I Called Him Morgan (Kasper Collin, Sweden/US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro Trumpeter Lee Morgan belonged to that wave of early-’60s Blue Note recording artists that included Sonny Clark and Ike Quebec, guys who did not embrace the radically dilating apertures...
View ArticleGimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch, US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro As with Year of the Horse (1997), Gimme Danger is an outlier in Jim Jarmusch’s filmography in that it’s both a documentary and a temporary vacation from the strictures of a signature...
View ArticleDeepwater Horizon (Peter Berg, US) — Gala Presentations
By José Teodoro We know from the start that this baby’s gonna blow; it’s only a question of when and how abysmally. Deepwater Horizon is everything you might expect from a Gala: it’s big, it’s bad, it...
View ArticleChasing Trane (John Scheinfeld, US) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro If you own one jazz record, it’s probably Kind of Blue; if you own two, the other one’s probably A Love Supreme. John Coltrane plays on the former and is composer and bandleader on the...
View ArticleCatfight (Onur Tukel, US) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro Is it all right that I derive pleasure from watching Sandra Oh and Anne Heche beat the living shit out of each other? I promise I have nothing against either actress. It is simply not...
View ArticleBarry (Vikram Gandhi, US) — Special Presentations
By José Teodoro Among Barry’s most likable attributes is the fact that it barely even needs to be about Barack Obama, whose actual given name is never uttered over the course of the film. Set in August...
View ArticleThe Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour, US) — Vanguard
By José Teodoro In the future and/or some parallel universe, the US will reject numerous citizens for unspecified reasons and banish them to some arid stretch of Texas-Mexico borderland. On one side of...
View ArticleAmanda Knox (Brian McGinn & Rod Blackhurst, USA/Denmark) — TIFF Docs
By José Teodoro What’s finally most objectionable about Amanda Knox is encapsulated right in this glossy and obnoxious film’s title. Its fundamental sensationalism bubbling under a patina of...
View ArticleKékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki, Argentina) — Wavelengths
By José Teodoro Gastón Solnicki’s third feature and first fiction film is, like its predecessors, named after a piece of music: Kékszakállú is Hungarian for “Bluebeard,” and Solnicki has cited Béla...
View ArticleKékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki, Argentina)
By José Teodoro From the start of Gastón Solnicki’s Kékszakállú it seems like a boy’s boy’s boy’s world. In the opening moments three boys bound off a high diving board, followed by a girl whose...
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