The first titles announced for the 2018 Toronto Film Festival include new films from Damien Chazelle, Alfonso Cuaron, Barry Jenkins, Nicole Holofcener and so much more.
Following the success of Lady Bird, it’s easy to imagine that Greta Gerwig has received her fair share of offers to direct other projects, but like the title character in her solo directorial debut, Gerwig has her own plan in mind. That plan involves making three more films set in Sacramento — the city where Gerwig grew up, which serves as the inspiration and setting for Saoirse Ronan’s own coming of age in Lady Bird.
James Baldwin and Barry Jenkins, a collaboration dreams are made of. Those dreams will become a reality now that the Moonlight director has secured his next film project, an adaptation of a Baldwin novel.
Never mind the old Chris Rock routine about how Martin Luther King Boulevards across America invariably tend to be especially violent — there’s a great honor in having a street named after you. It’s a concrete way to leave your mark on the world long past the point of your passing, a symbol of accomplishment that nobody can take away from you. Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood is home to Do the Right Thing Way, a commemoration of Spike Lee’s essential chronicle of one explosive day on the streets. And now, another black filmmaker of great vision and skill will receive this special distinction in parts due south.
Sound the alarm: TV has landed yet another of the movies’ best and brightest. Hot off the (chaotic) Oscar win for Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins will next go to work at Amazon, writing and directing a new drama series based on Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.
It wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I finally found time to catch Moonlight in theaters, so you’ll excuse me if the buzz around Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s film hasn’t quite worn off yet. Moonlight isn’t just a powerful story of one person’s struggle with his sexuality, it is also one of the most powerfully acted and beautifully shot films of the decade. In my professional opinion as a film critic, we should just throw awards at that movie until both filmmakers are forced to move into bigger houses just to store them all. That’s my professional opinion, mind you.
The 90 or so members of the Hollywood Foreign Press are always an unpredictable bunch of awards season voters, but that made predictions for the 2017 Golden Globes’ Best Motion Picture Drama award even more uncertain. The awards race has been a close one this year between Manchester By the Sea and Moonlight (and especially close in the Drama category at the Globes with other frontrunner La La Land in the Comedy category). But this year the HFPA decided to honor the Kenneth Lonergan film / the Barry Jenkins film with the top drama prize.
Is there a more stressful month for film fans than December? Not only are most of us trying to stay on top of our normal holiday stress — picking up gifts for our family and friends and dreading time spent in airports and train stations — we are also trying to fit in as many movies as possible before the end of the year. Whether you write about film, participate in an office Academy Award pool, or just like watching good movies, there’s nothing like cramming movies into every spare second of an already packed mo