Spaceman can seem intimidating to Joe Schmore scrolling through Netflix new releases: the cool intergalactic setting seems limiting, Adam Sandler is flexing his most sombre acting chops yet, and is that a giant spider he’s talking to? But when you boil the movie down to its basic fundamentals, Spaceman is not as challenging as one may think. This drama, which is pretty good to boot, is easy to follow and empathize with. This is, however,…
Dumb Money is supposed to educate viewers on how the stock market was overturned by amateur buyers who invested in the video store retailer GameStop, causing a disruption felt by Wall Street. The film is informative, though viewers are still required to know the basics of stock market culture before buying a ticket. However, what I find more interesting than the biographical intentions of Dumb Money is that director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) has made…
By: Jolie Featherstone Winner of the 2022 TIFF People’s Choice Award and one of the most anticipated films of the year, The Fabelmans gives us a peek-behind-the-curtain…er, camera of one of the most beloved director’s of all time: Mr. Steven Spielberg.
TIFF returns for another year, pushed along by their Tuesday announcement of gala and special presentation films. This first slate has the same level of films that frequently find their way into the earliest announcement: films that will eventually be nominated for Oscars, or be ignored for Oscars, or find their way into hot take articles about how they should have been nominated for Oscars.
By: Jessica Goddard Bong Joon-ho’s Okja is not only packed with insight, imagination, and action, but mesmerizing visual effects. While this movie bounces around tonally, it’s consistently engaging and gripping. There are moments of camp and farce and exaggeration (cough cough – Jake Gyllenhaal – cough) but they are fun and mostly harmless. The premise is well-conceived, and the frequent use of subtitles under Korean dialogue is never fatiguing.
By: Mark Barber Youth is Paolo Sorrentino’s follow-up to his Academy Award-winning film The Great Beauty, and his first English feature. I have not seen The Great Beauty, but the constant praise for its Felliniesque style makes sense, given that Youth is just as self-reflexive and oneiric as famed Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini’s films.
By: Trevor Jeffery Over the past few decades, the biopic has been more or less perfected and recreated over and over, to the point of boring predictability. While ultimately Love & Mercy is no exception, the film deviates from the structure enough to make the journey feel like a new, albeit shaky, perspective on the formula. Following Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the film jumps between the 20-something-prodigy Wilson in the 1960s (played by Paul Dano)…
By: Addison Wylie Life can imitate art and vies versa. For novelist Calvin Weir-Fields, he’s still trying to figure out where his encounter with Ruby falls. What an audience can be certain about though is that Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Ruby Sparks always keeps things interesting. Calvin (played by Paul Dano) is a neurotic character – as all movie writers usually are. From Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. to…