Spencer Le Fou: A film blog of sorts.

Each year at TIFF's Midnight Madness program, I always look for the one film that looks the most gory and brutal hardcore horror film of the bunch. Not every year has one of them, but since my first ever TIFF experience in high school with 2008's "Martyrs", I like to try and find something new each year that pushes boundaries and that successfully freaks out it's audience. French cinema in the past decade has been fairly reliable for me in terms of filmmakers who aren't afraid to go that little bit (or a lot) further in terms of what makes people squirm and scream. I may enjoy these gruesome films, but they still have to have purpose for the violence on display and characters I care for. This year's pick was Coralie Fargeat's "Revenge". I was intrigued by seeing a female perspective on the often exploitative "rape-revenge" genre. The plot is about as simple and straightforward as the title suggests and Fargeat certainly deliv...

Samba is the follow up from directing duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, whose last film, The Intouchables , was a film that was filled with touching moments, lots of laughs, and had two amazing leads. Nakache and Toledano's are collaborating again with Omar Sy, who plays the title role. Omar Sy and Charlotte Gainsbourg both command every scene that they are in, bringing many laughs, and are one of the main strengths of Samba . In this outing, the directors still bring plenty of the same charm, as well as some more dramatic material to play with, although I did not find myself quite as engaged as I was with The Intouchables . The chemistry between Sy and Gainsbourg is strong, but I feel the more dramatic elements present could have played a much bigger part. While the abundant humour and more crowd pleasing elements of the film (mostly) worked, I would have liked to see a bit more weight given to the issues with France's immigration laws instead of the romantic aspects ...