LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND doesn't successfully make the leap from page to screen
by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer
This is a really interesting film, though I’m not sure it fully comes together by the end.
TIFF2023: PICTURES OF GHOSTS, HELL OF A SUMMER, MOTHER COUCH!, STRANGE WAY OF LIFE and AMERICAN FICTION
by Billie Anderson, Staff Writer
Highlights from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, including a few big anticipated releases (including the 2023 People’s Choice and gay cowboys Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal) as well as some smaller scale, no-buzz films.
Tesla
Written and Directed by Michael Almereyda
Starring Ethan Hawke, Eve Hewson and Kyle MacLachlan
Running time: 1 hour and 42 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13, for some thematic material and nude images
by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport
“Everybody wants to rule the world…”
In terms of making a motion picture about the famed Nikola Tesla, filmmaker Michael Almereyda is practically perfect in every way. I can’t think of a filmmaker, except for maybe say, Miranda July that would be more fitting to tell the story of the eccentric inventor, Nikola Tesla.
Read MoreThe Truth
Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring Catherin Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke
MPAA rating: PG for thematic and suggestive elements, and for smoking and brief language
Running time: 1 hour and 46 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
After Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters (2018), his compassionate masterpiece about a makeshift family living on the margins of an unnamed Japanese city, it might have been reasonable to guess that his next film would continue his two-decade-long exploration of the fringes of Japanese society. Instead, The Truth, his follow-up feature, sees Kore-eda leaving his usual milieu to capture the tense reunion of a famed French actress and her screenwriter daughter (French film titans Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, in their first on-screen appearance together). Kore-eda’s first film set outside of Japan and not filmed in Japanese, The Truth is clearly distinct from the rest of his filmography, but lacks none of the heart and emotional complexity that make his films so moving.
Read MoreStockholm
Written and directed by Robert Budreau
Starring Noomi Rapace, Mark Strong, and Ethan Hawke
MPAA rating: R for language and brief violence
Running time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
by Ryan Smillie
In the mid-1970s, three bank robberies loomed large in the public consciousness. John Wojtowicz’s 1972 holdup of a Brooklyn bank was adapted into Sidney Lumet’s acclaimed Dog Day Afternoon. Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and subsequent participation in a bank robbery with the Symbionese Liberation Army served as inspiration for a significant subplot in 1976’s media satire Network (also directed by Lumet). Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson’s five-day standoff with the police after taking hostage four Stockholm bank employees was never dramatized into a Lumet-directed movie. Instead, it was through this incident that the term “Stockholm syndrome” was born, the phenomenon by which hostages form a seemingly irrational bond with their captors as a means of survival. Unlike Dog Day Afternoon and Network’s relatively quick turnarounds from newspaper headlines to silver screen portrayals, the forty-five years between the original Stockholm syndrome incident and Robert Budreau’s new film, Stockholm, provide a difficult amount of baggage for Stockholm to overcome.
Read MoreBlaze
Written and directed by Ethan Hawke
Starring Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Josh Hamilton and Charlie Sexton
Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language throughout, some sexual content and drug use
By Emmi Kurowski
“I don’t wanna be a star. I wants to be a legend. Stars burn out because they shine for themselves… Legends last forever.” – Blaze Foley
I have a confession. I’m a secret songwriter. There are songs swirling around these things called radio waves that I wrote. Nothing remotely well-known, you would never ever find them. But I wrote ‘em, and sold ‘em. I get royalties for them! However, I cast them far away and never listen to them ever again. Why don’t I care? Because they were…country songs. If you like country music, that’s great. I do NOT. I hate it. If you catch me listening to country music, well it ain’t me, babe. But you know what? I *get* it. I find it easy to craft a country music song, but I don't care about it. I’m basically turnin’ tricks fer cash. However, SONGWRITERS. Now that is something I care very deeply about.
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