Guys, I cannot wait to see this: [link]

That movie is gonna make me cry.

That looks good, Steph. In related news, I discovered that Olive Byrne was Ethel Byrne's daughter and Margaret Sanger's (birth control advocate) niece. Byrne's mom was one of the first female victims of institutional force feeding while imprisoned for helping women get access to birth control.

I bet Olive would have had a lot to say about Themiscyra.

I saw that a couple of days ago! It's a solid biopic and marvellous on the representation front. Rebecca Hall, who plays Elizabeth Marston, is particularly wonderful. I kinda wished it had spent more time on the creation of Wonder Woman though.

Drove down from Toronto yesterday after TIFF. I'm not as bone-tired as I had been in 2016 -- I was much better with self-care during the fest, limiting myself to 3 films a day (I had one 4-film day and yep, that was one too many) and remembering to eat and hydrate. Overall, I feel like there weren't quite as many amazing films I saw this year as I did last, but the highs were still very high.

The last film I saw on Sunday was the new Martin McDonagh, who did In Bruges (It's titled Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which is mouthful). I... might have liked it even better than The Shape of Water (!), and lo and behold, it ended up winning the People's Choice Award. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and profane (seriously, the amount of creative cursing in this film is off the chart), and it laughs at human foibles while having a surprising amount of compassion for its *extremely* flawed characters. Frances McDormand plays a grief-stricken mother who is now just fucking pissed and is acting out in a way that is clearly destructive yet enormously cathartic to the viewing audience. She's gonna be a serious contender for that Best Actress Oscar come February. And both Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson are ON FIRE in meaty supporting roles.

The trailer: [link]

(Put your headphone on if you're gonna watch it at work, yo. I'm not kidding about wall-to-wall profanity.)

You did warn about the profanity. But it fits the situation. Interesting movie, I'll be watching for when it is released.

We're watching the movie In the Loop, and boy, is watching Malcolm Tucker cathartic.

The TV series that it was a continuation of was In the Thick of It, right? scurries off to check local library's online catalog...

Yep. One of the first things he says is "Fuckity bye!" I felt that, on a spiritual level.

I saw Iannucci's latest, The Death of Stalin in TIFF. It's not quite as funny as In the Loop, mostly because nobody can match the brilliance of Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker. But it's still got plenty of Iannucci's hilarious dialog and excoriation of venal politicians and general absurdity. The cast is dynamite. I think it's coming out in October? Trailer: [link]

Nobody except film critics are going to the theater to see Darren Aronofsky's Mother! but the discussion *around* the film has been so sustained (it's mostly my fault to following so much of Film Twitter) that I kinda feel like I should watch it to see what the fuck it's all about. But what I've read so far about the film made it sound soooo unpleasant, ugh. The only other Aronofsky I've seen is Black Swan, which I quite enjoyed for what it was (high camp disguised in fine arts feathers). Hmmm.

At least it's generating talks and leading to articles like this one, which is a list of great female-led horror films over the years and includes some of my favourites (Carnival of Souls, Stoker, The Innocents and Ginger Snaps -- I would have added the original The Haunting) as well as several I have been too chickenshit to see.