>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 […]

  In 1988, the Chilean military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet was forced by diplomatic pressure to finally permit a democratic election, in order to prove its claim that the country’s people supported his presidency.  The plebiscite was simple:  voters would vote either “Yes” or “No” to authorize an additional 8-year term for the […]

  SAVING MR. BANKS:  Buy A Ticket – Positively Supercalifragelisticexpialidocious SAVING MR. BANKS , which screened at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles last night before opening in theaters next month, is a moviegoer’s dream of Hollywood popular art, superbly melding history, personality, humor, sentiment and glitz with little fault or sign of strain.  […]

  It takes about an hour, but Nicholas McCarthy’s THE PACT, which premiered in the Park City At Midnight section at Sundance, eventually turns out to have a neat twist up its sleeve, one that switches the movie from haunted house horror to an entirely different subgenre of thriller.  And after that, a solid reel […]

  Maybe it’s time for a filmmaker who doesn’t give a damn about the Beat Generation to make the next movie about them.  Michael Polish’s BIG SUR joins last year’s On the Road as a Jack Kerouac adaptation that’s gorgeously filmed, performed with seriousness and commitment, and dramatically paralyzed.  (I missed this year’s other Sundance […]

  The writing team of David Wain and Michael Showalter (Wain directs) certainly knew that THEY CAME TOGETHER would be far from the first parody of romantic comedy movies to come along.  Date Movie opened back in 2008, Friends With Benefits, although it had other fish to fry, featured a dead-on film-within-the-film satire that starred […]

  This was a Toronto Film Festival unlike any other, and not just because I “attended” it from the laptop in my house.  Toronto has become an important stop on the road to the Academy Awards, with 9 of the past 10 Best Picture winners premiering or screening there.  (Birdman was the exception.)  But no […]

  MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, which won the Sundance US Dramatic Directing award for Ava DuVernay last night, is in no rush.  The films moves with deliberation as it establishes its leading character and her difficult situation:  Ruby (Emayatzy E. Corinealdi) isn’t a single mom, but she might as well be, with husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) […]