Roger Ebert Reviews

The Toronto International Film Festival staged one of its most impressive one-two punches in the history of the fest on Saturday night with the world premieres of new films by Steven Spielberg and Rian Johnson, two movies that are going to be among the most beloved of 2022. In a weird way, they were a […]

One of the many admirable things about TIFF is how much the programmers support the film industry in their own country, usually spotlighting upcoming filmmakers in their Discovery or Canadian World Cinema programs. TIFF is such a major event that they could merely fill a program with red-carpet events with household names, but the programmers

Friday night is when the Toronto International Film Festival really explodes as more journalists, industry folk, and stars arrive to take in everything the event has to offer. In one part of town, upcoming theatrical releases like “Bros” and “The Woman King” were having their world premieres (click through for reviews of both), but I

I can understand a movie not making logical sense. I can even work through a movie lacking emotional sense too. But I can’t stand a film that feels dishonest or reeks of manipulation. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but actress Sanaa Lathan’s cliched, visually inert directorial debut, “On the Come Up,” is

From the moment Gina Prince-Bythewood became a director, her strength has always resided in her commitment to love stories. In her films, sumptuous twilight passions happen on a basketball court, they occur between generations, on the ladder rungs of show business, and between immortals. They center Black women carrying power and interiority, while finding strength

The programmers at the first close-to-full TIFF since 2019 decided to open their event this year with a pair of tearjerkers, films that would likely move even the most cynical movie goers. It’s interesting that this year’s fest starts with two films directed by lesser-known filmmakers than the high-profile premieres to come on the weekend,

2022 was my second year back at the Venice Film Festival, after a brief—well, year-long—pause in 2020, when the Festival went on under severely restricted circumstances, one of which had the effect of shutting out U.S. visitors. Last year the day-to-day action felt tentative, wary. Seating was staggered, which put a lot of stress on—and

To diffuse the tension that almost ruined their seemingly flourishing friendship, Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) drive to an empty landscape where they unleash their pent-up aggression by screaming at full volume. Liberated, Bjørn believes the animalistic ritual has bonded them, but in truth this outing is the beginning of the end. 

Harry Wootliff’s second feature, “True Things,” with Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke giving two riveting performances, isn’t really an “erotic thriller,” although that term is being bandied about as a descriptor. Yes, there’s a lot of sex in it, and yes, the mood gets very dark. But there isn’t really a “thriller” aspect to the

There’s a sublime sequence that occurs about midway through Juan Pablo González’s narrative debut feature, “Dos Estaciones,” that pivots from the film’s central storyline to follow another inhabitant of Atotonilco el Alto, Jalisco, the Mexican community in which the picture is set and where its director was born and raised. The character, a transgender hairdresser named