Irina Starshenbaum | Film Festival Today

Film Review: “Leto” Is a Gorgeous, But Overly Sleepy, Soviet Rock Drama

June 6, 2019

Film Review: “Wife of a Spy” Wisely Contrasts Spousal and Civil Loyalty for Brutal Results
By Hannah Tran
September 16, 2021
Wife of a Spy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2020) 3 out of 4 stars. Wife of a Spy might be a slightly misleading title for what is a heavy, complex political drama. Set in 1940s wartime Japan, the latest film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (To the Ends of the Earth) deals with the marriage of Yūsaku, a leader in charge of an import-export business, and his wife, Satoko, who is deeply in love with her husband and also stars in low-budget heist films that he ... >>
TIFF Review: “Petite Maman” Is Pure Magic
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
September 14, 2021
Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) 4 out of 4 stars. In Petite Maman, French director Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) crafts a fable that is as lovely as it is powerful. To all who have ever wondered what their parents were like when young, the film offers an answer simultaneously self-evident and revelatory: they were like us, but different. And so begins an adventure that fills the soul with joy even as it practices remarkable ... >>
TIFF Review: In Empowering “Violet,” the Voice of Male Derision Is Real
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
September 9, 2021
Violet (Justine Bateman, 2021) 3 out of 4 stars.* An experimental work that examines the fraught realities of female identity, Violet, from actress-turned-director Justine Bateman (here making her feature debut behind the camera), stars Olivia Munn (Love Wedding Repeat) as a woman consumed by her own insecurities and fears. Those take actual voice inside her head, spoken by a deriding, unseen male (Justin Theroux, Mute) who constantly ... >>
6 Films to See at TIFF 2021
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
September 8, 2021
Founded in 1976, the Toronto International Film Festival (or TIFF) continues in its second pandemic iteration, this time with both in-person and virtual screenings (as opposed to last year’s solely virtual affair). Some of the big narrative features in 2021 include Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Michael Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Antoine Fuqua’s The Guilty, Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, ... >>
Film Review: “Wild Indian“ Is an Unflinching Modern Tragedy
By Heidi Shepler
September 3, 2021
Wild Indian (Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr., 2021) 4 out of 4 stars. Wild Indian is an extraordinary film. Writer/director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr., making his feature debut, has created a subversive, literary tragedy. A good analogy for Wild Indian’s approach to past and present, culture and psychology, is a palimpsest, a book or manuscript in which some of the lines are continually, haphazardly erased and written over, but the original words ... >>

Film Review: “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” Positively Shines
In >> Breaking, Film Reviews, Robin C. Farrell, Spotlight
Film Review: Don’t Expect Many Laughs in Otherwise Compelling “Best Sellers”
In >> Breaking, Film Reviews, Robin C. Farrell, Spotlight
Film Review: Uneven “Nightbooks” Knits a Twisted Yarn of a Fairy Tale
In >> Breaking, Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Reviews, Spotlight
Film Review: “Kate” Is a Killjoy
In >> Breaking, Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Reviews, Spotlight

Victoria Reviews “Respect”
August 17, 2021
Starts off too slow and do we really need all that establishing framework to a dazzling career? ...>>
Victoria Reviews “Free Guy”
August 10, 2021
Dazzling fun with Reynolds playing a very likable character. An A-list actor’s cameo is perfect and ...>>
Victoria Reviews “F9: The Fast Saga”
July 3, 2021
It held my attention until Roman and Tej went Beyond Jupiter and met Dave Bowman. These guys are ...>>
Victoria Reviews “In the Heights”
June 8, 2021
Broadway behemoth Hamilton must have been a fluke. This is a musical without songs. And the ...>>