> In September, SHOWBUZZDAILY will be attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, for short).  This is the first in an intermittent series of pieces about the experience of TIFF-ing. Every film festival has its own personality and place in the movie calendar.  TIFF has become hugely popular and important, especially in the last decade, […]

> Sundance announced the second group of its 2012 titles today (Competition entries were announced yesterday; Premieres will be unveiled on Monday), mostly in what are traditionally the most untraditional categories of the Festival:  Park City At Midnight, Next, and New Frontier. Also announced were the Spotlight films, which is where Sundance puts films that […]

  CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (IFC):  no release date scheduled – Watch It At Home Olivier Assayas is a dazzlingly ambitious filmmaker, determined to do something totally different with each project he undertakes.  The results range from the spectacular (Carlos) to the tone-deaf (Demonlover), with his new CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA, which premiered at Cannes […]

  FAHRENHEIT 11/9 (Midwestern – opens September 21):  In the course of Fahrenheit 11/9, Michael Moore takes a shot at Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves for admitting that Donald Trump has been good for their businesses, but it’s a weakness of Moore that he lacks the self-knowledge to recognize that the same is true for […]

  THE BRUTALIST (A24 – TBD):  The most remarkable thing about Brady Corbet’s epic may be that it’s so enjoyable to watch.  The notion of a 197-minute saga (not including intermission) about Holocaust survivors and the crushing effects of capitalism practically screams “ordeal,” especially with the knowledge that Corbet’s last film was the cringingly pretentious Vox […]

>Benh Zeitlin’s BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is the kind of movie that makes people wince when they hear “independent film”. A tale, with magical realist overtones, set in the mostly African-American poverty of the Louisiana bayous, it’s narrated by its precocious child protagonist, known as Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis). Hushpuppy lives with her father Wink […]

> Oren Moverman’s first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx. This […]

At this point, with 3 first-rate films to his name, it’s time to stop remarking on how surprising it is that Ben Affleck is a major American filmmaker and just accept that he is one.  His latest, ARGO, is his best yet, one that has a broader palette of tones and a larger sense of scale […]