Movie Reviews and Previews Emma Stone & Ryan Gosling at their best in La La Land (Lainey: Sarah texted me right after the La La Land screening yesterday to tell me she liked it. “You liked a musical?” I started laughing. Because if Sarah couldn’t find a way to loathe a musical, it says something about the musical. This is why La La Land and By Sarah • Sep 13, 2016 10:25 am
TIFF 2016 Coverage TIFF Review: A Monster Calls AKA, the movie where everyone cries for two hours straight. Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Impossible, The Orphanage) commits another act of emotional terrorism with his latest movie about a little boy learning to grieve with the help of a semi-terrifying tree monster with a weirdly muscular butt. A By Sarah • Sep 12, 2016 06:05 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Moonlight Moonlight, the second film from writer/director Barry Jenkins, poses a lot of questions about race, class, identity, sexuality, masculinity, what it means to be black in America, to be gay in America, to be black and gay in America, and whether or not we’re ready to admit that By Sarah • Sep 12, 2016 05:22 pm
TIFF 2016 Coverage TIFF Review: Nocturnal Animals Tom Ford’s sophomore film, Nocturnal Animals, is a two-for-one deal. Movie A stars Amy Adams as Susan, a sad, lonely person, being miserable in sad, lonely rooms. Movie B stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Tony, a man bent on revenge in the high desert of West Texas. The sum total By Sarah • Sep 12, 2016 03:29 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral Ewan McGregor makes his directorial debut adapting Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, and while he doesn’t embarrass himself, he also doesn’t do himself any favors. Working from an adaptation by John Romano (The Lincoln Lawyer), Pastoral manages to feel too long and like not enough at the By Sarah • Sep 12, 2016 11:04 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Kate Mara in Morgan One of the all-time great good-bad movies is Deep Blue Sea, the movie about the super-shark that eats a bunch of people, and figures out how to turn an oven on in order to kill someone inside it. Deep Blue Sea is just the right amount of terrible, action oriented, By Sarah • Sep 09, 2016 04:22 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Certain Women introduces Lily Gladstone My first day at TIFF is a split result. On the one hand, I made it here without losing my phone this time, which is a MAJOR improvement over last year. On the other hand, the first film I saw, Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women is not awesome. It has By Sarah • Sep 09, 2016 11:34 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Jason Statham & Jessica Alba in Mechanic: Resurrection I was really hoping that Mechanic: Resurrection, the five-years-later sequel to The Mechanic, would be at least as insane as last year’s Transporter: Refueled. That movie, rebooted without original Transporter star Jason Statham, would have benefitted from retaining The Stath, so I was hoping that Mechanic: Resurrection would be By Sarah • Sep 08, 2016 03:12 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Johnny Depp Tupac movie The focus on TIFF is usually centered on the films premiering there, and their Oscar potential, but there’s an active film market going on as well, where movies and the rights to movies—an idea of a movie, really—are for sale. Among the films pre-selling distribution rights, a By Sarah • Sep 08, 2016 01:12 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Jamie Dornan in The 9th Life of Louis Drax (Lainey: Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan were in London yesterday to promote The Fall S3, even though I can’t find a release date. There is a trailer though. And you can currently see Jamie in theatres in The 9th Life Of Louis Drax. Her review is below. Both trailers By Sarah • Sep 08, 2016 12:20 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews “Let it rip” (Lainey: have you seen this video? It’s Matthew McConaughey speaking to the Texas Longhorns. Speaking might be the wrong word. He might need his own verb. He’s McConaughey-ing them. McConaughey: to jack yourself up. MM is jacking up the football team. And they won this weekend Sunday against By Sarah • Sep 07, 2016 04:40 pm
Ryan Coogler Ryan Coogler, artist above competition Earlier this year the Academy made good on its promise to become more inclusive by inviting an unprecedented number of new members, many of whom are women and minorities working in film. Among these was Ryan Coogler, writer/director of Fruitvale Station, Creed, and the upcoming Black Panther movie. Coogler By Sarah • Sep 07, 2016 02:34 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF 2016: The Tiffening TIFF kicks off this week, and I’ll be filing reviews along with Joanna and Kathleen. It’s a little bit of a weird year, The Birth of a Nation and Nate Parker dominating so much of the pre-festival conversation, but Venice got underway last week, and Telluride went down By Sarah • Sep 06, 2016 01:51 pm
Dumbass Meanwhile, Lena Dunham A couple weeks ago I wrote about Amy Schumer, again, and how she keeps tripping over problems with other women. And now, after a controversial interview/conversation included in last Friday’s Lenny Letter, the conversation is swinging back to Lena Dunham and her recurring issues with race. The interview, By Sarah • Sep 06, 2016 12:29 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers in Southside With You A fictionalization of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date, Southside With You is a film that straddles several lines. It’s part biopic, part romance, part fan fiction, and it mostly navigates those boundaries with ease, though there’s such a staged quality to it you can’t help By Sarah • Sep 02, 2016 01:26 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Robert De Niro and Edgar Ramirez in Hands of Stone Knowing absolutely nothing about boxer Roberto Duran, I was intrigued going into his biopic, Hands of Stone. Biopics often work better the less you know about the subject—dramatic license is less distracting—but then, if the biopic is too broad and messy, you can feel even more lost because By Sarah • Sep 02, 2016 12:42 pm
