Festivals
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Toronto 2017: Dark River review
★★★★☆ Following this year’s The Levelling and God’s Own Country, the decaying farmlands of rural England appear to be replacing the urban concrete high-rise as the preferred setting for British social realism. Clio Barnard’s Dark River may well be the cream of this particular crop.Barnard, whose Yorkshire-centric filmography already includes doc-hybrid The Arbor and The…
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Toronto 2017: Darkest Hour review
★★☆☆☆ Unpopular with his own cabinet and under pressure to enter into peace negotiations with Nazi Germany, once he became PM Winston Churchill’s character became symbolic of wartime spirit, his rousing speeches among the most famous examples of political oratory. What a shame, then, that the portrayal of such a figure should be fumbled so…
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Toronto 2017: Jane review
★★★★☆ When now-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall went to Tanzania to study chimpanzees, she had no scientific qualifications or formal training. Armed with a passion for nature and her tenacity, she changed the way our closest cousins are understood by science.Brett Morgan’s Jane blends hundreds of hours of archival footage with a new interview with Goodall…
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Toronto 2017: Breathe review
★★★☆☆ At the age of 28, Robert Cavendish was paralysed from the neck down by polio. Given only months to live on a respirator, he beat the odds and became one of the longest living ‘responauts’. Andy Serkis takes on Cavendish’s story with biopic Breathe.Opening with Cavendish (Andrew Garfield) meeting his future wife Diana (Claire…
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Toronto 2017: I Love You, Daddy review
★★★★☆ Louis C.K. returns to the director’s chair for the first time since 2001’s Pootie Tang. Though not quite up there with his best TV work, I Love You, Daddy is a hilarious, awkward and boundary-pushing comedy about fatherhood, anxiety and the ethics of relationships.Fans of C.K.’s comedy drama series Louie should know largely what…
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Toronto 2017: Gutland review
★★★☆☆ His first film since 2011’s We Might as Well Fail, Govinda Van Maele’s Gutland is an atmospheric, gripping mystery set in the Luxembourg countryside. Arriving in a small village, German Jens (Frederick Lau) is looking for work as a farmhand – and to hide.Though he’s readily accepted by the locals – especially by flirtatious…
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Toronto 2017: Molly’s Game review
★★★★☆ Molly Bloom once ran the world’s most exclusive underground poker games, attracting A-list celebrities, hedge fund magnates and, eventually, the Russian mob. After she began raking her own operation she was indicted by the FBI along with the Russian mafia.The majority of Molly’s Game is told from inside the office of Molly’s reluctant lawyer,…
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Toronto 2017: Custody review
★★★★☆ Making its way to this year’s TIFF following an award-winning debut at the Venice Film Festival, French director Xavier Legrand’s Custody is a powerful domestic drama of a toxic father who continues to terrorise his family following an unsavoury marital separation. The minute we meet Antoine (Denis Ménochet), there’s a sense of menace. He…
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Toronto 2017: You Disappear review
★★★☆☆ Based on a novel by Christian Jungersen, Danish director Peter Schønau Fog’s second feature You Disappear is an intriguing, if not wholly satisfying, family melodrama, buoyed up by decent central performances and an unsentimental directness.Following an epileptic fit, Frederik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is diagnosed with a brain tumour. Though the prognosis is not terminal,…
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Toronto 2017: Occidental review
★★★☆☆ Screening in the Wavelengths strand at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, Neïl Beloufa’s bonkers Occidental may not offer much in the way of coherence or thematic depth, but its surreal and charming qualities are more than enough to recommend this bizarre farce.Two very shifty looking guys posing as Italians rent a room at the…
