A film festival is certainly the place for a feature-length semi-linear flow of unscripted dialogue and bizarre imagery if anywhere is, so welcome to UNDER THE SKIN.  The writer/director Jonathan Glazer has gradually been transforming into an abstract filmmaker:  he started with Sexy Beast, which was a fairly traditional narrative, then followed it with Birth, a piece […]

  I AM MOTHER (no distrib):  Grant Sputore’s impressively controlled first feature brings us back to the post-apocalypse.  In Michael Lloyd Green’s script, it appears as though the only surviving remnant of humanity is an unnamed girl (Clara Rugaard as a teen) raised from a fetus by a maternal robot (voiced by Rose Byrne).  Mother […]

  MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM:  Watch It At Home – More Like a Trudge The movies haven’t figured out what to do with Idris Elba.  The powerful, fiery actor has been spectacular on TV, first on The Wire and more recently on Luther, and he’s kicked around as a supporting player in some big-budget […]

  DIDI (no distrib):  Sean Wang’s endearing memory piece won the US Dramatic Competition Audience Award.  It’s set in 2008 Northern California during the summer before Chris (Izaac Wang) begins high school and his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) leaves for college in San Diego.  The kids have essentially been raised by Chungsing (Joan Chen) as […]

> Here are capsule summaries of all this year’s SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival reviews, arranged more or less in order of preference.  Click on each title for the full review, and the complete list of all the reviews is here.  SHAME:  Audiences who go to the new film by Steve McQueen (not that one) for […]

> Derick Martini’s HICK is like a Sundance movie that took the wrong indie-film exit and wound up in Toronto.  For whatever reason, Toronto’s film festival tends to find itself with fewer stories of young people from small towns who come of age on the road, so Hick has a little air of distinction here. […]

  OPHELIA (no distrib):  Claire McCarthy’s film, written by Semi Chellas from Lisa Klein’s novel, dampens the fun of its own concept.  The idea is to re-tell Hamlet through the eyes of Shakespeare’s ill-fated Ophelia (Daisy Ridley) in a somewhat feminist way, and unlike other Bard marginalia like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead […]

  PAST LIVES (A24):  The playwright Celine Song makes an impressive feature writing/directing debut with the lovely, eloquent Past Lives.  The film is sort of the opposite of Sliding Doors and all of the multiversal entertainment we’re showered with these days.  Rather than allowing Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) […]