Living in a fantasy
“Playing house” in the ROM’s European exhibit
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Arts and Culture
Grief, memory, and the movies
Eylul Guven in Blue Heron. Cr: TIFF Blue Herona film directed and written by Sophy Romvari, and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Affeksjonsverdi [Sentimental Value]a film directed by Joachim Trier and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 After 11 long days, the Toronto International Film Festival
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FELT
Blake Williams and any consistency which forms a set FELTa film directed by Blake Williams and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Blake Williams’s recent filmography is composed using anaglyph colour filters—the 3D effect produced by a stereoscope of chromatic opposites. FELT is first and foremost 3D, and only really a
Too much love for this life
A review of David Freyne’s Eternity Eternitya film directed by David Freyne and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Death is humanity’s great unknown: we are constantly faced with the vast uncertainty of what happens when our mortal, physical bodies cease functioning. Where do we go after we die? David Freyne
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« Qu’est-ce que c’est dégueulasse? »
Nouvelle Vague is no masterpiece. But neither does it want to be. Nouvelle Vaguea film directed by Richard Linklater and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Issue 152 of the French film review, Les Cahiers du cinéma, was a tribute to the seminal French filmmaker Jean Cocteau, who passed in October
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Train Dreams
Or, the Roger’s experience of America’s making Train Dreams a film directed by Clint Bentley and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams—an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same title—has the same sentimentality and prodigious lens flare as an Ozempic advertisement. It’s important to establish
Vaulting ambition o’erleaps itself in del Toro’s Frankenstein
Frankenstein a film directed by Guillermo del Toro and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025 In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor’s ambitions lead him astray. How ironic, then, that Guillermo del Toro’s lofty aspirations to vivify this classic novel end in disaster. With any literary adaptation, fans will naively point to
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Sometimes spectacle isn’t quite spectacular
Egghead Republic is a multifaceted film about many things. Possibly, a bit too much. Egghead Republic a film written and directed by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 4–14, 2025. Speculative art often has a way of being quite . . . lacklustre. The ground mandatory to
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Woke jargon and censorship
The power of language on the internet Scrolling on social media lately, it seems an entirely new set of vocabulary has arisen. Of course, it has long been acknowledged that internet use can impact the words we use, especially in recent years, where slang, memes, and inside jokes rapidly go in and out of trend.
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