TORONTO – Jeffrey Tambor is the sort of actor who doesn’t really play the Hollywood game. He always comes across as genuine and forthright (even some of the best actors in the world are better at fake smiles and insincere charm than they would care to admit). And if he truly isn’t he’s an even better actor than he’s given credit for.

The “Transparent” star is a man who, after picking up his second consecutive Emmy Sunday night, advocated that he should be the last cisgendered man to play a transwoman on television.

Continue reading Jeffrey Tambor Says He ‘Almost Fell Over’ After Reading A New ‘Transparent’ Script at The Playlist.

After ten days, at least 55 films and an obscene amount of poutine and Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwiches, Team Playlist is done with the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF is probably the world’s biggest film festival, and if there were any worries about the “death of cinema” spurred by thinkpieces written as the fest was getting underway, they were swiftly dispelled by a line-up that showed the medium to be in fine health, from expensive true-life disaster movies and starry biopics to weird world cinema and tiny microbudget indies.

Continue reading The 15 Best Films Of The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival at The Playlist.

The pedigree of the TIFF People’s Choice Award speaks for itself. Past years has seen films like “Room,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Imitation Game,” “12 Years A Slave,” and “Slumdog Millionaire” earn the coveted prize and go on to awards-season success. Now, in 2016, one of the most buzzed-about movies of the fall has earned the stamp of approval.

Continue reading ‘La La Land’ Wins Coveted TIFF People’s Choice Award, ‘Free Fire’ & ‘Jackie’ Take Top Prizes at The Playlist.

Lee Morgan may not be the most popular name in jazz music, but his talent was exceptional. At just 18 years old, the trumpeter was playing with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and making a name for himself as a musical force of nature. He quickly rose through the echelons of the genre only to succumb to the depths of heroin and lose his band along with all stability in his life.

Continue reading Jazz Doc ‘I Called Him Morgan’ Is A Lively, Moving Portrait Of Music, Love, & Murder [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

“Time heals all wounds” is an aphorism that’s handed out as a superficially soothing balm for a variety of life’s pain and disappointments. But sometimes there are situations and experiences where the intensity of feeling only increases as the months and years pass by, or festers into resentments. And it’s that territory of unresolved hurt and the lingering complex emotions that writer/director Rachel Lambert explores in her incisive feature-film directorial debut “In The Radiant City.” It’s a drama of modest scope, but one that powerfully traverses the reverberations of a single event and how they’ve irrevocably changed the lives of a single family.

Continue reading Slow-Burn Drama ‘In The Radiant City’ Marks An Impressive Debut From Writer/Director Rachel Lambert [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

In the folds of our skin, the space underneath our fingernails, and the composition of our organs, the human body holds secrets and clues to the lives we have lived. From the food we ate, the injuries we’ve sustained and the scars that remain, the vessel through which we experience everything about being alive, leaves a record of our existence before we pass to whatever comes next. The idea of centering a movie, operating as part-horror film and part-procedural, around that idea is a pretty good one.

Continue reading Lifeless Horror ‘The Autopsy Of Jane Doe’ Starring Emile Hirsch Hardly Registers A Pulse [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Are the sins of the father destined to always be laid upon the children, as the Bible-inspired William Shakespeare quote reminds us, or is it possible for an individual to sack the negative aspects of their culture and lineage in order begin anew, unburdened by the hatred and mistrust the earlier generations had for each other? “Past Life” is a somewhat awkwardly written yet emotionally resonant drama that effectively asks that question via two Israeli sisters who struggle to find a way to live with themselves after finding out that their father might have done something unforgivable during World War II.

Continue reading ‘Past Life’ Is An Emotionally Resonant Exploration Of The Legacy Of Sin [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

With only a modicum of exaggeration, at least half of the Toronto International Film Festival’s volunteer army is pounding the pavement with their ballot boxes for the Grolsch People’s Choice Award, regardless of whether they’re stationed outside the exit of an Oscar vehicle or an avant-garde documentary. One TIFF regular certain to never win that award (perhaps because he often doesn’t attend with his films, as is the case this year) is Hong Sang-soo, but that is certainly not for lack of trying.

Continue reading ‘Yourself And Yours’ Is A Charming Entry For Newcomers To Hong Sang-Soo [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Wildly bizarre and imaginatively alluring, if not occasionally slight, the animated movie, “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea,” is an engaging surrealist take on the disaster movie. It’s a film steeped in metaphorical analogies, especially in its depiction of surviving high school and escaping it unharmed.

Featuring the voices of Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Maya Rudolph and more, “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea” is acclaimed graphic novelist Dash Shaw‘s feature-length directing debut and he renders the entire weirdo affair as if the viewer is reading a graphic novel and turning page after page.

Continue reading ‘My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea’ Is Bizarre & Beautifully Inventive [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Much like its long-winded full title, “Green White Green: And All the Beautiful Colours In My Mosaic of Madness,” Abba T. Makama’s debut film is a shaggy, unruly work of art, passion and perseverance. In the spirit of the early films of Spike Lee, this cheeky, bright-eyed and often overzealous Nigerian film is at once endearing and unkempt. As enthusiastic and well-meaning as could be, it’s never without its bright spots.

Continue reading ‘Green White Green’ Is A Shaggy, Unruly, Yet Endearing Coming-Of-Age Drama [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Sweetly rendered, but too sentimental, Aisling Walsh’s “Maudie,” about famous Canadian folk art painter Maud Lewis features the always-reliable Sally Hawkins. She makes a compelling case for this under-sung character and intimate little movie. Unfortunately, she can’t carry the stilted weight of “Maudie” and the uneven film just can’t keep up with her terrific performance.

READ MORE: The 30 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival

Although not as well celebrated in mainstream art circles, Walsh’s painting career included many artistic highs.

Continue reading ‘Maudie’ Features A Terrific Performance By Sally Hawkins, But Not Much Else [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

“I think I’m in love with you,” a middle-aged woman (Lenka Vlasakova) confesses to a thuggish strip-club bouncer (Zdenek Godla). The confession is startling, to say the least, because these two characters don’t really know each other. The bouncer occasionally comes in to buy cigarettes at the convenience store where the woman works, leading the woman to track him down to make her true feelings known.

READ MORE: ‘Yourself And Yours’ Is A Charming Entry For Newcomers To Hong Sang-Soo [TIFF Review]

This is just one absurd moment in Petr Vaclav’s depressing Czech dramedy “We Are Never Alone.” More a series of occasionally funny, but always bleak, vignettes than a cohesive narrative, “We Are Never Alone” is reminiscent of Wayne Wang’s 1995 indie “Smoke,” about the lives of several characters connected to each other via a neighborhood cigar store.

Continue reading Petr Vaclav’s ‘We Are Never Alone’ Is A Disjointed Dramedy That Never Quite Comes Together [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Operating with an impressive storytelling economy, yet managing to spin a tale that takes its protagonists from the Bronx to Westchester and back again, writer/director Adam Leon’s second feature film, “Tramps,” is something of a marvel to watch unfold. However, its multiple charms are so sly, the performances so perfectly unflashy, you’ll likely be surprised at how affecting it becomes in its final stages. It’s a heist movie with a Macguffin in the middle, it’s a romance where risk is the reward, and it’s a must-see movie that doesn’t wear its heart on its sleeve, so much as carry it protectively in its pocket, though you can see it beating through the fabric.

Continue reading Adam Leon’s Impressive & Touching ‘Tramps’ Is A Low-Key Charmer [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

“I guess since we were in it we didn’t understand. 

Continue reading Taraji P. Henson On “Overwhelming” Reaction To ‘Hidden Figures,’ A Movie “Needed Right Now” at The Playlist.

Each year, the biggest distributors and sales agents out of South Korea secure prominent slots at the Toronto International Film Festival for one or two of their biggest upcoming blockbusters. And even in the context of a huge, celebrity-driven festival like TIFF, fans of Korean popular culture stood out, showing up en masse to get a glimpse of the stars of Kim Sung-soo’s latest crime opus, “Asura: The City of Madness.” The rowdy experience at the historic Elgin Theatre is, in hindsight, oddly appropriate, as the film is as much a centerpiece for its cast as it is a stylistically flamboyant directorial showpiece.

Continue reading ‘Asura: The City Of Madness’ Is An Above Average, Carnage Driven South Korean Crime Flick [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Perhaps it was inevitable that “Brain On Fire” — writer/director Gerard Barrett’s adaptation of Susannah Cahalan’s memoir of her month being hospitalized with the rare autoimmune disease anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis — would lose arguably the most interesting aspect of the book: the fact that, because Cahalan can’t remember anything about her hospitalization, she treats her own life during that month as a journalistic investigation, and, by extension, as an inquiry into her own self.

Continue reading ‘Brain On Fire’ Starring Chloe Grace Moretz Is Disappointingly More Conventional Than Daring [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

To put it bluntly, Ukraine’s recent history has been tumultuous. After breaking away from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the country has continued to assert its independence to mixed results, a task which grew even more complicated in early 2014 when, after the Maidan revolution, Russia controversially annexed Crimea. In the aftermath, Ukraine has, in certain regions and cities, remained in a continuous state of unrest and violence. The inherent anxiety of this reality is exactly the tension which the new documentary “Close Relations” attempts to unpack.

Continue reading Unfocused & Tangential ‘Close Relations’ Tackles Identity Along The Ukraine-Russia Border [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

TORONTO – As a long time executive in the awards season game noted just a few nights ago after another round of parties and celebratory drinks came to an end, “We’re still in a bubble right now.”  And they were absolutely right. For all the hype and buzz you’ve seen about this picture or this performance from Venice, Telluride and now Toronto, this is all almost virtual reality for the big Oscar prize. The multiple standing ovations at Toronto, for instance, are not audiences of Academy members, let alone guild or industry (granted, there are no doubt a token few here and there). 

Continue reading ‘Moonlight’ Becomes A Legit Oscar Contender And 7 Other Things We Learned In The Toronto Bubble at The Playlist.

About a quarter of the way into Angela Schanelec’s new film, “The Dreamed Path,” a young man named Kenneth (Thorbjörn Björnsson) administers a dose of morphine to his mother as she lies sick and dying in bed. Even with more than half of the remaining picture to go, you’ll wish he’d spare a taste for you, too. “The Dreamed Path” is a movie at odds with itself, a breathtaking work of measured formalism and agonizing monotone; Schanelec’s technical chops are peerless, but her tonal sensibility is a drag.

Continue reading ‘The Dreamed Path’ Plays A Single, Serious And Not Particularly Compelling Arthouse Note [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Growing up Canadian, one learns to be wary of the often imitative homegrown films, that fill content quotas and occasionally creeps into cinemas. There are exceptions, most notably the world-famous directors who find berths at prestigious competitive festivals, but Canadian cinema — Anglophone more so than Francophone — struggles to escape the “CanCon” stigma. That conditioned skepticism inevitably rears its head when surveying the Toronto International Film Festival program which, justifiably enough, must also serve as a global stage for Canuck cinema.

Continue reading Zacharius Kunuk’s ‘Searchers’ Is An Impressive Inuit Take On John Ford’s Classic Western [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Browsing the TV section of Netflix can be an anxiety inducing exercise. While the upside in the new Golden Age Of Television has some of the best programming the medium has ever seen, the downside has been the impossibility of keeping up with everything, to the point where the sheer amount of choice can be overwhelming. And so, I walked into the Toronto International Film Festival press screening of two episodes from the upcoming third season of “Black Mirror,” a series I hadn’t previously watched, knowing there could only be two outcomes: I will have spent two hours regretting I hadn’t watched a movie instead or walked out with a new show to binge watch.

Continue reading ‘Black Mirror’ Season 3 Serves Up 2 Great Episodes At TIFF [TV Review] at The Playlist.

TORONTO – When the mobile offshore drilling rig the Deepwater Horizon exploded into flames on April 20, 2010 it resulted in the loss of 11 lives and the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Five years later, BP, which contracted the Deepwater, would spend $18.7 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government and local and state municipalities. The disaster was epic, but also filled with heroic acts, which director Peter Berg chronicles in a movie appropriately named “Deepwater Horizon” which debuted Tuesday night at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Deepwater Horizon’ With Mark Wahlberg Is Stellar Filmmaking Except When It Isn’t [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

A mystery lies at the shattered core of “Unless,” but it’s not your standard whodunit. Instead, the drama centers on what has caused a college student who argues with her professor over “Madame Bovary” to change into an unspeaking woman begging on the street of the Toronto winter in less than a month. Based on the final novel from author Carol Shields, this quiet Canadian-Irish film wears its heart and its literary roots on its nubby, woolen sleeve.

Continue reading Catherine Keener Stars In Thoughtful Drama ‘Unless’ [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

In 2011, in the early days of the Syrian revolution — back when it was still a series of protests and not yet a full on revolution — radio DJ Obaidah Zytoon and her rag-tag band of friends took to the streets with a hopeful curiosity. They were revolutionaries at heart, some with prior arrest records, who were eager to see the merciless Bashar al-Assad removed from power, and, being young, they recognized the power of the video camera and the necessity to document the horrors unfolding.

Continue reading Syrian Civil War Doc ‘The War Show’ Is An Uneven But Powerful Glimpse Inside A Revolutionary Country [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

While conspiracy theories, phone sex lines, and television psychics might not seem immediately connected, they offer two important things for those who feel their life is slipping out of their grasp: answers and control. Convoluted explanations for unfathomable events give reason to a world that can often seem irrational, unfair and arbitrary. Meanwhile, dialling strangers for sex and revelations about what the future holds, gives the illusion that seeking pleasure and knowing what lays ahead is firmly at your disposal.

Continue reading ‘Mr. Robot’ Rami Malek Drives Himself Crazy In Surreal ‘Buster’s Mal Heart’ [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.