Category: Reviews

Let ‘The Burial’ rise towards the top of your movie queue

Jeff Mitchell

“The Burial” (2023) – It’s October!  For movie fans of all ages, ‘tis the season for forbidding films that thrill and chill, loaded with frightening frights and screeching scares! Enter director/co-writer Maggie Betts’ “The Burial”.  Imagine the late, great movie-trailer legend Don LaFontaine introducing this new Halloween-month release. “Arriving this October, Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones rise in the terrifying after-midnight graveyard gorefest, ‘The Burial’.” Well, despite the ominous title, Betts’ (“Novitiate” (2017)) movie isn’t horror-based at all.  Not at all.   It’s a courtroom drama, and it doesn’t…

Hewson and Gordon-Levitt share warm chemistry and a beautiful song in ‘Flora and Son’

Jeff Mitchell

“Flora and Son” (2023) – Meet Flora. As director/writer John Carney’s (“Once” (2007), “Begin Again” (2013), “Sing Street” (2016)) film opens, Flora (Eve Hewson) and her bestie dash to a dance floor at a small Dublin club and bust up some serious, electric moves. This big-personality, short-in-stature 31-year-old grooves with a purpose, with a certainty.  At first glance, Flora seems to have all the answers, as she boogies with her bud to release tension, have fun, and possibly meet a guy.  We soon discover she doesn’t possess all the solutions…

The Best of TIFF 2023 – Part Two

Jeff Mitchell

Following the Sept. 15 “The Best of TIFF – Part One” article, here are five more of my favorites from the 48th Annual Toronto International Film Festival.  Now, yours truly didn’t catch the TIFF Audience Award winner, “American Fiction” starring Jeffrey Wright, but I did watch 46 other movies over 11 days and highly recommend that you seek out this cinematic quintet, films that will hopefully soon arrive at a theatre or streaming service near you!  “Anatomy of a Fall” – Samuel (Samuel Theis), a husband and father, falls to…