6 Best Movies To Watch After The Out-of-Towners (1999)

A Different Man is all about what it means to be seen, in all the best and worst ways. It’s what it means to avoid eye contact with the unhoused man on the subway and to gawk at anyone who looks remotely outside the norm. It’s the difference between simply being noticed and being intimately seen, the way only someone who actually understands you can. Writer and director Aaron Schimberg looks for as many ways as possible to play with these ideas, fitting the seer and seen inside each other in a little matryoshka doll. But first and foremost, our gaze is on Edward. Adam Pearson isn't internationally known, but he's known to rock a microphone. (Matt Infante/A24) Edward (Sebastian Stan) is a struggling actor with a rare condition that covers his face with large, benign tumors. He’s quiet and reserved. His every movement reveals a discomfort even existing in the world, never mind taking part in it. So when he gets the chance to take an experimental new drug that can completely heal him, he does so without a thought. Reborn as his new, more handsome self, he finally gets what should be the part of a lifetime in a local play based on his life. That is until Oswald, a man with the same condition as Edward, steals the part. In the process, this new arrival reveals just how exactly Edward has actually transformed.  Continue Reading →

From Certified Copy to Mass to the Before trilogy, cinema is replete with examples of great movies that wring transfixing drama out of an intimate scope and a cast of characters you can count on one hand. Christy Hall’s feature-length directorial debut Daddio aims to follow in the footsteps of those features, but stumbles mightily in the process. Daddio begins at a New York airport, where Girlie (Dakota Johnson) plops into a taxi after a trip to her home state of Oklahoma. Driving this cab is Clark (Sean Penn), a grizzled man in his sixties who loves shooting his mouth off. Initially, the focus of his ramblings is typical old-man material. He gripes about the ubiquity of apps and credit cards in the modern world. Gradually, though, the duo gets trapped in traffic. Stuck on the road, Clark begins asking Girlie increasingly intimate questions. They started this car ride as strangers. But conversations ranging from the raw to the ribald will have Girlie discovering the listener she didn’t know she needed. Unsurprisingly, Daddio started as a concept for a stage play. What's surprising is how the final film's visual impulses seem determined to avoid comparisons to something you could watch on Broadway. Hall, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, and editor Lisa Zeno Churgin act furiously to avoid lengthy single-take shots. Nobody will ever compare this to a Chantal Akerman or Chung Mong-Hong movie. Instead, images default to close-ups and medium shots. Hall and company continuously jostle viewers around the cab. Maybe this is out of concern that moviegoers will see a more staid visual style and immediately ask, “Why isn’t this a play?” Continue Reading →

There are few names as deeply ingrained in the fabric of American pop culture as Ghostbusters, the action-comedy franchise spawned by Ivan Reitman’s beloved 1984 film. Nonetheless, despite its staggering financial success (netting nearly 300 million against a 25 million dollar budget) and pop culture permeance, Sony has had trouble recapturing the magic in later entries. Neither 1989’s Ghostbusters II, 2016’s Ghostbusters, and 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife have neared the original’s success.  Despite that, it seems the Ghostbusters franchise has finally found a sequel concept it’s willing to forge ahead with. The franchise’s latest installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, is a direct sequel to Afterlife. It once more reunites Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) children with the three living original Ghostbusters— Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Bill Murray. Despite an intriguing subplot for Phoebe, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is an incohesive, unoriginal entry. It coasts on fan service to carry a paper-thin plot and a lukewarm crop of characters, new and old. Bill Murray and Paul Rudd discuss their love of fog machines. (Sony Pictures) Picking up two years after the events of Afterlife, Frozen Empire follows the Spengler family (Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard) to New York City. After the previous film's tradition-breaking decision to unfold in rural Oklahoma, this returns the franchise to its true home. Bankrolled by the uber-wealthy Winston (Hudson) they're back operating out of the old Ghostbusters firehouse. There the Spenglers struggle to juggle ghost-hunting with their interpersonal dynamics. That's all while working to keep the mayor (William Atherton) from shutting the family business. Continue Reading →

John Carney's new drama is just one of a diverse collection of features at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn't exist. Irish filmmaker John Carney made his big breakthrough in 2007 with Once, a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. This was followed by Begin Again (2013), a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. After that came Sing Street (2016), a film focused on the redemptive power of music and its ability to bring people, whether they are strangers or family, together in the pursuit of creating something that allows them to give voice to their once-buried hopes and desires. Continue Reading →