8 years ago
All posts by Tina Hassannia
TIFF Dispatch #4: “Hill of Freedom”, “It Follows”, and “Amour Fou”
Hill of Freedom - Hong Sang-Soo’s films about unrequited love never fall into predictable patterns, even if they’re all exceedingly similar. The same holds true for Hill of Freedom. Hong’s latest narrative puzzle features Mori, a young Japanese man heartsick f...
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TIFF Dispatch #3: “99 Homes”, “The Duke of Burgundy”, and “Phoenix”
99 Homes - The American home foreclosure crisis, the subject of Ramin Bahrani’s latest film, is the stuff of Michael Moore-style documentaries. The film observes various middle-class families fighting tooth and nail to hold onto their family homes, only to be ...
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TIFF Dispatch #2: “Love & Mercy”, “Eden”, and “Tokyo Tribe”
Love & Mercy, Bill Pohlad’s biopic about musical genius Brian Wilson is an empathetic but trite examination of the Beach Boy’s life, structured like a temporal see-saw occupying two specific periods. There’s the mid 1960s, when Wilson (Paul Dano) brainstor...
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TIFF Dispatch #1: “Foxcatcher”, “Clouds of Sils Maria”, and “Maps to the Stars”
So many films—regardless of their genre or origin—deal with the psychology of interpersonal discord that it’s scarcely worth mentioning them as some kind of classifiable phenomenon. But when you watch a variety of films that have little to do with each other—f...
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Wes Anderson’s Latest Diorama “The Grand Budapest Hotel” Isn’t His Tidiest
Wes Anderson is cinema’s inner child incarnate. His perfectly crafted interior universes - labyrinthine submarines, exotic trains, prestigious private schools - are populated by imperfect sad souls, live-action Charlie Browns who are forever mourning or resent...
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History of Film: ‘Network’
Sidney Lumet's masterpiece is as important today as it was almost 40 years ago.
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‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ is One of the Coens’ Best Shaggy Dog Stories
Warning: contains spoilers
In Inside Llewyn Davis, the titular protagonist (Oscar Isaac) is yet another one of Coens’ unlucky characters, bewildered by the cruel twists of fate. But what separates Davis—loosely based on folk musician Dave Van Ronk—from the ...
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Dueling Reviews of Sam Raimi’s Divisive Disney Fantasy Oz the Great and Powerful
By: Tina Hassannia
Grade: C-
Warner may keep a draconian eye on any cultural product with a smidgen of resemblance to the beloved classic The Wizard of Oz--for which they have owned the rights since 1996--and while that particular film has comprehensively pe...
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Toronto Top 5 (Week of 03/08/13—03/14/13)
Toronto is a vibrant city for cinema, and as such there’s always lots to see. These weekly posts will cut through the mainstream releases to highlight the Top 5 cinematic events to check out each week.
1. Early Summer/Late Spring (TIFF Lightbox)
If you h...
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The Invisible Cinema: Jesus of Montreal
In Denys Arcand’s 1989 Academy-nominated film Jesus of Montreal, allegory is treated as a not-so-subtle scaffolding with which the Quebecois director presents a cross-section of hypocritical ‘80s Quebecois culture—sexually fetishized advertising; the media’s b...
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