A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
Richard Linklater serves up a very tasty slice of an incredibly loopy premise. Glen Powell gobbles it up and makes it work through the power of pure, unrelenting, leading man handsomeness. Nothing wrong with pairing a director who knows how to have a good time with an actor who’s ascending to movie star supernova. Here the daffy vaguely-true story meshes with an intensely charming performance into a delightful gumbo.
Into each generation a new Donnie Darko is born. With Lynchian threads as applied to post-millennial trans awakenings, grounded in a deep love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and coming with its own slew of possible interpretations, Jane Schoenbrun’s eerie, visually entrancing, and sonically inventive cautionary love note to the nineties just might be it for the Zoomies.
Ten years after introducing Charlize Theron’s iconic Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller once again revisits the post-apocalyptic Australia he created back in 1979. The latest entry fills in fifteen years of backstory for the title war rig driver-turned-liberator by way of five chapters of audacious set pieces. As fan service, it’s exceptional. As stunt coordination, it’s reliably jaw dropping spectacle. But in terms of storytelling, it’s about as essential as a Doof Warrior and a flame-throwing electric guitar on a desert-racing military convoy. Which is to say that even if you don’t absolutely need it, there’s nothing wrong with making sure that you’re having a good time.
Catching up with the rest of the week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Two SIFF features with different approaches to portraying the transformative power of theater, be it in the carceral system or the prison of one’s own heart.
A trio of imperfect films that nevertheless give viewers entry into the past and present of unfamiliar parts of our world.
Capsule reviews from SIFF. Bob Trevino Likes it is the laugh, cry, and scream, heartbreaker hit of the festival.
Capsule reviews of two seaside SIFF films
The “I” in SIFF might stand for “International” but just because the festival brings in films from all around the world you shouldn’t sleep on its selections with local connections. Below are capsule reviews of the Northwest Connections program.
Over three films in the 2010s, Rupert Wyatt Matt Reeves crafted — with the motion-captured performance of Andy Serkis — a surprisingly successful prequel series exploring the earliest days of what would become a planet ruled by intelligent apes. The Caesar trilogy envisioned a world at a crossroads, one at the precipice of being dramatically transformed by a virus that made humans stupid (prescient, huh?) and gifted their non-human primate brethren super-intelligence and the ability to speak. As the final film in that series ended, Caesar, the lab chimpanzee who started it all had emerged victorious over the humans, leading his non-people to a prosperity that he wouldn’t live to see for himself. Where do you go from there?
