FREAKY TALES (no distrib):  The writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have returned from their profitable but unbeloved sojourn in the land of Captain Marvel to their indie roots with Freaky Tales.  While heartfelt and entertaining, the effort is also intensely derivative.  Fleck was a child of 1987 Oakland, where Freaky Tales takes place, and it’s a […]

> Here are capsule summaries of all this year’s SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival reviews, arranged more or less in order of preference.  Click on each title for the full review, and the complete list of all the reviews is here.  SHAME:  Audiences who go to the new film by Steve McQueen (not that one) for […]

> Derick Martini’s HICK is like a Sundance movie that took the wrong indie-film exit and wound up in Toronto.  For whatever reason, Toronto’s film festival tends to find itself with fewer stories of young people from small towns who come of age on the road, so Hick has a little air of distinction here. […]

  WIDOWS (20th – Nov. 16):  Widows is a genre movie that isn’t sure it wants to be one.  That’s not a shock, because the idea of the aesthete director Steve McQueen, of Hunger, Shame and 12 Years A Slave renown, toiling in the land of Ocean’s 8 seemed odd from the start.  And for […]

  RUBY SPARKS:  Worth A Ticket – A Narrative Feat   Woody Allen is one of the most influential figures in modern independent film, but his ghost is usually evident in the many romantic comedy-dramas we get each year paying homage to Annie Hall and Manhattan, about hyper-intellectual big-city types who lurch in and out […]

  Zach Braff’s WISH I WAS HERE, his first film as a writer-director since Garden State 10 years ago, mixes genuine, deeply-felt emotion with the kind of contrivances that would grate even on a second-rate sitcom.  (This week’s episode:  Dad tries to homeschool the kids!  And Uncle Jonah wears a costume to Comic-Con just to […]

‎ Jacques Audiard doesn’t do sentimental. His last film, A Prophet, had the clear-eyed view of crime and the dramatic heft of a French version of “The Wire,” and his new and very different drama RUST & BONE benefits as well from his refusal to take the road of easy emotion. Lord knows, the bare […]

  The trouble with trying to recommend THE ONE I LOVE , written by Justin Lader and directed by Charlie McDowell, is that it’s impossible to describe how clever, surprising and intriguing it turns out to be without giving up its secrets.  It begins straightforwardly–so much so, in fact, that you might need to restrain an “Ah, […]