Harmless, lavishly mounted, blandly forgettable and hastily assembled, the holiday trifle The Nutcracker and the Four Realms likely won’t be referred to by anyone as their favourite Christmas movie or adaptation of the titular well trod tale.
More of an insightful, nuanced, and comprehensive character drama than a detail oriented period piece, director and co-writer Wash Westmoreland’s Colette takes a historically significant literary figurehead and builds upon them a great amount of contemporary themes and parallels.
Since 1915, Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel, Anna Karenina, has been adapted eleven times for the big screen–and another handful of times for television–but that appartently didn’t stop director Joe Wright from tackling this complex story with playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, with mixed results.
Saturday was one of the better days for me at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and that’s really the way it usually goes because, for whatever reason, things tend to be front-loaded at TIFF. The first three or maybe even four days pack in more activity than most of the other days combined. While that means I often had to choose between a number of stars in different places, thanks to a decently organized schedule I ended up doing interviews, red carpets, and the chance to be in the presence of the great Stan Lee.
David Cronenberg walked the red carpet at Roy Thomson Hall for his latest film, A Dangerous Method, on Friday, September 10, with his daughter, Caitlin Cronenberg, and three of the stars of the film: Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, and Sarah Gadon.
Landing on home video this week: Rio swoops in with Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway voicing two rare, lovelorn parrots; Sean Connery stars as a clever monk in the murder mystery The Name of the Rose; and a look at the drama Last Night.
New arrivals in theatres this weekend include: Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides starring Johnny Depp as the one and only Captain Jack Sparrow, hunting this time for the fountain of youth; and the drama Last Night, starring Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington.
Available today on DVD and Blu-ray: director Alex Gibney explores the rise and fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer in Client 9; Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee star in the horror remake, Let Me In; two people try to survive an alien wasteland on Earth in the drama, Monsters; plus a look at Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield.
Opening this week in theatres: Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley star in the emotional drama, Never Let Me Go; Oliver Stone returns to direct the sequel to his classic 80s film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; plus a look at Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’Hoole and You Again.
