Author Archive
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Black Mass”

  Scott Cooper’s BLACK MASS is a beautifully put together and wonderfully acted true-life drama about Boston gangsters and the law, but it has a void at its center that holds it back from greatness.  That center isn...
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
 

 

 

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: “Being Charlie”

  Sadly, the phrase “BEING CHARLIE is Rob Reiner’s best film in years” doesn’t mean nearly as much as it once would have.  After a decade where he could do no wrong, he has, incredibly enough, been...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Meddler”

  Lorene Scafaria’s THE MEDDLER spins its way past so many potential crash sites that it’s practically an example of cinematic stunt-driving.  The premise itself is something out of a thousand terrible sitcoms...
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
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Program”

  THE PROGRAM feels entirely useless.  With an authoritative documentary about the Lance Armstrong story already in wide distribution (Alex Gibney’s excellent The Armstrong Lie), the only reason to attempt a scripte...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Danish Girl”

  Transgender issues have been such hot-button topics in the news lately that people may not be prepared for how muted and delicate Tom Hooper’s THE DANISH GIRL is.  The film, which debuted at the Venice Film Festiv...
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
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Truth”

  The screenwriter James Vanderbilt has made his directing debut with TRUTH, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival tonight, and at times it’s clear that this is a writer’s movie:  Vanderbilt gives no fe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Martian”

  Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN is the jaunty sci-fi offspring of Apollo 13 and McGyver, Scott’s least self-important movie in years and not coincidentally his most enjoyable.  Drew Goddard’s expertly craft...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Lobster”

  The allegory is piled on so thickly in Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE LOBSTER that after a while, it’s not clear just what the underlying subject is supposed to be.  Lanthimos is a cult-favorite filmmaker (the cult m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Sicario”

  The director Denis Villenueve has been staking out some interesting Hollywood territory for himself.  His new SICARIO, which debuted at Cannes and screened at the Toronto Film Festival prior to arriving in theatres next...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “I Saw the Light”

  Marc Abraham, for his second film as director (prior to that, he was a veteran producer), has chosen his second consecutive mid-20th-century biography, following 2008’s Flash of Genius with I SAW THE LIGHT, which p...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

NOTE TO READERS: Delayed Text

  Due to our coverage of the Toronto Film Festival beginning tomorrow, over the next week, while morning and afternoon charts will be posted on schedule (Nielsen permitting, as yesterday’s and today’s delays un...
by Mitch Salem