It usually starts around “Burning Down the House.” That’s six numbers into Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film, and the first number to feature not just the central quartet — David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz — but the whole expanded band they were …
Read More »A New Louis C.K. Doc Explores Why the Comedian Wasn't Canceled for Sexual Harassment
The thing about “open secrets” is: Everyone knows what the secret is, but no one wants to acknowledge or talk about it. Not really, at least — if somebody’s peers and colleagues are all privy to some forbidden or socially unacceptable facts, and bringing it up forces them to reckon …
Read More »Spike Lee Calls Out Film Critics for Speculating 'Do the Right Thing' Would Incite Riots
Spike Lee called out film critics who suggested thatDo the Right Thingwould spark riots when it opened in 1989, while expressing his gratitude for late reviewer Roger Ebert, who praised the film after its Cannes debut. “He was very crucial in my career,” said Lee as he received the Ebert …
Read More »'Dream Scenario' Is Bald Nicolas Cage's Cancel-Culture Nightmare
Think about some of the weirdest dreams you’ve ever had. Maybe you were perched on a dining room table while hungry alligators slithered toward you. Or the one where you’re sitting by a swimming pool as various objects fall from the sky. Or that nightmare where a tall, terrifying man …
Read More »Nickelback Doc 'Hate to Love' Is the Nickelback of Rock Docs
It is easy to shit on Nickelback. Too easy, some might say. The question is really: Why? What, exactly, is it about this Canadian group that inspires such ill will? Their overwhelming success? Lots of bands are successful, for all of the right and wrong reasons. Their hits? No one’s …
Read More »'Dicks: The Musical' Wants to Be the Most Offensive Musical Ever. It Nearly Succeeds
“Show us your Dicks!” Roughly 90 minutes after someone in the audience yelled that request out, the people sitting in the Royal Alexandra Theatre would find themselves being showered with makeshift confetti, led in a gospel sing-along by folks in church-choir robes, and batting around beach balls and, naturally, inflatable …
Read More »'The Boy and the Heron' Proves That Hayao Miyazaki Is the Greatest Animator Alive
There are those who were confused upon reading the announcement that the Toronto International Film Festival would kick off its 48th edition with The Boy and the Heron, from the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. And then there are those who heard that this latest — and possibly the last — …
Read More »'I Know What You Feel Before a Fight': Why Gina Prince-Bythewood Needed to Make 'The Woman King'
Gina Prince-Bythewood doesn’t find herself intimidated very often. Why would she be? The director kicked off her career with a bona fide sports-movie classic, Love & Basketball, which was the talk of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival; she’d made critically acclaimed dramas like Beyond the Lights and superhero blockbusters like …
Read More »10 Best Movies at Toronto Film Festival 2022
Should you have wondered whether the Toronto International Film Festival was indeed “back” in full force — in its 47th edition, and its second since Virtual TIFF Year Zero — you simply had to look outside. Folks milled in front the Bell Lightbox when they weren’t packed into screenings, chatting …
Read More »'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' Is a Major Work of Anti-Pharma Protest Art
On the afternoon of March 10th, 2018, Nan Goldin walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The award-winning photographer is no stranger to these institutions; prints of her groundbreaking work documenting everything from gay subcultures to the stifling legacy of suburbia to her own domestic abuse have graced their walls …
Read More »