TIFF 2016: the best, boldest, and most awards-ready new films – The Verge

Moonlight is a beautifully nuanced gay coming-of-age tale

2017-01-08T22:18:00-05:00

After a series of wins and critical accolades on the festival circuit, Moonlight won the Golden Globe for Best Drama. This story was originally published on October 21st, 2016.

Going into events like the Toronto International Film Festival, it's easy to predict a few of the hot-ticket hits - the movies that built major buzz at other festivals, or that come with particularly high-powered cast-and-crew lineages. And then there are films like Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, an artfully intense coming-of-age story which started as a promising word-of-mouth highlight and grew into the breakout must-see movie of the festival season, surpassing the dema …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A Monster Calls review: so good you won’t care that you’re crying

2017-01-06T14:45:00-05:00

A Monster Calls | Courtesy of TIFF

J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls premiered last year as part of the Toronto Intentional Film Festival, where it was just one of several movies that threw us into a state of intense emotional distress. Today it opens wide in the United States, and it hasn't gotten any less heart-wrenching since that first screening. This review originally ran on September 9th, 2016.

Let's just get this out of the way: I'm a movie crier. There's something about walking into a darkened room, watching a story unfold, and going through a cathartic experience with a bunch of strangers that's always been emotionally liberating for me. Sadly, it's also something that' …

Read the full story at The Verge.

La La Land review: a gloriously earnest Singin’ in the Rain for the 21st Century

2016-12-09T12:50:00-05:00

Full disclosure: it is just possible that La La Land is not for you. Damien Chazelle's follow-up to his Oscar-winning breakout film Whiplash got such rapturous responses in its early festival releases that it started to sound like a perfect movie, capable of winning over even the worst curmudgeons. (Further proof: It won over the Washington D.C. and New York Film Critics collectives, which both named it the best film of 2016.) But the early screenings were largely for a select crowd of determined festivalgoers and industry professionals who've chosen careers in making, marketing, or just talking about the movies. In other words, the people w …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Arrival review: a soulful sci-fi instant classic

2016-11-11T12:45:00-05:00

Early on in Denis Villeneuve's new film Arrival, it becomes pretty clear that for an alien-invasion movie, it's actually not all that interested in aliens. As 12 mysterious spacecraft land in different locations around Earth, we see college students getting texted with the news, newscasters describing it, and a linguistics expert played by Amy Adams taking it all in - but we don't see the ships themselves. Humanity's reaction is what's important, and it's only after the film has slowly, methodically established its priorities that the ships - or "shells," as they're dubbed - are revealed.

It sets the tone for what's to come: a mature, thoug …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Loving review: Jeff Nichols’ version of history is as quiet as the real thing

2016-11-04T13:47:00-04:00

The most fascinating thing about Loving, Jeff Nichols' drama about precedent-setting interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving, is the repeated revelation that no one in Virginia would have cared about their relationship if they hadn't had the temerity to get legally married. In Nichols' version of the story, Richard (Joel Edgerton, one of the best parts of Nichols' Midnight Special) and Mildred (Preacher's Ruth Negga, the best part of Loving) seem completely unaware of the legal issues they face as a white man and a black woman cohabiting in 1958 Virginia. They act like any other doting couple in public, and while their minor public dis …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Mascots review: Christopher Guest trades raucous humor for bland sincerity

2016-10-16T12:30:00-04:00

It feels odd to say this, but the primary problem with Christopher Guest's latest improvised-dialogue mockumentary is that it just isn't mean enough. And the reason that statement feels odd is because Guest's movies have always had a deep-seated affection for their openly ridiculous characters. They've never been about cruelty or contempt. But they aren't above having a laugh at insular communities - community theater in Waiting For Guffman, the competitive dog-show circuit Best In Show, and professional folk musicians in A Mighty Wind - and they find the hilarity in their characters' earnest, obsessive devotion to fringe pursuits.

Mascots, …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Birth Of A Nation review: Nate Parker’s awards-bait spectacle is familiar, but necessary

2016-10-06T12:59:00-04:00

It's actually unfortunate that The Birth Of A Nation was received with so much enthusiasm when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016. Eight months before its intended release date, the hype machine embraced Nate Parker's biopic as an Oscar front-runner. Its sympathetic take on American slave-revolt leader Nat Turner was touted as the triumphant fix to the Academy Awards' diversity problem. And the film was hailed as a monumental vindication for Parker, who spent seven years developing and independently funding his directorial debut before selling it to Fox Searchlight for more than $17 million.

But all the early buzz ba …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Director Andrea Arnold on the cross-country party that produced American Honey

2016-09-29T14:21:14-04:00

Andrea Arnold's new film American Honey is a fascinating, immersive trip across the American heartland with a crew of hard-partying 20-somethings, but it's also one of those projects where the behind-the-scenes story is as compelling as the one on-screen. Arnold, the British director of Fish Tank and Red Road, prepared for her first American movie with an extensive cross-country road trip. Along the way, she looked for the young people she wanted to cast in her film, finding them at beach parties and hanging out in parking lots. Arnold had read a 2007 New York Times article about mag crews - traveling groups of young people selling magazine …

Read the full story at The Verge.

La La Land starts its journey to Oscar dominance with TIFF’s People’s Choice Award

2016-09-19T16:53:47-04:00

The awards ceremony that wraps up the Toronto International Film Festival can feel like a weird grab-bag event. Toronto doesn't hand out the Best Actor / Actress / Director-type awards that dominate so many film awards ceremonies. Most of its individual awards are narrowly focused on local cinema or other specific areas of interest, set by the corporations or associations that sponsor them. Some of them come from small groups with big acronyms and specific agendas, like the FIPRESCI awards (from the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) and the NETPAC prize (Network for the Promotion of Asian Pacific Cinema). But the awar …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Our favorite films of TIFF 2016

2016-09-19T12:04:21-04:00

From the moment our boots hit Canadian soil for the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, we were rushing out dispatches, writing reviews, talking to filmmakers, and - most importantly - seeing lots and lots of movies. Some of the TIFF screenings were world premieres, others were making their domestic debuts, and others may already be in your local multiplex (or on Netflix). With this year's festival now behind us, we take a look at our favorites. These are the films we haven't been able to stop thinking about - and that you'll want to see as soon as you possibly can.

Nocturnal Animals

First of all, can we agree that this is one of the …

Read the full story at The Verge.