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: First Man Actor Skyler Bible on Working on Damien Chazelle’s Revelatory Space Drama
First Man represents the first time we’re getting a full-blown biopic about the legendary astronaut Neil Armstrong. Academy-award winning director Damien Chazelle‘s film, scripted by Spotlight and The Post‘s Academy-award winning scribe Josh Singer (based on the book by James R. Hansen) tells the story behind the first manned mission to the moon, with the focus squarely on Armstrong (Ryan Gosling). ...
TIFF 2018: Hans Zimmer on The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman 1984 & More
Hans Zimmer is no stranger to working with directors who have a ferocious passion. Yesterday, we published our interview with the Oscar-winning composer about his score for Steve McQueen’s thrilling crime drama Widows. Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score blended perfectly with McQueen’s film about three women navigating the criminal underworld in Chicago to pull off a ...
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: Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s A Star is Born Shimmers & Soars
We’ve seen a lot of really good films at the Toronto International Film Festival thus far, including the Halloween‘s return to terrifying form and Jason Reitman’s political drama The Front Runner. David Mackenzie’s bloody, muddy epic Outlaw King gave us Chris Pine as the 14th-century Scottish nobleman and rebel Robert the Bruce, and Shane Black delivered a funny, vicious buddies-versus-aliens ...
TIFF 2018: The Front Runner Depicts a Politician who Pays for his Infidelities
Pity the politician whose purity of purpose is undone by a puerile media (and pardon the journalist’s alliteration). This seems to be the overarching belief of 1988 presidential candidate Gary Hart (an excellent Hugh Jackman) in Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner. Hart had the misfortune of running for the highest office in the land just as the media ...
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: David Mackenzie’s Bloody Epic Outlaw King
Muddy, bloody and massive in scope and scale, David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King might be Netflix’s most ambitious, sprawling release to date. The historical epic stars Chris Pine as the Robert the Bruce, the 14th-century Scottish noble whose legitimate claim to the throne was contested by fellow Scot Lord John Comyn (Callan Mulvey) and ultimately nullified ...
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 2018: DP Pepe Avila del Pino on Bending Genres in The Kindergarten Teacher
Director of photography Pepe Avila del Pino lensed Sara Colangelo‘s daring The Kindergarten Teacher (Netflix, premiering on October 10, 2018), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal about the unusually intense bond Gyllenhaal’s kindergarten teacher Lisa Spinelli forms with a student, Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) she’s sure is a child prodigy. Written by Colangelo and based on a script by Nadav Lapid, ...
TIFF 2018 Announces First Slate of Buzzworthy Films
Toronto International Film Festival started rolling out their 2018 lineup today. Although not every TIFF selection is a world premiere, it is often the first time the press and the public get eyes and ears on award hopefuls. The immediate standouts include Beautiful Boy, A Star is Born, First Man, and The Hate U Give. ...
