Category Archives: movie review
The Lovers and the Despot
A mad dictator obsessed with film kidnaps the best director and actress of a rival country, so that his nation can make its movies world-class. In two years, the captive pair churn out seventeen movies, before escaping to freedom. Oh, and they’re married. That’s not the ludicrous pitch to the next Coen Brothers flick. It’s actually a true story. In a limited theatrical run and just released to iTunes today, The Lovers and the Despot lays out the ludicrous details in a fascinating, strange documentary.
TIFF 2016 Review: La La Land an exhilarating People’s Choice Award winner
The big Hollywood musical is alive and well. Sure, it’s an endangered species, but Damien Chazelle’s vibrant La La Land is about as fine a specimen as you can find. Chosen by Toronto’s filmgoing horde as the best film at TIFF this year, La La Land is a throwback tour de force.
The New “Blair Witch” Movie Goes Back to the Original’s Roots – Literally
Whether you like The Blair Witch Project or not, there’s no denying that it changed horror cinema forever. Capitalizing on the burgeoning power of the Internet, it helped to not only usher in nearly two decades of found footage films in horror, but also predicted the rise of viral marketing.
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TIFF 2016 Review: Into the Inferno finds the many meanings at the brink
Werner Herzog is a living legend, a madman director who insists he’s “the only sane filmmaker.” The director of the eighties remake of Nosferatu and the surreal “let’s drag an entire steamship over a mountain” movie Fitzcaraldo (plus countless others) has largely turned his attention to documentary in the past twenty years. His latest explores a subject close to his fevered, compulsive mind. Into the Inferno follows Herzog and co-director and vulcanologist Clive Oppenheimer as they traipse around the globe, visiting the world’s mightiest volcanoes.
TIFF 2016 Review: “Arrival” delivers thoughtful sci-fi with a heartfelt twist
Amy Adams is having a pretty great year. It’s only going to get better. With two top-flight films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, she’s this year’s Benedict Cumberbatch. I already wrote about her note-perfect performance as the love-lorn gallery curator in Tom Ford’s chilly noir Nocturnal Animals. Her role in Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral sci-fi feature Arrival is even better. The movie is pretty great, too. But Amy, she should clear some space on her mantle.
TIFF 2016 Review: In “Nocturnal Animals”, revenge is a dish best served ice cold
With Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford seems compelled to make up for lost time. Seven years after the success of the fashion designer’s directorial debut A Single Man, Ford’s second feature merges two noir tales into a single multifaceted narrative, dancing through time and multiple fictions. Haunting, by turns icy and anguished, it’s an unsettling and exquisite study of failure, loss and revenge.
TIFF 2016 Review: “American Honey” crackles with energy, winds up a sticky mess
Following a rag-tag group of teens selling and sexing across the mid-West, American Honey is a modern-day Kids, minus that film’s relentless pessimism and narrative drive. With a near interminable three-hour running time, director Andrea Arnold’s fourth feature is fuelled by muddled hope and hunger, and the boundless energy of its kinetic youthful stars. If slam-bangin’ road movies across the corroded skeleton of America are your thing, read on.
TIFF 2016 Review: “Free Fire” Is A Free-Wheeling Good Time
Ben Wheatley’s latest film Free Fire feels closer to the ensemble spirit of his 2009 debut Down Terrace than last year’s deliciously deranged High Rise. There are criminals meeting up with arms dealers for a trade, one which takes place in a warehouse in Massachusetts. It almost seems like too simple of a plot for a Ben Wheatley movie until everything goes ridiculously awry and you realize with delight, “Ah, here we go.”
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Money Monster feels like old school Hollywood
I’ve been a George Clooney fan since I first saw him as “George” on The Facts of Life back in the 1980s. I thought he was suitably charming as Booker on Roseanne, and while I wasn’t a big E.R. fan, I thought he was knockdown, drag out awesome in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. All this was before he really became GEORGE CLOONEY – HOLLYWOOD ICON ™. While I don’t go out of my way to watch his every film, when I do sit down to watch something, as I did with Money Monster from director Jodie Foster, I usually enjoy George’s work. Which was mostly true this time out.
Stars in Broad Daylight
We hear about Syria a lot these days. Ravaged by ISIS, crushed by their own dictatorial leaders, the Syrian population is wildly displaced, with millions of refugees looking for new homes around the globe. But we don’t know a lot about the actual country. TIFF looks to fill that gap, with a week-long program of Syrian films called Syria Self-Portraits: Chronicles of Tyranny, Chronicles of War. Stars in Broad Daylight is one of the oldest in the program, from 1988, by Syria’s foremost filmmaker Ossama Mohammed. It’s a bleak comedy, an absurd look at the country’s longstanding oppression.
