In full force for the first time since the pandemic, our return to the Toronto International Film Festival didn’t disappoint. There’s always a feeling of attempting to capture everything — every movie being discussed, the “big” picks, the smaller world cinema submissions that don’t garner as much spotlight and also explore the lush and vibrant city of Toronto. This year was no different. It was helpful to have two other companions along the way from Cinematary so we three could experience the festival. Here are our reviews of films viewed between myself, Alison Swafford and Reid Ramsey at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. — Zach Dennis
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John David Washington stars as The Protagonist in director Christopher Nolan’s Tenet
Tenet (2020) by Christopher Nolan
Retro Review / Personal Essay by Noah Thompson
When I saw Tenet for a second time, in December from the comfort of my home, it brought me back to the darkest period of my life.
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Cinematary's Top 10 Films of 2021
Every year, we like to look back at the year in movies by gauging the favorite picks from our Cinematary contributors — both on the website and the podcast. As always, the list contains a variety of films from foreign and arthouse favorites, to mainstream blockbuster hits and musicals featuring marionette puppets.
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Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tōko Miura star in director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car
Drive My Car (2021) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Review / Personal Essay by Logan Kenny
I will never forget the sound of her voice. I will forget a million other things as I grow older but that is not one of them. Because it will always be there when I need to hear it, even when she’s been gone for longer than she was alive. That’s one of the fundamental reasons I immediately connected with Drive My Car.
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Silence (2016) by Martin Scorsese
Retro Review by Cam Watson
The 2010’s had its fair share of films concerned with modern applications of Christian faith. Paul Schrader’s harrowing First Reformed (2017), John Michael McDonagh’s odd-but-effective Calvary (2014), and Malick’s contemplative The Tree of Life (also 2011) all hit screens within the decade, to name a few. Among these also stands Martin Scorsese’s Silence, which I saw in theaters back in 2017 and have never really stopped thinking about since.
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Noah (2014) by Darren Aronofsky
Retro Review / Personal Essay by Michael O’Malley
Noah, the 2014 oddball Biblical fantasy epic, directed by Aronofsky, has stuck with me. It won’t let me go, nor will the notion go away that the film’s semi-forgotten, oddball status belies that Noah is not only Aronofsky’s masterpiece but also the defining faith film of the past couple decades.
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The French Dispatch (2021) by Wes Anderson
Review by Zach Dennis
In both print journalism and the work of Wes Anderson, there is a bit of room for humanity under their lavish facades.
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Labyrinth of Cinema (2019) by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Review by Alison Swafford
Labyrinth of Cinema is one of those movies that is easily described as a career-capping magnum opus: it’s 3-hours long, it’s a highly experimental work by a filmmaker who had been experimenting with form for half a century already, it’s a metafictional movie-about-movies that spans a great deal of Japan’s sociopolitical and cinematic history, it was written, directed, and edited during Obayashi’s battle with cancer, and it was likely made with the full understanding that it would be Obayashi’s final statement as a filmmaker. As someone who has seen at least a handful of Obayashi’s films, I feel relatively more qualified to speak on Labyrinth of Cinema than the average white American film critic who has only seen House, but I have to admit that I struggled greatly with it.
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Cry Macho (2021) by Clint Eastwood
Review by Logan Kenny
Cry Macho is a cinematic version of thinking about memory while you’re experiencing a moment in time. As we think of a specific moment and how it is destined to become nothing more than a memory soon, intensively reflecting on our exact place in the universe, it slips away from us.
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Sandrine Bonnaire stars in director Agnès Varda’s film Vagabond.
Vagabond (1985) by Agnès Varda
Retro Review by Michaela Thordarson
A world of unadulterated freedom can be difficult to conceptualize. In her 1985 film Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi), Agnès Varda actualizes the life of a woman who decides to live her life drifting on the road with no home or job.
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O Vigilante (1992) by Ozuldo Ribeiro Candeias
Retro Review by Nazeeh Alghazawneh
How far must a community be collectively pushed before they can no longer ignore repeated casual atrocities occurring right outside the place they lay their heads?
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Nathalie Emmanuel and Vin Diesel star in F9 by longtime series director Justin Lin
F9 (2021) by Justin Lin
Review by Logan Kenny
F9 reminded me how good it can be to be alive, even if it’s just for a couple hours in the multiplex.
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LeBron James and Bugs Bunny in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) by Malcolm D. Lee
Review by Zach Dennis
There’s a difference between constructing a narrative that doesn’t coalesce together and piecing together references to other icons that the audience would recognize in order to continue to keep them interested.
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Pig (2021) by Michael Sarnoski
Review by Jessica Carr
I did not think I was going to get this emotional while watching a pig movie starring Nicolas Cage.
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Theo Anthony captures his camera’s reflection while observing the headquarters of Axon
All Light, Everywhere (2021) by Theo Anthony
Review by Alison Swafford
All Light, Everywhere encouraged me to reflect on the profound importance of how cameras can be used to justify or condemn police violence – and who is better positioned to take advantage of the power offered by them.
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Inside (2021) by Bo Burnham
Personal Essay / Review by Logan Kenny
Inside has little focus because it is a frantic pool of despair for Burnham to wallow within, taking the same bitter solace in complaining about basic irritants as he does outlining all the things in the world that cause him great existential suffering.
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From Beginning of the Serpentine Dance (1908) by director Segundo de Chomón
Serpentine Dance Films
Retro Review by Reid Ramsey
It was 1897, and although the cameras were not yet moving, the people certainly were. Loie Fuller, working with the Lumiere Brothers, stamped her name on one of cinema’s earliest movements: the serpentine dance film. This movement not only represented a significant portion of early film history, but paved the way, visually, for what cinema could become.
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Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie star in director James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted
Girl, Interrupted (1999) by James Mangold
Retro Review by Allie Chadwick
Even in movies about mental illness, there is still an element of sexualisation and passive stereotypes surrounding the portrayal of women, and it is interesting to examine these ideas in the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, wherein eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen does have sexual relations with men while she is in hospital, and her past sexual relationships are discussed by others during her stay.
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Maria Pankratz stars in director Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light
Silent Light (2007) by Carlos Reygadas
Retro Review by Nazeeh Alghazawneh
Reygadas is only interested in the very messiest components of our deepest transgressions because anything else would be the cinematic equivalent of making small talk. At the intersection of sexuality and spirituality, Silent Light explores an idea that the great Jesus-loving Kanye West so lucidly distills in his 2011 song “No Church in the Wild”: “deception is the only felony / So never fuck nobody without tellin' me.”
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Gal Godot stars as Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) by Zack Snyder
Review by Aster Gilbert
Justice League is about the merciless passage of time and how that passage can only be overcome through miracles.
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