Review: Moneyball (2011)
Though films “based on true events” are often painfully formulaic – and so too sports pics, which seldom do justice to the drama of actual on-field events – thanks to the unlikely comedic tandem of Brad Pitt and Jonah...
Julian Carrington's Posts
Spotlight TIFF 2011 Part 1: Featuring The Artist, Drive, Melancholia & Take Shelter
For sheer testosterone-infused, blood-spattered badassery, few films at this year's fest will compete with Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. Like Hazanavicius, the Danish directorial darling embraces the trappings of Hollywood homage, echoing the slick detachment of Michael Mann, and most...
Review: The Bang Bang Club
Apart from being uncommonly pretty people, Ryan Phillippe, Taylor Kitsch and Malin Akerman share a conspicuous inability to perform a credible South African accent. That the trio are also the principle cast of The Bang Bang Club – adapted...
Review: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
Far and away the most fascinating of 2010’s crop of high-profile “prankumentaries” – and one of the year’s best in any genre – many critics found Exit Through the Gift Shop, from iconically anonymous street artist Banksy, literally too...
Review: ARMADILLO – Presented by the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Between Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner Armadillo, the Oscar-nominated Restrepo, and forthcoming Hot Docs selection Hell and Back Again, the unprecedented access afforded to Afghan war journalists has yielded some of the most powerful nonfiction filmmaking in recent...
Review: The Trip
Despite being one of the most talented comic actors of his generation, mainstream popularity continues to elude Steve Coogan, particularly outside his native UK. For evidence of his stateside hoodoo, see Around the World in 80 Days – a...
Review: The Future Is Now!
As an unabashed cynic and self-professed misanthrope, the latest docu-fictional foray from the duo behind Radiant City is explicitly intended to cure me of my simmering general contempt. Called The Future is Now!, and billing itself as a ‘cynics...
Review: World on a Wire – Presented by the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Recently rediscovered and meticulously restored in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, World on a Wire is a kaleidoscopic, existentialist science-fiction epic from short-lived but hugely prolific German New Wave pioneer, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Originally produced for German...
Review: The Princess of Montpensier - Presented by the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Given that royal weddings are presently all the rage, and that bodice-rippers have never gone out of style, Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier – filled, as it is, with bodice-clad royal betrothed – has the apparent makings of...
Review: THE INVISIBLE EYE – Presented by the TIFF Bell Lightbox
At once a caustic political allegory and a compelling study in pathological repression, The Invisible Eye, from 35-year-old Argentine auteur Diego Lerman, bears many of the hallmarks of the brilliant Michael Haneke. Indeed, Lerman’s film – about an emotionally...
Blog: The Best of Hot Docs
Often overshadowed by its flashier, fiction-friendly cousin, Hot Docs remains something of a hidden gem for Toronto cinemagoers, despite its stature as North America’s largest documentary film festival. Most assuredly, though, whatever it lacks in TIFF’s style and star...
Review: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold *Hot Docs*
Inspired by Naomi Klein’s seminal, anti-capitalist treatise No Logo, Radiohead toured Europe in the autumn of 2000 in a portable, purpose-built tent, wholly devoid of corporate branding. The Kid A release tour concluded with a three-city visit to North...
Review: Confessions (2010)
Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Review: The Future (2011)
Review: The Puppetmaster (1993)
Review: The Tree Of Life (2011)
