Toronto Film Festival Sept. 5- Sept 15, 2019

[Chris Knipp]

More from the Guardian


NICOLE KIDMAN AND ANSEL ELGORT IN THE GOLDFINCH

The Goldfinch (John Crowley) Benjamin Lee gives 3/5 to this adaptation of Donna Tartt's 800-page globe-trotting novel: "meh." It's neither good nor bad, just okay, "neither a rousing success nor an embarrassing failure, falling somewhere in between, closer to admirable attempt." At least it avoids being an "ungainly mess" as "some had expected," its "many, many moving parts" "stitched together with an elegant hand."

(This is how I often feel about movies, that at best they fall somewhere in between rousing success and embarrassing failure.)

Owen Gleiberman in Variety calls The Goldfinch " the year's prestige literary adaptation" that's "scrupulously faithful, yet still misses the book's captivating essence." Vanity Fair calls it "dutiful" and "well mounted but tepid" with "not enough rough texture and feeling. "

The story line many know and is intriguing. A bombing at the Metropolitan museum, leads to a boy staling a painting while his mother is killed in the explosion. He keeps and is haunted buy the stolen secret treasure. It also has Jeffrey Wright and Sarah Paulson. Indiewire and The Globe and Mail both called Goldfinch "a disaster."


Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi) is a repetitive satire that plays all Nazis as silly morons, Hitler most of all, where Hitler is just a character's imaginary friend. In the Guardian Benjamin Lee gives this 2/5 stars but says Scarlett Johansson, who's on a roll lately (isn't she always?) "is the best thing about" this movie. Owen Gleiberman of Variety calls this a " feel-good hipster Nazi comedy" (which he thinks may be a first) and " a movie that creates the illusion of danger while playing it safe." The filmmaker directed Thor: Ragnarok .

Bad Education ( Cory Finley) From the director of Thoroughbreds is a "shaggy" retelling of a high school corruption story that Lee sees as solid but lacking except for a strong central turn by Hugh Jackman as an official determined to push the school to the bop, while Ailson Janney is a "dialed down" version of her "quippy, alcohol-soaked, Oscar- and Emmy-winning shtick," as an official who senses something fishy going on. 3/5 stars from Benjamin Lee.