By John H. Foote WIDOWS (****) Directed by Academy Award winner Steve McQueen, the guiding force behind the Oscar winning Best Picture 12 Years a Slave (2013), this high octane caper film is a twist on both heist pictures, and in its own way noir. Dark, nasty, twisting, these are not the sort of people…
By John H. Foote BEAUTIFUL BOY (***) The love of a parent is something children will never understand until they are parents themselves, should they ever be so lucky. It begins the moment we see the newborn child, a ferocious sense to protect from harm is what we father’s feel, to love and nurture what…
By Nick Maylor (***) Joel Edgerton’s sophomoric directorial outing is a quintessential coming-of-age story that while very much steeped in Americana, should have a global appeal due to its intrinsic human themes. Starring alongside Edgerton (in a supporting role) are his fellow-Australians Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman; playing a Baptist pastor and his wife who…
By John H. Foote DESTROYER (***) Nicole Kidman looks rancid, moldy as the tough detective in Destroyer. Never before has the actress allowed herself to look so rough for a film, it is as though she is rotting from the inside out, the corruption attached to her very soul. Her skin is sallow, blotchy, her…
By John H. Foote A STAR IS BORN (****) Wow! Talk about knocking it out of the park! In his directorial debut Bradley Cooper creates the finest of A Star is Born films, far surpassing the 1976 version and eking by the Judy Garland version. Further, he gives the finest performance of his career as…
By Nick Maylor (***1/2) Official Film Synopsis: ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch is the third collaboration between award-winning photographer Edward Burtynsky and acclaimed filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier following Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark. In breathtaking tableaus, their latest documentary continues their exploration of industrialization and extraction in astonishing scale and perspective. I walked into the upper…
By Nick Maylor (***1/2) Paul Dano shows the patience, confidence and wisdom of an older, more experienced filmmaker for his directorial debut. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Ford first published in 1990 and the script was adapted by Dano himself and Zoe Kazan. When explaining why he chose the book, Dano…
By John H. Foote OUTLAW KING (***) Though made for the streaming company Netflix, Outlaw King, which opened TIFF last night at Roy Thompson Hall deserves to be, no, demands to be seen on a vast movie screen. The better to take in the glorious helicopter shots, the lush greenery of old Scotland, and the…
By John H. Foote Always a slow one as some of the major studios are still arriving. THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE (****) French Canadian director Denys Arcand has been a staple with TIFF for as long as I can remember. His films The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jesus of Montreal (1990),…
By John H. Foote TIFF begins today, the 26th consecutive time I have attended this massive festival, one of the rare film festivals that is also a public festival. Since its modest beginning in the mid-seventies it was insisted upon by the creators that it be for the people and has remained such ever since.…