Onstage, Janis Joplin wailed the blues, drank whiskey, and drove the crowds wild. Offstage, she drank whiskey, slept around, and died shooting smack in 1971. But Joplin believed in music, worshipped it, seized its power to communicate and transport. Her love of music was the purest thing in her life, and Janis: Little Girl Blue […]
Steve Jobs, the movie, is more admirable as a meticulously constructed piece of theater that uses real-life figures like billiard balls than for its emotional catharsis or insight into the evolution of a man many perceived as a larger-than-life genius. At the New York Film Festival press conference, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin insisted he did not […]
One challenge at the Toronto International Film Festival is having enough time to check out films and directors that you may not know, in search of a gem that you (and thousands of others) can discover and claim as your own. Fortunately, a handful of shot-in-the-dark experiences were among the most memorable this year. A […]
Writer, producer, and director Michael Almereyda is one of the more exciting filmmakers working today. He is interested in serious, intellectual themes, adapting Shakespeare in Cymbeline earlier this year or dramatizing the life and work of famed social scientist Stanley Milgram in his latest film, Experimenter. Yet Almereyda is not so much paying homage to […]
Pawn Sacrifice is a love story unlike any other, as it is a love between a man, chess genius Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), and silence. Chess played at the grandmaster level requires stretching the human mind to its outermost limits, as matches have to be exhaustively prepared for, and there are more potential moves and […]
Written and Directed by Andrea di Stefano, Produced by Dimitri Rassam Released by Radius-TWC English and Spanish with English subtitles France/Spain/Belgium. 119 min. Rated R With Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hutcherson, Claudia Traisac, Brady Corbet, Carlos Bardem, Ana Girardot, and Micke Moreno Pablo Escobar is probably history’s most successful, and notorious, drug dealer/narcoterrorist. At its […]
Directed by Bill Pohlad Produced by Pohlad, John Wells, and Claire Rudnick Polstein Written by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner Released by Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions USA. 120 min. Rated PG-13 With John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti, Brett Davern, Bill Camp, and Jake Abel The opening montage of this intriguing biopic breezily goes […]
Directed by Simon Curtis Produced by Kris Thykier Written by Alexi Kaye Campell Released by The Weinstein Company US/UK. 110 min. Rated PG-13 With Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Antje Traue, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, Frances Fisher, Moritz Bleibtreu, Tom Schilling, Allan Corduner, and Henry Goodman […]
Directed by Ava DuVernay Produced by Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner Written by Paul Webb Released by Paramount Pictures USA/UK. 127 min. Rated PG-13 With David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Carmen Ejogo, Giovanni Ribisi, Lorraine Toussaint, Common, Alessandro Nivola, Dylan Baker, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tim Roth, André Holland, Wendell Pierce, Corey Reynolds, […]