Another year, another TIFF. Due in part to its situation in the calendar year relative to other major international fests, and in part to its programming strategy, TIFF often works as more of an aggregator festival for major arthouse, auteur, and awards titles, assembling a collection of the best hits from Berlin, Cannes, Venice, etc. while debuting major, late-year studio titles as a ticket-selling technique. That means that headed into 2021 Toronto, we have already written on over 20 of…
- by InRO Staff Festival Coverage Film
TIFF 2021 — Dispatch 6: The Eyes of Tammy Faye, One Second, Sundown
The Eyes of Tammy Faye The rise of evangelism has had no small impact on the cultural and political dynamics of America today, having — partly a visceral reaction against the proliferation of civil…
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a reductive, self-congratulatory musical that deeply cheapens its real-life subject. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie…everybody, that is, except Amazon Studios, who have done little in the way of promoting a film…
The Eyes of Tammy Faye indulges the very spectacle it supposedly interrogates, betraying its aims and offering only a flattened take on its titular subject. The rise of evangelism has had no small impact on…
- by M.G. Mailloux Festival Coverage Film
TIFF 2021 — Dispatch 5: The Rescue, The Story of My Wife, Earwig
The Rescue Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have a knack for humanizing the most extreme situations and conditions on Earth. 2015’s Meru documented Chin’s attempt to climb the eponymous Himalayan peak, while the…
Cry Macho is yet another late-career effort from Eastwood deconstructing his own legacy, neither his greatest such effort nor a throwaway piece. Just why does Clint Eastwood — who, in case you weren’t in the…
Copshop finds Joe Carnahan at the top of his game, with the requisite violence, humor, and plot intricacies to sell this brand of genre bombast. Thanks to pandemic-related delays, we’re being gifted (or threatened with, depending…
Adapted from Stephen King’s slim debut novella, Brian De Palma’s Carrie is perhaps the quintessential modern witch narrative. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a bullied teenager raised by a terrifyingly devout mother, gets her first…
Memoria Frequent In Review Online contributor Evan Morgan once posited a more refined version of the slow cinema paradigm that has come to dominate festival films over the past two decades: hammock cinema, in…
The Nowhere Inn smartly softens its meta conceit with some winking humor, but doesn’t interrogate any of its ideas or rise above mere brand management. Returning to the scene of the crime, Annie Clark (who…
The Starling is merely the latest by-the-numbers “issues” flick in Theodore Melfi’s bland filmography. It seems that director Theodore Melfi has never met a subject where he felt he couldn’t sand off its rough edges…
