Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck Mike Flanagan made his name directing horror films and television series like Oculus, Hush, Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Besides being one of the best genre directors working today, he’s the preeminent cinematic By Sarah • Sep 11, 2024 02:11 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Luca Guadagnino’s Queer Beat writers are notoriously difficult to adapt into cinema, probably something to do with the intense interiority of their narratives (some might even say, solipsistic). Luca Guadagnino, though, manages to turn William S. Burroughs’ early, semi-autobiographical novel Queer into an interesting piece of cinema unto itself, though this is a By Sarah • Sep 11, 2024 12:02 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Apprentice commits to the bit Well, here it is, the first trailer for The Apprentice, Ali Abassi’s film about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn and their f-cked up history, and the early years in which Cohn mentored Trump into the, er, man we know today. You know what? It doesn’t look bad. Looks By Sarah • Sep 11, 2024 09:47 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Angelina Jolie’s Without Blood Angelina Jolie is something of a frustrating filmmaker. She has no lack of technical skill, her eye is good, and she has a deft touch with actors, but her films never seem to add up to much. That is especially prevalent in her latest film, Without Blood, an adaptation of By Sarah • Sep 10, 2024 02:32 pm
Media Manipulation Blake Lively’s Feelings It Ends With Us opened in theatres a month ago yesterday and has gone on to become Blake Lively’s highest grossing movie. That’s typically an achievement to be celebrated but there really hasn’t been all that much celebration, at least not publicly. Because of the scandal that By Lainey • Sep 10, 2024 01:59 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Destin Daniel Cretton is taking over Spider-Man When TIFF is happening, I don’t like to think about anything else which, naturally, means Marvel is up to some nonsense. Whenever you least want to work, you can count on Disney and/or Marvel to force you to work. (I’m glad they seemed to have broken their By Sarah • Sep 10, 2024 12:26 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch Sometimes in my reviews I will cheekily dub a character “Lady Mom”, such as in my review of Unstoppable, in which Jennifer Lopez stars as a stereotypically underwritten mother character. “Lady Mom” is a derogatory shorthand for characters definable only by being female and mothers, with no real individual narrative By Sarah • Sep 10, 2024 10:16 am
Baby and Bump Obsession Angelina Jolie, the Movie Star at TIFF George Pimentel is the most well-known celebrity and special events photographer based in Toronto. He’s a fixture at TIFF, and works directly at and for the festival, given special access to roam the red carpet and go backstage at the screenings and premieres, to photograph the biggest stars. His By Lainey • Sep 09, 2024 02:29 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Unstoppable Here I am being a grump about a well-intentioned film again. But as with We Live in Time, the issue with Unstoppable is how extremely well-trod the genre is, and how the film does not find a way to inject new life into it. Unstoppable is an underdog sports drama By Sarah • Sep 09, 2024 01:48 pm
Break Ups JLo comes back to Toronto The last time Jennifer Lopez was at TIFF it was for Hustlers and on the strength of the strong reaction to the film in Toronto, she was, for a time, in conversation during award season as she was nominated for a Golden Globe. So she has good memories here, and By Lainey • Sep 09, 2024 12:15 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: We Live In Time It seems like every few years, we get a good old-fashioned weepy, usually about a romance doomed by disease, often cancer, that sunders a lovely couple, often when they are still young, and their fate feels all the more deeply unfair. The most recent entry into this very specific yet By Sarah • Sep 09, 2024 11:04 am
Movie Reviews and Previews TIFF Review: Kaniehtiio Horn’s Seeds On the heels of appearing in television series like Letterkenny and Reservation Dogs—where she plays the inimitable Deer Lady—and films like Alice, Darling, Kaniehtiio Horn is now making her feature directorial debut with Seeds, a thriller she also writes and in which she stars. Seeds is equal parts By Sarah • Sep 06, 2024 02:04 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews JLo: Not About The House Jennifer Lopez is expected in Toronto tonight for the world premiere of Unstoppable. Sarah’s review of this film is coming on Monday and even though JLo is involved, and we all know the noise that accompanies her, especially lately, we should definitely also be talking about Jharrel Jerome. He’ By Lainey • Sep 06, 2024 11:03 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetleju— Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice is the definition of a cult classic, a film that did okay enough in its own time only to go on to spawn a rabid, multi-generational fanbase. It’s Burton’s sophomore film, sandwiched between Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Batman, and is arguably the quintessential By Sarah • Sep 05, 2024 02:45 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Amy Adams is Nightbitch One of the films Lainey and I are both super looking forward to at TIFF is Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel of the same name. The trailer just dropped ahead of the film’s TIFF premiere, and in it, Amy Adams stars as a stay-at-home-mom By Sarah • Sep 04, 2024 01:52 pm
Douchebags Joaquin is asked The press conference for Joker: Folie à Deux happened today in Venice ahead of its world premiere with director Todd Phillips, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix in attendance. This is the role for which Joaquin won his Best Actor Oscar and anticipation is high for the sequel, especially with Gaga’ By Lainey • Sep 04, 2024 12:30 pm
