Reel Encounters

“First Man,” the new film by Damien Chazelle, begins in space.

Amandla Stenberg was one of a handful of actors who attended the Toronto International Film Festival this year as the star of two films.

“I have a poem.” It’s such an innocuous line but one that hides a wealth of profundity.

Is the new film “A Star is Born” a musical? This seems a bizarre question to ask.

This year, the Toronto International Film Festival made a concerted effort to shine a spotlight on women both in front of, and especially behind, the camera.

I walked out of “Venom” with the dopiest smile on my face.

“The House with a Clock in Its Walls” feels almost anomalous in 2018.

Two films at TIFF this year – both inspired by true events – seemed preternaturally linked in their representations of race and racism in Europe.

“Secrets are like margarine,” quips Stephanie, the protagonist of “A Simple Favor,” Paul Feig’s new mystery/comedy/thriller.

  From pseudo biopics like “Colette” and imagined biopics like “Roma” to inspired-by-true-events films like “Viper Club” and “Cold War,” the dichotomy between the real and the imagined seemed of recurring value throughout TIFF 18.

At the world premiere of “Ben is Back” at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, writer and director Peter Hedges discussed the reason he built his film about addiction around a single day.

A sense of impending danger pervades “The Dive.” The film never approaches the frontline of war but the presence of war permeates the surface throughout.

The time is 1183. The place is Chinon. We are in the Angevin Empire.

While waiting in line for “A Star is Born” to begin, I engaged in my favourite hobby: recounting random movie trivia to strangers.

By Andrew Kendall in Toronto       “The Sisters Brothers” opens with gunfire.

By Andrew Kendall in Toronto   I made the mistake of glancing at a few reviews of Ashgar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows” while I was working on my review.

  By Andrew Kendall in Toronto   At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, there are two notable scenes from separate films, which seem to be speaking to each other across continents; the Kenyan film “Rafiki” and the American film “Boy Erased.”  

What would it be like to live without faith? The word has clear religious connotations but it’s not explicitly or expressly religious.

Like in many romantic comedies, the primary conceit of Crazy Rich Asians takes some suspension disbelief.

Isle of Dogs is Wes Anderson’s second animated film but it bears little resemblance to his previous foray, 2009’s Fantastic Mr Fox, beyond the common thread of anthropomorphic animal characters.