The writer Peter Morgan is a whiz at boring into little-remembered (and in the US, sometimes little-known) crannies of recent history and scooping out the rich drama inside, with scripts like The Deal, Frost/Nixon and The Damned United to his credit, along with the more celebrated The Queen.  (His occasional forays into pure fiction […]

  It’s not really a surprise to see Alfonso Cuaron join James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott in that small group of film artists who have made 3D part of the essential toolbox of their imagery (no, Baz Luhrmann and Guillermo del Toro don’t make the list, although Michael Bay might).  Cuaron is a […]

  LABOR DAY is a beautifully performed, well crafted Harlequin romance.  As such, it’s a shock coming from writer/director Jason Reitman (based on Joyce Maynard’s novel), one that goes in a completely different, far more earnest direction than the snap and wit of his Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up In the Air or Young […]

  Like his Oscar-winning A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s THE PAST is concerned with the abyss of uncertainty and mystery that lies under seemingly straightforward actions, the ever-increasing complications that become evident whenever one scrutinizes the events and motives of everyday life. Although the setting this time is Paris, and the characters aren’t the same, in many ways, The […]

  Earnest and low-key to a fault, Liza Johnson’s HATESHIP LOVESHIP might have felt more at home in the Narrative Competition at Sundance than in Toronto.  It has a dramatic recessiveness, almost a passivity, for much of its length, that makes it hard to see just what kind of story it thinks it’s telling.  Ultimately, though, it […]

  The prevailing atmosphere in Denis Villenueve’s PRISONERS will be familiar to anyone who’s been watching cable TV drama for the past few years.  Gloom, grief, hopelessness, helpless rage–it’s home turf for shows like The Killing, The Bridge, Low Winter Sun, Broadchurch and their brethren.  (The rural Pennsylvania setting of Prisoners has even borrowed the endless raininess of The Killing‘s Seattle.) […]

  Steve McQueen (the filmmaker) doesn’t take it easy on audiences.  His first feature Hunger provided an excruciatingly detailed look at the fatal hunger strike of the Irish convict Bobby Sands, and he followed it with Shame, a cooly unsexy portrait of the ravages of sexual addiction.  His new film 12 YEARS A SLAVE is […]

  THE WAY, WAY BACK:  Watch It At Home – Modestly Engaging Coming-Of-Age Tale THE WAY, WAY BACK is one of the last real indie hopes for a original breakout hit this summer (it was a big buy out of Sundance, a $10M purchase by Fox Searchlight, the studio behind the Sundance smash Little Miss […]