2018: Another Year of Cinema Come and Gone

This year was a real game changer for a person like myself. To kick things off, it was the first year in which I was able to attend TIFF as a press member rather than as any other audience member. It was a defining moment for myself, though I don’t want to brag a little too much about what happened there. It was just a good year for cinema in general. That’s all I can really say, and I want to bring more attention to the many films that I absolutely loved this year – and so many of them came around this year and so forth. We’re already nearing the end of a decade, and through the good and the bad, the cinema has always been able to provide nothing but the greatest pleasures through and through. Although as we look through the films that have come to define 2018 as a whole, there were many surprises that came along the way just as there were disappointments – all of which came in between the very best and the worst in cinema through the year. So without further ado, let us begin. Continue reading →

Advertisement

Searching Review: An Emotionally Intense Thriller That Extends Beyond a Visual Gimmick

✯✯✯✯

I remember seeing Unfriended and scoffing at the gimmick being set up by a film that takes place entirely through the perspective of a computer screen, if there were any reason for me to be skeptical of yet another film set within this point of view produced by Timur Bekmambetov. Searching, the feature film debut of Aneesh Chaganty, tells another story that feels like it could only work so effectively because it’s told the exact way that it is. But when you watch everything unfold in the same way that Searching shows you, something about it just feels like what you hadn’t seen before. Because it isn’t the sort of movie that you would expect for something that shows everything unfolding from the perspectives of computer screens and smartphones – it’s also something more human.

Continue reading →