Toronto 2018: The Death and Life of John F. Donovan review
★☆☆☆☆ In 2006, 11-year-old Rupert Turner (Jacob Tremblay) strikes up a secret epistolary friendship with his TV star hero, John Donovan (Game of Thrones...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★☆☆☆☆ In 2006, 11-year-old Rupert Turner (Jacob Tremblay) strikes up a secret epistolary friendship with his TV star hero, John Donovan (Game of Thrones...
★★☆☆☆ Errol Morris tackles his most disturbing and slippery subject to date, Steve Bannon, in new documentary American Dharma. Morris paints a frighteningly apocalyptic...
★★★★☆ Gloria (Julianne Moore) is in her fifties, divorced and lives alone. A mysterious cat keeps finding its way into her apartment and the...
★★★★★ At first glance, the heist movie plot of Widows couldn’t be further from the arthouse work of director Steve McQueen’s early career. But...
★★★★☆ Acclaimed documentarian Werner Herzog spent a year interviewing the last President of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. Over the course of ninety minutes,...
★★★☆☆ When French war reporter Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) is released from being held hostage by ISIS, he insists that he’s fine, refusing help from...
★★★☆☆ In August 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk suffered two devastating explosions during a test firing of torpedoes. Many of the crew were killed...
★★★★★ If there’s a single design choice that could give us the key to Claire Denis’ challenging, esoteric science fiction High Life it’s the spacesuits....