TIFF 2018: 43nd Toronto International Film Festival

by Andrew Powell
  • Review: The Old Man & the Gun

    by Andrew Parker

    If The Old Man & the Gun truly represents veteran actor Robert Redford’s cinematic swan song, then writer-director David Lowery has gifted the performer with charming send off that makes the most of his trademarked …

  • Review: The Sisters Brothers

    by Andrew Parker

    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 …

  • Review: A Star is Born

    by Andrew Parker

    Actor Bradley Cooper’s feature directorial debut A Star is Born, a retelling of the well worn tale about a relationship between a washed-up performer and an up-and-coming talent, is an assured, electrifying, and expertly crafted …

  • Review: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

    by Andrew Parker

    Canadian documentarians Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky continue their examinations into the various ways mankind has irreparably damaged the environment with Anthropocne: The Human Epoch, a nod to a new and current …

  • Review: Colette

    by Andrew Parker

    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 …

  • Review: Quincy

    by Andrew Parker

    Quincy Jones has lived a life so rich, complicated, and noteworthy that one could fill a yearlong television series with his exploits, so the single two-hour documentary Quincy can only do so much to contain …

  • Review: Life Itself

    by Andrew Parker

    Dan Fogelman’s almost admirably insane Life Itself serves as a deep dive into the psyche of the creator of television’s hit series This is Us.

  • Review: Fahrenheit 11/9

    by Andrew Parker

    Fahrenheit 11/9, the latest long-form polemic from documentarian and pundit Michael Moore, definitely earns its sequel insinuating title, but not in ways that most viewers will be expecting.

  • Review: The Land of Steady Habits

    by Andrew Parker

    While some could read The Land of Stead Habits, the latest feature from writer-director Nicole Holofcener as a tale of one man’s mid-life crisis, it’s more a pointed, poignant, and frequently funny indictment of privilege …

  • Review: White Boy Rick

    by Andrew Parker

    The 1980s set gangster flick White Boy Rick gets off to a fast paced, but rocky start before eventually settling into a predictable, but more assured groove.

  • TIFF 2018 Review: 22 July

    by Andrew Parker

    Writer-director Paul Greengrass is very familiar with mounting reality based stories of everyday people suffering through physical and emotional tortures (Captain Philips, United 93, Bloody Sunday), but his latest effort 22 July mines real life …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

    by Andrew Parker

    The rare example of a perfect film, Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk considerably bests the filmmaker’s already strong work on the award winning Moonlight. If Moonlight was one of …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: A Star is Born

    by Andrew Parker

    Bradley Cooper’s first feature A Star is Born is as great as the pre-release hype suggests. The time honoured story of a washed up musician taking an up and coming superstar under their romantic wing …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Halloween

    by Andrew Parker

    Eclectic director and co-writer David Gordon Green proves to be a great fit to reignite the Halloween franchise with this sufficiently spooky, admirably gory, and exceptionally polished chapter in the ongoing battle between an unstoppable …

  • Review: Wild Rose

    by Andrew Parker

    Irish actress Jessie Buckley delivers the biggest star making performance of the year in director Tom Harper’s electrifying crowd pleaser Wild Rose. As budding 23 year old country singer Rose-Lynn Harlan, Buckley establishes a commanding …

  • TIFF 2018 Short Takes: Zack Russell on 7A

    by Andrew Parker

    Filmmaker, writer, and stage veteran Zack Russell didn’t exactly know that he was creating a dystopian film when he set out to make his latest short, 7A, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Manto

    by Andrew Parker

    Nandita Das’ biopic of renowned and controversial Indian and Pakistani author Saadat Manto is a fairly straightforward, but well made look at a creative man whose career and personal life suffered greatly following the subcontinent’s …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Jirga

    by Andrew Parker

    An uncompromised and visceral tale of a soldier’s quest for forgiveness, the Australian drama Jirga is a bit of a modern marvel when one thinks about how the film was even able to get made …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

    by Andrew Parker

    Canadian documentarians Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky continue their examinations into the various ways mankind has irreparably damaged the environment with Anthropocne: The Human Epoch, a nod to a new and current …

  • Review: Dogman

    by Andrew Parker

    Equally grim and manipulative, Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone’s true crime inspired morality tale Dogman is a frustratingly obvious, paper thin, and wholly indulgent entry into the Gomorrah and Reality director’s cinema of misery.

  • TIFF 2018 Review: El Angel

    by Andrew Parker

    Loosely based on the life of one of Argentina’s most notorious serial killers, filmmaker Luis Ortega’s El Angel doesn’t boast a lot of narrative depth or character, but it certainly succeeds through forceful storytelling form …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Let Me Fall

    by Andrew Parker

    Inspired by the true life recollections of addicts and their families, Icelandic filmmaker Baldvin Z’s harrowing and overwhelmingly emotional drama Let Me Fall eschews cheap clichés surrounding drug dependency in favour of a more delicately …

  • Review: The Fall of the American Empire

    by Andrew Parker

    A bristling, timely, and highly entertaining return to form for Quebecois filmmaker Denys Arcand, The Fall of the American Empire stands nicely alongside The Barbarian Invasions and The Decline of the American Empire as some …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Dead Souls

    by Andrew Parker

    Clocking in at over eight hours and cut down from over 600 hours of footage, Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s Dead Souls is a daunting cinematic achievement worth wrestling with. A work of pure, undiluted empathy …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Sharkwater: Extinction

    by Andrew Parker

    Completed posthumously following filmmaker and activist Rob Stewart’s tragic and sudden death during a diving accident last year, Sharkwater: Extinction once again finds the director trying to espouse the evils of illegal shark fin poaching …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Endzeit – Ever After

    by Andrew Parker

    Made by an almost exclusively female cast and crew, Carolina Hellsgård’s German-Swedish post-apocalyptic thriller Endzeit – Ever After combines subtle social commentary with stunning cinematography for a nifty and restrained riff on zombie movie tropes. …

  • TIFF 2018 Review: Tito and the Birds

    by Andrew Parker

    The animated Brazilian parable and fantasy Tito and the Birds crafts dazzling images through a combination of line drawings, painterly brush work, and computer animation in service of a story that blends childlike imagination with …

  • There are few experiences at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival that will be more transfixing, curious, and outright hilarious as Roney’s debut short Glitter’s Wild Women, which has its world premiere in TIFF’s Short …

  • TIFF 2018 Short Takes: Ian Harnarine on Caroni

    by Andrew Parker

    After winning the award for Best Short Film in 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival with Doubles with Slight Pepper, filmmaker Ian Harnarine returns to TIFF this fall with the world premiere of Caroni, …

  • TIFF 2018 Short Takes: Claire Edmondson on EXIT

    by Andrew Parker

    The powerful short film EXIT (which makes its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September) depicts an important and life changing day in the life of an anguished and conflicted woman.

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