If you have cats in your home, if they are part of your family, it is Louis Wain you have to thank for it. He was the 19th century illustrator of many cat images you’d recognize but might not attribute to him, and he introduced Victorian London to the wonder and joy of cats. A …
TIFF
TIFF 2021 Mad Women’s Ball AWFJ.org Review
One of my most powerful cinematic memories is from 1948’s The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Virginia Cunningham. That movie, and the book it was based on, literally changed mental health in the United States. In it, Virginia has been sent to a state mental hospital after …
TIFF 2021 Where is Anne Frank? AWFJ.org Review
We are told in Where is Anne Frank’s prologue that writer/director Ari Folman’s parents were sent to Auschwitz the same week as famed diarist Anne Frank. That was part of the inspiration for this animated feature examining her life from the perspective of Kitty, the imaginary friend Anne chose as recipient of her feelings and experiences …
TIFF 2021 The Starling AWFJ.org Review
At some point, you’ll be an amateur to loss, but eventually everyone gains expert status. If you think you’re immune, you aren’t. This is something director Theodore Melfi banks on with his new film The Starling, a dramedy in which parents Lilly and Jack Maynard are grappling with grief from losing their baby daughter Katie to …
TIFF 2021 Encounter AWFJ.org Review
An alien threat leads decorated soldier Malik (Riz Ahmed) to kidnap his sons Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada) and take them across the Southwest desert highways in Encounter, the latest genre-bender by English director Michael Pearce. The film, which is also co-written by Pearce, affirms him as a talent with vision, showing he has …
TIFF 2021 Night Raiders Review
The first words uttered in voiceover in Canadian Cree and Metis writer/director Danis Goulet’s feature debut, Night Raiders, are “We knew they would come for us like they always have before.” Though rooted in dystopian storytelling that recalls some darker recent YA literature, the film is actually right out of the nightmares and collective memories of …
TIFF 2021 Mothering Sunday Review
Part Bridgerton, part Downton Abbey, director Eva Husson’s steamy take on the Hawthorne Prize winning novella Mothering Sunday is equally lush and bleak as it examines love and loss in post WW1 England through the eyes of orphan, maid, and aspiring writer Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young). The film largely taking place on March 30th, 1924, on Jane’s day off …