The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Tuesday, September 18, 2018 at 1:23PM by Nathaniel R
Alfonso Cuarón's jaw-dropping Roma is inspired by his childhood in Mexico but it's no traditional memoir. Rather than focusing on his own life, he spins a slow-burn fictional memoir, imagining the emotional space occupied by the live-in maid/nanny who helped raise him...
Sunday, September 16, 2018 at 7:22PM by Nathaniel R
Go figure. The winner of TIFF's "Grolsch's People's Choice Award" is a film that literally none of my TIFF airbnb troupe (Joe Reid, Chris Feil, Nick Davis and I) saw during our 10 day stretch in Ontario. Green Book by Peter Farrelly (yes, of Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary fame) took TIFF's most coveted prize. (the runners up were Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma). So we'll have to add it to the Best Picture chart when we update this week (we're looking at probably Wednesday night for across the board updates to reflect all the festival madness).
In the entire 40 year history of this prize, stretching From Girlfriends (1978) through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), 16 of the winners went on to Best Picture nods at the Oscars. The 40 winners also include 7 future Best Picture winners, 6 future Best Foreign Language Film winners, and 2 future Best Documentary Feature winners. The Oscar correlation is getting stronger all the time, too...
Sunday, September 16, 2018 at 4:30PM by Chris Feil
Naturally, English language remakes of already great (and recent, at that) foreign language treasures are a dubious business. But Sebastián Lelio’s revisiting of his own Gloria, formery led by the immaculate Paulina García, presents a convincing alternative to other misguided or less effective attempts. Now titled Gloria Bell and starring Julianne Moore, this version is one not only worthy of its predecessor, but an equal that may even edge it out ever so slightly...
Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 9:00PM by Chris Feil
The newest from King Cobra director Justin Kelly, Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, opens with Laura Dern’s gruff, heavy twang voiceover echoing through a dark theatre. Even though the film charts the wild rise of the famous alias author before inevitable and controversial decline, the shock of her accented voice is about as gasp inducing as the film gets. Dern stars as Laura Albert, the artist that created the LeRoy illusion and wrote several successful novels in his voice. The film also stars Kristen Stewart as Savannah Knoop, the woman that Albert convinced to portray JT in public and helped shape him in non-binary Warhol-ish mode. “JT” claims that fiction can be more true than truth (or... something), but Kelly’s film is far from making that case.
Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 6:42PM by Nathaniel R
Since I just had my last screening in Toronto, I thought I'd share my list of all the films I watched at the festival this year, in rough order of rank (highly subject to change as all the movies are brand spanking new). It's right here on Letterboxd. Over the next three days we'll finish up our writeups so reviews of A Star is Born and more are coming.
← The highlight of the fest, other than staying with Joe, Chris, and Nick, and comparing notes each night and reuniting with lots of friends (even long lost Katey Rich!) was meeting Nicole Kidman again...
