> TIFF’s Midnight Madness program is exactly what you think it is: 10 flat-out, unapologetic genre movies that premiere each night at midnight in front of a raucous crowd at the 1200-seat Ryerson Theatre. In any given year, the Madness may include unexpected gems like last year’s Insidious and 2006’s Borat, interestingly weird pictures such […]
THE INSPECTION (A24 – November 14): Back in 1983, Robert Altman directed the film version of David Rabe’s play Streamers, about a Vietnam-era boot camp that turned even more violent and vicious with the catalyst of one recruit’s closeted homosexuality. Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection tells a similar story for the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” […]
> TEN YEAR, which premiered tonight at the Toronto Film Festival, is one of the few festival movies that has the feel of a potential hit. This is because, apart from its hugely engaging cast and, to be sure, some effective writing and directing, it’s really not a “film festival” movie at all, but a […]
JUST MERCY (Warners – December 25): As the release date suggests, this is a straight-down-the-middle Oscar play, and it may have some success in that arena (although Warners will also be campaigning for The Goldfinch and Joker). Destin Daniel Cretton’s film, co-written with Andrew Lanham, belongs to the Innocent Man On Death Row subgenre, […]
For SHOWBUZZDAILY’s full set of Sundance capsule reviews, click here. What kind of filmmaker does Mona Fastvold want to be? It’s an existential question that comes up often at Sundance, where artistic and industry cred are often judged at the same time. THE SLEEPWALKER, Fastvold’s first film as director and (with Brady Corbet, […]
> There’s a principled discussion to be had about whether the Sundance Film Festival should be featuring movies that are essentially low-budget Hollywood entertainments made outside the studio system. But that discussion fades into irrelevance when the result is as hilarious and accomplished as FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL…, which premiered tonight. Directed by first-time […]
JOJO RABBIT (Fox Searchlight – October 4): The discourse about Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit has quickly become a debate between those who think its Nazi-era black comedy is authentically daring, and those who feel its purported audacity is a pretense covering a merely middlebrow sensibility. (Note: every person in the history of language who […]
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES (Focus/Universal – March 15): The title of Kobi Libii’s first feature refers to the unfortunately well-established movie trope where a noble Black character exists only as a catalyst to make the white protagonist a better person. (Think of everything from Driving Miss Daisy to The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance to Green […]