by Jaime Rebanal

‘Civil War’ Review: A Pointless Conflict Has No Answers

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It’s the near future, America is at war with itself – perhaps this all feels a bit too close to home. For someone like Alex Garland, who’s a British-born filmmaker, he’s looking at such events from a distance, and that’s about all he can really make a film like this from. It ends up becoming both one of the most interesting things about Civil War, while also being its greatest curse at that. With how the film unfolds, especially in regards to how journalists cover a nation at war, it opens up another realm entirely when talking about how the events become sensationalized to pander either to left-wing or right-wing readers. That, in turn, ends up becoming the biggest problem which Civil War poises.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Io Capitano’ Review: A Fine Line Between Empathy and Spectacle

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When Io Capitano starts, we’re seeing territory that’s very unfamiliar for the Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone: in that this is a film about poverty in Senegal. Even though it’s unfamiliar for him, there’s still a great sense of empathy being displayed here that pertains to the struggles of people who seek to escape poverty, which Garrone makes clear has deeply resonated with him – and informed the stories that he chooses to tell. But Io Capitano feels like a moment for Garrone to show he can uplift his audiences, and as he commits to that with relative ease, yet perhaps his empathy for such a struggle can only take him so far.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ Review: Pleasing Everyone Can Only Get You So Far

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Everything about The Teachers’ Lounge and its setting, is very ordinary. That might be the perfect way for an audience to be led into a boiling pot, as they try to reckon with everything simmering and getting hotter by the minute, to a point where everything rises to a point it comes beyond one’s control. And it’s very apparent that director İlker Çatak understands that, because it’s very crucial to where the greatest successes of The Teachers’ Lounge come about. It might also be where its greatest shortcomings are apparent.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Society of the Snow’ Review: Is Survival Worth It?

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In 1993, the story of the Uruguayan Andes flight disaster appeared on the screen for American audiences through the film Alive, directed by Frank Marshall. But as noted critic Roger Ebert had said of the film at the time, “no movie can really encompass the enormity of the experience,” with regards to recounting how the rugby players had resorted to desperate means in order to survive their ordeal. And over the years, this story has been revisited on the screen through documentaries featuring detailed interviews with the survivors. This is where J. A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow differs, having close contact with the survivors, adapting a recent recollection of memories in a book written by a classmate of the survivors.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Saltburn’ Review: Pretty but Hollow Provocation

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It’s hard enough trying to write a review of Saltburn without going into great detail about the many elements that would in turn try and form a “surprise” so to speak. But at the same time, it feels so crucial to the world that Emerald Fennell is creating in this film to the point that it feels like it hinges entirely on this. Like Promising Young Woman which came before it, Fennell’s interests lie within reinventing familiar concepts with the hopes of inciting a feeling of shock, and many moments in Saltburn without doubt, feel designed to elicit such a reaction. Instead, the final result is very self-satisfied and the returns are empty.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Ferrari’ Review: Chasing the Shrinking Spotlight

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The opening of Michael Mann’s film about the Italian automobile entrepreneur tells you everything you’d need to know about how he sees Enzo Ferrari himself. It’s a moment that captures the last time Enzo Ferrari really was able to feel happy on the racetrack, but obviously that glory isn’t something that’d last forever. But knowing that Ferrari is a movie that Michael Mann has been trying to get made for a very long time, it’s easy enough to have your own expectations set to a very lofty standard. For better or worse, this might as well be the culmination of it all – though at the very end of the day, I’m glad that Michael Mann finally was able to get it made.  

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Hit Man’ TIFF Review: An Action Story Too Good to be True

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The true story of Hit Man almost feels like you’d be watching the material that could make a parody. But that just might as well be why Richard Linklater is perfect to bring it to the screen. Based on an article written by Skip Hollandsworth, whose article on Bernie Tiede had lent itself to what would eventually become Bernie, Hit Man is Richard Linklater’s take on an action vehicle, starring Glen Powell (who co-wrote with Linklater) as an unexpected hero of sorts. But that also might just as well be why Hit Man works, because this combination opts for the most bizarre routes while staying true to its roots.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘All of Us Strangers’ Review: Capturing All of the Heartbreak

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The setup for All of Us Strangers feels simple enough: we’re seeing the ghosts of the people who’ve raised us long after they’re dead, just in the way that we want to remember them. This story has in fact been adapted to the screen by Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi as the horror film The Discarnates, but Andrew Haigh’s take on familiar genre elements emphasizes another sort of pain that this ghost story could be carrying along with it. And at its best, Haigh turns out some brilliantly heartbreaking work out of All of Us Strangers.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire’ Review: A Truncated Space Epic

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Zack Snyder has always been a very polarizing director for many moviegoers: fans of his would always talk about his singularity among many directors in the blockbuster scene, and detractors deride his work for being derivative. Sometimes, both can be true – although it’s hard to really deny that whatever he’s making has always come from a sense of earnestness, to the point where feeling derivative doesn’t always matter. Even then, I think that at worst, Snyder tries to bite more than he can chew, especially when the case is a project as ambitious as this: the first of a two-part space opera aiming at launching a franchise.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘About Dry Grasses’ TIFF Review: A Meditative Breakdown of Selfishness

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Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films have never always been the easiest for many viewers to access, but sitting down there always feels like you’re made to think about why life turns out the way it does. With About Dry Grasses, it seems like Nuri Bilge Ceylan takes one of the most uncompromising looks at subject matter that perhaps might just on paper be a bit too uncomfortable for some to ask, especially around now. But Ceylan is not one to hit all the easy marks especially with the subject matter he chooses to tackle. Which is a big part of why I continually find him so fascinating, and with About Dry Grasses, he brings out a beautifully layered, thoughtful drama that comes off hugely self-deprecatory.

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