warner, William Randolph Hearst, Marilyn Monroe—and his relationships with all of them. And of course, the story then proceeds to Cary Grant. The documentary even finds its way back to Australia from time to time.

By the time the story is over, Orry-Kelly is not just another Hollywood luminary—he’s forever one with that town and its history.

Yet for all its narrative might, some of the storytelling devices employed fall terribly flat. Armstrong opts to cast people to play Orry-Kelly and his mother, and then work them into the story for narration, commentary, even humor. It’s all so silly, especially in the earliest days, which at times are downright cartoonish. I think I get what Armstrong is trying do—inject elements of stage and film into these portions as representations of the two branches of entertainment where Orry-Kelly was at his best. It just feels so gimmicky, and never more so than when the intricate pattern Armstrong weaves suddenly gets disrupted. Also feeling manufactured are quotes from celebrities as voiced by other actors. It’s intrusive and too cute by half, and it’s all to the detriment of the overall product.

It wouldn’t be a documentary without some talking heads, and it’s refreshing to see some living legends who worked with Orry-Kelly offer their thoughts. The most recognizable are critic/historian Leonard Maltin, actress Angela Lansbury, and actress Jane Fonda. (Hearing Fonda confess to what she would have liked to have done to a certain part of Marilyn Monroe’s anatomy is worth the price of admission.) These celebs, and other contributors, are used in excellent measure. Oddly enough, Orry-Kelly himself is only ever seen (via photos) at the end of the film.

Orry-Kelly’s formidable combination of history, skill, attitude, and pizzaz creates a mighty base for Armstrong to build upon, and build she does, using numerous storytelling devices and a whip-smart narrative. Women He’s Undressed isn’t always perfect, but it’s riveting from start to finish.

There’s a pleasantness to Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull that’s surprising, given its aggressive environment. Mascaro focuses his film on workers for the Vaquejadas, a rodeo where two cowboys have to grab a bull by the tail and drag it to the ground. But instead of profiling one of the cowboys, Mascaro looks at a small family-like unit of workers behind the scenes: cowhands Iremar (Juliano Cazarre) and Ze (Carlos Pessoa), truck driver Galega (Maeve Jinkings) and her daughter Caca (Aline Santana). With little to no narrative, Neon Bull prefers to establish a beguiling and gently subversive tone through its unique characters.

Iremar, Galega and new cowhand Junior (Vinicius de Oliveira) provide the film’s subversive elements through either their own traits or their relationships with other characters (which, given the way Mascaro merely presents these elements as they are, makes them more fascinating than provocative). Iremar has a passion for designing clothes, using Galega as his model; Galega spends her nights performing exotic dances wearing hooves and a horse head; and the feminine-looking Junior (due to his long mane of hair) starts up a relationship with Galega that suggests underlying tension between Iremar and Galega. It may be difficult to parse out exactly what Mascaro wants to say with his film (and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his ideas might have been lost in translation), but with director of photography Diego Garcia (who also lensed TIFF highlight Cemetery of Splendour) he creates a truly unique mood helped by unforgettable images: naked men showering together in a barn, Galega dancing in her horse costume under red lights, and Iremar rummaging through trash to look for mannequin parts. It’s a mood that combines the real, the surreal, and the banal, and merges them together to make a film that continues to inspire curiosity long after the credits roll.

It’s been over a decade since Lucile Hadzihalilovic baffled people in the best way with her incredible and underseen debut, Innocence, but now she’s back to show off her incredibly singular style with Evolution. From the opening, Hadzihalilovic (aided by cinematographer Manu Dacosse) wastes no time showing how much her unique vision has been desperately missed. A series of underwater shots around the coral reef of the film’s isolated location (shot on the Canary Islands, it looks like another planet altogether) are a feast for the senses, and the sensuous visuals continue throughout. But unlike Innocence, where Hadzihalilovic followed young girls in a similarly enigmatic and potentially sinister location, Evolution switches the focus to young boys and brings the darkness to the forefront.

On the edge of the island, where the small village of white houses stands out next to the black sand on the beach, 10-year-old Nicolas (Max Brebant) discovers the dead body of a boy around his age at the bottom of the ocean. He tells his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) about it, but she dismisses him; and the next day Nicolas goes back to find the body no longer there. Even before the cover-up, Hadzihalilovic makes it clear that something seriously abnormal is going on. The only people on the island are other boys, and each of them has a “mother.” The mothers all dress in the same bland, brown dress; pull their hair back; and feed their children what looks like bowls of boiled gunk scraped up at the bottom of the sea. Nicolas, unlike the other boys around him, is growing increasingly aware that his situation might not be a safe one.

And that’s all before Nicolas and his friends are shipped off to a medical facility on the island, where nurses start conducting experiments on the boys. Going into the undefined horrors in store for Nicolas and his friends would ruin the surprises Hadzihalilovic has in store, which evoke names like Lynch and Cronenberg. But comparing Hadzihalilovic to other filmmakers feels somewhat unnecessary and more like a need to find something tangible when trying to describe her work. Hadzihalilovic simply doesn’t make films like anyone else, and if her narrative falters—largely because narrative takes a back seat for her—it’s made up for by a command of mood and atmosphere that’s unparalleled. This is Evolution’s greatest strength.

With Innocence, Hadzihalilovic played things extremely close to the chest, and with her follow-up she loosens her grip just a little. That doesn’t mean it won’t be hard to figure out what exactly is going on throughout Evolution, but it will certainly be easier to guess than her debut (also worth mentioning again since it’s remarkable: this is only her second feature). There are times where the film’s small hints of information lead to some of its most unforgettable images, like when Nicolas discovers what exactly the mothers do at night when they walk out to the beach. Other times, like when Nicolas befriends hospital nurse Stella (Roxane Duran), the film comes perilously close to introducing exposition and breaking its own spell. Thankfully it doesn’t get to that point, but there are times where Hadzihalilovic seems lost at sea when it comes to figuring out how to leave out vital breadcrumbs to her audience.

But as I said, the benefit of Evolution is that plot doesn’t really matter. This is a film about nailing down a tone that walks the line between dream and nightmare, teetering on either side throughout. And in that respect, Evolution succeeds. It’s by far one of, if not the best looking film of the year, with images that look like paintings come to life. The constant presence and role of water in the film (tied directly in with the protective, maternal relationships between the women and children on the island) make it easy to get submerged in the otherworldly sights and sounds. Whether it’s for good or bad reasons, Evolution is a film that will linger in the mind long after seeing it. I just hope it won’t be as long of a wait before Hadzihalilovic works again.

Now on his 17^th feature, Hong Sang-soo has created yet another story about film directors, the women they pine over, and lots of soju. Hong’s films tend to play out in a similar fashion, to the point where it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim he’s been remaking the same film for most of his career. But it would be unfair to dismiss Hong’s work as one-note, due to his tendency of experimenting with form. Stories can repeat themselves, the laws of time and space break in two, and stories can reflect and refract within themselves. This playing with form can suddenly turn what appears to be a flighty effort into something more substantial; it makes Hong’s common themes of love and regret more resonant as a result. Right Now, Wrong Then sees Hong continuing to do what he knows best, although the results are lacking compared to some of his more recent fare.

Those familiar with Hong’s work shouldn’t be surprised by the plot. Director Ham Chunsu (Jung Jae-young) comes to the city of Suwon to present one of his films at a local festival, but he arrives a day early due to a miscommunication. With nothing to do, he wanders the city, eventually bumping into Yoon Heejung (Kim Min-hee), a young woman Chunsu quickly falls for. Chunsu quickly sweet talks Heejung into joining him for a coffee, and the two wind up spending the entire day together. Chunsu comes across as a bit of an egotistical person (it doesn’t help that almost everyone in the film heaps praise on him and his work), and after drinking too much as a sushi bar, he starts being a lot more explicit to Heejung about his feelings for her. Things eventually go sour, though, once Heejung takes Chunsu to her friend’s, and they expose Chunsu’s womanizing ways. Heejung, devasted to learn that her new friend is actually married, abruptly leaves, and Chunsu winds up flipping out the next day at his screening’s Q&A.

At that point, Right Now, Wrong Then literally resets itself. Now with a proper title card (the film’s first half opened with the title Right Then, Wrong Now), the day starts over, and Chunsu’s meet up with Heejung plays out with a few slight differences that increase exponentially as the day goes on. By making the second half of the film a slight variation on the first, the focus on the film changes significantly; with the general frame and story already known, attention goes to the smaller details to find changes between each part. By contextualizing every interaction, camera movement, and line of dialogue down to a micro level, Hong emphasizes the importance of how these seemingly small elements can shape the way people behave and interact. Pay enough attention to Right Then, Wrong Now and Right Now, Wrong Then, and there will be small rewards, whether it’s events or statements that can suddenly change the meaning of an action or line portrayed before.

But does Hong’s film really work at what it’s going for? In this case, not really. Unlike the three-part narrative of In Another Country, the Groundhog Day-esque repetition of The Day He Arrives, or the jumbled narrative of Hill of Freedom, the repeated halves simply don’t have much to delve into, and with the film’s two-hour runtime, things drag significantly once Hong’s point establishes itself. Hong’s low-key humour and dry comedy also feel sorely missed here (or, perhaps, it was too subdued for me to find it effective), with a lot of the film amounting to watching characters have rather dull conversations. It’s all disappointingly stale for Hong, especially after his highly entertaining Hill of Freedom last year. By now, Hong has shown that his variations on the same story can lead to some truly funny and thought-provoking material; Right Now, Wrong Then feels more like a slight misstep than anything else for Hong. There’s no sign that he’s lost his touch, but in this case, his experiment is less successful than his previous ones.

Roger Ebert said that video games can never be art, and director Ilya Naishuller is hellbent on proving him right with Hardcore. Promoted as the first POV action film, Hardcore‘s first-person perspective looks, feels and acts like a random shoot-em-up video game crapped out by a B-tier game company any old year. Looking through the eyes of Henry, a Robocop-like man who’s just been reassembled into a man/machine hybrid after a terrible accident, the film establishes its flimsy objective within the first several minutes: save his wife Estelle (Hayley Bennett) from the clutches of her evil, telekinetic boss Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) whose company put Henry together. After escaping from Akan’s lab (which happens to be a giant blimp in the sky), Henry slaughters his way through Akan’s seemingly endless army of soldiers to get Estelle back. And along the way he’s helped by Jimmy (Shalto Copley), a former scientist of Akan’s set on taking him down.

There’s little to say about why Hardcore is so bad. Put simply, it amounts to watching someone else play a very boring video game on God mode, with tits and gore thrown in to satiate audiences with the attention span of a goldfish. It’s infantile trash from front to end, with a few neat moments of stunt work that get lost amidst the numbing onslaught of violence. Copley has fun with it at least, and continues to prove himself as a reliable and charismatic presence in whatever he does. But Hardcore really has no appealing factors, unless you happen to be a 13-year-old boy. Considering the POV format (the film was mostly shot on GoPros), Naishuller could have had some fun or at least used the hectic, low-quality aspects of his cameras’ technology to do some neat things. Instead, he just throws out one fight after another, like he’s just mindlessly slamming his head against a brick wall over and over again. If I was given the choice, I’d probably take the brick wall over watching Hardcore again.

After co-writing Gravity with his father Alfonso, Jonas Cuaron has literally come down to Earth for Desierto, a survival thriller similar to Gravity except set on the border (and with a budget that was probably a fraction of his father’s film). But Desierto is first and foremost a genre film, and with a big international star in the lead it’s easy to categorize the film as “prestige grindhouse.” It’s a gritty attempt to take the hot-button issue of illegal immigration and transform it into a stalk and kill slasher on the border. The only problem is that Cuaron doesn’t have a single original idea, working with co-writer Mateo Garcia to wrap his film in the safety of conventions, thin characterizations and uninspired story beats. For a film about an unpredictable life or death scenario, Desierto plays it safe from frame one.

Moises (Gael Garcia Bernal) is in the back of a truck with over a dozen other undocumented workers traveling the desert to the U.S. The truck breaks down, and now everyone has to journey to the States on foot, a trip that should take over a day. At the same time, U.S. country boy Sam (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is out hunting rabbits with his dog Tracker and giving attitude to someone at border patrol who stops him. If the cowboy hat, pickup truck and country music blaring from his studio doesn’t give it away immediately, Sam really hates illegal immigrants (read: non-whites). And to make sure the flipside of this equation is just as simple and underdeveloped, Moises’ defending of a young female immigrant from her predatory helper quickly establishes him as the morally righteous good guy. Then, as these stories go, their paths cross, and Sam begins hunting down Moises with his dog and rifle.

At least Cuaron builds things up nicely in the first act before Sam begins shooting down one immigrant after another, utilizing the desert locale to show off some nice compositions (the opening feels like a direct lift of the opening shot from Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light). But once the bullets start flying, Desierto amounts to watching Cuaron retrace the steps of far better films. It doesn’t come as a surprise that it takes little time for Sam to slaughter every immigrant in Moises’ company except for Moises himself, and that Sam’s aim seems to be perfect except when pointing his gun at the handsome, recognizable star. It also doesn’t come as a surprise that Cuaron seems to care little about any of the supporting cast except for a young, female immigrant who manages to survive alongside Moises (Note: I tried to find the actress’ name but no actors other than Bernal and Morgan appear to get proper credit in any of the film’s publicity, which all but says these actors are just hispanic cannon fodder). The surprising thing about Desierto is not that Cuaron has essentially made a slasher film on the U.S. border, it’s that the average slasher film is more suspenseful than this.

So with absolutely nothing subversive to bring to the table, and a mostly handheld style that does very little to use any stylistic flair to up the tension, the central chase in Desierto is really stuck in neutral, going through the motions while waiting for the next obstacle to come Moises’ way. The film is typically more dull than dumb, except for one offensive part when Cuaron takes a break to have Moises and his only surviving companion tell each other their life stories. It’s an attempt to add some character development to a film sorely lacking it, but none of it is really that necessary. Even if these characters didn’t have family in the States missing them or supportive parents, the fact is that no one deserves to have some crazed cowboy blow their head off with a rifle for trying to cross a border. The basic need to survive should resonate well enough with viewers; Cuaron’s insertion of these sob stories implies he thinks it’s a point that needs to be argued. And the last thing a film this rote needs is a condescending attitude.

Can we have more musicals like this, please? Rufus Norris adapts Alecky Blythe’s and Adam Cork’s stage musical, London Road, for the big screen, and the result is a jolt of much-needed electricity into a dreadfully deflated genre. It tells the true story of the “Suffolk Strangler” murders that shook a tiny community in Ipswcich. An alarming number of prostitutes started blemishing the refined reputation of this quaint little British town, until someone took it upon themselves to start killing these women. Now, murder and crime get added to prostitution and the residents decide to do something about it.

What makes this such a mirthful experience is the genius choice of turning real-life testimony from witnesses and bystanders into songs, verbatim. In doing so, every “um,” “like,” and “you know” become integral parts of the lyrics, blending tragedy and comedy into wholly unique ways. The magnificent Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy are the name-actors, but Hardy’s only in it for a minute, while Colman thankfully gets to do, and sing, much more. The real stars, however, are the interviewees and the TV anchors, whose harmonies over Adam Cork’s various pop and dance beats give London Road its verve and vitality. A musical unlike any other, you’d do well to seek this one out as soon as it plays near you.

While I tend to hate spending too much time on describing a film in a review, I feel like I don’t have much of a choice with Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (certainly one of the more memorable titles at TIFF this year, and a blessing for any writer trying to get their word count up). Part documentary, part fiction, and part adaptation of the Paul Bowles short story “A Distant Episode,” The Sky Trembles comprises of two distinct halves. In the first half, Rivers’ camera follows a director (Oliver Laxe) as he works on a new film in Morocco. The production looks a bit troubled, with some difficulty working with the cast and trying to get specific shots down. The director eventually flees the production to free himself, which kicks off the second half (and where the Bowles adaptation begins). After wandering around in a town he’s kidnapped by a group of men who beat him, cut out his tongue, and then force him to entertain them by dancing around in an outfit made entirely out of tin cans. Unable to speak, and reduced to a role that seems beneath a jester, the director goes mad as he’s eventually sold off by his kidnappers to someone else.

Fans of Ben Rivers’ previous work shouldn’t be too concerned over The Sky Trembles since it continues to show off his greatest strengths as a filmmaker. Shooting with 16mm film on location in Morocco, Rivers (who also does cinematography) provides plenty of hypnotizing compositions that highlight the make landscapes the most well-defined presence in the entire film. But the playfulness with form and minimal, diptych narrative will have varying levels of appeal to viewers, leaving people either engaged or bored out of their minds. I fall somewhere in the middle; I wasn’t particularly interested in Laxe’s troubles on and off set, but Rivers’ formal mastery is always impressive to watch. This is especially true in the film’s excellent finale, where Laxe finds himself alone and wandering a mazelike series of passageways before running off into the desert. The image of the protagonist hurtling himself into the vast, empty desert is a striking, sinister case of wish fulfillment. He may have gotten the freedom he wanted by abandoning his film, but there’s only one outcome where he’s going.

Adapted from J.G. Ballard’s novel by Amy Jump, High-Rise is yet another interesting if not entirely successful experiment by Ben Wheatley. Taking place in mid-70s England, Doctor Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moves into the massive titular building to find a social system that’s gradually taking over the sanity of every resident. The middle to lower-class tenants stay on the lower floors, while the building’s architect (Jeremy Irons) and his ultra high-class friends party it up on the top. Eventually the power starts failing, and the rich begin diverting the supply to their floors so they can keep partying it up. The lower floors begin revolting, but it might be better to describe it as a tit for tat, since they start holding their own debaucherous parties while planning a way to get to the top. Social and class lines begin to blur, and by the end High-Rise is a look at a microcosm of a world gone mad.

Wheatley’s goal with directing the film might have gone a little too far here; the film itself feels just as deranged, messy and incomprehensible as its characters, mostly hopping all around and having characters not so much interact as periodically collide with their own separate orbits. It sounds great in theory, except Wheatley spends little to no time establishing why any of what’s going on is worth investing in. It’s like Wheatley expects people to simply leap in because he has people like Hiddleston, Irons, Elisabeth Moss and Luke Evans going wacko, and that’s just not enough to give a single damn about anything going on. This is by far Wheatley’s best-looking film to date, and his ear for great soundtracks is stronger than ever (Clint Mansell provides a great score, and Portishead’s cover of Abba’s “SOS” is the sort of thing I never knew I needed in my life). It’s just a shame that, in Wheatley’s attempt to go down the rabbit hole, he forgot to take viewers with him.

Graphic novelist Emma (the always excellent Alison Pill) works in a sex doll factory by day while drawing a new story at night. The story she’s drawing is about Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal), a famous action movie director trying to make a serious art film. The film he’s making is about Michelle (Mariana Ximenes), a model and aspiring novelist who drops everything to fly to Brazil so she can finish her novel about a graphic novelist named Emma who works in a sex doll factory. Brazilian director Pedro Morelli takes this closed loop of a narrative and throws in as many stylistic quirks and format changes as he can, turning Zoom into a frantic piece of metafiction that feels like nothing more than a collection of half-baked ideas.

At least screenwriter Matt Hansen tries to do something interesting, and for a time Morelli’s slick direction and the strong cast keep things interesting. But the film’s attempts to comment on the creative process get drowned out by Morelli making sure everything stays busy, and gimmicks like making Edward’s story entirely animated (remember, he’s in a graphic novel) look neat but feel superfluous. Bernal’s charm makes Edward’s rather bland story about wounded masculinity passable but Ximenes winds up with the short straw here, as her story winds up being a little too accurate in its attempt to be a bad art film. Morelli’s energy and the strength of Pill’s storyline (by far the best of the three) help make the film go by quickly, although it never winds up breaking past its shiny surface. The finale, where the closed loop transforms into an ouroboros, is neat to watch unfold, but the film might have served itself better if that zaniness came sooner rather than later.

There is a quiet and unassuming power in Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room, but it’s severely lacking in one crucial thing: character. The story follows Jasmin (Jasmin Geljo), a comic from Sarajevo who emigrated to Toronto at the wake of the Yugoslavian civil war. Already 20 years in Toronto, with a wife (Ma-Anne Dionisio) and ten-year old son Daniel (Filip Geljo), Jasmin struggles to find honorable work and get meaning back into his life. Going from one bad audition to another for typecast Slavic gangster roles (which paves the way for a particularly hilarious moment in one scene), Jasmin slowly begins to reminisce about a particularly haunting moment from his past, which involves his estranged daughter Sonja (Masa Lizdek).

Drljaca’s script requires more substance in order for these characters to feel more three-dimensional. There are plenty of wonderfully constructed scenes, confidently taking their time to ingrain themselves into the viewer’s mind. One particular moment involves Jasmin’s participation in an art installation, and another towards the end during a soft revelation of a major twist. But The Waiting Room has a stagnant rhythm that plagues so many indie films, which stops the viewer from emotionally investing. Beautiful shot and scored, it’s commendable for attempting something different with the theme of immigration, but threatens to dry up all of one’s patience by the end, thanks to its glacial pace and sparse characterization.

In 2005, in the small Finnish town of Eurajoki, construction began on the country’s third nuclear reactor, the first to be built by the Western world since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. The plant, commonly referred to as OL3, was set to join the first two units of the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant, which were situated just outside of town on a small island in the Gulf of Bothnia. In the early years of the project, the town was ecstatic to have won yet another plant. But in the tiresome and decisive years that followed, as the construction fell further and further behind schedule and the cost soared to unprecedented levels, tension rippled through the close-knit community, and a global conversation about the merits of nuclear power versus high carbon-emitting power plants grew fierce. This is the inherently dramatic and timely story that the tepid and tedious The Return of the Atom attempts to capture.

The new documentary from Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola picks up in the first days of construction, highlighting the energy and eagerness of the small community. A major contract such as the OL3 means jobs and money for these sorts of towns. It also means proudly supplying up to a fifth of Finland’s power. But despite the overall excitement, some live in great fear of the potential death and environmental disaster next door.

Taanila and Eerola follow a handful of key players in the events of the following eight years. They also attempt to map out what sort of town Eurajoki is. Despite their efforts, however, the community remains a mysterious and elusive place. Instead, The Return Of The Atom shadows several employees and committee members fighting to keep spirits high and cost low, as their project unravels beneath them. A former Olkiluoto engineer named Arto Lauri comes out against the plant, seeing nuclear power as a powder keg that will soon destroy his home and the planet along with it.

The trouble is, for all this perfect setup, not much ever really happens. At least not on film. Construction falls almost immediately behind, and Lauri shows up at town hall meeting after town hall meeting to voice his dissent despite the lack of interest from just about anyone else. And time and again, we watch interviewees stare regretfully into the distance as they struggle to continue pushing the plant’s propaganda. But never do we get close to anyone or any particular piece of this complex puzzle. And never do we truly get a chance to explore, let alone even ask, the dire questions related to nuclear power and the encroach of global warming. What we get instead are what feel like dozens of montages of dizzying construction scenes to the pulse and grind of Pan Sonic’s overly serious score—a score that seems to want to imbue the gravity of the situation that the film itself can never quite articulate.

In fact, it feels almost as though Taanila and Eerola, who shot the film over the course of eight years, were always showing up just after something interesting happened. If only we could have spent more time with Lauri. The growth of his obsession, even in the film’s periphery, is heart wrenching: he refuses to give up but never seems to find anyone who will truly listen. His is a character ripe for study, and The Return Of The Atom misses its chance.

Running an overlong 110 minutes, there is the sense that the film, unsure of what it is truly about, is hoping to pack in so much from so many disparate places, that some sum greater than its parts will emerge. The Return Of The Atom is a pressure cooker of a build. At its core, the film is set up to be some sort of thriller, unfolding over nearly a decade, with the hope that something great will have happened by the end. But there never is any moment of confrontation. Lauri is, in a small way, vindicated, but nothing grand ever comes of the strife surrounding the plant (which is certainly no spoiler). Nor is there ever a moment of catharsis.

Such endeavors for any documentary filmmaker are risky. Taanila and Eerola got in on the ground floor with no idea of what would come of things in Eurajoki. Certainly there would be conflict. Certainly there would be tension. But the question of what else the directors were looking for must be asked. Did they only want to see what would happen? Or did they want to explore the enormous possibilities and immense potential for true disaster (like the one that strikes Fukushima near the film’s close)? The Return Of The Atom is an earnest attempt to record an immensely important and criminally under-discussed moment in the progression of the 21^st century. But it could stand to have been more present for it.

Seven years ago, Bruce McDonald surprised horror fans with his chamber piece Pontypool, which centered around a radio DJ learning about a zombie breakout happening during his broadcast in the middle of nowhere. It was an inventive and seriously impressive low-budget thriller, one that showed how much imagination can go a long way when it comes to establishing dread and tension. Now, McDonald returns to the genre with Hellions, a low-budget horror film set on Halloween in a small town. It would be unfair to expect Hellions to operate exactly like Pontypool, and McDonald seems intent on making sure he isn’t doing the same thing twice; if Pontypool was all about being low-key, Hellions dives headfirst into the world of fantasy and surrealism. But Hellions is the exact opposite in all the wrong ways: it’s stale, cheesy, amateurish, and an all-around mess—an example of what happens when a filmmaker doesn’t know how to work within their limits.

High schooler Dora (Chloe Rose) is the standard image of the rebellious teen: skipping class with her boyfriend, smoking, drinking, and planning to spend Halloween night partying hard. But a quick follow-up with her doctor (Rossif Sutherland) early in the day brings her some shocking news: she’s four weeks pregnant. Not knowing what to do, and learning it’s only a matter of time before the doctor has to legally inform her mother (Rachel Wilson), Dora decides to stay home for the evening while her mom and little brother go out for some trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, Dora’s planned night of moping around to some bad horror movies gets thrown out of whack when some kids wearing creepy masks begin showing up at her door. The kids’ actions quickly become more aggressive, until one of them decapitates Dora’s boyfriend and demands she give over her unborn baby. Much to Dora’s surprise, her day actually could get worse.

At this point, Hellions goes full-blown surreal and never comes back. Once the army of demon children show up at Dora’s door trying to break in, everything gets transported to some sort of parallel universe where the skies turn red (in order to achieve this look, McDonald shot the majority of Hellions in infrared), and Dora’s pregnancy starts accelerating at a rapid pace. An explanation for all the insanity eventually comes in the form of an exposition-spouting local cop (Robert Patrick), who explains that it’s all part of some demonic ritual to sacrifice a baby on Halloween. That sort of clunky, awkward attempt to fill in the details is just one of many issues with Pascal Trottier’s screenplay, which feels like a textbook definition of the word “lacking.” Despite Chloe Rose giving a capable and convincing performance as Dora, her character amounts to little more than a bloody, screaming horror heroine, and the lack of any characterization puts a severe damper on the rest of the film. Without giving any sense of how Dora might feel about her pregnancy, Hellions feels like a cheap attempt at shock by repeatedly harming children (granted, they’re demon children, but still) and a fetus.

But a lackluster script isn’t what really tanks Hellions; bad writing isn’t exactly a surprise when it comes to the horror genre. The big surprise here is just how awful the film looks. McDonald has been making films for a few decades now, and he’s shown how skillful he can be on a stylistic level in the past, but Hellions is packed with visuals that feel like they’re from an inexperienced straight-to-video director. The infrared look only calls attention to the cheap DV cameras used to shoot the film, along with the fact that most of the nighttime scenes were shot during the daytime. And the use of special effects, like CGI shots of a fetus or exploding pumpkins, are more laughable than anything. It’s a giant disappointment from a filmmaker who can certainly do better, and an even bigger disappointment considering his proficiency within the horror genre in the past. Given the infrared cinematography—which makes this look like an even cheaper version of Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt—it might be best to just consider this a failed experiment and pretend it never happened.

There are missteps, and then there’s stepping off a cliff, and that distinction couldn’t be clearer while watching Journey to the Shore. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film starts out as a sort of middle ground between his earlier genre films (Kairo, Cure) and the weighty drama he mastered in Tokyo Sonata before turning into a turgid mess. Over two hours in length, Journey to the Shore is, quite literally, all about the journey, which in this case feels like the slowest funeral march imaginable. It’s a film whose terrible qualities sting more than anything, since Kurosawa’s best days seem to be behind him. To say that he missed the mark with this film would be incorrect, because it would imply he was aiming at something to begin with.

At the very least, Kurosawa starts things off with a promising premise (he, along with co-writer Takashi Ujita, adapted the screenplay from a novel by Kazumi Yumoto): Piano teacher Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu) comes home to her apartment to find her husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano) literally appearing out of thin air while she does the dishes. Yusuke drowned in the ocean three years earlier, and despite his body never being found, there’s no plot twist or rational explanation here: Yusuke is 100% dead, his body devoured by crabs soon after he died. For some reason, his spirit has returned, looking and acting like any other human being, and he offers Mizuki the chance to go on a journey with him across the country. She accepts, and the film switches gears into an episodic narrative as they travel from one place to another, meeting people (including other normal-looking ghosts) that Yusuke has come to know in the years since his death.

This is where, despite my negativity towards the film (which comes from a place of disappointment more than anything), Journey to the Shore excels. There’s something bewildering and fascinating about the way Kurosawa creates a new mythology around death that fundamentally goes against all logic. Some dead people move on to the afterlife while others stay behind, living ordinary lives while fully aware of the fact that they’re a ghost. Mizuki and Yusuke’s first stop takes them to a village where they stay with Mr. Shimakage (Masao Komatsu), a newspaper distributor who used to employ Yusuke. He turns out to be a ghost too and eventually reveals a deep regret over mistreating his wife, presumed to be dead or long gone by now. The segment delves into themes of regret that come with the loss of a loved one, and Kurosawa ends his protagonists’ visit on an image that quickly changes from eerie to moving.

That scene doesn’t come close to matching what comes next, as the couple’s next stop finds them working at a small restaurant by the sea. There’s a self-contained sequence where Mizuki talks to the restaurant’s co-owner about a piano she keeps upstairs, and what follows is remarkable in the way Kurosawa’s framing, theatricality, and use of music coalesce into an emotionally charged moment that simultaneously evokes the pain of loss and the opportunity to move on from it. It’s a sequence that is, by far, the best thing Kurosawa has achieved in a long time, and a clear sign of the potential masterwork the film could have been.

But that’s only the first hour or so of Journey to the Shore, and for the next half, Kurosawa slowly dismantles everything he deftly establishes through the first two episodes. After a blowup between Mizuki and Yusuke reveals that things weren’t always perfect between the two, the film appears to reset itself, even going for the possibility of an “it was all a dream” explanation. There’s a brief detour, and then Yusuke magically reappears, whisking his wife off to a farm owned by yet another ghost. At this point, everything stalls, and the recurring link between guilt and mourning dissipate in favour of an attempt to add some sort of logic to the way death works in the film’s universe. It’s a classic case of ruining the mystery, and it’s absolutely unnecessary. The same goes for a subplot introduced about a couple going through a similar situation, except by the time this story resolves itself, it’s difficult to understand what exactly Kurosawa’s purpose might be. Or maybe it’s just that watching everything slowly fade into indiscernible white noise makes it impossible to care enough to try and figure it out.

And that’s why Journey to the Shore can feel so infuriating in how much it squanders the foundation it built. On a meta level, as a fan of Kurosawa, it’s easy to feel like the characters in this film at times— unable to accept that his ability to make genuinely great films has pretty much died. Watching Journey to the Shore is similar to watching an EKG machine show a few beeps before flatlining. I don’t want to say goodbye to Kurosawa, but like Mizuki, perhaps it’s time to finally let go.

When describing a film, words like “schmaltz” or “cliché” are typically reserved for derision, used to chastise a film for lazily indulging in stale familiarities instead of achieving something more natural or truthful. But sometimes schmaltzy clichés aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s paradoxical in some ways that a film’s use of clichés can make it feel artificial when clichés exist precisely because of their natural familiarity (in reality, it’s more about how they’re employed—rather than if they’re used at all). Last Cab to Darwin, Jeremy Sims’ latest feature, has all the markings of “been there, done that.” It’s a tale about a curmudgeonly old man who, through trying out new experiences, learns to appreciate his life and the people willing to have him in theirs. And for all the borderline cringeworthy moments of manufactured sentimentality peppered throughout Last Cab to Darwin, there are also plenty of warm, funny and entertaining examples of earning the right to indulge in the maudlin.

In the town of Broken Hill, cab driver Rex (Michael Caton) lives out a meager existence, his only true companion being his dog named Dog (“Rex was taken,” he says dryly when someone asks him about the name). He has a social life, but it’s kept at arm’s length, giving him the ability to retreat into solitude if he feels like it. He goes for drinks at the local bar with his friends from time to time and hides the occasionally romantic relationship he has with Aboriginal neighbour Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf). The opening goes a long way in establishing their diverting and charming chemistry: Rex comes outside in the morning to find Polly cursing him out at the top of her lungs for dumping his garbage in her bin, then brings over some tea for them to drink together while she cuddles up to Rex on his porch. Rex obviously has the potential for a great life, except he refuses to allow himself to have it.

Then the bad news hits: a trip to the doctor’s about Rex’s trouble keeping food down turns into a diagnosis of an aggressive form of stomach cancer, giving Rex 3 months to live. He stubbornly shuts down the possibility for treating his disease, insisting that he’ll continue driving his taxi until he can’t anymore. Then a form of hope arrives for the cynically-minded Rex: he learns that the Northern Territories of Australia recently legalized euthanasia, he sees a chance to die on his own terms. After contacting a doctor (Jacki Weaver) he sees in the newspaper to set up an appointment to die, she tells him that he would have to travel up north to Darwin in order to go through with the procedure. Rex decides to get in his cab and drive the entire 3,000 kilometre trip on his own, abandoning everyone in Broken Hill and leaving Polly his house, belongings, and Dog.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that, once Rex hits the road, Last Cab to Darwin transforms itself into a generic road movie. He drives along to various montages set to upbeat music, encounters ghost towns, meets eccentric locals, and hits different obstacles along the way (the usual hallmarks of a cross-country car ride). These sequences flow nicely within the film’s pacing, mainly thanks to the terrific cinematography by Steve Arnold (although, by this point, I’m thinking it’s difficult for anyone to film the Outback and make it not look spectacular) and Caton’s performance, who barely hides Rex’s vulnerability underneath his hard exterior. Caton transforms his character from an archetype to someone much more relatable and human as the film continues on and Rex begins opening up to those around him.

The same goes for Lawford-Wolf, who turns out to be the heart of the film as Polly. She’s a tough woman from the first moment we see her screaming at the top of her lungs, though Lawford-Wolf combats the harshness with a great amount of sensitivity once she lets down her guard. The screenplay, written by Sims and Reg Cribb (adapted from Cribb’s successful stage play), also goes out of its way to establish the still-rampant racism surrounding Polly, showing her hard-edged persona as something she does more out of survival than anything. The few moments when Rex calls Polly during his trip are by far the most heartbreaking and emotional moments, largely because of Lawford-Wolf’s fantastic performance. It’s the film’s saving grace from falling into a sappy mess.

But just as Last Cab to Darwin starts becoming one of the better feel-good tearjerkers in recent years, bad choices and preposterous developments come and sour the good vibes. As Rex makes his way up north to Darwin, he winds up taking on two passengers. The first is Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), a young Aboriginal man whose penchant for drinking and partying ruins his chances of becoming a professional footballer. Smith has plenty of charisma to make Tilly a likable guy despite his screwups (including neglecting his wife and kids), but he’s written as a broad caricature, the kind of wise slacker who likes to begin sentences with phrases like “Don’t you worry about me”, in the tone of a person who actually has it all figured out. And it’s not even a question about whether Tilly can actually play football. He claims he’s great—and he winds up being just that—but it takes Rex to eventually put him on the right path and shed his alcoholism before he lives up to his full potential. It’s a subplot that winds up feeling disappointingly slight, considering the amount of time spent with Tilly throughout.

Even more hilariously preposterous is a sequence where Rex and Tilly meet the bartender Julie (Emma Hamilton), a British girl who vaguely answers any questions about how she wound up in Australia. Later that night at the bar, Rex falls severely ill. While Julie tries to save him, her boss tells her to call an ambulance and get back to work. It’s at this moment that Julie reveals she’s actually a former nurse, an oh-so-convenient coincidence that winds up making her tag along for the ride as Rex’s caretaker. Other moments like this happen throughout: when Rex calls a radio show to talk about his illness earlier on in Broken Hill, the camera cuts to all of Rex’s friends across town who all happen to be listening in at the same time. These scenes serve as little reminders that, no matter pleasant the film may be, there’s a limit to the amount of BS one can pile on an audience.

The last act, where Rex arrives and Weaver’s character takes on a more prominent role, is a bit of a fumble, especially when the story turns to highlighting how Rex has changed those around him for the better. But a touching scene between Rex and Polly and a surprisingly low-key ending things on a note that’s more bittersweet than melancholy help turn things around a bit. There’s no denying that audiences will enjoy Sims’ film, laughing and crying at the exact moments it wants them to (there were plenty of tears and sniffling at my screening), but Sims having his heart in the right place can’t entirely mask the mawkish and cheesy nature of the story. Last Cab to Darwin, therefore, operates as a guide on how to do schmaltz right and wrong. It’s a ratio that tips over a little more on the wrong side, but the terrific performances and touching relationship at the centre of it all make this film a lot easier to swallow.

Osgood Perkins’ directorial debut February is the kind of film that’s hard to pin down at first. Primarily taking place at an all-girls’ prep school, it starts off as a sort of teen drama dealing with student drama and a possible pregnancy. At the same time, a second narrative introduces an element of mystery in how it connects to the main storyline at the school. The one thing Perkins seems painfully and obnoxiously intent on is establishing that something sinister is lurking underneath his film’s underexposed surface, with a strand of supernatural horror pulsing just below every scene. Perkins deliberately designs his film to keep the truth hidden, but as each layer peels back it becomes apparent that February is a very, very dumb movie. And it’s all the more insulting because Perkins clearly thinks he’s being clever with his vague dialogue, grating sound design and playfulness with form. There’s nothing wrong with a stupid film, but there is a problem when a stupid film acts like it’s the smartest one in the room.

Split into three sections, each centered around one of the film’s three female protagonists (a choice that’s entirely superfluous, given that each part frequently switches between POVs). The main plot of February focuses on prep school students Rose (Lucy Boynton) and Kat (Kiernan Shipka). It’s winter break at their school, but neither of their parents have shown up. For Rose, it’s not a surprise; she purposely lied about the pick up date to her parents so she could deal with her boyfriend over a pregnancy scare. Kat’s parents, on the other hand, haven’t shown up for some sort of reason. A vague dream sequence alludes to her parents dying in some sort of accident, but how a teenager can hide that fact from her school never gets addressed. The third person in this story is Joan (Emma Roberts), who recently left a hospital and wants to head to the town next to the school. She gets offered a ride from Bill (James Remar) and Linda (Lauren Holly), a religious couple who happen to be headed in the same direction.

Did Perkins just marathon David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn movies in order to prepare for his debut? It certainly feels like it, given his liking for overlong pauses in conversations and low, rumbling sounds that only get higher in volume as every exchange keeps going. It’s a cheap attempt to throw some dark undertones over plenty of vague and banal lines of dialogue, lines specifically designed to enhance the aura of mystery. Sometimes, it works; scenes between Joan and Bill early on can feel legitimately menacing because of its ambiguity (it’s hard to tell which one is predator or prey, and Remar and Roberts do a great job at keeping the lines blurred). But Perkins uses this method in almost every scene, which ruins the impact. After getting beaten over the head with “Something’s wrong!” over and over again, it doesn’t take long to stop caring as the tension (quickly) gives way to dullness.

And once Perkins finally shows the hand he’s been keeping close to his chest, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that he was poorly bluffing the entire time. There’s a twist with the Joan storyline in how it fits in with Rose and Kat, but anyone paying a bit of attention to the editing (where loud, sudden flashbacks function as annoying jump scares) should be able to figure the whole thing out before Perkins begins revealing things. The same goes for the supernatural elements that finally creep their way into Kat’s section of the film, but it’s handled so poorly it can feel more like an afterthought than a revelation (the film also has the honour of including one of the lamest exorcism scenes in ages). It isn’t until the very end that Perkins finally brings his main theme to the surface, showing that February is a film about loss, and the desire to find someone (or something) to replace what’s gone. That could have made for an interesting idea when combined with the horror genre; it’s just too bad Perkins decided to dress it all up in a misguided attempt to be clever.

A.D. Calvo’s The Missing Girl is the unique kind of mystery film that gradually reveals itself to have no real mystery at all. That may sound like a disappointment, but in the hands of A.D. Calvo it’s quite the opposite. And while there is, in fact, a missing girl in the film (there are actually two), Calvo cleverly uses the old, familiar hook of a detective story to lure people into a character-based drama about letting go of the past and moving forward. The emphasis on character is there from frame one, but as time goes on Calvo deliberately downplays and removes his narrative strands established at the beginning to make the film’s major discovery more of an internal one for its central character. It’s the kind of low-key, diverting indie that uses its great cast to avoid falling into the clichés of a late coming-of-age tale, and it’s all elevated by an incredible lead performance.

The person at the centre of The Missing Girl is actually Mort (Robert Longstreet), a middle-aged owner of a comic book store in New London, Connecticut. He’s recently hired Ellen (Alexia Rasmussen), an aspiring graphic novelist hoping to get her work published. Mort’s attracted to the younger Ellen, but he’s too nervous to make a move. It’s soon revealed that part of Mort’s attraction to Ellen has to do with a dark memory from his past; she looks similar to his high school crush who mysteriously vanished years ago, with only her clothes and a lot of blood found underneath a bridge in a seedy-looking part of town. The unsolved mystery still bothers Mort for reasons beyond his attraction to the girl; his late father was a detective on the case and never solved it.

And then Mort’s reignited fascination with the case only gets stronger once the missing girl’s high school boyfriend Skippy (Eric Ladin) strolls into town for a few days to clean up his parents’ place after putting his dad in a nursing home. Skippy, now a rich businessman living in New York, shows he hasn’t really changed since his days in high school, coming into Mort’s shop and humiliating him in front of Ellen for his childish interests. Not too long after Ellen suddenly stops showing up for work, and when Mort goes by her place the TV’s on but nobody’s home. Suspecting that Ellen has fallen victim to a similar fate as Skippy’s former girlfriend, Mort starts investigating to find out what happened to her.

Calvo swiftly sets the pieces of his story in place, only to casually ignore the puzzle he’s laid out. Rather than add suspense by withholding the whereabouts of Ellen, Calvo leaves everything out in the open regarding her fate. It immediately deflates the sense of mystery, and by doing so allows Calvo to delve further into Mort’s life, whether it’s staying in contact with his mother (Shirley Knight), relying on his brother Stan (Thomas Jay Ryan) to help him out with his store’s finances, or getting help from his friend and local cop Fran (Sonja Sohn). Anyone familiar with these names should be aware by now that Calvo has assembled a terrific group of character actors for his film, and everyone brings their own unique presence to their roles. Even Kevin Corrigan—who’s been having a great year with roles in films like Results and Wild Canaries—shows up at one point, in what amounts to a glorified cameo.

But this is primarily a showcase for Robert Longstreet, and to say his performance makes The Missing Girl is an understatement. Longstreet, who’s been playing supporting roles over the years in films like Take Shelter, This is Martin Bonner and more recently in Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, finally gets a chance to show off his incredible talent in a lead role. Longstreet played a terrifying, intimidating force in Decker’s film, and here, he goes in the opposite direction, portraying Mort as a meek, shy man whose obsession with comics and toys feels like a result of his inability to get over his father’s death. But Longstreet also taps into his more intense side, showing Mort as short-tempered with an ability to fly into a rage if he hears the wrong thing. It’s seriously impressive how much Longstreet transforms Mort from the standard image of a man in arrested development to a fascinating and complex person.

Behind the camera, Calvo and cinematographer Ava Berkofsky give the film a rare quality seen in recent indies that takes advantage of the film’s New London setting (or maybe it’s just refreshing to see something not in Brooklyn or Los Angeles). Michael Taylor’s editing is where The Missing Girl shows off some originality by using split screens and match cuts to make the screen reflect comic book panels, but its implementation is hit and miss (the first time it’s used might be the best part since the effect is somewhat disorienting). Similarly, Calvo’s brief glimpses into Mort’s brain through fantasy sequences also don’t land too well, adding a crudeness to the film that doesn’t match up well with everything else. But Calvo’s film is primarily a character study, and on that end it succeeds thanks to Longstreet. It’s a mystery movie with no real resolution, and in this case, there’s nothing wrong with that.

According to the National Down Syndrome Society, one in every 691 children born in the US has Down syndrome. That calculates to a collective of over 400,000 people nationally. Hollywood has been paying attention. In addition to casting actors with Down syndrome in key parts in recent hit TV shows like American Horror Story (Jamie Brewer) and Glee (Lauren Potter), 2015’s Where Hope Grows made history as the first major US theatrical release to star an actor with Down syndrome in a leading role (David DeSanctis). The indie film community has taken notice as well, casting Dylan Harman in the title role of the new indie drama The Rainbow Kid.

Eugene (Harman) is a 19-year-old living in an apartment with his mother in Toronto. His passion is rainbows. When tragedy strikes, the Down syndrome sufferer loads his backpack with sandwiches and saved money, hops on his bicycle (training wheels and all), and embarks on a road trip along the back roads of Canada to find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow he sees outside. On his journey, Eugene meets a collection of individuals, not all of whom share his good nature or his good will.

Writer/director Kire Paputts, making his debut feature with The Rainbow Kid, begins his film with the promise of a hero. Eugene is faced with a life-changing moment that he is not equipped to manage. Still, he remains undaunted. He thinks he knows what is best to do in his situation and he does it—not necessarily without fear, but certainly without hesitation. This is what makes him a hero in the film’s first 10 minutes, and he retains that title throughout the film because, despite considerable adversity, he keeps moving forward, looking for that pot of gold.

This heroism the film’s lone bright spot. Once Eugene hits the road, Paputts abandons all narrative and opts to string together a succession of situations Eugene finds himself getting into and getting out of. While his motivation is strong, his story isn’t a story at all, but rather a series of hurdles he must clear in order to reach his goal.

Eugene’s first major encounter is with a man who “teaches” him to use a bent hanger as a dousing rod to find treasure. That man might be nefarious and Eugene needs to leave. The second major encounter is with an aging rock star who teaches Eugene to dance. That man might be nefarious and Eugene needs to leave. The third major encounter is with a man whose daughter also has Down Syndrome and who will do anything to get into Eugene’s good graces. That man might be nefarious and Eugene needs to leave. And so on, until it isn’t necessarily the people who are a threat to Eugene, but the situations he finds himself in.

With a combination of a lack of narrative, the hero’s drive towards a singular goal, and a steady string of impediments, the entire film feels like an old-school video game, with Eugene as the protagonist. He moves forward, he dodges, he moves forward, there’s a setback, he moves forward, there’s a damsel in distress, he moves forward, he’s injured, etc. Like an old-school video game, the challenges escalate in difficulty as he encounters them. Also like an old-school video game, the challenges become more outlandish as the forward movement progresses. If this were an 8-bit world, it might be fun. However, in a film about a teen with Down syndrome who has suffered a tragedy and is searching for something that doesn’t exist, the circumstances rapidly devolve from quirky to creepy to preposterous.

Like an old-school video game, the repetition becomes monotonous.

There is a sense that one of the purposes of The Rainbow Kid is to demonstrate that a character with a disability can go through a film and struggle with that film’s conflicts no differently than a character without a disability, and amen for that. Life is full of people, some of them disabled, and the movies need to show more of this. But conflicts don’t care about disabilities. Conflicts are conflicts, and if they aren’t believable, it doesn’t matter who is in the lead; those moments simply won’t ring true.

The Rainbow Kid isn’t so much a story of Eugene’s journey as it is a collection of situations Eugene is thrust into, each as unbelievable as the one before it. The lack of narrative would have the film rolling in an endless string of these things, so Paputts must resort to a shocking third-act moment to hurl the story towards resolution instead of leading it to a natural end. That these situations are so outlandish and feature a lead character with Down syndrome, there are times the film feels like it is generating extremes to show that someone with a disability can deal with extremes. That’s not telling a story, that’s forcing a situation, and when the subject of that situation has a disability, it feels like the circumstance has been manufactured to garner additional sympathy. Once that happens, and it happens early here, the film is lost.

For a story that feels directly inspired from the director’s personal life, Mia Madre feels surprisingly bland. Nanni Moretti’s latest film focuses on Margherita (Margherita Buy), a director working on the troubled production of her latest film. Her on-set troubles come in the form of Barry Huggins (John Turturro), an American actor with a bloated ego; off set, Margherita and her brother (Nanni Moretti) have to deal with their mother’s (Giulia Lazzarini) failing health. Both children know that, with their mother, getting better isn’t an option; it’s only a matter of when she’ll pass on, and the impending death soon takes its toll on Margherita’s health and well-being.

Moretti faced a similar issue several years ago; his mother passed away while he was working on his 2011 film We Have a Pope, so it feels a bit strange watching Mia Madre unfold in such a bland and detached manner. Moretti throws in one clue after another about Margherita’s psychological condition, and his weaving in of dreams and fantasy sequences (all shot in the same way, making it hard to discern what’s real and fake at certain moments) does a fine job of establishing his protagonist’s fraught mental state. But none of it really coalesces into anything definitive about Margherita. It all feels fragmented, making certain sequences—like one where Margherita purposely smashes her mom’s car after catching her driving—feel baffling or out of place. Moretti makes it impossible to find anything about Margherita worth latching on to, and as a result, the central drama over her mother’s passing falls flat.

At least Mia Madre benefits from its cast. Moretti and Lazzarini feel somewhat wasted (Margherita’s mother barely registers as a character, which also contributes to why there’s almost no emotion in the film), but Buy and Turturro keep the film from being entirely forgettable. The shoddy script makes Buy’s characterization weak, but she does a terrific job expressing the strain of keeping herself together professionally while her personal life goes to hell (in other words, her behaviour may not be relatable but her emotions are). And Turturro turns out to be the lifeblood of Mia Madre, making Barry a frequently funny and bombastic presence who’s seemingly dedicated to pushing Margherita even closer to the edge. But the talent of these two performances might only be magnified here when compared to the very miniscule drama going on elsewhere in the film. The only thing Moretti achieves with Mia Madre is something that was most likely unintended: he managed to make a film about the death of a parent that inspired nothing but complete indifference.

In a time when the punk aesthetic was increasingly resonant in art and pop culture, Icelandic painter Georg Guðni decided to pursue a different style: landscape depiction. He took to the misty plains and craggy highlands of his country, engaging in a kind of quiet, visual dialogue with the vast expanses. These conversations would be mentally tucked away, allowed to expand and stretch as the nature of Guðni’s memory dictated before being carefully spilled out on the canvas. For him, painting was a product of the mind, and through his strikingly minimalist work he was able to elevate the landscape “genre” beyond something stereotypically attributed to amateur “Sunday painters.”

Above all, Horizon is a tribute to Guðni, who passed away at the age of 50 in 2011. Brief descriptions of his early days as an artist fly by, and testimonials to the depth of his craft are provided by interviews with colleagues, professors and art historians, but the film is most interested in exploring the specifics of Guðni’s process and technique. Lucky for the audience, the insights come unfiltered, through the words of the painter himself.

The majority of Horizon is made up of lengthy scenes in Guðni’s studio, where he wanders from past paintings to old sketchbooks, breaking down the methods and philosophies of his artistry. On its face, the directness is a welcome approach, but the film’s monotonous, unbroken passivity and sheer lack of dynamism quickly yields something that is too dry to properly engage with. A handful of visual interludes gorgeously juxtapose Guðni’s work with the settings that inspired it, but even these sequences fail to imbue the film with some kind of cinematic sensibility. They eventually grow tiresome in their slideshow manner and redundant repetition.

Truly, this is a documentary made for hardcore art enthusiasts. The formal and structural elements are bland and Guðni isn’t all that mesmerizing a speaker, so we are left only with a flurry of highly technical discussions on painterly procedure and inspiration. Those who take an interest in such matters will likely be satisfied, but for the rest of the audience, Horizon may prove to be a dull, slightly alienating experience.

Living in front of cameras that never stop rolling and existing in the presence of an often vicious social media congregation, Caitlyn Jenner, who for four decades had best been known as US Olympic hero Bruce Jenner, announced she was transgender. It’s a new thing for most people, this transgenderism, but Jenner has brought it to the forefront of the world’s mind. And while there are a lot of questions the world might have about those identifying as transgender, the one that keeps coming to my mind is this: how much pain have transgenders suffered while spending lifetimes pretending to be something they are not?

Director Alexandra-Therese Keining’s drama, Girls Lost, looks at the genesis of that kind of pain when a teen wonders if she is actually a boy trapped in a girl’s body.

Kim, Momo, and Bella (respectively Tuva Jagell, Louise Nyvall, and Wilma Holmén) are the closest of friends and they need to be. Outcasts at school, the teen trio are physically and verbally bullied on a regular basis—at times brutally so—by classmates who are enraged only by the hateful notion the girls might be lesbians. Nothing more. Their teachers allow the bullying to happen.

One day, while seeking solace in the greenhouse in Bella’s back yard, the girls find a mysterious-looking seed among the usual horticultural fare. They plant it, and by morning a flower is fully grown. Burning with curiosity (but understandably a little scared), the girls drink nectar from the flower. Soon after, they magically transform into boys, albeit temporarily, giving them a chance to experience life the way the opposite sex experiences it, both inside and out. This opportunity, however, brings with it consequences the girls might not be ready for.

Girls Lost is one of those films where to explain a little more wouldn’t make much sense. At a high level, this film deals with themes including love, friendship, bullying, sexual identity, absentee parents, and even addiction. A lot happens in 106 minutes, and while all the goings-on are worthy of inclusion in a story like this, to attempt to tackle them en masse prevents sufficient exploration of themes beyond their labels. This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach also demands shortcuts to be taken.

Some of those shortcuts undermine the development of characters. While the gaggle of mean teens can remain at surface level, a pair of main characters is woefully two-dimensional and ought not be. Their actions, then, ring a little hollow because they seem to be doing things for the sake of having something to do. Therein lies another short-cut problem: most of the conflict in this film is not conflict at all, but rather a series of obstacles meant to impede the progress of a character or give them something to solve to get to the next point. There is never a sense that a deeper solution is being explored.

The struggle with sexual identity, and during during puberty no less (the most difficult time in an adolescent’s life), is the main theme here. But it’s hampered by the very construct that makes the film so unique. One of the girls wonders aloud (in painfully overt dialogue) if she is a boy. When the magic flower turns her into a boy, her struggle is over; she knows she should be a boy. Because the “Who am I?” question is answered so early, when she reverts back to being a girl her pursuits are no longer about finding herself—they become about getting more nectar (there’s the addiction part) to become a boy again, so she can pursue a love interest while she is in male form.

Keining then doubles-down, creating a love triangle among the girl, her romantic interest, and a third (established) character. Because the girl frequently changes gender via the magic nectar, the love triangle twists the gender-bend. It’s all so mad, really, and what once tried to be a film about deep things quickly devolves in the third act to become another pouty, “Why don’t you love me?” teen melodrama. Although one with a set-up I’ve never seen before.

But there’s some positives to Girls Lost too. The trio of actresses are terrific, especially Tuva Jagell as Kim. And the boys who play the girls as boys—Emrik Öhlander as Kim, Alexander Gustavsson (as Momo) and Vilgot Ostwald Vesterlund (as Bella)—do well to capture the wonder one might experience in such a unique situation. The film also has some fine lighter moments, especially when the girls look at themselves in the mirror after transforming.

Speaking of that transformation, the VFX used to show it onscreen are top-notch. It would have been easy for Keining to use clever blocking and heavy editing to make the point, but instead she shows the girls transforming. It helps immensely that the boys bear great resemblances to the girls (a fine bit of casting), but the transformation is subtle to the point of requiring a double-take.

To pivot off that, Keining is incredibly strong with her overall visual presentation (aided by gorgeous lensing from Ragna Jorming). There isn’t a scene nor setting Keining can’t handle. This includes several hours of day and night, as well as some sublime underwater shots. The director also knows when camera movement is most effective. Her handling of the film’s tenderest moments—mostly involving the trio of girls early in the picture—is deeply moving.

Girls Lost is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and if anything can be said about Keining, who adapted the screenplay from a popular Swedish YA novel, it’s that she is undaunted in the face of both delicate and intricate material. It might not always work, but her combination of strengths and her bold attempt at storytelling make this film—and Keining’s future—is well worth the time to pay attention to.

Five years after being banned from filmmaking for 20 years, Jafar Panahi returns with his third film since his sentencing with Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. With his first post-sentencing film This is Not a Film taking place within the confines of his apartment, and his follow-up Closed Curtain taking place in a vacation home, Taxi sees Panahi making his most audacious protest yet by heading out into the streets of Tehran. Panahi plays a taxi driver, and to get around “directing” he lets the film play out through small cameras mounted in the car on the dashboard and back seat. Over the course of a day, Panahi picks up a variety of eccentric passengers who double as conduits to bring up issues of morality, religion, crime, censorship, and a whole host of other important issues. For those familiar with Panahi’s films none of this should come as a surprise; for those who aren’t as familiar, Taxi should act as a terrific entry point for people new to Panahi’s incredible acts of defiance.

Right from the opening, where two passengers argue over what the punishment for thieves should be (he says the death penalty, she says not the death penalty), it’s easy to get hooked in by Panahi’s ability to approach such an important theme through a conversation that flows so naturally. But it turns out that’s just a warm-up, because Panahi brings in more characters and stories that keep Taxi going at a fast, entertaining pace: a man selling bootleg videos who recognizes Panahi for who he really is, two superstitious old women trying to stay alive, and a motorcycle accident that winds up dealing with women’s rights are just a few situations Panahi finds himself in. But the best part of the film has to be Panahi’s niece (Note: due to the film being made illegally, no one in the film gets credited except for Panahi), whose no-nonsense attitude and attempts to make a short film that fits the government’s guidelines for an acceptable film (for example: films must not contain “sordid realism”) make her easily walk away with the entire film. Beyond just being yet another astounding act of protest from Panahi, and an example of how creative one can be when restricted, Taxi is just a fun, thought-provoking movie from the beginning to its (unsettling) end.

The definitive teen film of my generation is John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985). I saw it in the theater on its initial release, I’ve watched it countless times on cable and home video, I’ve introduced it to my kids, I’ve seen it in the theater again on re-release, and I’ve even hosted screenings of it in my local cinema (as recently as May, 2015). There is a quote in that endlessly quotable film that I kept coming back to as I watched Bienvenue à F.L., Geneviève Dulude-De Celles’ first feature film. Carl the Janitor (John Kapelos) says to the lamenting Assistant Principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), “C’mon Vern, the kids haven’t changed. You have.” If there is anything this documentary proves, it’s that quote.

In an effort to do something different and positive, Gabrielle Chaput enlists the students of a Quebec high school to participate in the “Inside Out Project.” The task put forth to the school’s 1,162 students is simple: pair with a randomly assigned student, get to know them (even if just a little bit), and photograph them in front of a background of white with a black-dotted pattern. The resulting photos will then be plastered on the school’s drab exterior, creating a collage of the present day’s student body meant to celebrate them and offer an interesting alternative to the drab grey walls that remind many of the kids of a prison. Documentarian Dulude-De Celles is there to capture the event, and much more.

This is really a tale of three films. The first film—the best film—is populated with teenagers in fairly extreme close-ups discussing directly to the camera, and in what seems to be considerable candor, myriad issues that face them as high schoolers. They discuss cliques and acceptance into groups (or the sad lack thereof). They discuss the pressures teens face—pressures from school and parents and friends and cliques and jobs and romantic interests and the various combinations thereof and so on. They discuss the socioeconomic realities of their lives, mostly defined by their wardrobes. Some students confess, passively, to modifying their behavior so as to be accepted by the masses. Others boast, also passively, to clinging to their individualism, masses be damned.

In this best film, every student’s take is as powerful and riveting as the next because of how honest each is. And it’s not as if these statements and sentiments are necessarily negative; they’re simply statements of fact that, when delivered by today’s teens, ring heavy with truth. They are also devoid of the drama one might expect from a documentary about teens of today. There is no talk of drugs. There is no talk of sex. There is no talk of violence. While it might be easy to criticize a film about teens that lacks these issues, I prefer to view it as a positive that a documentary with teens as its subject can still find compelling matter without resorting to the salacious.

The second film is where the good ends, sadly. In between these video confessionals are examples of what some teens do when they are not in school. One plays guitar and he is shown playing a song. Another is into parkour, and he is shown with his friends scaling gutters and somersaulting on rooftops. Another pair of teens are amateur filmmakers and shoot a film in one of their basements. All of this is fine, and it all illustrates what makes these teens happier than what school can provide. It just grinds the film to a near halt is all, because it’s not interesting in the least. Bienvenue à F.L. is already lean at 74 minutes, but much of it is padded with this kind of filler (honestly, do we need to see all the makeup a prom attendee applies)? There is enough of this filler to make one consider that there wasn’t enough “there” there to keep the interesting parts of the doc the dominating thread.

The third film is pure frustration. A main theme of the ongoing story is the Inside Out Project. It is introduced early, and it treats the viewer to a scene of kids taking pictures of each other for the project. But nothing is ever developed in terms of how these random pairs of kids interact. I’m not one to usually say when a film should have something in it that it doesn’t, but in this case, much was made early about randomizing the pairs—as if two kids from wildly different cliques, kids who might not ever interact, are suddenly forced to collaborate, with the results to be revealed in the film. This never happens, and it’s terribly disappointing.

I cited the quote from The Breakfast Club because as I listened to the kids speak to the camera, I found myself harkening back to my high school days. Despite being part of a graduating class of less than 100 kids, and being part of a high school with less than 400 total students, my triumphs and tragedies and fears and realities were no different than those of these subjects. The same can be said for my teenage daughters. So what Carl the Janitor said holds true: kids don’t change; we do. We grow up and move on, putting high school behind us, and leaving for the coming generations the same general fears and frustrations. The details might differ (my youth was more about Pac-Man than parkour), but the sentiment and the themes remain the same.

Bienvenue à F.L. is one of those films that will mean different things to different generations of people, and yet still mean the same thing to everyone. In the end, though, the collage of experiences, like the collage of pictures taken for the Inside Out Project, is better suited as a living yearbook for the students showcased than it is as a true documentary.

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s much-anticipated follow-up to her 2010 film Attenberg finds her making a (sort of) chamber piece poking fun at masculinity with Chevalier. The film takes place almost entirely on a boat, where six men are taking a vacation with each other. One night the men try coming up with a game to play in order to pass the time, when one of them suggests a strange competition: everyone will constantly judge each other on every aspect (how they dress, how they react to things, what they do, what they don’t do, if they bite their nails, etc.), assigning points to “good” behaviour, and at the end of the trip the man with the most points will be declared the best man.

Chevalier is one of those cases that proves the old adage of hindsight being 20/20. In retrospect, the admiration for what Tsangari is doing can overshadow the fact that watching Chevalier unfold is a little too dry for its own good. Tsangari leaves plenty of room for interpretation in terms of figuring out what exactly this absurdist case of male competition can represent, but some moments point toward a fun case of role reversal between genders (Getting judged on a constant basis based on arbitrary and cosmetic standards? I’m sure one gender can relate to that). Yet Tsangari’s concept only has fleeting pleasures, and Chevalier has what feels like a lot of dead air between its comedic highlights. At the end, Chevalier at least follows through on its set-up: a winner is selected, the men go their separate ways. And the film disappears almost as quickly as it arrives.

On paper, Marcin Wrona’s Demon should be a cliché-ridden tale of a demonic possession and the effect it has on a young couple’s relationship. After all, that’s the template for a handful of genre films that are released every single year. But Wrona’s latest is not your typical possession story—it’s something entirely different.

Piotr (Italy Tiran) arrives in a small town in rural Poland to marry his fiancé, Żaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska), on her family’s homestead. Shortly before the wedding, the groom-to-be discovers skeletal remains in the family’s backyard. Despite initially brushing off the macabre discovery, Piotr begins to suspect something sinister is afoot when he sees flashes of a dead woman lurking around the wedding. As Piotr begins acting erratically, the guests believe at first to be epileptic attacks, but then are quickly diagnosed as the acts of a man possessed by a Jewish demon known as the dybbuk. As tensions grow, the wedding party attempts to save the groom from certain death while simultaneously preventing the entire ceremony from erupting into chaos.

Despite its inherently dark and supernatural elements, make no mistake about it; Demon is not a horror movie. To be perfectly honest, it’s a stretch to even label it as a psychological thriller. It’s a movie that is almost impossible to put it into a specific box because of its seemingly endless layers. For much of the film, Demon plays out like a traditional drama and then swiftly transitions into a pseudo-comedic tale of a seemingly cursed wedding. Even the dybbuk—the film’s sole villain—isn’t imposing and has the appearance of a lovely, albeit dead, young woman. Still, there are some legitimate horror aspects throughout, including a very on-the-nose homage to The Shining. But Demon is as much in line with My Big Fat Greek Wedding as it is with Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.

There’s a distinct sense of humor on display, but the screenplay (which is co-written by Wrona and Pawel Maslona) doesn’t feature many setups or punch lines. Instead, the levity arrives through the guests’ confused, frustrated, and indifferent reactions to the absurdity that occurs once Piotr begins to see the dybbuk. The film’s most significant comedic relief comes in the form of a priest who desperately wants to leave the wedding, but constantly runs into roadblocks that prevent him from leaving the reception. Without a driver’s license, the priest is eventually forced to catch a ride home with an atheist doctor who has had one too many celebratory drinks. The entire sequence should feel completely out of place in a film like Demon, but it somehow manages to work.

Utilizing naturalistic performances, the acting is good across the board. As Piotr begins to crack under the pressure of the dybbuk’s presence, Tiran expresses paranoia through eerie physicality. While his reactions are chaotic and exhausting, they’re never over-the-top or silly. The real meat of the film comes from the family’s conflicting reactions to Piotr’s illness or possession, and the dramatic scenes of heated debate on the issue are finely acted and engaging.

Sadly, Demon doesn’t really go anywhere, and the end of the film leaves you asking if the destination was truly worth the strenuous journey. Given its subject matter and the atmospheric, haunting, and mildly creepy first act, it’s frustrating that there aren’t any significant scares or notable payoffs. Demon is unlikely to do for awkward Polish weddings what Jaws did for the ocean, but it’s the first truly unique take on the all-too-crowded possession sub-genre to come along in some time, and there’s something to be said for that.

With Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier has perfected the intensity he showed in brief glimpses with his previous film Blue Ruin. Whereas Ruin played out through a more slow-paced approach and focused on the vicious cycle of a long-lasting blood feud, Green Room goes full genre, putting characters in a situation that’s seemingly impossible to get out of while gleefully letting everything to go hell in a handbasket. It’s a thriller that knows exactly what it’s doing, raising the stakes to an unbearable level while subverting expectations associated with the genre. In terms of pure, raw intensity and entertainment, Green Room is fantastic, and confirms Saulnier as a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

As these sorts of stories go, things start off with a calm before the storm. Punk band The Ain’t Rights are touring with no money and apparently no gigs either; they can barely afford food and siphon gas in order to keep traveling to their next destination. After driving out of their way to perform for some guaranteed cash they learn that the show’s been cancelled, but they’re offered an alternate gig; performing at a neo-nazi bar in what looks like the middle of the woods. They accept, and despite a rocky performance, things go well. It isn’t until they’re about to leave that things go south, when band member Sam (Alia Shawkat) forgets her phone in the eponymous green room. When bandmate Pat (Anton Yelchin) goes back to grab it for her, he walks in to find the headline act standing over the dead body of a young girl. With Pat being witness to a crime, the neo-Nazi bar staff lock the band in the room while bar owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart) and his right-hand man Gabe (Macon Blair) figure out how to handle the situation.

Right away, Saulnier establishes that playing by his own rules. The band, who turn Pat into a de facto leader as they try to negotiate an escape with Darcy through the room’s locked door, aren’t stupid. They know what will happen to them, and the more time they spend waiting the more time their captors can strategize a way to take them out. This is where the film’s earlier section pays off, since Saulnier’s ability to write realistic characters makes it easy to relate to the band’s desperate, yet smart, attempts to get out alive. Saulnier realizes the importance of realism, and that making viewers relate to the characters only ups the anxiety to a nauseating degree.

And once the situation goes haywire, Saulnier doesn’t hesitate to get brutal (and boy, does it get brutal). Machetes, box cutters, rabid dogs, and plenty more get used in the various showdowns, and when people die they go out screaming. Saulnier’s decision to cast character actors like Yelchin and Shawkat in the band puts his protagonists on a level playing field, making it impossible to guess who might make it out alive by the end. One by one, Saulnier removes the safe havens of conventions from viewers, meaning every moment plays out with an unpredictability that the film thrives on.

That’s largely because Saulnier doubles down on the best aspect of Blue Ruin; the ability to let his characters make mistakes. While Pat and his bandmates try their best to outsmart their rivals, Saulnier constantly reminds viewers that these are people desperately trying to feel their way through a situation they have no earthly idea how to grasp. Clever attempts to trick Darcy’s foot soldiers play out in ways they couldn’t expect, and even if they do pay off it might come at the cost of someone’s life. Much like The Raid: Redemption, Green Room is a survival thriller that understands the importance of constantly establishing the stakes, raising them higher, and letting people enjoy watching characters try to get out of the increasingly small corner they’ve put themselves in. It’s like watching a spectacularly bloody fireworks show, but with the knowledge that one of those explosives could come flying in your direction at any time.

An attempt to be both a cute love story and a commentary on contemporary youth in China, He Ping’s The Promised Land benefits from an experimental approach, but doesn’t really cohere into more than a stylish relationship dramedy. The film opens with Ai Ling (Wang Jiajia) returning to her small hometown after living in Beijing trying to make it as a ballet dancer. Her father (Wang Zhiwen) asks Ai where her boyfriend Jiang He (Zhang Yi) is, and despite her behaviour suggesting they’re no longer together, she insists he’s just back in Beijing. The film soon begins cutting back and forth through time, showing Ai Ling and Jiang He’s relationship from the beginning in Beijing, while in the present day Ai tries to open a dance studio in her hometown.

He Ping didn’t use a script while filming The Promised Land, letting his actors improvise all their dialogue. The approach leads to plenty of funny, naturalistic scenes between Ai Ling and Jiang He that help build their chemistry and relationship with ease, and makes The Promised Land move at a quick pace. And without a script, He invests a lot into the film’s visuals. The director of photography, Shao Dan, uses long takes, canted angles and gorgeous long shots of Ai Ling’s village to make the film easy on the eyes. But the film’s goodwill soon dissipates as time goes on, with the framing device and mystery over Jiang He’s whereabouts feeling more like an annoying afterthought. It won’t be hard to guess what happens, but He’s reveal is so abrupt and hurried (it’s shoved in the last five or so minutes) it dulls any emotional impact the resolution might have had. That leaves The Promised Land feeling like it’s spinning its wheels for most of the middle section, relying on the chemistry between its two leads as a distraction from the threadbare and predictable storyline. At least The Promised Land’s charm helps it get by, but it feels like with some tighter control there could have been a much better film.

Within the first minutes of Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer, it’s apparent that it won’t be a typical character study. It opens with an extreme close-up on Erwin (Erwin van Cotthem), a middle-aged man playing a fantasy video game on his computer. It’s an image that can paint Erwin as an example of the single, lonely gamer, until the voice of his wife Kate (Kate Ashley) can be heard asking him to help with their son Andrew (Andrew Latter), who has locked himself in their car and won’t get out. Yet Radwanski’s camera never lets go of its close distance to Erwin, or anything else in his environment. Almost every shot in How Heavy This Hammer unfolds through handheld close-ups of Erwin, with no establishing or wide shots. It’s a formal choice that isn’t exactly new (handheld cameras can be the bread and butter of low-budget indies sometimes), but it’s Radwanski’s use of this style which makes How Heavy This Hammer feel so distinct. It’s a quietly devastating drama, with a relentless intimacy towards its character that makes its emotional impact all the more powerful.

Most of Erwin’s existence comes across as a desire for him to live the kind of life he should have been living in his 20s. He plays a Viking in a computer game, sits around drinking or eating and plays rugby with a group of guys that are more like acquaintances than friends (it’s also the only socializing he does). He tries to be an attentive father to his sons Andrew and Seth (Seth Kirsh), but he spends most of his days quietly going through the mundane motions of a suburban life. There’s evidence that his lifestyle is taking its toll on him, given his extremely low-level of patience when even the smallest thing gets in the way of doing what he wants. Eventually that feeling extends to his own family, falling asleep when they try to watch a movie together and making it obvious he doesn’t want to do anything with his wife and/or children not involving computer games. When Andrew wakes his dad up after he falls asleep during movie night, Erwin snaps, berating his family for bothering him (“This is fucking ridiculous!” he screams over and over). Then, in one of the film’s many jarring elliptical cuts, Erwin’s moving into a shoddy apartment above a bar.

The close proximity to Erwin and (sometimes) those around him can make it difficult to watch this family’s slow dissolution unfold. Every moment is an invasion of personal space, the camera feeling like it’s on a short leash connected to Erwin, so when the strong emotions come out—like Seth crying after Erwin gets too rough teaching him rugby—there’s no chance to look away. The most remarkable thing about this, and largely why How Heavy This Hammer works so well, is how well Radwanski gets naturalistic performances out of his (I’m assuming) largely nonprofessional cast. Van Cotthem is a compelling force as Erwin, with a realism and presence on screen that never makes a single moment with him ring false. The supporting cast, while sometimes looking like they’ve never performed in front of a camera before, still add a naturalism to the film which never makes it feel manufactured, offering the kinds of performances that would never be possible with professional actors. The fact that this all works, especially with the camera looking like it’s inches from people’s faces, is a feat in itself.

Despite the lack of a clear resolution to Erwin’s conflicts in How Heavy This Hammer (it can feel like Radwanski simply dropped in, filmed a bit, and then dropped out just as quickly), the film remains a fascinating study of a character trying to break free of his own cycles of stagnation. It can feel unflinching in its portrayal of the fallout from Erwin’s decisions although Radwanski is smart enough to never pass any judgment on Erwin or his actions. The film does what great character studies should do, leaving things open for interpretation rather than defining a clear-cut path to follow. How did I take How Heavy This Hammer? I found Erwin to be partially selfish in his quest for change, but sympathetic to his attempts to break out of his patterns. Radwanski and cinematographer Nicholay Michaylov’s (who does seriously impressive work here, considering how well the style ties into content) choice to film in close-ups heightens the feelings of being trapped, along with Erwin’s inability to truly break out of his rut. In what seems like a cruel joke, the only time Radwanski offers breathing room through a long shot is actually a trick; it’s a close-up of Erwin’s computer screen, showing the vast landscapes of the world within his computer game. For Erwin, the only freedom he gets is a poorly rendered illusion of one.

Brotherly bonds get quite the test in The Ardennes, a surprisingly tense and entertaining spin on a familiar tale from first-time director Robin Pront. Opening with a robbery gone wrong, Dave (Jeroen Perceval, who also co-wrote the film with Pront) leaves his brother Kenneth (Kevin Janssens) behind, taking off with Kenneth’s girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens). Kenneth refuses to rat on his brother and girlfriend, so he gets the maximum punishment. Cut to four years later, and Dave picks up Kenneth from prison after he serves his term. Kenneth is excited to get back into the swing of things, but Dave has been withholding two bombshells from him: Dave and Sylvie became a couple while Kenneth was in prison, and now they’re expecting a child. And since Kenneth is a huge mass of masculine fury with a short fuse, they’re concerned about how he’ll take the news.

The question of whether or not Kenneth will find out about his brother and Sylvie is the sort of old, clichéd material that feels worn out by now, and when Pront & Perceval’s script leans on this The Ardennes can start feeling awfully generic. But the screenplay makes up for its narrative shortcomings by having a strong and rich thematic core, with Dave and Sylvie trying to climb their way out from below the poverty line to live a standard life (“I just want to be dull,” Sylvie says at one point). Kenneth’s release from prison puts a wrench into their plans, and his menacing presence in their lives serves as a reminder of their selfish decision four years earlier, threatening to drag them back down to the place they’ve tried so hard to escape from.

Pront and director of photography Robrecht Heyvaert give the film a slick, grimy look that heightens the dramatic stakes, highlighting the poor living conditions and little opportunities for escape. Perceval and Janssens work great together as the two battling brothers, but Baetens—who people might recognize from her excellent turn in The Broken Circle Breakdown—is fantastic as Sylvie. An unexpected turn in the film’s final act that moves things to rural Belgium brings a touch of the eccentric and surreal that might prove divisive, but it all leads to a highly intense and brutal climax that’ll make sure people won’t forget about The Ardennes after they see it. The finale’s nihilism might turn some viewers off, but it sure as hell leaves a mark, and that counts for something.

Jia Zhangke’s follow-up to A Touch of Sin, his scathing criticism of the current state of China, is a much more intimate and sympathetic film, this time focusing on the cost of culture and heritage as China moves faster and faster towards capitalism. The film splits up into three acts, taking place respectively in 1999, 2014, and 2025. In the first act (shot in the Academy ratio), the young Tao (Zhao Tao) finds herself pursued by two men: coal miner Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) and wealthy gas station owner Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong). Eventually, Tao chooses Liangzi and has a son with him that Liangzi names Dollar. That sort of not-so-subtle messaging happens throughout Mountains May Depart, but Jia’s beautiful handling of the human dramas at the centre of his story make these moments easier to handle.

In 2014 (shot in standard widescreen), Tao and Liangzi have split up, and it’s in this heartbreaking second act that Zhao Tao showcases one of the best performances of the year as the devastated Tao learns that Dollar is moving to Australia with Liangzi. Then, in the final act (shot in Cinemascope) set in Australia, a now adult Dollar (Dong Zijian) bonds with one of his teachers (Sylvia Chang) while debating if he should go back to China to visit his estranged mother. Jia’s plain drama and handling of imagery, where symbols and objects resonate and reappear over the two-plus decade span of the film, is masterful, and his exploration of the loss of heritage and culture should resonate with everyone despite its ties to Jia’s own country. The often maligned final act, where Jia directs for the first time in English (prepare for wooden acting and bad dialogue), certainly has its faults, but Jia’s power at filtering such a complex issue through a moving personal story triumphs in the end.

There’s no better evidence of Denis Villeneuve‘s handle of craft than in Sicario. Directing a tightly paced screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Villeneuve follows Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent recruited to join a task force headed by government worker Matt (Josh Brolin) and his intense sidekick Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). From the start, Kate realizes she’s out of her depth; Matt and Alejandro lie (a trip to El Paso winds up in Juarez), and they prefer to keep her in the dark about what they’re really doing when it comes to luring a top cartel member out of hiding. And as the mission gets more dangerous (and more vague), Kate realizes she’s thrown herself right into the vicious maw of the War on Drugs.

There are points early on where Sicario feels like watching a masterclass on how to create a truly nerve-wracking thriller. Relying once again on legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (who lensed Villeneuve’s first mainstream effort Prisoners), Villeneuve keeps things in Kate’s perspective, taking advantage of the southern border’s vast landscapes to clash with the chaotic unknowns Kate finds herself thrust into repeatedly. Blunt is terrific as her character fights between maintaining some sort of control of her situation and pure, pants-shitting terror at what she’s a part of, and del Toro can be downright bone-chilling when he shows his ruthless side in the film’s latter half.

The choice to include a brief subplot involving a Mexican police officer, an attempt by Sheridan to offer a look at the human cost of the drug trade, is less of a relief from the unrelenting tension and more of a distraction than anything. It’s an attempt to broaden the film’s scope, but it fails because there’s no need; by observing the headache-inducing bureaucracy, the little value placed on lives, and the “means justifying the ends” philosophy taken to the utmost extreme, Sicario does plenty in showing off the disastrous state of the drug trade today.

When One Floor Below premiered earlier this year at Cannes, the general reaction seemed to be bafflement. For some reason Radu Muntean’s follow-up to Tuesday After Christmas confounded people with its simple and intriguing story. Watching it now, while still in the context of a rushed festival like TIFF, it’s easy to assume that Cannes audiences might have been surprised at how straightforward this film really is. Family man and business owner Sandu (Teodor Corban), who helps people navigate the bureaucracy of car registrations in Romania, overhears an argument coming from the apartment of his young, single neighbour Laura (Maria Popistasu). He listens in, only to be caught when the door opens and he sees Vali (Iulian Postelnicu), a married neighbour from a different apartment downstairs. Sandu, embarrassed at being caught eavesdropping, goes on his merry way, but later finds out that Laura was murdered. Yet when the cops come to question everyone in the apartment, Sandu refuses to say a word about the argument he overheard. And soon enough Vali starts involving himself more and more with Sandu’s family.

Muntean shows remarkable control here, letting his scenes play out through long, well-composed takes that are all about what’s not being said. The murder at the centre of the film isn’t the real mystery; instead it’s why Sandu won’t speak up, and why Vali seems so keen to get himself closer to Sandu. Muntean lets his film unfold at a deliberate pace, letting Vali slowly insert himself into Sandu’s personal space as time goes on (first outside by his car, then chatting up his family members in the stairwell and eventually winding up hanging out with his son in his apartment). This makes One Floor Below unfold at a slow, steady boil, with Corban providing a strong, understated performance as his character has to deal with the consequences of his inaction. There’s a plainness to One Floor Below that’s refreshing. Muntean simply presents a situation, keeps the motivations and psychology under the surface, and lets the viewer make their own conclusions. It gives the film a richness, one that invites plenty of discussion and repeat viewings.

Finally making his return after winning the Palme D’Or five years ago with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul delivers yet another beguiling and utterly singular film with Cemetery of Splendour. Taking place at a former school that turned into a hospital for soldiers suffering from a strange sleeping sickness, local woman Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widner) decides to volunteer, looking after the soldier Itt (Banlop Lomnoi) as he sleeps in a comatose-like state. The soldiers eventually wake up randomly for brief periods of time before suddenly passing out again, and through his brief moments of consciousness Jenjira and Itt develop a strong friendship.

As with most of Weerasethakul’s work, the story takes a backseat. The director has described his film as either a dream about being awake or a reality that can feel like a dream, and Cemetery of Splendour’s largest achievement is how well it weaves reality, fantasy, dreams, spirituality and the supernatural together. All of these things—usually seen as separate entities—flow together through Weerasethakul’s vision: two beautiful women can suddenly become the spirits of princesses, a school can turn into the battlefield of a great war between ancient kings, and a park can become a great kingdom overseeing plenty of rich, fertile lands. There’s a boundless imagination to the film, and through its hypnotic visuals (a sequence with a group of lights can easily function as its own brilliant installation piece) it’s easy to get swept up by its beauty. Fans of Weerasethakul’s work should find themselves pleased with yet another terrific film from the director, and those unfamiliar might not find a better entry point than this. By this point, there shouldn’t be a reason not to check out Weerasethakul’s work. He’s one of the best directors working today, and Cemetery of Splendour is another excellent addition to his filmography.

What’s the point of a good performance if it’s wasted on a bad film? That’s the question I had in my head after watching Adam Salky’s I Smile Back. Sarah Silverman plays Laney, a wife and mother of two kids with a successful husband (Josh Charles) who’s about to publish a book. But Laney has severe issues with addiction, clinging on to any possible vice she can get her hands on if her mood happens to go the wrong way. She stops taking her prescribed medication to curb her addictions, and soon finds herself drinking, snorting cocaine, popping Xanax and sleeping with a family friend (Thomas Sadoski). Janey hits rock bottom, goes to rehab, and then tries to re-adjust once she gets out.

The film’s focus on the struggle to break the cycle of addiction feels refreshing in its frankness, but Salky’s direction and the script (by Amy Koppelman and Paige Dylan) fall into a rather simplistic, familiar depiction of addiction that feels more at home in a TV movie. Laney is a textbook example of daddy issues, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that her father winds up throwing her into yet another self-destructive phase. As a result, there’s a dated feel to the entire film, with its entirely white, affluent cast of characters dealing with their rich people problems. It might have worked better in the 90s.

And while the material is lacking, Silverman commits to every piece of it with full force. Some people might find her performance a little too obvious in its attempt to play against type, but even if that were the case nobody could deny that she completely hurls herself into the role, going to places a lot of actors wouldn’t dare. It’s just too bad she commits herself to a film that’s clearly beneath her efforts. Even an abrupt ending, one that’s admirable in its refusal to give any resolution, can’t land because it’s preceded by a sequence that can only be described as abysmal in its attempt to be “raw” and “gritty.” Other than acting as a curio for people wanting to see Silverman’s range, I Smile Back doesn’t offer much else.

There’s an inherent paradox when it comes to family: despite spending more time with your parents/siblings than anyone else, you’ll never get to truly know who these people are. Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs, his follow-up to the devastating masterpiece Oslo August 31, explores the collisions between the individual, subjective experiences of family members, along with the barriers of communication that can spring up between the people closest to you. The film starts approximately three years after the death of Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), a war photographer who took her own life by crashing her car. Isabelle’s husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and eldest son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) know the truth surrounding her death, but her 15-year-old son Conrad (Devin Druid) still thinks it was an accident. Now, with Isabelle’s former colleague (David Strathairn) planning to reveal the truth about her death in a piece he’s planning for the New York Times, Gene tries to tell the truth to Conrad while attempting to repair the relationship between his two sons.

Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt continue to show off their strength as filmmakers when it comes to experimenting with form to accurately portrayal the thought process. The film frequently swaps perspectives between Gene, Jonah and Conrad, while also hopping back and forth through time to when Isabelle was alive. Through this, it’s apparent that each man has a different idea of who Isabelle was, and the way these differing interpretations intersect is when Louder than Bombs hits a level of specificity that creates some great drama. But when Trier decides to break away and show the stories of each individual—Gene’s secret relationship with one of Conrad’s teachers (Amy Ryan), Jonah’s fear of becoming a father, and Conrad’s crush on a cheerleader that’s out of his league—it falls into clichés that wind up making the film get lost within itself. It’s disappointing because, when Trier’s methods do work, he creates some heart-wrenching and sublime moments (an extreme close-up of a character staring the camera down will haunt viewers for days). If Trier had more moments like these, Louder than Bombs could have been the masterpiece it so obviously wants to be.

It comes as a bit of a surprise that The Witch, currently heralded as one of the scariest movies of the year since its Sundance debut, isn’t really scary at all. Set in 1600s New England, the film follows a devoutly religious family of Pilgrims as they try to live on their own on a patch of land near a large forest. Everything seems fine until the family’s infant son gets snatched away by an unseen figure from the woods, and it becomes apparent that something seriously evil is trying to destroy this family by making their lives a living hell.

First, the good stuff: Writer/director Robert Eggers, also a former production designer, nails the period look down with his film’s small, distinct setting. And it’s hard to find a weak link in the cast either, with new actress Anya Taylor-Joy exuding a magnetic screen presence as the family’s eldest daughter Thomasin, along with her parents (played by Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie). But Eggers gives up the ghost almost immediately by clearly showing that, yes, supernatural shenanigans are afoot, and by doing so, removes any ambiguity or fear from the proceedings. And rather than try to establish any tension, Eggers prefers to utilize poor jump scares sporadically between artfully composed shots, all of which amounts to little. It’s a suffocating horror film, though not in the way usually useful to horror films, taking itself so seriously it’s hard to enjoy.

Add to all of the aforementioned that a rather poor attempt to weave the subject matter into a sort of commentary on patriarchy and the oppression of women—and boy, I can’t wait for people to sink their teeth into how problematic the film is in this regard—and you have your reasoning as to why The Witch is one of the year’s biggest disappointments. It gets by on its impeccable acting and technical aspects, but nothing can hide that this is a horror film without any horror.

There’s a shot early on in Mark Lewis’ Invention that I can only describe as exhilarating, but I get the feeling it might not work on everyone in the same way it did for me. The sequence, a single take lasting over 10 minutes, starts as a black-and-white shot on top of a downtown Toronto building overlooking the cityscape. The camera slowly starts panning around in a circle, eventually aiming its sights towards the city’s downtown core (you can see the CN tower peeking out from behind a cloud). Eventually, the camera stops and locks in on a window in another building directly across from it. Suddenly the camera starts flying towards the window, goes through it (the moment the camera enters inside, the film switches to colour), flips upside down, then turns around and proceeds to zoom into the streets below to observe the cars and pedestrians.

I can’t deny that, on a basic level, there’s something I find exciting about watching what looks like a simple shot unexpectedly transform into an incredibly complex one. A pan turns into (I assume) a drone or crane shot, proceeds to do something seemingly impossible, and then redefines the familiar views of the city into something more abstract and mathematical (the window the camera peers through is split into three sections, and Lewis frames it to look like a three-dimensional plane). Lewis, along with cinematographers Martin Testar and Bobby Shore, employ this approach to three areas in different parts of the world: Toronto, São Paolo, and the Louvre in Paris. And aside from the opening and closing, Invention has no soundtrack whatsoever, letting the film play out almost entirely in complete silence (the film has been described as reminiscent of city symphony films of the silent era). The film rests everything on its visuals, and with so many downright dazzling scenes, it’s not hard to get past the silence.

That radical move might make it easy for some to dismiss Invention as more of an art installation (to be fair, part of Invention is made up of shorts Lewis made for the Louvre), but if anything, Invention might be one of the year’s most cinematic films. By stripping things down to the most vital element(s), and by putting all the emphasis on the camera and its movement, Lewis makes Invention a film that’s all about the act of observing and how powerful the camera can be in teaching viewers what and how to observe. This is apparent in the opening shot, where the camera slowly observes a sculpture, and through the way the camera glides and pans over almost every detail, frequently changing the interpretation and appreciation of the art piece. Even more fascinating is how Lewis extends this to the way he observes Toronto and São Paolo, capturing surreal images (primarily one of people walking along a closed down highway) or seemingly mundane parts of a city and, by using the camera’s placement and movement, generates a new, dynamic appreciation of the familiar. And by providing this distilled version of cinema, Invention turns into the sort of film that’s a distinct, powerful work that’s about the unique power of film.

There’s something remarkable about the fact that Magnus von Horn’s The Here After can contain so many European arthouse clichés yet still work effectively for the most part. The film opens with John (Swedish pop star Ulrik Munther) getting out of prison after serving a sentence for a crime the film keeps hidden until later, but needless to say it’s something bad. His father (Mats Blomgren) and little brother (Alexander Nordgren) try to adjust to John’s return, but things soon go out the window once he returns to school. John’s family may be willing to move on, but their small, rural community is still raw over what happened.

Director of photography Łukasz Żal (Oscar-nominated for his work on Ida) shoots The Here After on 35mm Cinemascope, taking advantage of the open landscapes in the film’s countryside setting to give the film a nice look. But all of it feels so familiar: the gradual reveal of John’s crime, the chilly remove with its insistence on long shots, the penchant for sudden, brutal violence to spill out in the span of a single scene, and the list goes on. At times, The Here After can feel like it’s lifted from an Arthouse 101 textbook, yet there’s an undeniable power to Von Horn’s film. Munther impresses as the mostly silent John, subtly showing off how his guilt consumes him as the harassment escalates, and Blomgren makes just as much of an impression as his conflicted father. Von Horn falls into a lot of trappings that make his debut more like a collection of influences than the arrival of a distinct voice in arthouse cinema, but at least he’s lifting things from the right people.