Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival 2024 Reviews: “William Tell” & “The Cut”

Posted September 12, 2024 by Mitch Salem

  WILLIAM TELL (Goldwyn – 2025):  If it requires a certain amount of audacity to take a short children’s story and expand it into a violent adult action epic, that gall has to rise by several orders of magnitude when its 133 minutes conclude on a cliffhanger.  William Tell, the one about the dad who’s forced […]

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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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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

Sundance 2024 Film Reviews: “Exhibiting Forgiveness” & “Suncoast”

Posted January 27, 2024 by Mitch Salem

  EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS (no distrib):  The noted painter Titus Kaphar has made an impressive shift into scripted feature films.  Although Exhibiting Forgiveness isn’t strictly speaking autobiographical, Kaphar’s protagonist Tarrell (Andre Holland) is a successful painter whose canvases resemble the filmmaker’s.  Tarrell travels with his wife (Andra Day, playing a recording star) and young son to […]

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Current Release

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “The Judge”

Posted September 4, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  THE JUDGE (Warners) – Opens October 10 – Watch It At Home Since the first Iron Man opened, Robert Downey Jr. has been one of the world’s biggest (and wealthiest) stars.  But he hasn’t used his superpowers for good:  in the 6 years that have followed, he’s interspersed Tony Stark extravaganzas only with entries […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Causeway” & “The Menu”

Posted September 14, 2022 by Mitch Salem

  CAUSEWAY (Apple – November 4):  After a decade as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, there was reason to wonder whether the Jennifer Lawrence who first came to prominence with the Sundance movie Winter’s Bone still had a gritty indie-movie gear.  She returns to those roots with Causeway, for which she also serves as a […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival 2024 Reviews: “The Wild Robot” & “Disclaimer”

Posted September 17, 2024 by Mitch Salem

THE WILD ROBOT (DreamWorks Animation/Universal – Sept. 27):  Chris Sanders’s movie is a fairly captivating if unsurprising family entertainment.  In the future, when a plane with a cargo of robots crashes off the coast of an island, the survivor is Rozim 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o)–you can call her Roz.  She’s programmed to aid humans, […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “If Beale Street Could Talk” & “Ben Is Back”

Posted September 10, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (Annapurna – November 30):  Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to Moonlight received a rapturous standing ovation at its Toronto premiere, and it’s unquestionably a beautiful piece of filmmaking,  Jenkins reunited with most of his Moonlight creative team, including cinematographer James Laxton and composer Nicholas Britell, and with a higher budget at […]

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