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Monday
Sep172018

YNMS: Mary Poppins Returns

Movie trailer step in time.
Movie trailer step in time.
Movie trailer step in time.
Never need a reason, never need a rhyme
Movie trailer step in time!

It's finally here! After the jump the Mary Poppins Returns trailer and our Yes No Maybe So™ breakdown.

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Monday
Sep172018

Showbiz History: Sophia's Proxy Wedding, Emma's "Easy A"

7 random things that happened on this day, September 17th, in showbiz history...

1931 Anna Maria Louisa Italiano born in The Bronx. She's goes on to become Anne Bancroft, one of the all time greats of stage and screen.

 1957 Here's a truly odd bit of trivia. Sophia Loren was married by proxy on this day. Two male attorneys stood in for her and producer Carlo Ponti (who gave her stage name and groomed her public image -- they first met in 1950 when Sophia was only 16). Ponti was not legally divorced from his previous wife so the marriage was annulled to escape bigamy charges and then they married again in 1966, but legally this time; they remained married for the rest of his life! But how crazy, right?

1963 The Fugitive premieres on ABC...

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Sunday
Sep162018

TIFF Delivers an Oscar bound-surprise with "Green Book" 

by Nathaniel R

Go figure. The winner of TIFF's "Grolsch's People's Choice Award" is a film that literally none of my TIFF airbnb troupe (Joe Reid, Chris Feil, Nick Davis and I) saw during our 10 day stretch in Ontario. Green Book by Peter Farrelly (yes, of Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary fame) took TIFF's most coveted prize. (the runners up were Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma). So we'll have to add it to the Best Picture chart when we update this week (we're looking at probably Wednesday night for across the board updates to reflect all the festival madness).

In the entire 40 year history of this prize, stretching From Girlfriends (1978) through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), 16 of the winners went on to Best Picture nods at the Oscars. The 40 winners also include 7 future Best Picture winners, 6 future Best Foreign Language Film winners, and 2 future Best Documentary Feature winners. The Oscar correlation is getting stronger all the time, too...

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Sunday
Sep162018

TIFF Review: "Gloria Bell"

by Chris Feil

Naturally, English language remakes of already great (and recent, at that) foreign language treasures are a dubious business. But Sebastián Lelio’s revisiting of his own Gloria, formery led by the immaculate Paulina García, presents a convincing alternative to other misguided or less effective attempts. Now titled Gloria Bell and starring Julianne Moore, this version is one not only worthy of its predecessor, but an equal that may even edge it out ever so slightly...

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Sunday
Sep162018

Women on the Verge at TIFF: abandoned wives, kindergarten teachers, and activists

by Nathaniel R

Why does anyone make movies about men? No, really. Female characters are inherently more fascinating. That's not only because they're allowed a wider range of feeling onscreen due to repressive gender norms which discourage men from embracing a full range of emotion, but because women's stories are more infrequently told and, thus, fresher. Herewith four recommended movies about women on the verge of either nervous breakdowns, or major crimes. 

WILDLIFE and WIDOWS
Chris has already reviewed these intense dramas about abandoned wives here and here. We'll have plentiful opportunities to discuss them during Oscar season but I just want to second his surprise rave of Wildlife  because it's spot-on. I'll admit, though, that I'm ever so slightly cooler on Widows than I initially thought. I attended the very starry premiere (seriously that cast!) and the screening and movie were both so electric that I was like 'favorite of the fest. wow' But it doesn't linger in quite the way you'd expect given how exciting it is in the moment (it's going to be a big hit). Still, it's the film from TIFF that I'm most eager to see a second time. 

WOMAN AT WAR
Woman at War is the story of a childless choir director Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir in a no-nonsense charismatic turn) who moonlights as a fearless environmental activist in her spare time. Halla has caused enormous problems for a local corporation by knocking out their power again and again. She evades capture with impressive physical skill, careful planning, and paranoid routines; there's a funny recurring shot in which she places her cel phone in a refridgerator before speaking to friends in person about secretive matters. Just as her corporate sabotage is beginning to make real world waves, she learns that she's going to be a mother via adoption proceedings she began years prior. How can she do both?

The Icelandic writer/director Benedikt Erlingsson arrived with Of Horses and Men, an indelible Oscar submission in 2013. This tense, twisty, and provocative sophomore feature is even better and confirms that that was no mere fluke. He's a singular talent, able to imbue sly visual and narrative humor with idiosyncratic depth of feeling. His boldest move in Woman at War, one that risks being a distracting comic gimmick but somehow elevates the picture into the sublime, is an on-camera orchestra. They give the picture a score that doubles as both interior monologue and greek chorus, commenting on but also entangled in Halla's complex possibly disastrous passions. Highly recommended!

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER
Maggie Gyllenhaal is terrific and troubling (no surprise. That's kind of her thing) as a teacher who becomes obsessed with a student. Her favorite little student composes beautiful poems on the spot with little warning that the muse has struck. Fearing that his prodigious talent will wither and die if it's not nurtured she begins to step outside her proper place in the classroom and walks right into his life outside. For all of Mrs Spinelli's madness, the complicating factor is how right she often is when her behavior is all wrong. Despite the fascinating central character there's something that feels incomplete or slight about this intriguing drama that's remained difficult to put a finger on. Regardless, the final scene haunts and a great ending can go a long way.