Jay Stone 136 results

#TIFF2018: Skipping the lineups

Movies: #TIFF18, Toronto International Film Festival Our correspondent finds ways to see all the Donald Trump-themed films he wants, and with no waiting required By Jay Stone (September 8, 2018) TORONTO — Today we invoked another Toronto film festival rule for the retired critic, which is that we don’t stand in line for anything. This is partly because life is too short, and partly because you might not get in anyway and so you’ve used up some of your precious remaining minutes idly shifting from one leg to the other, indulging in the futile hope of getting a seat that will probably be in the front row, and standing behind people who talk in bored nasal voices about their film festival experiences. One tries not to listen, but one is human, after all, and one is in danger of grinding away all the remaining enamel on one’s teeth. The downside of this guideline is that one doesn’t get to see a lot of movies that everyone else is dying to see, which is perhaps not ...

TIFF 2018: Wandering in and out of this and that

Movies: #TIFF18, Toronto International Film Festival In which our retired film critic decides at the last minute what he wants to see and discovers he's chosen an eight-hour epic. By Jay Stone (September 7, 2018) TORONTO — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, or, in the case of the Toronto film festival, ceaselessly into the next lineup. People who come to film festivals to scout movies for other festivals, or who own theatres and are looking for something to show in them, move through Toronto’s cinemas like sharks, dipping their fins, as it were, into this auditorium and that. In a few minutes they can decide whether what they’re watching is worth the acquisition. Then it’s off to feed in the next hunting ground. Film critics, on the other hand, are expected to do some research, make a schedule, and head off to the likely movies. You stick it out because you might be interviewing the stars, or the director, and they might ...

#TIFF18 Top Ten to look for at a theatre near you

Movies: #TIFF18, Toronto International Film Festival On his 25th anniversary of covering the Toronto film festival, a critic decides he is ready for the quieter side of cinema.
3.5Score

BlacKkKlansman gets under the all-white hood

Movie Review: BlacKkKlansman Spike Lee's movie, based on the true story of a black policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, focuses on America’s enduring cultural history of racism.
3Score

Disobedience is an uncertain love story

Movie Review: Disobedience An art photographer and an Orthodox Jewish wife re-ignite a forbidden passion in a romance that never quite finds its footing

Movie review: The Rider is a slice of the authentic West

A rodeo rider has to leave the life he loves in this film — part documentary, part fiction — about modern-day horsemen  
3.5Score

Movie review: You Were Never Really Here almost isn’t

Joaquin Phoenix plays a tortured, almost silent hit man in Lynne Ramsay's moody thriller about the terrors of the past and the price of violence
4Score

Laugh Your Head Off at The Death of Stalin, Or Off With Your Head

Movie Review: The Death of Stalin Dark satire set in the Soviet Union in 1953 finds bleak humour in the betrayals, slaughters and political manoeuvering of a host of communist leaders
4Score

Movie review: The Death of Stalin is brutally funny

Movie Review: The Death of Stalin Dark satire set in the Soviet Union in 1953 finds bleak humour in the betrayals, slaughters and political manoeuvering of a host of communist leaders
4Score

Phantom Thread Pushes the Needle

Movie Review: Phantom Thread In what might be his final movie, Daniel Day-Lewis fully inhabits another of his difficult characters, this time a fashion designer who demands praise and silence.