Toronto seemed the perfect place for Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise to have its world premiere. The J. G. Ballard adaptation stages a class-war in an ultra-modern high-rise, and the theater where it played Sunday night is only about a mile from the luxury condo developments that tower over Toronto’s waterfront, which suggest a modern Eden in shiny glass and steel but have instead exacerbated the city’s homelessness problems and real-estate bubble. Another felicitous detail to the evening: the screening was sponsored by Visa and before you could take your seat to see Wheatley’s commentary on class and capitalism, there was a […]
by Whitney Mallett on Sep 16, 2015Could it be, six features deep at the most exalted film festival in the world, that this writer’s favorite film isn’t some scrappy Critics’ Week indie or an ennui-driven Eastern European drama of profound sociopolitical relevance — but rather, the $150-million studio juggernaut Mad Max: Fury Road? Nothing new needs to be said about the most inventive, thrilling, lyrical action flick in ages (considering it’s now opened worldwide) except that it’s radically more feminist than Emmanuelle Bercot’s Standing Tall. Cannes’ first opening night selection to be directed by a woman in nearly three decades, Bercot’s juvenile justice-system drama — a clumsy, histrionic […]
by Aaron Hillis on May 15, 2015