Posts Tagged ‘film festival’
 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL Day 1 Capsule Reviews: “The Magnificent 7″” & “Free Fire”

  THE MAGNIFICENT 7 (Village Roadshow/MGM/Columbia/Sony – Sept 23):  Cinema survived in 1960 when Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece The Seven Samurai was transformed into an American western, and it will survive th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: Fernando Meirelles’ “360”

> If Arthur Schnitzler had only been a member of the WGA in 1900, when he wrote the play La Ronde, and he’d had the benefit of the format rights guild members receive today, he and his descendants would be very rich indee...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SHOWBUZZDAILY REVIEW: “Silver Linings Playbook”

  SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK:  Don’t Get Sold Out – A Rom-Com With Dance Moves All Its Own Anyone who doubts that Jennifer Lawrence is a real-thing, big-time movie star should get thee hence to a theater showing ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: Madonna’s “W.E.”

> One of the enduring questions of Madonna’s illustrious quarter-century career is how someone so brilliant in managing every other facet of her persona has consistently made such terrible decisions when it comes to movie...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “In the House”

Francois Ozon’s IN THE HOUSE is a delicious examination of the pleasures and dangers of addictive narrative.  Storytelling (and corresponding tricks of cinematic structure) has been an interest of Ozon’s throughout...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU REVIEW: “50/50”

> 50/50:  Worth A Ticket –  A Genuinely Feel-Good Cancer Comedy With The Big C renewed for its third season on Showtime, the concept of a comedy getting laughs from the experiences of a cancer patient is no long...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Review: “Juliet, Naked”

  JULIET, NAKED (no distrib):  Every Sundance has a title or two that isn’t particularly “indie,” other than by the fact that its stars aren’t hugely bankable.  These aren’t the films that s...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz”

> In just her second feature film as a director (her first was 2006’s Oscar-nominated Away From Her), Sarah Polley demonstrates that she’s already a filmmaker with rare grace and sensuality in TAKE THIS WALTZ, which...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “The Company You Keep”

As soon as Robert Redford had enough clout to start generating his own movies, he began starring in and often producing some of the best politically-themed films of the 1970s, including The Candidate, Three Days of the Condor�...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: “The Woman In the Fifth”

> Pawel Pawlikowski is a filmmaker whose name deserves to be better known: his films Last Resort and My Summer of Love are small but beautifully realized stories of intricate human emotion. His new picture The Woman In the Fift...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “End of Watch”

  David Ayer’s END OF WATCH brings a new wrinkle to the “found-footage” genre by using it in a cop movie.  LAPD Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) wires a camera to his uniform, and constantly photog...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU REVIEW “The Descendants”

>   THE DESCENDANTS:  Worth A Ticket – Flawed But Heartfelt It’s taken an unaccountable 7 years for Alexander Payne to follow up Sideways, the biggest hit of his career,  with THE DESCENDANTS, which w...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “In the Earth” & “Knocking”

  IN THE EARTH (Neon):  After his foray into more commercial cinema with the Netflix remake of Rebecca that didn’t go very well, Ben Wheatley has returned to the stranger and more experimental style of his earlier f...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: “Drive”

> DRIVE is a self-conscious genre movie, and those are tricky propositions.  On the one hand, you need to make your existential or other textual statement with all the artistry at your command; on the other, you still have...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “Thanks For Sharing”

Stuart Blumberg’s first film as a director (his screenwriting credits include The Kids Are All Right), THANKS FOR SHARING, never quite manages to solve its own central problem:  how to make a sensitive and funny (and not...
by Mitch Salem