TIFF 2017 - First Reviews.
Sep. 14th, 2017 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedWe're well past the halfway mark for this year's film festival, so I thought I'd put up a couple of mini reviews of stuff seen so far.
Call Me By Your Name
This had great buzz coming out of Sundance, and it was not misplaced. It's a story of summer love, with precocious 17-year-old falling for his dad's 23 year-old grad student. It's also a gay love story without any coming out panic or inevitable tragic ending. And it's utterly gorgeous, set in and around a villa in northern Italy. The cast is uniformly wonderful, especially Armie Hammer as the grad student and Timothée Chalumet as the teen, but also Michael Stuhlbaarg as the main character's father, who has a lovely scene at the end showing his empathy for his son and his first love. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
Borg/McEnroe
I became a tennis fan watching Borg play at Wimbledon every year, so I was very much looking forward to this movie, examining his rivalry on the court with bad boy John McEnroe. And it was honestly everything I was hoping it was. There are flashbacks to both men as kids, coming up in the game, and a look at how their rivalry developed, but it all comes down to the insane Wimbledon final they played in 1980. The actor playing Borg, Sverrir Gudnason, is a dead ringer for Borg, and Shia LeBeouf was unexpectedly good as McEnroe. I've heard people in festival lines say they found it a bit dull, but those people are WRONG.
I, Tonya
This was my one ridiculous indulgence for the fest. I paid to see the premium screening of this biopic of figure skater Tonya Harding solely because Sebastian Stan is in it and I wanted to see him in person. But it turns out, the movie is really good and is getting great word at the fest. I put up an incredibly long post about the screening and my thoughts on the film on Tumblr, along with a pic I took of Stan and his co-star, Margot Robbie, but the short version is it's dark and funny and will make you really feel for what Harding went through in her life.
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales
We managed to talk Ros into seeing this film in the kids sidebar at the fest. It's a French animated film with a Looney Tunes feel, and it's really fun. The trailer gives a good sense of its inspired lunacy. And as a bonus for me, the first of the three stories has a baby called Pauline! (My name is only popular in France, it seems.)
Call Me By Your Name
This had great buzz coming out of Sundance, and it was not misplaced. It's a story of summer love, with precocious 17-year-old falling for his dad's 23 year-old grad student. It's also a gay love story without any coming out panic or inevitable tragic ending. And it's utterly gorgeous, set in and around a villa in northern Italy. The cast is uniformly wonderful, especially Armie Hammer as the grad student and Timothée Chalumet as the teen, but also Michael Stuhlbaarg as the main character's father, who has a lovely scene at the end showing his empathy for his son and his first love. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
Borg/McEnroe
I became a tennis fan watching Borg play at Wimbledon every year, so I was very much looking forward to this movie, examining his rivalry on the court with bad boy John McEnroe. And it was honestly everything I was hoping it was. There are flashbacks to both men as kids, coming up in the game, and a look at how their rivalry developed, but it all comes down to the insane Wimbledon final they played in 1980. The actor playing Borg, Sverrir Gudnason, is a dead ringer for Borg, and Shia LeBeouf was unexpectedly good as McEnroe. I've heard people in festival lines say they found it a bit dull, but those people are WRONG.
I, Tonya
This was my one ridiculous indulgence for the fest. I paid to see the premium screening of this biopic of figure skater Tonya Harding solely because Sebastian Stan is in it and I wanted to see him in person. But it turns out, the movie is really good and is getting great word at the fest. I put up an incredibly long post about the screening and my thoughts on the film on Tumblr, along with a pic I took of Stan and his co-star, Margot Robbie, but the short version is it's dark and funny and will make you really feel for what Harding went through in her life.
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales
We managed to talk Ros into seeing this film in the kids sidebar at the fest. It's a French animated film with a Looney Tunes feel, and it's really fun. The trailer gives a good sense of its inspired lunacy. And as a bonus for me, the first of the three stories has a baby called Pauline! (My name is only popular in France, it seems.)
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Date: 2017-09-15 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-16 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-16 04:23 am (UTC)It's one of the buzziest films at the fest and got picked up for distribution a couple of days after it's premiere by Neon. (The SO tells me that's the distribution arm of Alamo Drafthouse.) So it should get a theatrical release soonish. (Word around the fest is they're going to push Margot Robbie and maybe Allison Janney for awards nominations.)
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Date: 2017-09-17 04:21 pm (UTC)Amusingly, the posters here call it 'Borg vs McEnroe'... I wonder if that is actually anything to do with being aware of slashers or just a convention they feel UK people are more familiar with in terms of sports fixtures?
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Date: 2017-09-22 02:38 am (UTC)My ticket said Borg/McEnroe, the screen credit said Borg McEnroe, and now I'm starting to see the Borg vs McEnroe version in internet references to it. Make up your mind, people! *g*