2018

Review by David Baldwin

I watch a lot of movies, so it seems to shock friends and co-workers any time I have not seen the popular movie of the moment as quickly as they have. I usually have the standard excuse of “It’s on the list” or “I’m waiting for Netflix”, but as must-see content continues to pile up on an almost hourly basis, I find myself consistently behind the curve. Quitting my full time job is not an option (especially when you’ve only recently become a full-time homeowner), so I’m constantly playing catch-up.

I say all of this, because the last few weeks have been dominated by discussions about Christmas, New Year’s, whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie (spoiler alert: It is), and Bird Box. The film premiered with little fanfare at AFI Fest in November (mostly because they cancelled their Red Carpet coverage out of respect for on-going wildfires terrorizing California at the time), but has since become one of the most watched original Netflix films, has inspired conspiracy theories about the veracity of the memes about the film being posted on Twitter, and now has inspired its own social media challenge related to activities being performed while blindfolded.

So yes, it makes sense that someone would be surprised I had not watched the film just yet. I made a point of fixing as soon as I possibly could.

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Another year, another TIFF. It was my ninth year in a row of going to the festival, and my second time covering as Press — but first time where I actually used the pass as it was meant to be used. The less said about the last time, the better.

I watched 5 films before the festival, 44 films during (my own personal record!), attended 2 Press Conferences, 1 Jason Reitman Live Read (for The Breakfast Club no less), and even had some time leftover to skip a whole day to attend the wedding of a dear friend. Through all the smoking and deep, depressing films, I had a total blast and cannot wait for next year. Perhaps I’ll budget my sleeping better so I don’t doze through a good portion of a movie like The Old Man & The Gun? Probably not, but I can at least pretend that I’ll try.

I wrote quite a few words for Mr. Will Wong on a number of the films I had the opportunity to see, so here are the individual links to those reviews and the links to the Press Conferences I covered:

CAPSULE REVIEWS
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Fahrenheit 11/9
First Man
The Front Runner
Halloween
High Life
Hold the Dark
The Kindergarten Teacher
Kingsway
Let Me Fall [Lof mer ad falla]
Life Itself
Mid90s
Monsters and Men
Nekrotronic
The Predator
A Private War
The Public
ROMA
Les Salopes or the Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin [Les salopes ou le sucre naturel de la peau]
A Star is Born [2018]
Wildlife

FULL REVIEW

White Boy Rick

PRESS CONFERENCES

First Man
The Front Runner

I didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey when I watched it at a packed screening back in 2015. And I didn’t hate Fifty Shades Darker when I watched in at home last Spring in all its timid “Unrated” glory. Both films were badly written and badly acted, but they were functional pieces of entertainment that were clearly not designed for me. They provided some intentional and unintentional laughs, and were not nearly as bad as some of the films I actually went to see purposely.

But the finale, Fifty Shades Freed — or climax as the posters so playfully tease — is a whole other beast entirely. And while I joked on Facebook that it was a “triumph of cinema”, it is easily the exact opposite.

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After multiple release date changes and some troubling rumours, Netflix finally cleared up any and all confusion about The Cloverfield Paradox tonight. Once called God Particle, once called Cloverfield Station, we finally have the third entry in the loosely connected Cloverfield series. And despite some excitement earlier this evening with Netflix’s bold decision to drop a teaser during the Super Bowl — for a film that would start streaming immediately following the big game — the long awaited film is not all that great.

Rather than type up a full review (it is almost 2 AM after all), I figured I would just deliver a few thoughts on the film, and do my very best to avoid some of the more spoilerish elements. Continue Reading