A rare look into the mind of an assassin, Incitement provokes and disturbs. This Toronto world premiere tells the story of Yigal Amir, the young law student who killed Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, dooming the peace process that the Israeli prime minister had sought to implement and changing the history of the Middle East. This film seems especially timely in an era of growing fanaticism and hatred.
Several years ago, director Yaron Zilberman made A Late …
At the same time that California Governor Gavin Newsom has called for an end to the death penalty, a powerful film opens that documents a horrific miscarriage of justice that most likely resulted in the execution of an innocent man. Trial by Fire, directed by Edward Zwick, is adapted from a New Yorker article by David Grann, author of the best-selling book, Killers of the Flower Moon, another startling true-crime story. This new film is …
Actors-turned-directors do not always have the command of cinematic technique that can be found in the work of auteurs with a different background. But these actor-filmmakers can generally be counted on to encourage and bolster compelling performances, and this is certainly one of the great strengths of Joel Edgerton’s second film as director, Boy Erased. Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and a uniformly splendid supporting cast—including Edgerton himself as a gay conversion therapist—deliver the …
As some pundit once observed, every comic secretly yearns to play Hamlet, which of course is an oversimplification. And yet funny men and women have often made the journey to dramatic roles, with mixed results. Melissa McCarthy is the latest to veer from her customary image, in a surprisingly rewarding dramedy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which had its world premiere in Telluride and will be released by Fox Searchlight this fall. McCarthy’s performance, which …
Those who haven’t adjusted ecstatically to all the wonders of modern technology will revel in the unorthodox and delightful documentary, California Typewriter, one of the major discoveries at last year’s Telluride Film Festival.
Director Doug Nichol told the audience in Telluride that he started out to make a documentary about a small, struggling typewriter repair shop in Berkeley, California. But the canvas gradually expanded to a rich and rewarding cinematic essay on what the demise of …
