Well, I was wrong, and I did manage to make it to one last day at the Toronto International Film Festival. One of the movies I wanted to see the most this year was Scarlet, the latest from Mamoru Hosoda, whose most recent film was the metaverse fairy tale Belle. Whereas that film was a […]
Few video game adaptations understand their source material quite like the Exit 8 film. It takes the rules and structure of the game – which strands players inside of a looping hallway in a Tokyo subway station – and then builds on them with actual characters and a story. And according to director Genki Kawamura, […]
Like the rest of the Knives Out movies, Wake Up Dead Man is full of extremely fun revelations – the kind that can turn the whodunit story on its head and, as was the case for many of those attending the film’s premiere in Toronto, Canada, produce audible gasps. Those shared moments of surprise are […]
When Stephen King’s The Long Walk was first published in 1979, dystopian young adult fiction had not yet become a wildly popular genre. With all of its gore and brutality, King’s novel wasn’t really meant for children. But in the book’s story about disillusioned youths being made to march through wastelands as a form of […]
Frankenstein is one of those stories that’s been retold countless times. And yet, Guillermo del Toro has managed to make a version that not only feels true to Mary Shelley’s original, but is also imbued with the trademarks the director is known for. Maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising – when presenting the film at […]
The best part of going to a film festival is finding something new. Sure, it’s great to find out that movies you’re excited about are in fact good – I’ve had luck so far with Exit 8, No Other Choice, and Wake Up Dead Man – but it’s so much more exciting to be surprised […]
The Toronto International Film Festival is almost like a preview of the movie slate for the next few months — and this year I’m watching as much as possible to give you all the scoop on what’s ahead. To do that, I’ll be writing a dispatch covering every movie I’ve seen that day, which will […]
When director Rian Johnson introduced the new Knives Out film on the third day of TIFF 2025, he exclaimed: “we’re going back to church.” By that he meant that Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, would harken back to the origins of the whodunit, and in particular the gothic vibes of Edgar […]
At my second day at TIFF 2025, the longest line I saw wasn’t for a movie: it was for the Criterion Closet. The space is housed in a van so that it could make it up to Toronto, and honestly, it felt a little wrong to see the outside of it after watching everyone from […]
Showrunner — the startup that wants to “revolutionize” the entertainment industry by charging people to prompt up AI-generated videos featuring copyrighted IP — is working on a new project to restore an Orson Welles classic. On Friday, Showrunner announced that it has designed a new generative AI model that is meant to help recreate lost […]