MONSTERS UNIVERSITY:  Watch It At Home – No Dean’s List For Pixar’s Latest There’s a wonderfully charming, imaginative Pixar movie opening on Friday, one that will restore your faith in the studio’s near-miraculous ability to give life and personality to the most unlikely objects (here including a parking meter and a Walk/Don’t Walk light, […]

THE SUBSTANCE (MUBI – Sept. 20):  It’s quite a feat to take the body horror crown at a film festival that also features a contribution from David Cronenberg, but Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance uses its revolting imagery in a funnier, crazier, and more focused manner than Cronenberg’s The Shrouds.  The setting is an only slightly satiric […]

  SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN:  Worth A Ticket –  Not a Disneyland Ride   Just to be clear, the new SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN bears about as much resemblance to this spring’s Mirror Mirror as The Dark Knight did to the 1960s Batman TV series.  Sure, there are some familiar aspects–an evil queen […]

> Although Sundance still has several days to go, and surprises could spring up at any time (yesterday The Surrogate, a drama with John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung who decides to lose his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt, came out of nowhere to win a huge $6M […]

    KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (no distrib):  The exercise in narrative that began with Manuel Puig’s 1976 Argentinian novel has found an enduring place in popular culture, first through a 1983 theatrical version adapted by Puig himself, then Hector Babenco’s 1985 film (which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and won […]

  X-MEN:  DAYS OF FUTURE PAST:  Buy A Ticket – For Once, The Script Is As Mighty As the CG After the money-making meatball that was Godzilla, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST serves welcome notice that a movie can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, be crammed with CG-generated spectacle, and still have room for an […]

  THE COUNSELOR:  Not Even For Free – A Deluxe Pedigree, But Only Cut-Rate Nihilism The first “uh-oh” moment in THE COUNSELOR comes early, perhaps 10 minutes in.  We’ve barely been introduced to Reiner (Javier Bardem, genially dissolute, his hair spiky this time) and his lover Malkina (Cameron Diaz, speaking with an on-again, off-again sultry […]

  LA LA LAND (Summit/Lionsgate – December 2):  No film arrived at Toronto this year with more hype to live up to than Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, the follow-up to the filmmakers’s Oscar-winning Whiplash and the recipient of white-hot raves in Venice (where Emma Stone won the Best Actress award) and Telluride.  Chazelle’s rapturous […]