Roger Ebert Reviews

Last year, it felt like there was an abundance of music documentaries at TIFF for an obvious reason: musicians aren’t actors or directors. The strikes so limited the red-carpet star power at the event that the programmers needed to find a way around them, and so getting Paul Simon, Lil Nas X, and even Nickelback […]

TIFF’s Platform Films section holds a special place in my heart because even though I never know what kind of movie I’ll get, at the very least, I’m guaranteed an uncompromising vision. The Platform section in particular is characterized by films from creatives who aren’t afraid to push boundaries in their storytelling techniques and narratives;

Two of the three films in this dispatch were inspired by true events, while another reflects the truly dire situation many women face in terms of controlling their bodily autonomy across the globe. Director William Goldenberg’s “Unstoppable” tells the remarkable story of NCAA champion wrestler Anthony Robles. Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s “Triumph” skewers Bulgarian

Adapting Goethe’s sturm-und-drang classic The Sorrows of Young Werther into a buoyant, bright Canadian rom-com feels like a horrendously awful idea on paper. And, for the first few minutes of José Lourenço film, I was convinced that it was. This is an aggressively quirky movie, one that feels buried in twee in its opening scenes.

Someone once said, “Mike Leigh doesn’t make bad movies.” I was repeating it in the days leading to the premiere of his latest at TIFF, and his acceptance of the Ebert Director Award—more on that lovely event soon—but the truth is that the same could be said about Pedro Almodovar, who has taken the most

The premieres continued on Friday and Saturday at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, highlighted by deeply personal projects, including another Stephen King adaptation from the man who may be the master of such things, further evidence that Marielle Heller is a filmmaker to watch, and a project that grew out of a famous father’s

One theme that connects many films at this year’s festival is that of internal journeys that force external ones. In writer Durga Chew-Bose’s directorial debut she adapts Françoise Sagan’s coming-of-age novel Bonjour Tristesse in order to explore how emotional maturation sometimes comes through acts of cruelty. Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s directorial debut “The Fire Inside,”