Reel Encounters

“Bros” is the first of its kind. Billy Eichner, the male lead and cowriter of the film’s script, has been telling everyone for months.

Wole Soyinka’s Nigerian play “Death and the King’s Horseman” is easily remembered as one of the essential works of late 20th century African drama.

Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, which had its North American premiere at TIFF after resounding success at its world-premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is based on a 2012 Drama Desk winning play of the same name.

In a way, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” follows a traditional path: a well budgeted Hollywood epic, loosely based on events in history, which creates a high-energy action story driven by human emotion.

The wide range of films screened at the Toronto International Film Festival each year often means that debut filmmakers are sometimes more established ones, sometimes even exploring similar things thematically.

The crux of George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing” begins when a Djinn is released from a bottle in a hotel room in Istanbul.

Even before the title characters in Clio Barnard’s “Ali and Ava” meet, a brief musical montage early on binds them together in moments of isolation.

According to well established Hollywood logic, any movie about a rule-breaking action hero needs to add nuance to his character by giving him a wife and a daughter to contextualise his character arc and provide some essential emotional robustness.

A few months ago, somewhere in the middle of the umpteenth round of the ongoing debate over “Superhero Movies vs Art Movies” online, a superhero-enthusiast proposed an idea to bridge the gap.

Handwringing over the running-time of movies ahead of their release is a dangerous game: good movies feel just-right, regardless of their length and lesser movies feel long, overstaying their welcome, no matter how brief.

On paper it seems perfect: Baz Luhrmann and Elvis Presley are a match made in showmanship heaven.

On the Hollywood set for a commercial, two siblings, OJ and Emerald, try to successfully wrangle a horse.

“There is hope for us all.” That line acts as a coda of sorts for the final sequence in the newly released comedy “Mrs Harris Goes to Paris,” where Lesley Manville plays a widowed cleaning lady whose yearning for a couture Christian Dior dress takes her to Paris and on a string of adventures far beyond her dreams.

What does it mean when a “Thor” movie seems uncertain about who Thor is?

There is no single image, or sequence, in Joseph Kosinski’s “Spiderhead” that suggests any passionate stakes in its story, its characters or the world they inhabit.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Let’s imagine a scenario. You are a space ranger on a quest to explore a habitable planet.

There’s a recurring wave of unease that subsumes much of Robert Eggers’ “The North-man”.

When “Brave” premiered at the Seattle International Festival in June, 2012, it was the first feature from Pixar Animation Studios to feature a female protagonist.

Beyond its role in propelling a specific kind of summer blockbuster into the post-1980s landscape of Hollywood cinema, Tony Scott’s “Top Gun” holds a distinct place in establishing the mythology of Tom Cruise.