TIFF2016

A smart, socially awkward loner attempts to navigate between teenage years and adulthood. Hundreds of films deal with this topic, relying on the easy drama arising from the transition out of education and into everything to come. Carrie…

If the past is a foreign country, no one seems to believe it. Particularly when it comes to our own history, we often look back with a carefully censored gaze. Blue Jay throws two former high school sweethearts into this confusing nexus…

No one has ever been sure what to do with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States. He fell between the unforgettable John F. Kennedy and the infamous Richard M. Nixon, a hard place to land. As a Texan Senator he…

When there’s nothing else to sell, an attention grabbing concept is the way forward. That’s exactly where (re)Assignment goes with its trans-community and general decency baiting set-up. It’s also a wash-out, the initial shock fading early…

Few families have proven as adept at mythmaking as the Kennedys. The early ‘60s were a glorious golden period, a time when Civil Rights finally made the agenda, a US President faced down the USSR and seemed to do ok, and America set out on…

The view we have of ourselves is almost certainly not what other people see. Knowing this doesn’t stop everyone making snap judgements based on cultural and social signifiers. These signifiers are a message in themselves, sometimes a sign…

Some people are a little too talented. Not content as one of the leading lights in the world of fashion, and having proven a dab hand at business too, Tom Ford moved to film. A Single Man in 2009 set the bar high, only to see Nocturnal…

It starts quiet and then turns loud as the ground falls away beneath him. Connor (Lewis MacDougall) reaches out but the hand slips from his grasp, down into the giant hole in the earth. Loss is central to A Monster Calls; for the grief it…

Michael Fassbender has been a lot of things in his career. From androids to demented slave owners, sex addicts and paedophiles, he doesn’t mind taking on a challenge. Chameleon that he is, his turn in Trespass Against Us still comes as…

There’s a lot of ambition in ‘76, painstakingly pursued over multiple years. Nigerian director Izu Ojukwu’s foray into the past took a long time to clear with the military given it focusses on an attempted coup that led to the assassination…