Movie review: The Intern doesn’t pay off
In Nancy Meyer's new film, Robert De Niro is a 70-year-old intern in the on-line company run by Anne Hathaway, where selling clothing is secondary to handing out familiar advice
Movie review: Best of Enemies is galvanizing
A documentary about the 1968 televised debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal becomes a study of two fascinating men, but also of the way TV, and politics, were changed forever
Movie review: The Kindergarten Teacher
In this Israeli film, a teacher discovers a five-year-old poetry genius in her class and becomes increasingly obsessed with nurturing, protecting and owning his talent
Truth is stranger than TIFF
Real-life dramas make their appearance at the Toronto film festival, but sometimes in the movies, facts get in the way of a good story
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Truth occasionally makes an appearance at a Toronto International Film Festival, although usually not in the presence of a movie star (“You were great, Kevin!”) It pops up in a few movies, more or less; not just in documentaries, its natural home, but in the Hollywood versions of real-life stories, usually twisted ever so slightly to make it more interesting, or cinematic, or sellable. Sure, truth is stranger than fiction, but the challenge is to make it more lucrative.
The biggest “true” story at TIFF is Spotlight, the Tom McCarthy version of the real-life expose by the Boston Globe of the scandal of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests (the Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer prize for the story.)
Spotlight — the name of the four-person investigative team at the Globe that ...
Is Tom Hardy the best actor in the world?
The star of the new gangster drama Legend is a versatile actor whose roles range from the indomitable Mad Max the villainous Bane. Is there nothing he can't do?
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Tom Hardy might be the best actor of his generation.
He can do anything. He was the scary buff gangster in Bronson and then he was the scary but doomed hit man Ricki Tarr in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. Next thing you know, he’s Bane, the gigantic muscled villain in The Dark Knight Rises, growling through a leather mask. Hard to believe it was the same guy in Locke, a solo film about a man who’s responsible for the concrete in a British construction project, called away because a woman he once slept with is about to give birth to their child. Now he’s Bob, the compliant bartender in the gangster drama The Drop who turns out to be a guy you don’t want to screw around with. Then he’s the indomitable (but vulnerable!) hero in the post-apocalyptic desert in Mad Max: Fury ...
Mistress America a shaggy comedy
Movie review: Mistress America
Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have concocted a screwball story of friendship between two women that finds a beacon of hope in one of life's lovable losers
How to watch a movie
Notes for a talk given by Jay Stone at Das Lokal restaurant in Ottawa on Aug. 16, 2015 on the topic of “How to watch a movie.” Alcohol was served.
By Jay Stone
People sometimes say to me, “Hey, Jay,” — or, more frequently these days, “Excuse me, Mr. Stone” — “how does a critic watch a movie? Please be brief and give examples.”
My usual reply is, “No thanks, I’ve already eaten,” which is my fallback answer when I’ve totally stopped listening — or, more frequently these days, didn’t quite catch what they were saying. However, it’s a worthy question and I do have an answers. It’s brief and there are examples.
I started thinking about this in earnest in 1994, when I was at the Toronto film festival interviewing the film director Alan Rudolph. He was in town promoting his movie Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and we had an hour-long chat (film festival interviews used to be nice and long. They’ve now shrunk to 15 ...
Movie review: A reason to cry U.N.C.L.E.
The film version of the 1960s TV show stars a couple of bland leading men involved in a second-rate espionage thriller notable mostly for its cool costumes, writes Jay Stone
