GoKawiilMarvel’s mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio’s biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous reports here and here), and it was one of those days that drives home why events like TIFF can be so special. Each film I saw was drastically different from the last — there was everything from a drama about drifting cars to a throwback horror flick based on a famous Japanese ghost story — which was a great reminder that there are still plenty of new ideas left in the world of film.
So let’s get to it. Here are some rapid-fire reviews of everything I saw on day 3 at TIFF.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
In theaters in October
Latif (Ali) lives a life of contradictions: he’s a devout Muslim and loyal father, but he also works as a hitman, albeit one who works under a specific moral code (only kill bad guys; never use a gun). But both his faith and his code are tested when his wife dies and he’s forced to become a single father to three kids, including a newborn baby. At the same time, his blood-soaked past comes back to haunt him, putting everyone at risk. We’re in a great moment for pure action flicks like Furious or the John Wick franchise, but Your Mother offers something very different. It’s a powerful character study, one where the action is comparatively fleeting, but all the more powerful and impactful because of it. It’s a film that always left me guessing just how Latif was going to get through this, and, despite being very serious and often solemn, the story also has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Ali is excellent as the morally questionable righteous killer, but I was also really impressed by John Cho as the villain, a charismatically unhinged leader of a right-wing church group.
In Alaska
No theatrical date yet
A slow-burning crime thriller, In Alaska, co-directed by Jaap van Heusden and Vinnie Karetak., follows a suicidal teen named Woody (Leo Matthew Temela) who, after a tragic mishap, finds himself wanted by the FBI for causing millions of dollars worth of damage to an oil pipeline. It’s a film of two sides: Woody’s desperate attempts at survival, and veteran agent Susan (Noomi Rapace), the only who realizes the damage wasn’t caused by eco-terrorists. In Alaska is a moodier take on the genre, and one that asks some difficult and important questions about both its leads, particularly Woody, who constantly grapples with whether he even wants to live at all. What starts out bleak ends on a much more hopeful note.
Image: TIFF
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