Posts Tagged ‘Toronto Film Festival review’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival/Series Premiere Review: “Casual”

  CASUAL:  October 7 on Hulu Hulu has included some original programming in its inventory for a while now, but it’s signaled its intention to join Netflix and Amazon in that realm in a more serious way with its orde...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “St. Vincent”

  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 he̵...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Gravity”

  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 Luh...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “12 Years A Slave”

  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 w...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Spotlight”

  Awards season is Darwinian, often placing two titles in direct competition that have only general traits in common.  Last year we had the British biographies The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game, which might ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “The Past”

  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 bec...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “A Tale of Love and Darkness”

  Natalie Portman certainly hasn’t made it easy for herself with her debut as a writer/director, A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS.  The film, which premiered at Cannes (but tellingly, doesn’t yet have a US distribu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “The Judge”

  THE JUDGE (Warners) – Opens October 10 – Watch It At Home Since the first Iron Man opened, Robert Downey Jr. has been one of the world’s biggest (and wealthiest) stars.  But he hasn’t used his su...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Rush”

  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 Th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Freeheld”

  Events on the same-sex rights front have moved so quickly that FREEHELD, which is based on a true story from 2007, and has been in development almost since it occurred, now feels like something of a history story.  Not ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Can A Song Save Your Life?”

  Less intimate but perhaps even more irresistible than his micro-indie smash Once, John Carney’s follow-up CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE? plays a similar tune with broader orchestrations.  The city this time is New ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Hateship Loveship”

  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 m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Third Person”

  There is a reason, or at least an argument, for why almost everything in Paul Haggis’s THIRD PERSON feels synthetic and contrived–but I can’t make it here, because doing so would expose the film’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival/Series Premiere Review: “Heroes Reborn”

  HEROES REBORN:  Thursday 8PM on NBC, starting September 24   This year, for the first time, the Toronto Film Festival has included a slate of television productions from around the world in its line-up, formalizing...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Trumbo”

  It’s an unfortunate irony that TRUMBO, the story of one of Hollywood’s great blacklisted screenwriters, is undermined by an inadequate script.  It’s written by John McNamara, also the man behind NBC...
by Mitch Salem