Better Things powerful stuff – and well-paced

Better Things
Rating: ****
Loosely related stories of love, loss and loneliness are brought together in Duane Hopkins’ powerful, impeccably paced first full-length feature, Better Things. With very minimal dialogue, the film is compelled to communicate primarily through visual expression, a task performed impressively by a cast of mostly first-time actors.

Characters act or sometimes just exist to a limited supporting soundtrack that emphasizes natural sounds and silence to build a realist drama. It’s not for mainstream audiences, but for modern artistic cinema buffs, it doesn’t get much better than Better Things.
– Brian Coulton/for Metro Toronto

Happy-Go-Lucky
Rating: *** 1/2
Happy-Go-Lucky quite aptly describes the mood and spirit of director Mike Leigh’s (Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake) new picture — although the quiet desperation of contemporary London still manages to lurk under the surface. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a 30-year-old London schoolteacher who always looks on the bright side of life. She loves her job, adores her friends — and she especially cherishes her personal freedom.

When her bike gets stolen, Poppy casually decides to take driving lessons. However, she gets saddled with a terminally angry and bitter instructor (Eddie Marsan), who slowly becomes obsessed with her. While not much comes of the rest of the story, Happy-Go-Lucky still basks in Sally Hawkins’ eccentrically charming and spirited performance.
– Kevin Courrier/for Metro Toronto

Che: Part 1
Rating: ****
Split into two films after a mixed reception at Cannes, the first part of Steven Soderbergh’s epic bio-pic of Che Guevara is the movie audiences would expect. The film is about the revolutionary’s triumphant victory in Cuba told in the hyper-realist aesthetic that the director first employed in Traffic.

The movie combines the harsh realities of fighting in the Cuban jungles with a 16mm recreation of Guevara’s infamous speech to the UN.

It’s a powerful ode to the cultural icon with a stunning lead performance by Benicio Del Toro that is enriched by the more pessimistic second film.
– Phil Brown/for Metro Toronto

Che: Part 2
Rating: ****
This second chapter of Steven Soderbergh’s ode to Che Guevara is an indispensable companion piece to the first film.

Shot with a more subdued style and colour palette, the movie is about Guevara’s failed attempt to spread the revolution through­out Latin America. This film expands on the first with all of Che’s best qualities working against him, leading to a tragic downfall in Bolivia.

The two chapters should play as one epic 41/2-hour whole. But that would be commercial suicide, so audiences will get two theatrical releases instead … better than nothing, I suppose.
– Phil Brown/for Metro Toronto

Nurse.Fighter.Boy
Rating: *** 1/2
In this Canadian directorial-debut by Charles Officer, Clark Johnson (TV’s The Wire) plays a rugged over-the-hill boxer who, after a street fight, falls for a nurse (Karen LeBlanc) with a critical ailment and her slightly-eccentric 12-year-old son (Daniel J. Gordon).

While this film is definitely in no hurry to move the action along, it is strongly supported by a quietly intense performance from Johnson and some gripping, gorgeous cinematography.  
– Steve Gow/for Metro Toronto

Skin
Rating: ****
Skin is based on the true story of Sandra Laing, who was born black during the apartheid era in South Africa.  Her parents, however were white, racist Afrikaners. Yet they love their child and raised her to believe she was white. Her father even took the case to court to prove his daughter was white.

But when the adult Laing (played by Sophie Okonedo) falls in love with a black man, the family’s racist wrath bursts forth.  Sandra Laing grew up in an almost schizophrenic environment.

This is a powerful movie. See it — but go prepared.
– Steve Veale/for Metro Toronto

Hurt Locker
Rating: **** 1/2
Kathryn Bigelow’s taut, brutal film about a team of bomb disposal technicians working in Baghdad is a festival highlight, and a return to strengths for the director of Near Dark and Blue Steel. Jeremy Renner plays the reckless but brilliant expert whose suicidal disregard of safety and protocol makes his fellow soldiers regard him as a bigger threat than the enemy all around them.
– Rick McGinnis/Metro Toronto

A Year Ago in Winter
Rating: *** 1/2
A year after Alexander died, his mother commissions an artist to create a portrait of him and his 21-year-old sister. We soon learn Alexander committed suicide — that is when the tortured truth starts to emerge. This German film, directed with finesse by Oscar winner Caroline Link, explores the lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with feelings that may be too overwhelming to confront.
– Steve Veale/for Metro Toronto

Medicine for Melancholy
Rating: ** 1/2
Melancholy showcases the 24-hour period following a one-night stand between Joanne and Micah. Filmed in San Francisco, the drama works best when it plays with ideas of gentrification and living in one of America’s most expensive, but beautiful, cities. Unfortunately, the two leads aren’t all that particularly interesting. 
– Steve Gow/for Metro Toronto

Adoration
Rating: *
An ambitious but convoluted meditation on storytelling in the Information Age, Adoration concerns a Toronto teen whose drama-class assignment takes on a life of its own after it’s posted online. It’s not that Atom Egoyan is lacking for ideas so much as that he seems incapable of placing them in a credible dramatic context; the script is riddled with contrivances and explicit thematic statements.
– Adam Nayman/for Metro Toronto