Catching up with the rest of the week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
SIFF 2024 Roundtable: Festival Exit Survey, Golden SunBreak Awards
The in-person portion of the Seattle International Film festival closed this weekend — first with a Gala screening of Sing Sing and a party at MOHAI on Saturday, then with the Golden Space Needle Brunch on Sunday morning. The festival continues through the weekend with about 50 titles still playing online, but we took this transition from theatrical to home-viewing to catch our breaths and share our experience with this year’s big birthday event.
SIFF 2024 Notebook: Sing Sing and Ghostlight
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.
SIFF 2024 Notebook: I Saw the TV Glow, Dragon Superman, and Oddity
I Saw the TV Glow (2024 | USA | 100 minutes | Jane Schoenbrun) Jane Schoenbrun’s mesmerizing follow-up to We’re All Going …
SIFF 2024 Notebook: Grasshopper Republic, Scala!!!, the Critical Zone
A trio of imperfect films that nevertheless give viewers entry into the past and present of unfamiliar parts of our world.
SIFF 2024 Notebook: Bob Trevino Likes It
Capsule reviews from SIFF. Bob Trevino Likes it is the laugh, cry, and scream, heartbreaker hit of the festival.
SIFF 2024: Recommendations for Closing Weekend
A collection of picks and special events as #SIFFTY heads into the closing weekend of the in-person portion of the fiftieth Seattle International Film Festival.
SIFF 2024 Notebook: Northwest Connections
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.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes presses the reset button on a storied monkey business franchise
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?