Did you miss Mudbound and Jim & Andy at the Toronto International Film Festival? It’s okay, I did, too. Even the most dedicated critic can’t get to everything that plays at TIFF.
Netflix subscribers can catch up when both films start streaming Friday (November 17), and we figured that was a good excuse to check out what other TIFF 2017 premieres are now available to watch at home.
Alias Grace
TIFF only screened the first two hours of CBC’s six-hour miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s historical mystery audiences had to wait until October for screenwriter Sarah Polley, director Mary Harron and star Sarah Gadon to reveal all of Grace Marks’s secrets. The entire show is available online now, which will be handy for those first-year Can Lit students who neglected to read the book.
Read NOW’s review. Available to stream on CBC.
Brawl In Cell Block 99
S. Craig Zahler’s burly, bloody prison movie – featuring a remarkable turn from Vince Vaughn as a hulking ex-boxer trying to carry out an impossible assignment in a hellish penitentiary – isn’t quite the same experience without the raucous Midnight Madness crowd. On the other hand, if you’re watching it at home you can pause it to get some air after the thing where… well, you’ll see.
Available on iTunes, Microsoft and Google Play.
First They Killed My Father
Based on the memoir of Loung Ung, Angelina Jolie’s drama explores the nightmare of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge uprising from the perspective of a five-year-old girl (Sareum Srey Moch) who barely understands what’s happening around her. It’s grim and unrelenting, and no less easy to take on a small screen than it was at TIFF.
Read NOW’s review. Available on Netflix.
Gaga: Five Foot Two
TIFF bolstered its pop cred with the premiere of Netflix’s carefully calibrated look at a year in the life of Lady Gaga. The art-pop sensation’s fans gobbled it up as soon as it went live on Netflix a couple of weeks later, but if you’ve been meaning to catch up it’s there for you now.
Available on Netflix.
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Featuring A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention Of Tony Clifton
Movies about movies are catnip to film festivals, and Chris Smith’s intriguing look at the making of Man On The Moon – which uses reams of on-set footage to chart Jim Carrey’s self-destructive determination to lose himself in the roles of both Andy Kaufman and Kaufman’s alter ego Tony Clifton – proved irresistible to TIFF’s programmers. Was it all worth it? You can decide for yourself when it goes live on Netflix.
Read NOW’s review. Available on Netflix.
Long Time Running
Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier’s look at the Tragically Hip’s farewell tour – sparked by Gord Downie’s diagnosis of terminal brain cancer – transcends the rockumentary format to become something truly special: a tribute to a remarkable band, and an intimate study of old friends struggling with the grief that’s yet to come.
Streaming now on CraveTV, available on iTunes and other on-demand platforms. Read NOW’s review.
Mudbound
Dee Rees’s adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s novel about an unlikely friendship forged between two veterans against the backdrop of Jim Crow Mississippi gave the festival one of its splashiest red carpets, thanks to co-stars Mary J. Blige and Carey Mulligan and Netflix’s determination to position the movie as an Oscar contender. Now you can finally find out if the film lives up to the hype.
Read NOW’s review. Available on Netflix.
One Of Us
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are no strangers to fundamentalism a decade after their Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp showed us Christian fundamentalism from the inside out, the pair delivered this clear-eyed look at New York’s Hasidic Jewish community through the eyes of three people who left it. TIFF’s assembled entertainment media went for flashier docs about Lady Gaga, Grace Jones and Jean-Michel Basquiat. They missed out.
Available on Netflix.
