They were pretty lackluster, huh. I don't think I liked any summer movie as much as I liked Civil War. I did enjoy Ghostbusters, though.

I thought Star Trek Beyond was entertaining. I didn't really expect much more out of it than to be entertaining, though.

DH is at TFF right now, Vonnie, maybe you'll cross paths!

It could totally happen! There are only like half a million people attending the festival!

Did he complain yet about the escalators at Scotiabanks venue being broken? It's kinda turned into a festival-wide joke. Having to climb up that ridiculous flight of stairs after standing in queue outside in the rain for an hour yesterday was... special.

Festival update: I've heard about Park Chan Wook's The Handmaiden (adapted liberally from Sarah Water's Fingersmith apparently) being gorgeous and lurid and kind of bonkers, but nobody told me how funny it was! I was in stitches throughout the film. It was like 2 1/2 hour-long Gothic lesbian comedy on drugs. A+++, will watch again! I haven't read the Waters novel but I assume the more... outre elements in the film were Park's invention.

Also watched yesterday: Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time, which purported to say profound things about Time, Universe, Life, and Everything. I found it visually splendid and also hilariously pretentious. In my defense, I had plenty of really excellent Thai food just an hour before and Cate Blanchett's Galadriel voice (slowed down to half the speed, if you can imagine it) proved to be extremely soporific to me in that state, so I was possibly not in the appropriate frame of mind to receive it favourably. Seriously though, there is just so much mournful choral music one can stomach in a single film, and I like mournful choral music! (I also had some issues with poverty- and misery-porn, especially in the film's use of brown and black bodies as a shorthand for human suffering.) Um. It seemed rapturously received by most people in the theater, so don't take my word for it.

It was like 2 1/2 hour-long Gothic lesbian comedy on drugs.

Ooooh, that sounds like one to look for.

Ooooh, that sounds like one to look for.

It's OTT and hella fun. And Park restrains from his trademark ultra-violence until the very end, which I was grateful for.

My new festival favourite is Damien Chazelle's La La Land, which I watched yesterday. It's a swooningly lovely old fashioned musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Neither of them are great singers but boy, do they spark together so well. It's full of romance and candy-coloured fancy, but with an edge of melancholy. Parts of the movie were so beautiful that it actually made me tear up. It strikes me as a very Buffistas-type film.

The trailer: [link]

Oh, Vonnie, that really does look great.

I love the look and the style.

Reading this...

[link]

...and this...

[link]

...should give you an idea of how much I'm looking forward to La La Land. The short version: very, very much.

OK, hold your horses, I have a NEW favourite film from the festival -- Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, about which I knew next to nothing going in. All I heard was that Casey Affleck was the lead and it was about a man who had to deal with his brother's death. I basically spent the entire second half of the film silently weeping. It might be the best film I've seen about grief since... maybe The Sweet Hereafter? Which is a high bar. And it's not dreary or depressing at all, but raw and heartbreaking and surprisingly funny throughout. Affleck is stupendous in it, playing someone almost entirely interior and withdrawn.

SO MANY GREAT MOVIES, Y'ALL. I can't wait for these to come out so that I could talk about them here.

So glad Lonergan got to make another movie!

I love Lonergan's other stuff, so am definitely looking forward to that.