Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) isn’t just a film; it’s an emotional gut-punch, a reckoning with Brazil’s unhealed wounds through the eyes of a family that refused to be erased. This deeply personal and politically charged story earned a ten-minute standing ovation and the Best Screenplay award at Venice, and I’m not surprised. Salles’ long-standing connection with the Paiva...
In The Last Journey (Den sista resan), Swedish TV duo Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson embark on a road trip to the south of France, documenting Filip’s efforts to lift the spirits of his 80-year-old father, Lars. The film has made waves in Sweden and was the country’s submission for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Lars...
Life ain’t always empty. Few directors capture working-class life as authentically as Andrea Arnold. Arnold is one of a very few class-conscious directors in the UK, where the industry is dominated by wealthy filmmakers who often depict working-class communities through a detached or exploitative lens. Having grown up on a council estate in Dartford, Kent—just miles from where Bird is set—she does...
“This is the role I have been waiting for my entire career,” Pamela Anderson told the crowd at the Toronto Film Festival. Anderson has seen a long overdue career resurgence in the 2020’s, from her 2022 stint as Roxie in Chicago, to her 2023 Netflix documentary and autobiography. It was after seeing the documentary that director Gia Coppola decided to cast her in The Last Showgirl. In a world that’...
The opening hour of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy takes its sweet time—way too much of it, in fact. We meet Bridget several years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, where she and Mark had a son and got hitched. In Mad About the Boy, Bridget has become a widow and single parent to Billy and his younger sister, Mabel, after Mark died while on a humanitarian trip four years prior. This new reality ...
Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) is having the worst time. Not only has her boyfriend broken up with her while she’s been undergoing cancer treatment, but he has also taken the musical they composed together and cast a famous actress in the role they wrote for her. Seeking comfort, Laura returns to her childhood home, where she finds a monster (Tommy Dewey) in her closet, and begins a surreal romanc...
