The screenwriter James Vanderbilt has made his directing debut with TRUTH, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival tonight, and at times it’s clear that this is a writer’s movie:  Vanderbilt gives no fewer than three of his characters the opportunity for a Rousing Final Speech, something another director might well have toned down.  […]

  EDEN (IFC):  release date unscheduled – Watch It At Home Notwithstanding its subtitles, the genre of Mia Hanson-Love’s EDEN, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, isn’t unfamiliar to American eyes:  the rise and fall of a musical genre, as reflected through a group of friends who are involved with it.  […]

  ST. VINCENT (Weinstein) – Opens October 24 – Worth A Ticket Bill Murray has perfected the persona of the grouchy, reluctant hero.  The image has even attached itself to him professionally:  although he’s not close to being even semi-retired (ST. VINCENT, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and opens next month, will be […]

> Oren Moverman’s first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx. This […]

  THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (Searchlight/Disney – in release):  The reason for expanding a documentary into a scripted narrative is typically to allow for an exploration of motive and emotional background not available in the existing footage.  A documentary can show what happened, but not necessarily why it happened.  That makes The Eyes of […]

> I wasn’t aware that the Toronto Film Festival showed TV pilots until I caught a screening of PEACE, LOVE & MISUNDERSTANDING.  As a pilot, Peace certainly has its appeal, with a strong cast that includes Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and rising star Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene), and a reliable […]

  Marc Abraham, for his second film as director (prior to that, he was a veteran producer), has chosen his second consecutive mid-20th-century biography, following 2008’s Flash of Genius with I SAW THE LIGHT, which premiered tonight at the Toronto Film Festival and will open in theatres in November.  The life of country music star […]

  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 […]