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Music Doc ‘Mali Blues’ Looks At The Power Of Song In A Violent World [TIFF...
Mali, as a country, is, to some extent, physically divided. In the south there are the thriving cities typical of Africa’s burgeoning society, but in the deserts to the north a lawless extremism has...
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Anne Hathaway Discovers The Monster Hiding In Plain Sight In The Clever...
What makes a monster? It’s a question that director Nacho Vigalondo (“Timecrimes,” “Open Windows”) explores both literally and figuratively in “Colossal,” a monster movie that truly defies any...
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Alison Maclean Returns With Incisive Coming-Of-Age Drama ‘The Rehearsal’...
Just about anyone who’s ever taken an acting class should feel a wave of queasy familiarity watching “The Rehearsal,” a keenly observed coming-of-age drama, about the ways some teachers push budding...
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TIFF Exclusive: First-Look Clip From ‘Gimme The Loot’ Director Adam Leon’s...
Though we wish more people had seen it, Adam Leon’s 2012 film “Gimme The Loot” is one of the best films about being young in recent years. Detailing the story of two young New York graffiti artists...
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Rooney Mara & Vanessa Redgrave Star In Romantic Irish Period Drama ‘The...
At two different points in the Irish WWII drama “The Secret Scripture,” the movie’s heroine, Rose (played by Rooney Mara), walks down a windswept beach and stops to admire a fighter plane flown by her...
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Christopher Guest Gives Fans Another Reason To Cheer With ‘Mascots’ [TIFF...
It has been a decade since pioneering mockumentary filmmaker Christopher Guest delivered his last feature length work, the unfortunately underwhelming “For Your Consideration.” And in that time, Guest...
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‘The Raid’ Star Iko Uwais Goes Jason Bourne In ‘Headshot’ [TIFF Review]
Iko Uwais is entirely known for kicking ass with some serious ferocity. His debut film “Merantu” set the stage for his breakout role in “The Raid,” which he followed with “The Raid 2,” and a part in...
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James Gunn-Penned ‘The Belko Experiment’ Needs To Go Back To The Lab [TIFF...
Putting characters into a single space, applying a few narrative rules, and then seeing what happens is nothing new, and at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, we’ve already seen Ben...
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‘Diary Of A Teenage Girl’ Star Bel Powley Returns In Coming-Of-Age Comedy...
Carrie Pilby is such a delightful character that she deserves a movie better than the one that bears her name. As played by Bel Powley, the heroine of the indie comedy “Carrie Pilby” is a 19-year-old...
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Israeli Drama ‘Sand Storm’ Is an Insightful Directorial Debut for Elite Zexer...
In its early scenes, “Sand Storm” appears to be a film where its mother and daughter protagonists will find success in struggling against the patriarchal bonds holding them in their Bedouin village in...
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Lupita Nyong’o And David Oyelowo Break The Disney Mold In Mira Nair’s ‘Queen...
TORONTO – If someone were to pitch you a Disney sports movie about a child chess prodigy from the slums of Africa you could pretty much map it out in your head without even seeing a trailer. The...
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‘Lion’ Starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara & Nicole Kidman Renders Complex Story...
The hill across the street. The convenience store a few blocks over that still sells cassettes. The dented mailbox on the corner. The broken streetlight that never works. While where we live is marked...
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Walter Hill’s ‘(Re)Assignment’ Can’t Find The Fun In Its Bonkers Premise...
In 1997, an FBI agent and master criminal swapped faces and wreaked havoc chasing each other down in John Woo’s deliriously great “Face/Off.” It’s a movie that succeeded because the director and his...
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A Bank Becomes The Underdog In Steve James’‘Abacus: Small Enough To Jail’...
It would be hard to imagine any corporate institution that is more loathed at the moment than banks. Particularly following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, which saw the economy nearly cratered, the...
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‘Sing’ Is ‘Pitch Perfect’ With Some Crowd Pleasing Animation And That’s A...
TORONTO – Sometimes you just can’t hate a movie. It may annoy you. It may make your eye rolls a bit, but eventually you just succumb to the sheer entertainment of it all. That’s the case with Garth...
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‘Barry’ Is An Unexpectedly Moving Biopic Of A Young President Obama [TIFF...
In one of the last scenes of director Vikram Gandhi’s “Barry,” the title character (played by Devon Terrell) sits in a sand trap at the ritzy country club where his girlfriend’s family is hosting a...
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Oscar Isaac And Christian Bale Succumb To The Soap Opera Theatrics Of ‘The...
It’s been over a decade since director Terry George had a big hit with the three-time Oscar nominated “Hotel Rwanda,” and his career ever since has been in a steady downward tumble, culminating in his...
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‘Werewolf’ Is An Intoxicating Debut Feature By Ashley McKenzie [TIFF Review]
Ashley McKenzie’s “Werewolf” is a startling, out-of-nowhere film, and an intoxicating first feature from a rising filmmaker. Who are the actors in this story of addiction and despair? Where did they...
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Season 3 Of Amazon & Jill Soloway’s ‘Transparent’ Is The Show At Its Best...
Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime tend to design their original series to be binged, which gives their creators the freedom to develop stories more slowly and subtly. But there’s still a...
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British Period Drama ‘Lady Macbeth’ Is An Arresting But Imperfect Take On The...
Numerous seminal filmmakers have tried their hand at revisionist cinematic takes on William Shakespeare’s work, just as the plays are regularly reimagined for the stage. William Oldroyd’s directorial...
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Blake Lively Is Blind In ‘All I See Is You’ In Marc Forster’s Thriller [TIFF...
For roughly an hour, “All I See Is You” offers some mild but genuine intrigue as a stylistic exercise. To try to convey the way Gina (Blake Lively), a blind woman who lost her sight in a car accident...
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Exclusive: Anne Hathaway & Jason Sudeikis Talk The Kaiju Monsters Of ‘Colossal’
TORONTO – It’s not hard to see why having Anne Hathaway and the Kaiju genre might not sound right in the same sentence. Hathaway, a pristine, highly talented, Oscar nominated actress has never really...
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Undercooked Noir ‘City Of Tiny Lights’ Starring Riz Ahmed Fails To Thrill...
Across eight episodes this summer, Steve Zaillian and Richard Price showed there was lots of new life to be found in the crime procedural with “The Night Of.” Going deep into life behind bars and...
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Werner Herzog’s ‘Salt and Fire’ Starring Michael Shannon Is Flawed But...
During the 1970s heyday of the German New Wave, Werner Herzog’s earthy adventure films and dramas were hailed for their realism, as the director aimed to recreate onscreen the extreme conditions that...
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Lone Scherfig’s ‘Their Finest’ Starring Gemma Arterton & Bill Nighy Is A...
The charming, rousing WWII romance “Their Finest” is a film that openly stumps for two causes: the value of women in the workplace, and the power of cinema to tell stories that people need to hear. Set...
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‘Mr. Robot’ Rami Malek Drives Himself Crazy In Surreal ‘Buster’s Mal Heart’...
While conspiracy theories, phone sex lines, and television psychics might not seem immediately connected, they offer two important things for those who feel their life is slipping out of their grasp:...
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Syrian Civil War Doc ‘The War Show’ Is An Uneven But Powerful Glimpse Inside...
In 2011, in the early days of the Syrian revolution — back when it was still a series of protests and not yet a full on revolution — radio DJ Obaidah Zytoon and her rag-tag band of friends took to the...
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Catherine Keener Stars In Thoughtful Drama ‘Unless’ [TIFF Review]
A mystery lies at the shattered core of “Unless,” but it’s not your standard whodunit. Instead, the drama centers on what has caused a college student who argues with her professor over “Madame Bovary”...
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‘Deepwater Horizon’ With Mark Wahlberg Is Stellar Filmmaking Except When It...
TORONTO – When the mobile offshore drilling rig the Deepwater Horizon exploded into flames on April 20, 2010 it resulted in the loss of 11 lives and the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Five years...
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‘Black Mirror’ Season 3 Serves Up 2 Great Episodes At TIFF [TV Review]
Browsing the TV section of Netflix can be an anxiety inducing exercise. While the upside in the new Golden Age Of Television has some of the best programming the medium has ever seen, the downside has...
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Zacharius Kunuk’s ‘Searchers’ Is An Impressive Inuit Take On John Ford’s...
Growing up Canadian, one learns to be wary of the often imitative homegrown films, that fill content quotas and occasionally creeps into cinemas. There are exceptions, most notably the world-famous...
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‘The Dreamed Path’ Plays A Single, Serious And Not Particularly Compelling...
About a quarter of the way into Angela Schanelec’s new film, “The Dreamed Path,” a young man named Kenneth (Thorbjörn Björnsson) administers a dose of morphine to his mother as she lies sick and dying...
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‘Moonlight’ Becomes A Legit Oscar Contender And 7 Other Things We Learned In...
TORONTO – As a long time executive in the awards season game noted just a few nights ago after another round of parties and celebratory drinks came to an end, “We’re still in a bubble right now.” And...
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Unfocused & Tangential ‘Close Relations’ Tackles Identity Along The...
To put it bluntly, Ukraine’s recent history has been tumultuous. After breaking away from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the country has continued to assert its independence to mixed results, a task...
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‘Brain On Fire’ Starring Chloe Grace Moretz Is Disappointingly More...
Perhaps it was inevitable that “Brain On Fire” — writer/director Gerard Barrett’s adaptation of Susannah Cahalan’s memoir of her month being hospitalized with the rare autoimmune disease anti-NMDA...
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‘Asura: The City Of Madness’ Is An Above Average, Carnage Driven South Korean...
Each year, the biggest distributors and sales agents out of South Korea secure prominent slots at the Toronto International Film Festival for one or two of their biggest upcoming blockbusters. And even...
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Taraji P. Henson On “Overwhelming” Reaction To ‘Hidden Figures,’ A Movie...
TORONTO – Last Saturday, in a packed theater at the TIFF Lightbox, Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae watched 20 minutes of cut scenes from their new film “Hidden Figures” with a...
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Adam Leon’s Impressive & Touching ‘Tramps’ Is A Low-Key Charmer [TIFF Review]
Operating with an impressive storytelling economy, yet managing to spin a tale that takes its protagonists from the Bronx to Westchester and back again, writer/director Adam Leon’s second feature film,...
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Petr Vaclav’s ‘We Are Never Alone’ Is A Disjointed Dramedy That Never Quite...
“I think I’m in love with you,” a middle-aged woman (Lenka Vlasakova) confesses to a thuggish strip-club bouncer (Zdenek Godla). The confession is startling, to say the least, because these two...
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‘Maudie’ Features A Terrific Performance By Sally Hawkins, But Not Much Else...
Sweetly rendered, but too sentimental, Aisling Walsh’s “Maudie,” about famous Canadian folk art painter Maud Lewis features the always-reliable Sally Hawkins. She makes a compelling case for this...
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‘Green White Green’ Is A Shaggy, Unruly, Yet Endearing Coming-Of-Age Drama...
Much like its long-winded full title, “Green White Green: And All the Beautiful Colours In My Mosaic of Madness,” Abba T. Makama’s debut film is a shaggy, unruly work of art, passion and perseverance....
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‘My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea’ Is Bizarre & Beautifully...
Wildly bizarre and imaginatively alluring, if not occasionally slight, the animated movie, “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea,” is an engaging surrealist take on the disaster movie. It’s a...
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‘Yourself And Yours’ Is A Charming Entry For Newcomers To Hong Sang-Soo [TIFF...
With only a modicum of exaggeration, at least half of the Toronto International Film Festival’s volunteer army is pounding the pavement with their ballot boxes for the Grolsch People’s Choice Award,...
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‘Past Life’ Is An Emotionally Resonant Exploration Of The Legacy Of Sin [TIFF...
Are the sins of the father destined to always be laid upon the children, as the Bible-inspired William Shakespeare quote reminds us, or is it possible for an individual to sack the negative aspects of...
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Lifeless Horror ‘The Autopsy Of Jane Doe’ Starring Emile Hirsch Hardly...
In the folds of our skin, the space underneath our fingernails, and the composition of our organs, the human body holds secrets and clues to the lives we have lived. From the food we ate, the injuries...
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Slow-Burn Drama ‘In The Radiant City’ Marks An Impressive Debut From...
“Time heals all wounds” is an aphorism that’s handed out as a superficially soothing balm for a variety of life’s pain and disappointments. But sometimes there are situations and experiences where the...
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Jazz Doc ‘I Called Him Morgan’ Is A Lively, Moving Portrait Of Music, Love, &...
Lee Morgan may not be the most popular name in jazz music, but his talent was exceptional. At just 18 years old, the trumpeter was playing with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and making a name for...
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‘La La Land’ Wins Coveted TIFF People’s Choice Award, ‘Free Fire’&‘Jackie’...
The pedigree of the TIFF People’s Choice Award speaks for itself. Past years has seen films like “Room,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Imitation Game,” “12 Years A Slave,” and “Slumdog Millionaire” earn...
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The 15 Best Films Of The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival
After ten days, at least 55 films and an obscene amount of poutine and Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwiches, Team Playlist is done with the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF is probably the...
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Jeffrey Tambor Says He ‘Almost Fell Over’ After Reading A New ‘Transparent’...
TORONTO – Jeffrey Tambor is the sort of actor who doesn’t really play the Hollywood game. He always comes across as genuine and forthright (even some of the best actors in the world are better at fake...
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