BEST BETS
Madeline’s Madeline
Josephine Decker’s indie drama about a teenage actor with a talent she can’t quite seem to control features a breakout performance from Helena Howard and strong supporting work by Molly Parker and Miranda July. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
Support The Girls
The latest from indie filmmaker Andrew Bujalski (Mutual Appreciation, Computer Chess) stars Regina King as the general manager of a Hooter’s-like restaurant on one ridiculously busy day. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
THEATRICAL
The Bookshop
Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, The Secret Life Of Words) adapts Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel about a woman (Emily Mortimer) who outrages her repressive community by… daring to open a bookshop. Read Glenn Sumi’s review.
Breath
Australian actor Simon Baker – best known here as the star of the long-running TV procedural The Mentalist – makes his directorial debut with this period drama about two teens (Samson Coulter, Ben Spence) who forge a life-changing friendship with an older surfer (Baker).
Crown And Anchor
The first feature from Newfoundland writer/director Andrew Rowe tracks a tightly wound cop (Michael Rowe, the filmmaker’s brother) and a spiraling criminal (Matt Wells) on a collision course with one another – because they’re cousins. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
The Happytime Murders
Melissa McCarthy spends a lot of time yelling at felt in Brian Henson’s comedy, set in a world where people and puppets co-exist – and where someone is stalking the cast of a beloved 80s TV show. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
Little Italy
Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen are childhood friends who fall for one another while their families feud over pizza in Donald Petrie’s made-in-Toronto rom-com. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
1945
The arrival of two Jewish men in a small Hungarian village forces the locals to confront their culpability in the Holocaust in Ferenc Török’s drama, which screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival earlier this spring.
Papillon
Danish director Michael Noer’s remake of the 1973 prison drama casts Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek as a safecracker and a counterfeiter who become unlikely comrades in miserable circumstances – roles originally played by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, respectively.
We The Animals
Documentarian Jeremiah Zagar shifts to drama with this coming-of-age tale about a sheltered boy (Evan Rosado) just starting to understand what sets him apart from most of the people he knows.
What Keeps You Alive
Brittany Allen and Hannah Emily Anderson are a married couple whose anniversary getaway turns into a struggle for survival in the latest from writer/director Colin Minihan, who last cast Allen (his real-life partner) in the zombie thriller It Stains The Sands Red. Read Norm Wilner’s review.
TV/STREAMING
The Innocents
Netflix’s latest teen-targeted series stars Clique’s Sorcha Groundsell as a 16-year-old who runs away with her boyfriend (Percelle Ascott) just as she discovers she has the power to swap bodies with other people. Guy Pearce plays the sinister scientist on their trail. All eight episodes drop Friday (August 24).
Ghoul
This three-part Indian horror series overlays current issues of nationalism, torture and terrorism with supernatural elements in a story about an anti-nationalist prisoner (Mahesh Balraj) who turns the tables on his interrogators. Available on Netflix on Friday (August 24). Read Rachna Raj Kaur’s review.
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