Reel Encounters

The opening scene of “No Time to Die” has stayed in mind longer than I expected it to.

If the unhinged earnestness of Tom Hardy’s central performance was the hook that necessitated a sequel to the 2018 “Venom”, it’s a bit surprising that the recently released sequel – titled “Let There Be Carnage” begins with someone other than Eddie Brock and his faithful symbiote friend.

The newly released comedy-drama “The Starling” is the second underwhelming Netflix release starring Melissa McCarthy this year, which is a disappointing fact for such an engaging actor.

Canadian author Miriam Toews drew heavily from personal family tragedies for her 2014 novel “All My Puny Sorrows”.

Two of the best films that played at TIFF this year felt like self-conscious purgings of personal demons from the filmmakers.

Family dramas across generations, continents and genres were a recurring preoccupation at the Toronto International Film Festival this year.

The third season of “Sex Education” opens with a montage of characters primarily devoted to some frantic sex.

To compelling, if varied, results, three films screened at the recently concluded TIFF2021 explored similar themes of women in crisis struggling to acclimate to the systems around them – Canadian family-drama “All My Puny Sorrows”, the Brazilian horror film “Medusa”, and the Danish drama “As In Heaven”.

Biopics tend to get a bad rep, mostly due to a swathe of listless interrogations of real-life figures, but it’s instructive to remember that a biopic is not really a genre of film.

Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 9, 1951.

The Cinderella story entered European tradition in the 17th century, but records date back to as early as Egypt BC.

One of my favourite creative moments in any medium is the beginning of the finale of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park with George”.

There’s an undercurrent of restrained anxiety throughout the six episodes of the new Netflix miniseries, “The Chair”.

The acronym CODA – child of deaf adults – is, perhaps, an unusual name for the new Apple TV+ family drama.

There’s a lot happening in the computer-animated musical comedy “Vivo”. At its centre, it’s about the power of music, and seeking to prove that a single song can change a life.

How might things have been different if Marvel had decided to produce a “Black Widow” film that opened in 2017 to explore the past of Natasha Romanoff?

I’ve spent way too much time marvelling at the oddity of the title of Steve Soderbergh’s new crime drama, “No Sudden Move”.

There’s a bowling alley sequence in the early parts of “Gunpowder Milkshake” that sets up the full gamut of the tedium which will soon come to represent the film.

Are the “Conjuring” movies the most intriguing franchise of this century?

Poland. December 31. 1999. Four hours before midnight, and a 22-year-old man (Sebastian) takes a TV presenter and a security guard hostage.