Movie Reviews and Previews Wes Anderson’s inauspicious dogs The Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my favorite movies, so I got really excited when Wes Anderson’s next movie, Isle of Dogs, was determined to be another animated film, this time about dogs. Wes Anderson and his doll-like stop-motion animation, telling a story about a bunch of very By Sarah • Sep 22, 2017 10:24 am
TV Updates Three women who rule Netflix, who can’t stop-won’t stop making new things to put in our eyeballs, announced yet another new show yesterday. It has no title, as yet, but it is co-created and produced by Amy Poehler, Natasha Lyonne, and Leslye Headland. Lyonne will star, and the pilot episode is written By Sarah • Sep 21, 2017 10:40 am
Movie Reviews and Previews The video game curse comes for Alicia Vikander After Assassin’s Creed’s failure, the video game curse remains unbroken, and now it is coming for Alicia Vikander. They have tried everything with video game movies, from 1990’s super-cheese to high fantasy (Warcraft) to artsy realism (Assassin’s Creed). None of it worked, and nothing in the By Sarah • Sep 20, 2017 01:35 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Jennifer Lawrence is the Black Widow Every time an Avengers movie comes out, the internet asks where the Black Widow movie is, but despite lots of platitudes from both Marvel and Scarlett Johansson, a standalone Black Widow movie has never happened. So Fox decided to make one with Jennifer Lawrence and call it Red Sparrow. The By Sarah • Sep 19, 2017 11:32 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Brie Larson joins the Avengers Following her directorial debut at TIFF—which Joanna liked a lot— Brie Larson was spotted arriving in Atlanta with Chris Evans. They’ve known each other for years (and both worked on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), and Joanna, the resident Brie Larson expert, informs me Larson is still engaged By Sarah • Sep 19, 2017 10:18 am
Top Reads I’m more disappointed in myself than Louis C.K. In 2012 rumors began with a Gawker blind item that identified a “beloved comedian” who, allegedly, jerked off in front of women, citing an incident at a comedy festival involving two female comedians. It was widely believed to be Louis C.K. (Gawker would eventually explicitly name C.K.) Those By Sarah • Sep 18, 2017 09:21 am
Movie Reviews and Previews The best comedy so far this year: The Death Of Stalin Armando Ianucci (Veep, In The Loop) is one of the best satirists working today—certainly the best working in narrative forms. His latest piece of satire is The Death of Stalin, a Cold War era comedy about, you guessed it, the death of Joseph Stalin. Or rather, it’s about By Sarah • Sep 15, 2017 02:13 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) lives at the end of a lonely road in rural Missouri, the only thing marking her way are three decrepit billboards. She buys the ad rights for the billboards and up go three violently red billboards asking the town police chief why her daughter’s murderer By Sarah • Sep 15, 2017 12:12 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Borg McEnroe The other tennis movie that played at TIFF is Borg McEnroe, which was the opening night film because…someone at TIFF really likes tennis? It’s a tennis themed year. If you’re a big tennis fan, you might enjoy Borg McEnroe for its recreation of the 1980 Wimbledon finals By Sarah • Sep 15, 2017 10:07 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Current War The Current War is about Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) scrambling to build the electrical grid that will power a nation. When the movie begins, Edison is already a famous “inventor”, known most recently for the invention of the lightbulb, and Westinghouse has made an enormous By Sarah • Sep 15, 2017 08:16 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Gary Oldman goes for Oscar in Darkest Hour Darkest Hour begins as Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign as Prime Minister on the eve of World War II, and Winston Churchill is selected as his replacement after the more popular Lord Halifax—also a supporter of appeasement—passes up the opportunity. It’s a bit of political maneuvering By Sarah • Sep 14, 2017 01:34 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lainey: Did we mention Nicole Kidman is riding a wave?) Yorgos Lanthimos makes films so surreal they are almost impossible to describe. He’s not a visual surrealist so much as an emotional surrealist, his stories taking you into bizarre worlds and twisted circumstances. A Lanthimos film is a horror By Sarah • Sep 14, 2017 10:47 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding I, Tonya sold during TIFF to distributors Neon and 30West, in a deal said to be $5 million. Lainey thinks that’s low, but it sounds about right to me—the natural effect of the disastrous summer is more cautious spending. Netflix was apparently offering $8 million—I ran across By Sarah • Sep 13, 2017 03:55 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews James Franco and the real Disaster Artist The Room is the most popular cult film of the last twenty years, frequently described as the “best worst movie ever made”, and subject of The Disaster Artist, a half-memoir, half-procedural about the making of the movie and the friendship at its center, both on and off screen, between Tommy By Sarah • Sep 13, 2017 12:15 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Shape of Water If you ask me to describe Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, the short answer is: Amelie f*cks a fish monster. The long answer, though, is that The Shape of Water is a beautiful, tender, sweet, sincere, sorta funny, definitely weird, deeply romantic film about love and By Sarah • Sep 12, 2017 03:24 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Downsizing Alexander Payne follows up his pair of family dramas with Downsizing, a movie that doesn’t quite know what it is. I would like to ask Payne if the attraction of Downsizing was REALLY the material, or was it playing around with the various technology required to make it, from By Sarah • Sep 12, 2017 11:12 am
