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Posts from the ‘TIFF2011’ Category

Sep 17

The Awakening (2011)

Directed by: Nick Murphy

3 stars

1921.  Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall), a professional ghost story debunker, is asked to solve an apparent haunting at a boy’s prep school in the North of England.  One boy has died, and there may be a link to an earlier, rumoured death in the grand house which the school now occupies.  Armed with her intelligence, a detached, fragile scepticism (she is still mourning the loss of a man in the Great War) and a large number of scientific instruments, she heads north. Read more

Sep 16

3 Comments

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2011)

Directed by: Te-Sheng Wei

3 stars

In 1895, Taiwan was taken over by the Empire of Japan.  Thirty five years later, the Seediq aboriginal people are in a semi-subservient condition, regarded as savages by their Japanese masters, who view Seediq traditions (which include headhunting) as barbaric.  Chief Mona Rudao appears to have accepted this state of affairs, but when a Japanese policeman insults his clan at a wedding, Mona leads a loose coalition of clans in a brief, bloody rebellion. Read more

Sep 16

Rebellion (2011)
L’ordre et la morale

Directed by: Matthieu Kassovitz

4 star

1988, New Caledonia, a series of islands in the South Pacific that are legally part of France.  A group of indigenous Kanaks has stormed a police station on one of the islands, killing four gendarmes and taking twenty hostage.  A team of elite GIGN police, led by specialist negotiator Capitaine Legorjus, flies to the islands but, by the time they arrive, the mission has been given to the army who have orders to end the uprising quickly, using any means –  the French presidential elections are underway, and neither candidate can afford to look weak. Read more

Sep 16

1 Comment

The Last Christeros (2011)
Los últimos cristeros

Directed by: Matias Meyer

1 star

Mexico, in the 1930s. At the tail end of the Cristero War, in which the Mexican government attempted to enforce various secular provisions of the constitution, a last band of Christian hold-outs skirmish with government troops, their ammunition and strength running low. The group of five, sometimes six, men wander through the hills, say goodbye to their families, and prepare for the inevitable. Read more

Sep 16

Sleeping Beauty (2011)

Directed by: Julia Leigh

4 star

Student Lucy (Emily Browning) supports herself with a series of regular and ad-hoc jobs.  Some (endless photocopying, cleaning tables in a café) use her manual labour – others (serving as a medical experimentee, opportunistic prostitution) use her body and/or looks.  Her relationships with other people, flatmates, former lovers, and most notably with a reclusive alcoholic whom she both supports and aids on his path to self-destructive, are highly enigmatic.

One day she answers a newspaper advertisement, and soon she is being interviewed and prepared for what is described as a silver-service job – a description that manages to be both accurate and disingenuous at the same time.  Renamed as Sarah, she is required to serve and to sleep (drugged) while wealthy men lie with her. Read more

Sep 15

2 Comments

Snowtown (2011)

Directed by: Justin Kurzel

4 star

1998, Snowtown, South Australia.  Divorced working-class mum Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris) asks her neighbour (and potential befriend) to look after her boys one evening, and he rewards her trust by sexually abusing them.  His continued presence across the road serves as a threatening taunt to her clan, so when John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) arrives on this scene, riding a motorbike, he looks to the family like a knight in shining armour.  Soon he’s harassing the paedophile from the neighbourhood and organising kitchen meetings of wannabe vigilantes to plan campaigns against local abusers, real and supposed. Read more

Sep 15

4 Comments

The Odds (2011)

Directed by: Simon Davidson

1 star

In the suburbs of Vancouver, Desson (Tyler Johnston) and his high-school buddies drink, smoke, lie, steal and fight.  Oh, and they gamble.  A lot.  They all seem to be in debt to a greater degree than their allowances will fix.  When Desson’s best friend Barry (Calum Worthy) is found hanging in the family garage one morning, it looks to his peers like a suicide brought on by the magnitude of his losses.  But Desson knows better… Read more

Sep 14

11 Flowers (2011)

Directed by: Wang Xiaoshuai

4 stars

Southwest China, 1975, in what will turn out to be the final year of the Cultural Revolution, eleven year-old Wang Han (Liu Wenqing) lives with his sister and parents in a tiny apartment in a remote town.  Giving chase after his brand new white shirt is stolen, Han finds himself face to face with a man wanted for murder…. Read more

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