Posts Tagged ‘Toronto Film Festival’
 

 

Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Greatest Beer Run Ever”

  THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER (Apple – September 30):  Peter Farrelly’s Green Book was one of the clearest beneficiaries of winning Toronto’s People Choice Award, vaulting from being entirely under the aw...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Causeway” & “The Menu”

  CAUSEWAY (Apple – November 4):  After a decade as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, there was reason to wonder whether the Jennifer Lawrence who first came to prominence with the Sundance movie Winter’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Woman King” & “Prisoner’s Daughter”

  THE WOMAN KING (Tri-Star/Sony – Sept. 16):  Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King feels something like what would happen if the Themyscira Island Amazonian sequences of Wonder Woman were feature length.  D...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Inspection” & “Emily”

  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 cat...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SHOWBUZZDAILY REVIEW: “On the Road”

  ON THE ROAD – Worth A Ticket – Kerouac’s Classic Is Beautiful and Atmospheric But Lacks Urgency ON THE ROAD, as a novel and now as a film adaptation, is so enmeshed with the mythology of the real-life p...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Empire of Light” & “Triangle of Sadness”

  EMPIRE OF LIGHT (Searchlight/Disney – December 9):  Sam Mendes takes the first solo screenwriting credit of his long career on Empire of Light, a personal film inspired by his youth and his mother.  The story is ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “On Chesil Beach” & “Loveless”

  ON CHESIL BEACH (no distrib):  Ian McEwan’s longish novella/shortish novel has been adapted by McEwan himself into a fluid and extremely English film, the first feature directed by stage director Dominic Cooke.  ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Whale” & “Chevalier”

  THE WHALE (A24 – December 9):  The fall film festivals usher in awards season, and no performance this year screams “Oscar bait” more than Brendan Fraser’s in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale.�...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “Frances Ha” & “Imogene”

  One of the things that happens at film festivals is that as you see many films in back-to-back proximity, mini-trends start to emerge, at least in the mind, and pictures that were made entirely separately, and which may ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Boy and the Heron,” “Dumb Money” & “North Star”

  THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids – Dec. 8):  Hiyao Miyazaki, a legend of animation (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke), had announced his retirement as a feature film director a decade ago, upon the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Worst Person In The World,” “Encounter” & “Compartment No. 6”

  THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Neon – TBD):  The Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, despite being a subject of critical raves over the years, hasn’t penetrated the space where arthouse favorites become known...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Fabelmans” & “The Eternal Daughter”

  THE FABELMANS (Universal – November 11):  Like all superheroes, Steven Spielberg has an origin story, and he tells it in The Fabelmans, whose world premiere was far and away the signature event of this year’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Burial,” “Wildcat” & “Poolman”

  THE BURIAL (MGM/Amazon – Oct. 13):  A yarn that’s also a true story.  Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) was the owner of a family-run, regional Mississippi business that for decades had offered funer...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Toronto Film Festival Reviews

  This was a Toronto Film Festival unlike any other, and not just because I “attended” it from the laptop in my house.  Toronto has become an important stop on the road to the Academy Awards, with 9 of the pas...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Holdovers,” “Pain Hustlers” & “Woman Of the Hour”

  These haven’t been glory days for the Toronto Film Festival.  The WGA/SAG strikes dampened the vibe, of course–of the 27 films I saw at TIFF, only 4 screenings featured appearances from the cast.  Beyond th...
by Mitch Salem