#TIFF19 Going to the dogs, cats and bunny rabbits
Movies: #TIFF19
Animals may only occupy the frame for a few moments at at time, but their presence can define an entire character and slant audience reaction in subconscious ways. Critic Katherine Monk does a head count of the creatures great and small appearing at TIFF19.
Fascism, Feminism and the big buzz movies at TIFF19
Movies: #TIFF19
The Toronto International Film Festival is the equivalent of Christmas morning to a movie critic, and oftentimes, the most appreciated gifts are the ones in humble packages, writes critic Katherine Monk
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO — For film critics, the Toronto International Film Festival feels like waking up on Christmas morning. Pretty, promising packages bathed in sparkling light and and a tangle of reflected tinsel have arrived at the foot of the Bell Lightbox, just waiting to be torn open. They will either be loved and cherished, or completely forgotten, disposed of with the next day’s trash.
There’s no way to predict the reception, but after a few decades of scrolling through schedules, pondering publicists’ press releases, and reading between the glowing lines penned by festival programmers, you start sifting, and making lists.
The first list is always the buzz sheet: What movies are coming to the festival with some advance hype — either from ...
The dark recesses of TIFF19 and some great expectations
Movies: #TIFF19
Smelling something familiar in the air? It’s the gentle fragrance of auteurism, leavened with the sharp odour of Oscar bait. In other words, it’s the dawn of TIFF19. Jay Stone places his bets on Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman and Ed Norton’s directorial debut as a detective with Tourette’s.
By Jay Stone
SOMEWHERE ON THE WAY TO TORONTO — And here we go again, heading to the Toronto International Film Festival with a suitcase packed with black clothes and a head filled with dark hopes. Will our feet hold up? Can we stay awake through those evening screenings? Will we ever eat dinner before midnight? Did someone remember to pack the Lipitor?
Also: Will the movies be wonderful?
Some of them always are, but you never know: the hot buzz titles can land with a clunk, while the unknown thing you walk into because you have nothing else to do or the title grabs you — I always remember the unheralded documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business as the ...
Outlaw King reimagines tribal history, bares Pine’s parts
New on Netflix/Movie Review: Outlaw King
Chris Pine plays national folk hero Robert the Bruce in David Mackenzie's blood sausage of a costume epic that rewrites a few historical details to serve its dramatic cause, and quench our thirst for more Game of Thrones.
22 July appeals to rule of law, not emotion
Movie Review: 22 July - New on Netflix
Paul Greengrass’s restrained vérité treatment of the July 22 massacre at a Norwegian kids camp lassos truth of tragedy by showing us the banal face of evil and the chilling effect of fear.
#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 ...
Canadian film goes full frontal in Toronto
Movies: #TIFF18, The Toronto International Film Festival
This year’s lineup of Canadian film at TIFF represents more than a handful of familiar faces, it’s a coming-of-age moment for the whole industry.
Kathleen Hepburn Takes a Metaphorical Skinny Dip
Interview: Kathleen Hepburn
The first-time feature director went back to the family cabin in northern B.C. -- and deep into the wilderness of mother-child dynamics -- in Never Steady, Never Still
Mike White Updates Status Consciousness
Movies: TIFF17
The writer-director of Brad's Status is an indie darling, but he says he still wrestles with insecurity and ego issues because we live in a world of false comparisons
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO — “I think you have your epiphany, and then you forget about it,” says Mike White. “Then you remember it again. And you forget it again. It’s like you are inching toward wisdom. Or circling the drain.”
White seems to be doing all of the above, all the time, because his mind seems to radiate ideas. He creates tangent lines mid-sentence, leaving orbit, only to fall back to earth, chained by the full force of gravity.
It’s his ability to levitate and fall with giddy aplomb that makes his voice so unique and his characters so memorable, whether it’s Selma Hayek as massage therapist and healer in Beatriz at Dinner, Laura Dern as a recovering executive experimenting with faith in Enlightened, or the entirely childlike Chuck, from the indie landmark Chuck & ...
