>Click below for all SHOWBUZZDAILY‘s collected Toronto Film Festival reviews, in alphabetical order: 360 50/50 ALBERT NOBBS THE ARTIST BUTTER DAMSELS IN DISTRESS THE DEEP BLUE SEA THE DESCENDANTS DRIVE HICK THE IDES OF MARCH THE INCIDENT INTO THE ABYSS MONEYBALL THE MOTH DIARIES PEACE, LOVE AND MISUNDERSTANDING THE RAID RAMPART RESTLESS SALMON FISHING IN […]
MARRIAGE STORY (Netflix – November 6 in theatres/December 6 streaming): A film doesn’t have to be revolutionary to be great. There may be no subjects more intensively depicted in movies and on television than marital break-ups and the miseries of divorce, yet Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is so fully realized and brilliantly performed that […]
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (Sony Classics – Dec. 20): Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language feature is in keeping with his recent, more contemplative films (Pain and Glory, Parallel Mothers), but it’s even more restrained than those. Based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez, it’s virtually a chamber piece for two actresses, Tilda Swinton (who’d previously starred […]
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY: HIM & HER is an extraordinary feature debut for its writer/director Ned Benson. Indeed, it’s so remarkable that it comes close to not needing the modifier “debut” to express how good it is–if Benson hadn’t bitten off a bit more than he could chew, this would have been one (or […]
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’t occupied by JoOut ofhnny Depp or his character James “Whitey” Bulger (one used that nickname with him […]
THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU (Warners) – Opens September 19 – Worth A Ticket Jonathan Tropper’s very successful day job is writing seriocomic novels about families and romance that are distinguished by their male protagonists–the ground he trods is similar to Nick Hornby’s, but without quite matching Hornby’s freshness of approach or wit. […]
QUEER (A24 – TBD): Luca Guadagnino has unearthed glamour in the blood-soaked dance troupe/witches’ coven of Suspiria and the cannibal romance of Bones and All, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that his seedy 1950s Mexico City and South America of Queer glistens with swank. Queer is based (by Justin Kuritzkes, who wrote Guadagnino’s Challengers) […]
ROMA (Netflix – Dec. 14): Alfonso Cuaron is one of the master filmmakers of this era, and Roma confirms that all over again. It’s a deceptively simple memory piece, a semi-autobiographical story set in the Mexico City of his youth in 1970-71, with most of the action revolving around an upper-middle-class family with three […]