Author: tamarhanstke
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The Darkness of Girlhood in Dust Bunny and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS Dust Bunny and Little Amélie both privilege the full, and often messy, experience of early girlhood, be that trying to determine if you have conjured up a real man-eating monster out of your own rampant imagination, or slowly learning the painful lesson that you are not a Goddess among mere…
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The Glass Ceiling is Really Made of Cement in Couture and Maddie’s Secret
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS Despite radically different narrative and tonal styles, Couture and Maddie’s Secret offer a rare and welcome look into the unique struggles of being an ambitious career woman who is suddenly, and heartbreakingly, faced with the dissolution of her career dreams, forced to face the vulnerabilities that successful women are forced…
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Nothing is Sacred Under Capitalism in Egghead Republic and A Useful Ghost
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS While we live in increasingly weighty and hopeless times, one of cinema’s greatest powers in times like these is to offer moments of hope, of originality, of curiosity, and to remind us of the ongoing potential for change that capitalism works overtime to distract us from. A Useful Ghost and…
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Good Boy(s), Bad Apples, and a Pedagogy of Violence
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS As disturbing as both of these films might be, perhaps it is the very discomfort of seeing the extreme end results of our failing educational system literalized that might compel us to hold our political systems responsible for how they continue to fail the next generation of children. By Tamar…
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Charli’s Angels, Erupcja and Sacrifice
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS If I had a nickel for how many films I saw at TIFF that featured both Charli XCX and a devastating volcanic eruption, I would only have two nickels, but isn’t it weird that it happened twice? By Tamar Hanstke As a follower of Charli’s work, but not knowledgeable enough…
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Richard Linklater, Professional Cinephile
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS Neither Blue Moon nor Nouvelle Vague is likely to be ranked among Linklater’s greatest works, such as the Before trilogy or Dazed and Confused; yet, he continues to establish his identity as an auteur-of-all-trades, always dabbling in new genres and styles that interest him without overthinking whether each new film…
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The Sixties Scoop and Intergenerational Trauma in Meadowlarks & Blood Lines
TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS Meadowlarks and Blood Lines are two deeply personal, intimate examinations of individual and intergenerational traumas stemming from the Sixties Scoop, and are particularly prescient in a cultural moment in which far too many seek to tick off Truth and Reconciliation as a completed project on Canada’s to-do list. By Tamar…
Pink Asparagus 