No matter which way your cinematic tastes go, the Toronto International Film Festival likely has you covered. It’s easy at TIFF to program your daily viewing schedule with Oscar hopefuls like Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER, mainstream popcorn thrillers like Rian Johnson’s LOOPER, gory Midnight Madness exercises like Barry Levinson’s THE BAY and international sensations like Michael Haneke’s AMOUR.
Every week there are dozens of film news stories. We read them all and bring you the five most important ones in the single most important blog post you’ll ever read (today [at this moment]). This week: the festival circuit in full swing, Ben Affleck in full auteur mode and Dirty Harry, full-on crazy.
Every week there are dozens of film news stories. We read them all and bring you the five most important ones in the single most important blog post you’ll ever read (today [at this moment]). This week: dreams, festivals, raids and teen idols.
Every week there are dozens of film news stories. We read them all and bring you the five most important ones in the single most important blog post you’ll ever read (today [at this moment]). This week: trips to Toronto, Hawaii and a Los Angeles porno theater.
Variety applauds the “gritty verite drama,” especially its “knotty psychological profile of [Ashley] Arbaugh, whose own video-diary entries from the mid’-90s – when she was modeling – provide a haunted glimpse into exploited youth. A visit to Arbaugh’s home in Connecticut, a spacious, rambling modernist dwelling with all the warmth of a bus station, is a creepfest: A pair of baby dolls sit upright on the couch in a living room devoid of almost all other decor. Arbaugh comments that she thought it was appropriate when she bought the house to buy the dolls, too. She has an overt desire for children and an apparent inability to have them; her need is palpable and pitiful, and the doll sequence has the mind reeling.”
If you’re not creeped out yet, check out the trailer, and imagine that right now, in some badly lit room in Siberia, a group of “Russian girls hoping to hit the big time, are parading their skinny innocence around in bargain-basement bathing suits.”
UPDATE: Said to have the ability to obtain cult-movie status, ROCKET SCIENCE had a limited theatrical release this past summer.
“What makes the first fiction feature from documentarian Blitz persuasive is its late-film detour from the inspirational niche-sports genre to something altogether unexpected — and the winning lead performance of Reece Daniel Thompson.” – Jim Ridley (Village Voice)”