Current Release

Sundance 2023 Reviews: “Past Lives,” “Fairyland” & “Infinity Pool”

Posted January 30, 2023 by Mitch Salem

  PAST LIVES (A24):  The playwright Celine Song makes an impressive feature writing/directing debut with the lovely, eloquent Past Lives.  The film is sort of the opposite of Sliding Doors and all of the multiversal entertainment we’re showered with these days.  Rather than allowing Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2023 Reviews: “Flora & Son,” “A Little Prayer” & “The Pod Generation”

Posted January 30, 2023 by Mitch Salem

  FLORA AND SON (Apple):  John Carney’s Irish dramedy was (with Fair Play) the commercial bonanza of Sundance, reportedly with a $20M pricetag.  It isn’t hard to see why the studio and streamer checkbooks came out, since Flora and Son was one of the festival’s unabashed crowd pleasers.  Like most of Carney’s work (Once, Sing […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2023 Review: “Fair Play”

Posted January 27, 2023 by Mitch Salem

  In a generally depressed indie film market, Netflix shelled out a reported $20M at Sundance for Chloe Domont’s feature writing/directing debut FAIR PLAY.  The splurge made sense:  Fair Play has that combination of strong storytelling and hot-button ideas on its mind that should allow it to temporarily take over the internet when it launches […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2023 Reviews: “Theater Camp,” “Radical” & “Mutt”

Posted January 27, 2023 by Mitch Salem

  THEATER CAMP (Searchlight/Disney):  The odds are that a lot of people who’ll want to see a movie called Theater Camp are comfortable with the kind of ramshackle, hit-or-miss qualities associated with actual summer camp productions, and will likewise find plenty to enjoy in a movie that’s been made with more love and energy than […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Wonder” & “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”

Posted September 20, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  THE WONDER (Netflix – November 16):  In the time of Ireland’s Great Famine, 11-year-old Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) claims to have survived for 4 months without eating even one bite of food.  Is she a miracle, possibly a saint in the making, or a sham?  The elders of her small town have the girl […]

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Current Release

Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Greatest Beer Run Ever”

Posted September 19, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER (Apple – September 30):  Peter Farrelly’s Green Book was one of the clearest beneficiaries of winning Toronto’s People Choice Award, vaulting from being entirely under the awards radar to a (somewhat divisive) Oscar for Best Picture a few months later.  No doubt the premiere of his follow-up The Greatest […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Women Talking” & “Saint Omer”

Posted September 19, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  WOMEN TALKING (UA/MGM/Amazon – December 9):  In an insular Mennonite community, the woman have always believed what the men told them, that when they awake to discover evidence of sexual assault and thereafter sometimes pregnancy, those were the result of attacks by evil spirits and ghosts.  When the story of Women Talking begins, they’ve […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Empire of Light” & “Triangle of Sadness”

Posted September 19, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  EMPIRE OF LIGHT (Searchlight/Disney – December 9):  Sam Mendes takes the first solo screenwriting credit of his long career on Empire of Light, a personal film inspired by his youth and his mother.  The story is centered around the seaside Empire movie theater, a once-grand palace that by the early 1980s has seen better […]

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