Posts Tagged ‘TIFF review’
 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “12 Years A Slave”

  Steve McQueen (the filmmaker) doesn’t take it easy on audiences.  His first feature Hunger provided an excruciatingly detailed look at the fatal hunger strike of the Irish convict Bobby Sands, and he followed it w...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Can A Song Save Your Life?”

  Less intimate but perhaps even more irresistible than his micro-indie smash Once, John Carney’s follow-up CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE? plays a similar tune with broader orchestrations.  The city this time is New ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “August: Osage County”

  The writer/producer/director John Wells made his reputation as the showrunner of ER, and he’s known as one of the most consistent, professional producers in the network business, with impeccable shows like The Wes...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Third Person”

  There is a reason, or at least an argument, for why almost everything in Paul Haggis’s THIRD PERSON feels synthetic and contrived–but I can’t make it here, because doing so would expose the film’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Under the Skin”

  A film festival is certainly the place for a feature-length semi-linear flow of unscripted dialogue and bizarre imagery if anywhere is, so welcome to UNDER THE SKIN.  The writer/director Jonathan Glazer has gradually b...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “Clouds of Sils Maria”

  CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (IFC):  no release date scheduled – Watch It At Home Olivier Assayas is a dazzlingly ambitious filmmaker, determined to do something totally different with each project he undertakes.  The re...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “You Are Here”

  If there were no credits on the new comedy-drama YOU ARE HERE, it would almost be inconceivable that an audience member would imagine it coming from the typewriter of Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men.  It’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Hateship Loveship”

  Earnest and low-key to a fault, Liza Johnson’s HATESHIP LOVESHIP might have felt more at home in the Narrative Competition at Sundance than in Toronto.  It has a dramatic recessiveness, almost a passivity, for m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Gravity”

  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 Luh...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Philomena”

  In recent years, the… let’s call it mature audience has been a profitable one, making moderate hits of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet.  This holiday season, the title of choice fo...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “The Past”

  Like his Oscar-winning A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s THE PAST is concerned with the abyss of uncertainty and mystery that lies under seemingly straightforward actions, the ever-increasing complications that bec...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “The Last of Robin Hood”

  THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is an odd miss, a sliver of movie history that seems to have all the right elements but never quite jells.  The title refers to Errol Flynn, legendary swashbuckling star of The Adventures of Rob...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her”

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY: HIM & HER is an extraordinary feature debut for its writer/director Ned Benson.  Indeed, it’s so remarkable that it comes close to not needing the modifier “debutR...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto 2014 Review: “The Humbling”

  THE HUMBLING (Millenium) – no release date set – Watch It At Home THE HUMBLING wasn’t one of Philip Roth’s major novels, and Barry Levinson’s film, despite striking performances from Al Paci...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Tracks”

  There’s no cutesiness to be found in John Curran’s film TRACKS, a bracingly non-Disneyfied true-life nature tale.  In the mid-1970s, a young Australian woman named Robyn Davidson decided to walk across almo...
by Mitch Salem