TIFF Midnight Madness: "The Vigil", "Saint Maud", and "The Vast of Night"

Chris Feil takes a look at a few of the genre offering of TIFF's Midnight Madness section...

Safely the most terrifying Midnight Madness I’ve seen in my years at TIFF, Keith Thomas’ The Vigil is a visceral dive into Jewish tradition and the effects of antisemitic trauma. Dave Davis stars as Yakov, a man struggling with his mental and financial health after leaving his Hasidic community. For a little quick cash, he accepts an overnight position as a shomer (an Orthodox traditional role for watching over the recently deceased) to a former Holocaust survivor. With the widow (Lynn Cohen) asleep upstairs, Yakov is visited by a demonic force that antagonizes Yakov’s already broken spirit...

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TIFF Derring-Do Double: "The Aeronauts" and "Ford v Ferrari"

by Nathaniel R

Those magnificent men (and women) and their flying machines. What prompts people to build aerodymanic death traps in which to race at incredible never before accomplished speeds or go up up up to never before seen heights?  Today's double feature centers on just this type of man and their creations.  

FORD V FERRARI (James Mangold)
This very handsomely made film centers around a famous late 60s battle between the massive Ford Motor Company and the Italian boutique manufacturer Ferrari. How did Detroit's Henry Ford II come to battle Enzo Ferrarri in the European playground of Le Mans anyway? And how does the film get you to root for the Goliath rather than the David in this battle? That's the magic of this old fashioned well-paced movie. Older audiences might be familiar with this story but we weren't so it all played out like a fleet-footed and hot wheeled corporate drama mixed with inspirational sports movie...

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Celebrating Jennifer Lopez

by Murtada Elfadl

Hustlers opens today, so let's celebrate Jennifer Lopez. She's getting the best reviews of her career - including a rave from Chris right here. There's Oscar buzz. The movie is poised to become a substantial hit this weekend.

Answer these 3 questions for fun:

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Jennifer Lopez?

Is it that green dress that has its own wikipedia page? That infamous interview from the late 90s? She's a big big star who's been involved in many memorable cultural moments. Tell us what comes to mind...

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"Dear Ex" adds another queer film to the International Feature Oscar Race

by Nathaniel R

UPDATED 09/17
59 films announced thus far for the Best International Feature race at the 92nd Oscars, there are yet more LGBTQ entries...

One recent gay entry is Taiwan's Dear Ex (2018). You might remember the title because it won three Golden Horse Awards last year including Best Actress for the Hsieh Ying-xuan as the widow who realizes her husband had a male lover (Roy Chiu, nominated for Best Actor). It's currently available to stream on Netflix.

The other newest arrival is Memories of My Body from Indonesia which we haven't heard much about but involves male dancers who dress as women. It's kind of a surprising selection since it's been banned in some parts of the country and is under attack by conservative groups for "LGBT propaganda". SOUNDS GREAT, WHEN CAN WE WATCH IT? 

Memories of My Body

That brings the total of LGBTQ films to eight.

• Bolivia - I Miss You 
• Indonesia - Memories of My Body 
• Panama - Everybody Changes 
• Peru - Retablo 
• Spain - Pain & Glory 
• Sweden - And Then We Danced 
• Taiwan - Dear Ex 
• Venezuela - Being Impossible

UPDATE: France did not select the lesbian romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire which would have made this list more high profile and larger.

TIFF: "Waves" Crashes

by Chris Feil

Writer/Director Trey Edward Shults’ approaches his subjects with raw emotionality, with his first two features Krisha and It Comes At Night using visual acrobatics to reveal the tenser truths festering inside extreme family dynamics. His third feature Waves attempts this dynamic again while pushing the sensory experience extreme territories. Shults somersaults and twirls with florid visual vibrancy here, as aggressive a display of a director demanding we consider them with greater reverence as we have seen since Xavier Dolan. But despite its fevered sensory world and punishing human stakes, Waves struggles to align the two for the truly immersive experience of its ambitions.

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