In the Toronto International Film Festival’s documentary section, stories about fighting for one’s beliefs, dreams, and survival sit side-by-side on the schedule. From near and afar, cameras give the audience an up close and personal view of issues and topics we may only skim across in headlines. The lens puts a face, a name, and

By nature of their logistics, film festivals always come with innate frights (accidentally going to the wrong theater for your screening, anything and everything related to Ticketmaster) but watching Midnight Madness films is a guaranteed way to be entertained even while being spooked. Even when the cinema genre is a known type, it’s exciting to

Focusing on Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), a former CIA operative forced out of hiding when an old adversary comes looking for him for revenge, “The Old Man” debuted with a sleek pilot—perhaps one of the best of the decade. That, and watching legends like Bridges and John Lithgow in television roles older actors aren’t often

There was an abundance of music documentaries at TIFF last year for what feels like an obvious reason: musicians aren’t actors or directors. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes so limited the red-carpet star power at the event that the programmers needed to find a way around them, and so getting Paul Simon, Lil Nas X,

The premieres continued on Friday and Saturday at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, highlighted by deeply personal projects, including another Stephen King adaptation from the man who may be the master of such things, further evidence that Marielle Heller is a filmmaker to watch, and a project that grew out of a famous father’s

We all enjoy a good heist flick, but stretching one into a limited television series is a gamble that is as risky as the heist our characters try to pull off. The eight-part Peacock miniseries “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” from showrunner Shaye Ogbonna and “Dolemite is My Name” director Craig Brewer spins a

The incredibly clever platformer “Astro Bot” is designed with one intention: To make you smile. In an era in which even the best games can seem addictively cruel (“Elden Ring”) or thematically brutal (“The Last of Us”), there’s something so satisfying about a game that goes back to the basic function of providing pure, joyous

A ferociously satisfying update of “First Blood” with a rustic Southern setting, “Rebel Ridge” furthers writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s pattern of trapping his protagonists in tight spots and making them fight their way out, even as it recalibrates the grisly survivalism of “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room,” along with the atmospheric tension of his Alaska-set “Hold

If you want to know how difficult it is getting 70mm film prints screened at movie houses these days, just talk to Jerry Blackburn. Blackburn is the senior manager and director of public programming for the Beverly Hills-based Fine Arts Theatre. Built in 1937, the repertory theater is one of the handful of historic movie

Locarno isn’t a film festival. It’s a pilgrimage. My journey to the legendary festival, which celebrated its 77th edition this year, involved planes, trains, and automobiles to land in Milan, Italy before crossing the border into Locarno. The odyssey felt well worth it when I caught sight of the narrow stone pebble streets, the gelato-colored