Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Program”

Posted September 13, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  THE PROGRAM feels entirely useless.  With an authoritative documentary about the Lance Armstrong story already in wide distribution (Alex Gibney’s excellent The Armstrong Lie), the only reason to attempt a scripted version of the story would be to offer insights not present in the documentary material, or a cohesive narrative of his life that […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Waves” & “Uncut Gems”

Posted September 11, 2019 by Mitch Salem

  WAVES (A24 – November 1):  Trey Edward Shults’ third film (after the micro-budgeted indie Krisha and the horror movie They Come By Night) manages the remarkable feat of feeling both experimental and grounded, as propulsive as an episode of Euphoria without that show’s smug affectations.  There isn’t a lot of plot, and what there […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Truth”

Posted September 12, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  The screenwriter James Vanderbilt has made his directing debut with TRUTH, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival tonight, and at times it’s clear that this is a writer’s movie:  Vanderbilt gives no fewer than three of his characters the opportunity for a Rousing Final Speech, something another director might well have toned down.  […]

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THE BIJOU @ TIFF: “Rampart”

Posted September 13, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> Oren Moverman’s first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx. This […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “A Star Is Born” & “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Posted September 10, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  A STAR IS BORN (Warners – October 5):  Bradley Cooper, making his directing debut, decided to do the equivalent of a first-time weightlifter starting out with a 400-pound barbell.  It isn’t just that A Star Is Born is one of the most iconic Hollywood classics (this is the fifth version, counting What Price Hollywood?, […]

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THE BIJOU @ TIFF: Fernando Meirelles’ “360”

Posted September 10, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> If Arthur Schnitzler had only been a member of the WGA in 1900, when he wrote the play La Ronde, and he’d had the benefit of the format rights guild members receive today, he and his descendants would be very rich indeed.  Schnitzler’s concept, a series of sequences in which, initially, Person A meets […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Boy Erased” & “Vita & Virginia”

Posted September 14, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  BOY ERASED (Focus/Universal – November 2):  Joel Edgerton’s film is the second of the year concerning gay conversion therapy, and its tone is far more conventional than The Miseducation of Cameron Post.  Lucas Hedges plays Jared Eamons (this is a fictionalized version of a true story), son of southern pastor Marshall (Russell Crowe) and […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “The Sessions”

Posted September 13, 2012 by Mitch Salem

Oscar buzz has been trailing THE SESSIONS (which was then called The Surrogate) since it was unveiled at Sundance in January, and with good reason.  For Academy members, it doesn’t get much better than a warm “based on a true story” about someone with a serious disability who nevertheless maintains his sense of humor and […]

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