TIFF: Adelaide Clemens impresses with ‘The Swearing Jar’

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s wonderful when a film serves as a showcase to a performer you’ve appreciated seeing before and had hoped would get another terrific part. Australian actress Adelaide Clemens, who has done plenty of TV work in her home country, delivered a very affecting turn in the underrated SundanceTV series Rectify as a soft-spoken spouse learning to find her own voice. She also recently appeared as the wife of Andrew Garfield’s Mormon detective in Under the Banner of Heaven. In just the opening scene of the Canadian film The Swearing Jar, it’s clear that Clemens is doing something altogether different and harbors tremendous untapped talent…

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Your moviegoing options this weekend ~ Pick one!

It's Friday which means NEW STUFF. There's quite a lot arriving today in US theaters so are you moviegoing this weekend? Here's what's playing. If there's a link we've reviewed it. 

NEW ON IMAX SCREENS 

• Moonage Daydream - Glenn calls this David Bowie experiential doc "exhilarating" and we have our tickets in hand for tonight (albeit at one of those fake IMAX screens...sigh. The real ones are so few and hard to get good seats for.) 

NEW IN WIDE RELEASE...

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7 new Oscar submissions for Best International Feature

We're now up to 40 submissions in the upcoming Oscar race for Best International Feature Film. You can see the full charts here but if that's too much all at once for you, here are the latest countries to announce from Armenia to Slovakia, some going with films that are currently playing at TIFF...

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TIFF: Florence Pugh in ‘The Wonder’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

It’s much easier to expose a lie in today’s technology-driven world than it was in past centuries, when something that seemed supernatural or inexplicable might have been taken at face value rather than properly investigated. The Wonder, based on the novel by Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue, centers on an eleven-year-old girl in Ireland who hasn’t eaten in four months yet somehow remains alive and well, and the town committee that brings in an observer with the apparent purpose of verifying some sort of divine intervention rather than unveiling a deception…

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TIFF: "Empire of Light"

by Matt St Clair

The trailer for Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light promises to capture, if you will, the spirit of the Nicole Kidman AMC ad. Something that depicts the escapist power of moviegoing and 'that indescribable feeling we get when the lights dim.' As Toby Jones’ projectionist character says at one point, there is something about the experience of that beam of light bursting from the projector when the previews start, the theater darkens, and we’re all huddled together to escape into another place or time. 

In the film’s entirety, are we treated to the ode to moviegoing that the trailer promises? The answer is... somewhat. As it turns out, Empire of Light serves as a meditation on both mental illness and race as well as the power of cinema...

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