TIFF 2018: The Tender Fragility of the Boy Erased Score
Boy Erased is a shattering portrayal of a family fractured by a challenge to their stringent religious beliefs. Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley, Lucas Hedges plays Jared, a young man from a religious family who begins to realize he is gay. Jared’s parents send him to a church-sanctioned conversion therapy camp where he ...
TIFF 2018: The Hate U Give Has the Potential to Empower a Generation
A teenage girl and boy who didn’t know each other were making friends in line for the 2nd screening of The Hate U Give at TIFF. “So, you already saw it?” he asked her. “Yeah, at the premiere with the cast and everything. They came out after to talk about it,” she said excitedly. This ...
TIFF 2018: Compassion Transcends a Harrowing True Story in Hotel Mumbai
Hotel Mumbai is searing. It is a full two hours of terror that seems nearly unbearable at times. Just recalling it, I find myself shifting in my seat, made anxious by the memory. It is the type of film that needs no 3D or virtual reality technology to immerse you fully. There is no way ...
TIFF 2018: Halloween Really is That Good
I have never belonged to the camp that believes something you truly love can be tarnished in the slightest by adding to it. Don’t like an adaptation of your favorite novel? Enjoy the book. Hate the film version of your favorite Broadway musical? No need to rip up the playbill. Loathe the sequel to your ...
TIFF 2018: The Predator Premiere Heats Up Midnight Madness
The Predator kicked off TIFF’s Midnight Madness series to a rowdy crowd last night. The production filmed in Vancouver and premiered to a welcoming Canadian audience. Many of the fans were willing to come alone to one of the festival’s farthest flung theaters to experience what Shane Black had cooked up. We were rewarded for ...
TIFF 2016: What We Loved
It's been a whirlwind of smart, senuous films at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Besides generating increased enthusiasm for Damien Chazelle’s luminous musical La La Land which jumped to the head of the awards season race after Emma Stone nabbed best actress honors at the Venice Film Festival, two smaller films created strong buzz among audiences ...
Female Directors Shone at the Toronto International Film Festival
One of the surprises and highlights of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was the number of films about women and the number directed by women. Sure, most were small indies. But in an industry where only 1.9 percent of the 100 top-grossing fictional films distributed in the United States from 2007 to 2014 ...
