Good Kill Special Presentations Voltage Pictures had a huge hit six years ago with The Hurt Locker. This year they deliver a very different kind of war movie with Good Kill. Ethan Hawke plays Tommy Egan, an ex fighter pilot who now fights terrorists 7000 miles away as a drone pilot based in Las Vegas. While the bomb […]
The Imitation Game Special Presentations Benedict Cumberbatch carries the day in a role that feels almost custom made for the sort of droll loner act he has been perfecting across his past several films and his hit TV series, Sherlock. Only this time, he’s certain to get some award season buzz because he’s playing noted […]
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films Midnight Madness Genre buffs need no explanation as to what Cannon Films is. The biggest action, horror, skin, and exploitation outlet from the 70s through the early 90s has become synonymous with some of the strangest, goofiest, most exciting, action packed, and sometimes strangely artful films […]
Top Five Special Presentations Chris Rock has been appearing in films since the 80s, but they’ve rarely ever managed to capture what it is that makes him special. Much like Richard Pryor before him, Hollywood producers saw a brilliant, honest, and vicious stand-up comic and cast Rock in mugging slapstick roles unsuited to his talents. […]
While We’re Young Special Presentations Noah Baumbach’s bitter little filmmaking pill has never been wildly popular, but he’s been surprisingly consistent enough to earn and maintain a healthy cult of support. That small audience of angry people with a sweet tooth for bitter comedy should be quite pleased by the writer/director’s latest effort, particularly after […]
Seymour: An Introduction TIFF Docs While Ethan Hawke is certainly more well-known for acting work in films from Dead Poets Society to the recent, brilliant Boyhood, in Seymour: An Introduction, he steps behind the camerafor a documentary about pianist Seymour Bernstein as he discusses a career and a life overtaken by music. Bernstein isn’t terribly […]
Hyena Vanguard “This isn’t the 80s,” says Michael Logan’s superior, his contemporary way of groaning, “you’re a loose cannon, Logan, but damn it you get the job done.” Logan (A Field in England’s Peter Ferdinando), does get a job done, he gets a lot of people busted, but he doesn’t do it with any good […]
Luna Vanguard Dave McKean is one of the architects of the 90s; a dark illustrator, his busy but whimsical images set a tone for many brooding album covers and drama students. When he took his skills to task as a director for the first time in 2005, with MirrorMask, it felt like a bit much, […]
Backcountry Discovery A devil-may-care city boy (Jeff Roop) brings his girlfriend and potential fiancée (Missy Peregrym) on a camping trip to a provincial park that he insists he knows like the back of his hand since he grew up in the area. Surprise, surprise, he’s stubborn and doesn’t know what he’s doing and her resourcefulness […]
Wild Gala Wild is a stunningly shot, exceptionally written film from Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée, with a great leading performance from Reese Witherspoon as a woman trying to find herself by any means necessary. After an emotional tragedy, Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) sets off on a relentlessly self destructive path that nearly kills her. In order […]
The Forger Gala John Travolta stars as an art forger and single dad about to embark on one last gig so he can spend some quality time with his dying son in this passable potboiler that’s more of a character study than a thriller or a heist film. Ray Cutter (Travolta) is a convicted felon […]
The Good Lie Special Presentations Nothing at all like its extemely misleading marketing campaign, the refugee and immigration drama The Good Lie proves that Canadian filmmaker Philippe Falardeau (the Oscar nominated Monsieur Lazhar) can make the leap to Hollywood without sacrificing his voice or artistic integrity. Following the Sudanese civil war that began in the […]
Tales of the Grim Sleeper TIFF Docs By now, the Nick Broomfield documentary formula is set in stone. He picks a subject, heads to where it happened with minimal research, shoots everything, and ends up with a movie that is about his discoveries where even the failures are part of the story. Tales of the […]
Featuring gorgeous backdrops and exquisitely framed cityscapes, the final program in the Short Cuts International series is filled with cinematic treats of film and animation, and also includes a unique use of 3D. The 3D technique is used by director Matthu Placek in his sprawling crane shot examination of the then abandoned future home of […]
The fourth program of TIFF’s International Short Cuts programming brings a focus on some individual narratives that use colorful and inventive techniques to examine such age old motivations as vengeance, humor and isolation. (Null) is a hyper stylized look at the day and evening of a female, all taken from the narrow focus of a […]
