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TIFF Review: JCVD
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports 
All the world's a stage, Shakespeare tells us, but just imagine what kind of nightmare it would be if that were actually true. Jean-Claude Van Damme, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme in Mabrouk El-Mechri's JCVD, doesn't have to imagine if it were true, because for him it is; worse, he doesn't even get to pick the kind of stage he's on or the part he's playing. ... JCVD fakes you out from the jump and doesn't stop, opening with a one-cut action sequence set to the pulse and pound of Baby Huey's 8-track soul-funk version of Curtis Mayfield's...
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TIFF Review: Religulous
Filed under: Comedy, Documentary, Lionsgate Films, Theatrical Reviews, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics, Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical Indie 
I contend we are both atheists; I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F. Roberts
In Religulous, stand-up social commentator Bill Maher doesn't just assert how he believes in one less god than many of us, and he doesn't just craft bold, bizarre and hilarious moments of comedy and discussion with the help of director Larry...
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Review: The Pool
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie 
Outwardly confident yet quietly insecure, 18-year-old Venkatesh Chavan climbs into a tree and stares at a pristine pool. He's a domestic worker at a nearby hotel in the Indian coastal city of Panjim, Goa, and he's ambitious enough to know that he wants something more, even if he doesn't know what, exactly. He performs his duties, meets his considerably younger friend Jhangir Badshah to sell plastic bags to earn extra money, studies the untouched pool and the surrounding, uninhabitated house and garden grounds, and retires for the night. Boiled down to its essence,
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TIFF Review: Paris 36
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, New Releases, Sony Classics, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical Indie 
Paris 36 tries to do a dozen different things, and does none of them well. But even that description may not be harsh enough, because it makes the film sound ambitious. It's not. Director Christophe Barratier, whose The Chorus was a quality rendition of an age-old formula, doesn't even pretend to give much thought to any of the disparate elements he assembles here. This is one of those middlebrow period-piece comedies that mistakes frenzy for energy and...
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TIFF Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Filed under: Comedy, Sony, Sony Classics, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Toronto International Film Festival 
Starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is a light, slight, fleet-footed teen comedy of romance and indie rock; there are logic holes in it, and lulls, and moments that seem devoid of sense, to be sure, but there are also moments in where Cera or Dennings will smile and your momentary doubts and disagreements are washed away and your head is filled with a sense of gladness, not despair, that you're watching our young, happy hipster heroes on screen. Nick and Norah's...
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Review: Everybody Wants to Be Italian
Filed under: Foreign Language, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews 
The modern romantic comedy has long treated novelty like a venereal disease, fleeing any thought of invention as it foists the same tired, rigid formula on viewers content to consume familiar pap dressed up in slightly different duds. Still, if the average studio rom-com offers little of worth aside from the occasional endearing performance (and no, I don't mean you, Ms. Bullock), there's something even more noxious about the strain of ethnic-indie romances pioneered by 2002's smash hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which charmed audiences by taking recognizable conventions and spicing them up with broad, brash stereotypes....
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TIFF Review: Burn After Reading
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Oscar Watch, Toronto International Film Festival, Cinematical Indie 
When the worlds of Washington, DC political intrigue, infidelity, fitness centers and internet dating intersect and collide in a darkly hilarious fashion, you must be watching a film by the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading, Joel and Ethan Coen's follow-up to last year's critically lauded award winner, No Country for Old Men, was actually written by the duo as they were adapting No Country, but the two films couldn't be more different. The colliding...
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Review: Mister Foe
Filed under: Drama, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews 
Jamie Bell makes the best of a bad situation as Hallam, the titular teenage protagonist of Mister Foe, whose anger, resentment and paranoia drive him from his father's remote Scottish Highlands estate to the streets of Edinburgh in search of solace. Hallam's mother recently drowned in the loch behind the house, the apparent victim of a freak boating accident, and his dad (Ciarán Hinds) has moved on and married his former secretary Verity (Claire Forlani), whom he was seeing before his wife's untimely passing and whom Hallam believes is a gold-digging hooker responsible for mom's death....
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Review: Bangkok Dangerous
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, New Releases, Lionsgate Films, Theatrical Reviews, Remakes and Sequels 
"One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble..."
-Murray Head Don't ask me what happened to the real Nicolas Cage, because I don't know where he is. I don't know what happened to the man who left Las Vegas, or the man who made Donald Kaufman into such an endearing figment of imagination, or the man who stole diapers as he stole hearts. All I've seen of late is a face, a name, a profile, a character, the artist formerly known as Nic Cage, an entity on auto-pilot and damn near self-parody that...
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TIFF Review: The Brothers Bloom
Filed under: Comedy, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Toronto International Film Festival 
Long awaited in the wake of his 2005 debut Brick, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is a magic trick of a film; the second it's over, you want to see it again so you can try to catch how you were tricked, but you also want to see it again so you can return to the joy and wonder of being wrapped up in the nimble, deck-shuffling hands of a born showman. Watching it at first, some of The Brothers Bloom's creative and thematic elements seem like they're on loan from Paul Thomas Anderson (opening...
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