This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
Featuring reviews of Mothering Sunday, Violet, Night Raiders, and 7 Prisoners
Mothering Sunday (dir. Eva Husson)
Mothering Sunday takes place in a post WWI England and follows a maid named Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) who develops a secret relationship with a man named Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) who was set to marry another woman. An aspiring writer, Jane tells her story across multiple timelines. While they cover some important themes, the film does next to nothing with them thanks to its thin characters while the convoluted nature of the story made it hard to follow at times thus easy to tune out. Meanwhile, its slow pace also did not help its case. Though the set design, costumes, and cinematography are nice and fit the period nicely, it’s just hard to care. Ultimately, the film will likely appeal more to period British dramas than anyone else otherwise it will just be a dull and overlong watch. However, its only saving grace was its performances, primarily Young who was a force as Fairchild but she could only do so much. Meanwhile. her chemistry with O’Connor as Sheringham was also a delight despite his limited screen time. If only the rest of the film was more to their level.
Score: 62%
Violet
Violet is another classic example of style over substance but in this case is more like style nearly drowning out substance. A somewhat compelling character study is drowned out by one too many stylistic touches, be it text on screen depicting inner thoughts or a separate voice (Justin Theroux) that constantly questions behavior or choices or sequences of trippy imagery from her past, Violet (Olivia Munn) has it pretty rough, balancing a job as a film executive with anxiety and self-worth among other issues. Characters and plot beats are merely contrived triggers for her for the most part. While the film certainly could have gone deeper to ground her anxieties so audiences could better connect with her on an emotional level. Despite this, Munn definitely gives it her all as Violet, a career-best performance where she wears her pain on her face and her frustration and anxiety are palpable. Once the film reaches the inevitable moment where she lets it all out, it just wasn’t as powerful as it could have been.
Score: 68%
Night Raiders
While it has been said countless times before, representation matters and it continues to matter. Night Raiders is a sci-fi thriller that may not bring anything new to the table but its First Nations twist gives it more power while the symbolism will probably mean more to Canadians with knowledge of the country’s dark past involving residential schools and their mistreatment of children of First Nations. Framing the tale through the lens of the relationship between a single mother named Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and her daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) gave it a compelling heart as the story saw the mother attempt to rescue her daughter from an insidious institution. Though the production value and action are impressive considering the lesser budget, the film eventually devolves into a lot of the other films within the same genre. Beyond the obvious symbolism, there wasn’t much else here in terms of plot.
Score: 75%
7 Prisoners
7 Prisoners is a Brazilian film about a group of friends from a low income neighborhood who get trapped in the dark world of human trafficking. The film employs the classic trope of establishing a character for audiences to root for and then dropping them in some adversity that will either make them or break them. However, this only works if the audiences cares about the character over the course of that arc. Mateus (Christian Malheiros) was an 18-year-old who accepted a job, along with a few other young men, to work a São Paulo junkyard for a man named Luca (Rodrigo Santoro). It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone that things would not go the way that he or the other men thought. In the end, an underdeveloped story and characters made it hard to connect with and feel the impact of what was happening. Trying to fit so much within a short period of time probably didn’t help. That being said, Malheiros still shined as Mateus and Santoro made a charming villain.
Score: 70%
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.