TIFF Review: “Susie Searches”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 World Premiere It’s exciting when movies take ambitious swings, but sometimes the final product is too messy to be even admired. At the beginning of Sophie Kargman’s feature debut “Susie Searches” (based on her 2020 short of the same name), the story appears to be moving in a predictable direction, […]

TIFF Review: “Prisoner’s Daughter”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 Gala Presentation World Premiere Max (Brian Cox) has just been freed from a long prison sentence. But that’s about as good as the good news gets. The reason for him being granted the opportunity to spend the rest of his sentence on house arrest is because he’s been diagnosed with […]

TIFF Review: “Empire of Light”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 Special Presentations Perched on an English seaside, it’s glowing marquee towering above its surroundings, sits the Empire Theatre. It’s the early 1980s, and the Empire has seen better days, although vestiges of its former glory as a former movie palace are evident in its elegant lobby, two red-curtained screens, and […]

TIFF Review: “The Fabelmans”

Toronto International Film Festival Special Presentations World Premiere When we first meet Sammy Fabelman, he’s a little boy petrified of attending his first movie. It’s not exactly the image we’d expect to see of a character based on Steven Spielberg, one of America’s most acclaimed and prolific filmmakers. Sandwiched between his mother (Michelle Williams) and […]

TIFF Review: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”

Toronto International Film Festival Special Presentations World Premiere From the dreary coziness of autumn in New England to the sun-dappled shores of a Grecian island, writer and director Rian Johnson takes detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to the other side of the world on a new case in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” But […]

TIFF Review: “The Lost King”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 World Premiere, Special Presentations Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) is adrift. Recently denied a big assignment at work—she’s good at what she’s already doing, her boss says— and suffering from ME, a chronic fatigue illness that especially flares up in times of stress, she’s in need of something to rejuvenate her. […]

TIFF Review: “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 Midnight Madness World Premiere Weird Al Yankovic is no typical music artist. The shaggy-haired, Hawaiian shirt connoisseur musician/comedian built a career out of a niche area of the industry: parodies of existing songs and polka covers. So it shouldn’t be surprising that a movie about his life would be no […]

Review: “Three Thousand Years of Longing”

Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) inhabits the perfect role in a movie that’s a story about telling stories. She works in the equally fictional-sounding position of narratologist, specializing in myths and legends, and while she resides and teaches in London, at the start of “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” she’s arriving in Istanbul for a […]

Review: “Bodies Bodies Bodies”

“Bodies Bodies Bodies,” director Halina Reijn’s Gen-Z satire clothed in trappings of a whodunnit from a story by Kristen Roupenian and screenplay by Sarah DeLappe, opens on a tender note. The camera caresses young couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and their girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) as they caress each other, Sophie even going so far as […]

Review: “Prey”

This weekend, I was really jonesing to watch “Prey,” director Dan Trachtenberg’s prequel to/reboot of the “Predator” franchise featuring a female Comanche warrior as the main protagonist that was released on Hulu last Friday. And then I realized something: I actually hadn’t seen a “Predator” movie before. Not any of the sequels or Alien team-ups, […]