Tilda Swinton

The Eternal Daughter once again finds British filmmaker Joanna Hogg wrestling with ghosts of the past, albeit this time a bit more literally and with only slightly diminished returns.

While its overall style of excessively literal deadpan humour won’t be to everyone’s taste (especially horror fans going into this expecting a broader, gorier zombie comedy), The Dead Don’t Die is a silly, unpretentious, and admittedly slight bit of good fun from art house darling Jim Jarmusch.

The Souvenir, the superlative fourth feature from British writer and director Joanna Hogg, is one of the most uncomfortably realistic and heart rending looks at young love ever put to film.

Artistically and thematically indulgent to the point of becoming top-heavy and ponderous, award winning filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s alternatingly loose and constricting reworking of Dario Argento’s horror thriller Suspiria is one of the most interesting, and least entertaining misfires of recent memory.

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was a cultural trailblazer whose historical, cultural, artistic, and archaeological research changed perceptions of the Middle East. But like many intelligent women, Bell – who was once quietly regarded as the most powerful female in the British Empire – saw many of her contributions ignored, suppressed, or erased from public and private record. That’s staggering when one considers that she was hugely instrumental in the fight for Iraqi independence from British rule and basically redefined the borders in the region that are more or less still in use today. Filmmakers Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum aren’t content to merely look back on Bell’s legacy, but let their subject speak for herself in the well researched and assembled documentary Letters from Baghdad.

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.

There’s an inescapable landing between unimpeded childhood and the grown-up world with all of its resident angst and constraint, and it’s often aptly coined as the summer when everything changes. That middle place is Moonrise Kingdom.

Roy Thomson Hall was surrounded last night, September 5, as dreamy-eyed Brad Pitt fans took pictures and tried to get a glimpse of their favorite big screen star.

In town for the Toronto International Film Festival, Pitt walked the red carpet with the writing, directing and producing fraternal duo, Joel and Ethan Coen for their new film, Burn After Reading.

Director Tony Gilroy was joined by actors George Clooney and Tilda Swinton at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival for the press conference and red carpet for their latest film, Michael Clayton.