Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Program Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong movie, The Program, is not the worst movie I’ve seen at TIFF—that’s a toss-up between London Fields and Our Brand is Crisis—but it is probably the most disappointing. Frears has a knack for biopics (see also: Philomena, The Queen), but The Program By Sarah • Sep 17, 2015 10:56 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Beasts of No Nation I heard some industry folks at TIFF sh*t-talking Netflix for allegedly overpaying for Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, Netflix’s first original feature film. They were of the opinion that Netflix will keep overpaying for movies and go bust, but just a few years ago TV executives By Sarah • Sep 17, 2015 09:56 am
Movie Reviews and Previews At the very least, The Jungle Book looks gorgeous I have serious reservations about bringing Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book back, which I discussed last year when it came out that there are TWO new versions of the story coming to the big screen. Well, we now have a trailer for one of those adaptations, the one from By Sarah • Sep 16, 2015 01:50 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Emma Watson in Colonia Imagine Argo, but worse and about Nazis, and you have Emma Watson’s new movie, Colonia. Set during the 1970s coup of General Pinochet in Chile, Colonia is a thriller (“thriller”) about a young couple in love escaping a prison-cult. It’s the political thriller version of Equals (click here By Sarah • Sep 16, 2015 12:41 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Family Fang I like Jason Bateman’s second film as a director more than I do his first, Bad Words, but then, I didn’t care much for Bad Words. If this is a math equation it would be expressed like this: Bad Words – sh-t brown light filter + Christopher Walken x Nicole By Sarah • Sep 16, 2015 11:31 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Truth Truth is Spotlight’s more depressing cousin, another investigative procedural but this time, the outcome is less celebratory. Based on her own book, Truth tells the account of Mary Mapes, the 60 Minutes producer who oversaw the story on then-President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The By Sarah • Sep 16, 2015 10:43 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Equals Drake Doremus’s previous feature films are all concerned with love, and in Equals, his latest feature, it’s no different except that this time he comes at notions of sex, intimacy, and love from the angle of a society that typically lives without those things. Set in a post-apocalyptic By Sarah • Sep 15, 2015 11:25 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Spotlight Hands down the best movie I’ve seen at TIFF, Spotlight is a phenomenal film, absolutely pitch perfect from start to finish. This could be my whole review—this film is flawless and if it doesn’t affect you, then you are a monster. It will break your heart. It By Sarah • Sep 15, 2015 09:28 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Black Mass It’s not that Black Mass is bad—it’s too technically proficient to be called “bad”—it’s that it’s…cold. It is unengaging. Yes, Johnny Depp is very good as Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, but we’ve seen him do so many transformations at this point By Sarah • Sep 15, 2015 08:55 am
Dumbass Matt Damon opens mouth, world face palms Matt Damon and Ben Affleck used to have a show called Project Greenlight, in which they and a panel of filmmakers chose a script and a director and set them loose with a small budget to make a movie. It aired three seasons on Bravo from 2001-2005, and the only By Sarah • Sep 15, 2015 08:04 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: I Saw The Light I had high hopes for the Hank Williams biopic, I Saw the Light, because Hank Williams’s life is inherently cinematic—gifted musician with a meteoric rise, tragic death, and a drama-ridden life in between—and also because Tom Hiddleston plays Williams. Hiddleston is a brilliant mimic and a good By Sarah • Sep 14, 2015 12:01 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: About Ray I feel bad sh*tting on About Ray, but…I’m going to sh*t on it—it’s not very good. Starring Elle Fanning as transgender teen Ray and directed by Gaby Dellal (Looking), About Ray is more about everyone else talking about Ray than Ray himself. It’s By Sarah • Sep 14, 2015 11:10 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Martian The last time I outright enjoyed a Ridley Scott movie, no reservations, no qualifications or conditions, was American Gangster in 2007. Since then he’s given us Grimdark Robin Hood, the space-magic bullsh*t of Prometheus, and the super messy but ambitious The Counselor, plus some other stuff no one By Sarah • Sep 14, 2015 09:19 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Our Brand Is Crisis This f*cking movie. I hate this movie. It’s cynical garbage motivated solely by Sandra Bullock’s desire to win another Oscar. You know she’s in Oscar-mode because she’s gone blonde, just like she did for The Blind Side. I have a high threshold of pain when By Sarah • Sep 14, 2015 08:13 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Jake G in Demolition Jake Gyllenhaal has been on a TREMENDOUS run these last few years, throwing down ace performance after ace performance, including a Hall of Fame-level Cinematic Weirdo in Nightcrawler’s Lou Bloom. In Jean-Marc Vallee’s Demolition he offers another take on the Cinematic Weirdo, this time starring as Davis, a By Sarah • Sep 11, 2015 03:34 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: The Assassin My first day at TIFF got off to a rocky start when I lost my phone at the airport, spent all afternoon trying to find a replacement phone in Canada and then sat through Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, which has just been chosen as Taiwan’s entry for this By Sarah • Sep 11, 2015 11:07 am
