Despite some occasionally dazzling visual ingenuity on display and the efforts of a wonderful voice cast, Strange World is one of the most forgettable Disney animated efforts in recent memory.
Jake Gyllenhaal
No matter if you choose to look at it either as the closing of a major chapter in the Marvel Avengers storyline or the beginning of a new era, Spider-Man: Far From Home is a superbly entertaining and well done superhero movie by any metric.
Although it looked for quite some time like it would never see the light of day in Toronto area theatres, actor turned filmmaker Paul Dano’s exceptional directorial debut Wildlife, one of the best films of 2018, finally gets its proper due with a run at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
A unique, beguiling, and subtly humorous take on the western genre, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s adaptation of Canadian novelist Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers breathes ingenious new life into a cinematic artform that always feels like it’s on perpetual life support.
Miranda Richardson is always surprising. Even when you have an idea just how much she can inhabit a role, the next time you see her on screen you’ll likely still need a few minutes to fully accept that it’s Richardson who has vanished into another mesmerizing character.
Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho delivers another fantastical allegory with Okja, following similarly themed, but perhaps more action packed efforts like The Host and Snowpiercer. While those films were a lot darker and more relentless in their approach and aims, don’t let Okja’s overall gentility and flashes of kindness fool you. This is just as cutting, biting, and insightful as his previous works. It’s still not a subtle effort, and a lot of the messages can easily be seen on the film’s surface without much digging or unpacking, but that approach works well with Joon Ho’s tendency towards science fiction and the ethereal.
- Contests & Giveaways
Giveaway: ‘Southpaw’ Canadian Premiere in Toronto with stars Jake Gyllenhaal & Rachel McAdams
If you’ve always wanted to be in the same room as Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams, have we got a giveaway for you. The GATE and Entertainment One are giving away five double passes to attend the Canadian premiere of Southpaw this Thursday, July 9 in Toronto. Southpaw opens in theatres on July 24, 2015.
This whole week has been kind of a blur at TIFF. It’s been hard just finding time to get to everything, let alone blog about it afterwards, so I’m a bit behind, but at the same time I’m trying to process videos and write up reviews and interviews.
New arrivals on DVD and Blu-ray this week: Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the sci-fi thriller, Source Code, by Moon director Duncan Jones; plus a look at the drama Trust, starring Clive Owen and directed by David Schwimmer.
Opening in a theatre near you this weekend: Jake Gyllenhaal relives the past as he looks for answers in the thriller Source Code; James Marsden gets in the Easter (candy) spirit in Hop; and horror comes home in the film Insidious.