Current Release

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Gravity”

Posted September 8, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  It’s not really a surprise to see Alfonso Cuaron join James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott in that small group of film artists who have made 3D part of the essential toolbox of their imagery (no, Baz Luhrmann and Guillermo del Toro don’t make the list, although Michael Bay might).  Cuaron is a […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Fabelmans” & “The Eternal Daughter”

Posted September 16, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  THE FABELMANS (Universal – November 11):  Like all superheroes, Steven Spielberg has an origin story, and he tells it in The Fabelmans, whose world premiere was far and away the signature event of this year’s Toronto Film Festival.  Bits and pieces of this lore have been scattered throughout Spielberg’s filmmaking career, with all its […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Hate U Give” & “The Hummingbird Project”

Posted September 8, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  THE HATE U GIVE (20th – October 19):  YA radicalization.  George Tillman Jr’s film, from a sprawling script by Audrey Wells (based on the novel by Angie Thomas) centers on Starr (Amandla Stenberg), an African-American teen who witnesses her friend shot to death by a white cop.  But the story also wants to encompass […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “Something In the Air” and “Ginger and Rosa”

Posted September 11, 2012 by Mitch Salem

Toronto this year provided two notable portraits of teenagers growing up in a time of political turmoil, Olivier Assayas’s SOMETHING IN THE AIR and Sally Potter’s GINGER AND ROSA. Assayas’s film is about the end of the end of a revolution that never happened.  (The French title, Apres Mai, specifically refers to the May 1968 unrest in and around […]

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Film Festival

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Labor Day”

Posted September 7, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  LABOR DAY is a beautifully performed, well crafted Harlequin romance.  As such, it’s a shock coming from writer/director Jason Reitman (based on Joyce Maynard’s novel), one that goes in a completely different, far more earnest direction than the snap and wit of his Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up In the Air or Young […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Joker” & “Harriet”

Posted September 11, 2019 by Mitch Salem

  JOKER (Warners – October 4):  One’s perception of Todd Phillips’ JOKER may depend in part on the context in which one sees it.  In the 11 years since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the MCU has taken over not just Hollywood’s financial heart but the very tone and definition of the comic-book genre.  The […]

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THE BIJOU @ TIFF: “The Deep Blue Sea”

Posted September 15, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> If you were going to describe the films of Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth) in one word, that word would not be “dynamic.”  Or “kinetic.”  Or, well, “exciting.”  Davies directs stately tableaux, impressive and sometimes moving, but rooted in nostalgia and regret. Which is why […]

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Film Festival

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL Day 7 Capsule Reviews: “Paterson” & “The Salesman”

Posted September 14, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  Note:  this will be our final installment of Toronto reviews, although the festival runs on until Sunday. It’s been a good if not classic festival, with a trio of legitimately great presentations in La La Land, Jackie and Moonlight, as well as the enormously fun if not particularly artistic Sing, and other strong titles […]

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