Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “Black and White”

Posted September 7, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  BLACK AND WHITE – no current US distributor or release date – Not Even For Free BLACK AND WHITE was reportedly drawn from events in its writer/director Mike Bender’s own life, which makes it remarkable, on some bizarro level, that every single element of Binder’s script feels false and contrived.  Binder has been a […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “No One Lives”

Posted September 16, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  As movie bloodbaths go, NO ONE LIVES is almost–but not quite–clever enough to be worth seeing. We start with a backwoods family of petty outlaws, headed by father Hoag (Lee Tergesen) and including his wife, brother, two adult children and their significant others.  Their game is to rob tourists and brutally beat them until […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Power Of The Dog,” “Violet” & “The Story Of My Wife”

Posted September 16, 2021 by Mitch Salem

  THE POWER OF THE DOG (Netflix – theatrical release Nov 17, streaming Dec 1):  Jane Campion’s first feature in a dozen years is a powerhouse that won’t be to all tastes.  It’s a western that sets out to subvert the genre’s conventions, a slow-burn psychological thriller that eventually explodes, and in the end, somewhat […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “22 July” & “American Woman”

Posted September 12, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  22 JULY (Netflix – October 10):  So many terrible things have happened in the world since July 22, 2011 that at least in the US, few even remember the horrific events that occurred in Oslo, Norway that day, when a single right-wing fanatic named Andres Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people, most of them […]

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Articles

THE BIJOU @ TIFF: Yet More Titles

Posted August 16, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> See also: THE BIJOU @ TIFF:  FIRST TITLES ANNOUNCEDTHE BIJOU @ TIFF:  FESTIVAL TITLES, ROUND TWOTHE BIJOU @ TIFF:  O CANADIAN TITLES! The Toronto International Film Festival prides itself on being one of the more comprehensive in the world, and today a slew of additional titles were announced for next month’s TIFF.  After the […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Humans,” “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” & “The Wheel”

Posted September 17, 2021 by Mitch Salem

  THE HUMANS (A24/Showtime – Nov. 24):  There are typically two strategies for adapting a celebrated play about a small number of people in a limited space to the screen.  One is to “open it up,” adding scenes, characters, or at least locations outside the original set.  The other is to lean into the claustrophobia, […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ TORONTO: “No”

Posted September 16, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  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 […]

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Current Release

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Bros” & “Butcher’s Crossing”

Posted September 13, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  BROS (Universal – Sept. 30):  Notwithstanding its occasional meta self-deprecation, it’s clear that Nicholas Stoller and Billy Eichner (both writer/producers and respectively director and star) want Bros to be Hollywood’s first mainstream big-screen gay rom-com hit.  It’s fitting in a way, then, that like so many straight rom-coms before it, Bros suffers from third […]

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