TIFF 2021 – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

HOLD YOUR FIRE – Review by Pam Grady

June 6, 2022June 6, 2022 Pam Grady documentary, Harvey Schlossberg, Hold Your Fire, hostage negotiation, Shu'aib Raheem, Stefan Forbes, TIFF 2021

Taking place only months after the bank robbery/hostage situation that inspired Dog Day Afternoon, the January 1973 incident at John and Al’s Sporting Goods in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, went on far longer – lasting nearly four days – and resulted in the death of a cop. It is also the event credited with ushering in the modern age of hostage negotiation. And it is has been pretty much lost to history – until now with coverage in Stefan Forbes’ Hold Your Fire, a riveting documentary on the subject.

Reviews

MOTHERING SUNDAY – Review by Martha K Baker

April 13, 2022April 13, 2022 Martha K. Baker Alice Birch, colin firth, eva husson, Mothering Sunday, motw, Movie of the Week, Odessa Young, Olivia Colman, TIFF 2021

What does a filmmaker do with a stunning novel that is more style than plot? If you’re the French director Eva Husson, you make a film that is your own style. She blessed Graham Swift’s brilliant and brief 2016 novel, Mothering Sunday, with her style, thus making the film as transcendent as the novel.

Movie of the Week Reviews

MOVIE OF THE WEEK March 25, 2022: MOTHERING SUNDAY

March 19, 2022April 9, 2022 Jennifer Merin Alice Birch, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, colin firth, eva husson, jennifer merin, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, Marilyn Ferdinand., Mothering Sunday, motw, Movie of the Week, Odessa Young, Olivia Colman, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, sherin nicole, susan wloszczyna, TIFF 2021

Based on the same-named novel by Graham Swift, director Eva Husson’s lush, languid drama Mothering Sunday feels in some ways like the cinematic equivalent of reading another English writer’s work. Introspective, melancholy, and finely observed, it’s reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse in the way it hones its focus on a very specific set of events and the way those events affect the people at the center of them.

Reviews

MOTHERING SUNDAY – Review by Jennifer Merin

March 14, 2022April 13, 2022 Jennifer Merin Alice Birch, colin firth, eva husson, glenda jackson, Mothering Sunday, motw, Movie of the Week, Odessa Young, Olivia Colman, TIFF 2021

Eva Huson’s steamy and feminist Mothering Sunday is an epic multi-chapter drama that begins in post-World War I England, in a lush and lavish rural enclave where well-to-do upper crusty families are suffering traumatic grief from the deaths of their sons in the war to end all wars. The film focuses its lens on the British class system, particularly on the stiff upper lip ways in which women are expected behave. The plot is sufficiently replete with intriguing complications that keep you engaged and entertained. It might seem a bit soapy, were it not for the authenticity of its concerns, as well as its profoundly well-written and beautifully performed characters. The film is a very welcome invitation to finely crafted, socially conscious escapism.

Reviews

MOTHERING SUNDAY – Review by Susan Wloszczyna

March 14, 2022April 13, 2022 Susan Wloszczyna Alice Birch, colin firth, eva husson, Mothering Sunday, motw, Movie of the Week, Odessa Young, Olivia Colman, TIFF 2021

Mourning and grief collide with steamy sexuality in the British film Mothering Sunday, a costume drama set in 1924 soon after World War I. The romance in question is an Upstairs, Downstairs situation between a fetching orphaned maid named Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and the surviving son of a well-off family. She works for the upper-class Niven clan and has been carrying on a secret affair for years with Paul Sheringham, the lone surviving son of a near-by clan (the Emmy-winning Josh O’Conner aka the young Prince Phillip on the TV series The Crown).

Reviews

MOTHERING SUNDAY – Review by Liz Whittemore

March 14, 2022April 13, 2022 Liz Whittemore Alice Birch, colin firth, eva husson, glenda jackson, Mothering Sunday, motw, Movie of the Week, Odessa Young, Olivia Colman, TIFF 2021

A marriage of convenience proves inconvenient when Paul, a son of society, and Jane, a maid, fall in love against the rules of 1920s England. The tragic reality of postwar times, sons lost and promising futures destroyed, prominent families fake smile through another lunch together keeping up appearances. But, death and suffering are inescapable. Mothering Sunday is a story of love and loss through the decades.

Festivals Reviews

HOLD YOUR FIRE (TIFF2021) – Review by Pam Grady

September 21, 2021September 21, 2021 Pam Grady documentary, Harvey Schlossberg, Hold Your Fire, hostage negotiation, Shu'aib Raheem, Stefan Forbes, TIFF 2021, toronto international film festival

Taking place only months after the bank robbery/hostage situation that inspired Dog Day Afternoon, the January 1973 incident at John and Al’s Sporting Goods in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, went on far longer – lasting nearly four days – and resulted in the death of a cop. It is also the event credited with ushering in the modern age of hostage negotiation. And it is has been pretty much lost to history – until now with the Toronto International Film Festival world premiere of Stefan Forbes’ Hold Your Fire, a riveting documentary on the subject.

Festivals Reviews

NEPTUNE FROST (TIFF 2021) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

September 16, 2021May 26, 2022 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Anisia Uzeyman, Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Neptune Frost, Saul Williams, TIFF 2021

It’s sadly unsurprising that the Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman co-directed Neptune Frost finds Uzeyman’s name oft deleted in casting sole authorship of the film to the acclaimed, multi-talented Williams. But considering the aesthetic, philosophical and ideological aggression which propels rthe sci fi musical from its opening moments, there’s something of a depressing irony surrounding Uzeyman’s common erasure as a key co-author of the film, often (at best) reduced to a footnote, if she’s mentioned at all.

Festivals Reviews

YUNI (TIFF2021) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

September 16, 2021September 18, 2021 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Arawinda Kirana, Indonesian films, Kamila Andini, TIFF 2021, toronto international film festival, Yuni

internal lives of young people in Indonesia is filmmaker Kamila Andini’s primary focus, but Yuni is as much a sensory, immersive portrait inviting us into the world of her characters as it is an exercise in pure storytelling. With Yuni’s signature passion for all things purple (so much so that she engages in minor theft), the her world – her ‘true’ world – is one filled with color and movement, particularly when hanging out with her friends, chatting about Instagram, cute teachers, sexuality and more serious things, like their school’s attempt to introduce virginity exams to verify the ‘purity’ of its women students.

Festivals Reviews

THE HILL WHERE THE LIONESSES ROAR (TIFF2021) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

September 7, 2021September 10, 2021 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Luàna Bajrami, The Hill Where the Lionesses Roar, TIFF 2021, toronto international film festival

The hill of the film’s title is a literal one, a location from where its three central characters survey the beautiful rural landscape that surrounds them. But where we see beauty, these three young women see the stillness and tranquillity as standing in direct opposition to their thirst not just for excitement and adventure, but for anything at all interesting to happen. Their roars too are literal, a playful primal scream that belies a true, deep frustration whose evolution the film will track as they decide to form a girl gang and embark upon a stream of robberies.