Queer TIFF: "Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy"

by Chris Feil

The newest from King Cobra director Justin Kelly, Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, opens with Laura Dern’s gruff, heavy twang voiceover echoing through a dark theatre. Even though the film charts the wild rise of the famous alias author before inevitable and controversial decline, the shock of her accented voice is about as gasp inducing as the film gets. Dern stars as Laura Albert, the artist that created the LeRoy illusion and wrote several successful novels in his voice. The film also stars Kristen Stewart as Savannah Knoop, the woman that Albert convinced to portray JT in public and helped shape him in non-binary Warhol-ish mode. “JT” claims that fiction can be more true than truth (or... something), but Kelly’s film is far from making that case.

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TIFF Rankings. Plus: Who Does Nicole Kidman Belong To?

by Nathaniel R

Since I just had my last screening in Toronto, I thought I'd share my list of all the films I watched at the festival this year, in rough order of rank (highly subject to change as all the movies are brand spanking new). It's right here on Letterboxd. Over the next three days we'll finish up our writeups so reviews of A Star is Born and more are coming. 

← The highlight of the fest, other than staying with Joe, Chris, and Nick, and comparing notes each night and reuniting with lots of friends (even long lost Katey Rich!) was meeting Nicole Kidman again...

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TIFF: The Quietude

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

Martina Gusman (Carancho) and Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) are exceedingly well cast as loving sisters reunited when their wealthy father has a stroke in this sexy family melodrama from Argentina. The sisters are tight despite years of separation but they have dramatically different relationships with their mother (a commanding turn from Graciela Borges) who clearly favors one and disdains the other. Despite the capable and supremely sexy cast (Edgar Ramirez and Joaquín Furriel are the male love interests for the sisters... and, well, who wouldn't be interested?) and a few witty visual moments and firecracker scenes, the movie is a mixed bag. The character arcs don't fully land given the erratic quality of the screenplay.

And I'm not one to normally harp on "the male gaze," a triggering complaint now so frequently overused it's beginning to lose  meaning, but here we have a textbook example...

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Queer TIFF: "Bulbul Can Sing" and "Giant Little Ones"

by Chris Feil

Crafted with a Malickian grace, though with its feet planted more firmly on the ground, Rima Das’ Bulbul Can Sing is a coming of age tale of deep feeling. Set in rural India, many of its notes will seem initially familiar: the innocence of first loves, rampant patriarchal demands, the unity of friendship broken by consequences. What makes this film sink deeper is its refusal to reduce its punishment for the sake of comforting, motivational sentiment. Respecting the humanity of its teenagers, its uplift comes from a human spirit impossible to snuff out completely.

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Cynthia Erivo will play Harriet Tubman

by Murtada Elfadl

Cynthia Erivo who made waves this week at TIFF as one quarter of Widows has announced her next project. She will play iconic freedom fighter Harriet Tubman in Harriet. The film will follow Tubman on her escape from slavery and subsequent missions to free many slaves through the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War America. More exciting is that Harriet will be directed by Kasi Lemmons of Eve’s Bayou (1997), a film we adore. This will be Lemmons' first film since Black Nativity (2013), in the past few years she’s been directing episodes of TV shows like Luke Cage and Shots Fired.

Joining Erivo in the cast are Leslie Odom Jr.,  Joe Alwyn ( who’s very busy this fall with parts in Boy Erased, The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots), Clarke Peters (Detective Freamon in The Wire) and surprisingly country music singer Jennifer Nettles.

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