Based on Garrard Conley’s memoir Boy Erased: A Memoir, writer director and Joel Edgerton does fine work in adapting from the source material a story of familial and internal strife that intrinsically works onscreen in the micro scale opposed to the macro.…
‘Widows’ Review: Viola Davis Shines in this Reinvigorating Take on the Heist Thriller | TIFF 2018
Viola Davis continues to perform on a level all her own in Steve McQueen’s taut and thrilling Widows. A socio-political heart pounding heist, McQueen demonstrates his impressive versatility with this 12 Years a Slave follow up, proving that he can and will tackle…
‘A Star is Born’ Review: This Musically Inclined Romance is Uneven but Undoubtedly Evocative| TIFF 2018
A Star is Born,as the fourth iteration of this story, needed to breathe new life into an old story, an idea that the film even references when talking about the familiar and repetitive nature of music. There are only so…
‘Beautiful Boy’ Review: Timothée Chalamet Astonishes in Painful, Messy and True Story About Addiction | TIFF 2018
Early in Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy, based on the best selling novels by David and Nic Sheff, David (Steve Carrell) is told that relapse is to be expected in addiction recovery – even thought of as one of the…
Movie Review: The Secret Scripture
Buried far, far beneath the empty hubris and soapy melodrama of the thin plot in Jim Sheridan’s The Secret Scripture, there’s a fascinating film about women’s rights in 1920’s Ireland or, better said, the lack there of. Instead, the film pointedly goes…
TIFF Review: Euphoria
To read further TIFF 2017 coverage, go here. The English-language debut of Sweden’s Lisa Langseth and her third collaboration with actress Alicia Vikander, their latest outing together suffers from a tonally inconsistent script. Despite two powerful, if distinctly different, performances…
TIFF Movie Review: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
To read further TIFF 2017 coverage, go here. Director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) possess two crucial understandings of what creates excellence in character building. The first, is the belief in the duality of human nature and that the version…