Reviews

Like its hero, Tuner has perfect pitch

Amid festivals clogged with so many films with “prestige” ambitions, it’s a thrillingly welcome jolt when a really fun movie executes on a clever concept and is impeccably entertaining from top to bottom. And that was exactly the case when the good word of Tuner started rippling through queues at Telluride before putting on the full charm offensive in Toronto a week later. Making the transition from pulse-pounding documentary filmmaking to small-stakes crime romance, Daniel Roher does exactly that with a film that just moves from the jump and never lets up until the closing credits.

Reviews

Glen Powell is a hilarious master of disguise in Hit Man

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.

Festivals Reviews

TIFF 2023: Origin

Ava DuVernay takes on A Whole Lot in attempting to transmute Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s provocative nonfiction book Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents to the screen.