The animated film Transformers One throws us back to a time when Optimus Prime, going by the name of Orion Pax, is but a mere miner working in the belly of Cybertron: the planet that all ‘bots call home. With the disappearance of the great Matrix of Leadership which coincided with the death of the Primes who had been protecting Cybertron from aliens who wanted to steal the precious Energon… the death of all but one: Sentinel Prime. Now Sentinel is on a mission to find the Matrix of Leadership to return the world to its former glory and peace to all Cybertronians.
Year: 2024
TIFF 2024: Queer
Thought if anyone could make the smack-addled writings of William S Burrows romantic it would have to be Luca Guadagnino, but alas.
TIFF 2024: Nightbitch
Amy Adams is phenomenal as an artist who set her career aside to raise an adorable child; she sells the madness of isolation as her identity attempts to reclaim itself with hallucinations (maybe) that she’s turning into a dog.
TIFF 2024: Emilia Pérez
To its enormous credit and occasional detriment, Jacques Audiard’s improbable musical is as mercurial as its title drug kingpin-to-society queen would-be heroine. With something new every few minutes the boldly ambitious film succeeds in never being boring while it has an enormous amount to say (sing).
TIFF 2024: On Swift Horses
I suppose it’s kinda cool that the hottest young stars in Hollywood now establish their cred by the rite of passage of playing gay. In Daniel Minahan’s adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, at least Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar Jones avoid tragic weepy stereotypes in this handsome literary take on queer identities in the 1950s American West.
TIFF 2024: The Life of Chuck
Told in three acts in reverse, Mike Flanagan has made a lovely little Stephen King adaptation about how Tom Hiddleston came to be an exceptional dancer who contains multitudes.
TIFF 2024: Eden
Ron Howard dives into the dark scheming heart of humanity in recounting a true story of self-promotional Galapagos settlers in the 1930s.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: Michael Keaton is the hardest-working spirit in the afterlife
I loved the expansive world-building Burton and his team put together. There were some cool visual effects and some running gags that were quite funny. I laughed hard whenever the late Charles Deetz was on screen. I also really liked the storyline between Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega. Still, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice throws a lot of proverbial spaghetti at the proverbial wall and quite a bit of it sticks because a lot of it was thrown.
Telluride 2024: Monday Journal: Maria, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, All We Imagine As Light, Nobu
Notes from Monday at Telluride
Telluride 2024: Sunday Journal: Anora, September 5, Saturday Night, Bird
Notes from Sunday at Telluride