Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird have recently been praised for dealing seriously with their young female subjects, the filmmakers giving teenage girls’ lives the meticulous treatment that Hollywood usually reserves for, I don’t know, Breaking Bad, or films about dead presidents and accused Communists. We should celebrate, but also look back […]
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Some movies conjure up bittersweet recollections while emitting positive vibes. That’s all part of the cinematic experience — relating to subject material but still allowing the deepest cuts to bleed, and immersing yourself in uncensored memories from a more naive time, all in the name of personal growth. In college, I distinctly remember my cinematic […]
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Like all film fans, I was ecstatic when the lineups for the Toronto, Venice, and Telluride film festivals were announced. There were so many movies to sink my teeth into that I knew I had to go. So, I set up a GoFundMe to pay for my trip, and agreed to write a report for […]
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I skipped out on the big political event of the Toronto International Film Festival, the premiere of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9, a screening at which the director brought out Flint residents and Parkland survivors to drive home the immediacy of the documentary. Moore’s films are designed to galvanize audiences’ reactions into action, although given the […]
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Unlike the late entries in some horror franchises, The Predator doesn’t pretend any of its predecessors didn’t happen, but you don’t need to have seen them, either. Directed and co-written by Shane Black (who was an actor in the original 1987 Predator), this gory, quippy sequel assumes you’ll easily catch up if you’re not familiar with […]
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Based on Darcey Bell’s novel, which must have been inspired by Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, A Simple Favor is a funny, dark-edged, lurid mystery-melodrama starring Anna Kendrick as a naive stay-at-home mom named Stephanie Smothers who turns detective when her hoity-toity best friend Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) goes missing. Eschewing the “females in peril” formula for […]
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It’s unlikely (I hope) that the Wershe family of Detroit will remind you of your own clan. As portrayed in White Boy Rick, a compelling if familiar fact-based drama set in 1984-88, the Wershes are low-class ignoramuses, the type of family where the dad (Matthew McConaughey) and his junkie teenage daughter (Bel Powley) can be […]
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“Addiction is our new default,” quips Juliette Binoche’s Selena in Non-Fiction, a special presentation at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. She’s talking about the rise of binge-watching culture changing viewing patterns, but she might as well be referring to a good chunk of the films I saw at TIFF this year. There were films […]
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Mandy stars Nicolas Cage, with Andrea Riseborough as his wife, the two of them living a lumberjack’s life in the Pacific Northwest in 1983. Intercut with scenes of their idyllic existence, reading fantasy novels and talking about which planets are their favorites, are scenes of a cult leader (Linus Roache) and his dimwit followers occupying the […]
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Twenty years after Rounders’ release, the gambling narrative remains applicable in a world of post-20th-century hustlers. Written by the creative team behind Showtime’s Billions (Brian Koppelman and David Levien), John Dahl’s film captures the spirit of underground poker and the skillset needed for high stakes, face-to-face Texas Hold ‘Em competitions. In today’s world of FanDuel, […]
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In yet another Death Wish update teaching the valuable lesson that violence is the answer, Peppermint presents Jennifer Garner as Riley North, a Los Angeles woman who seeks revenge after her husband (Jeff Hephner) and little girl (Cailey Fleming) are killed by Mexican gangbangers. To prove the point, Riley and the girl have a scene early on […]
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