TIFF Film Review - BROOKLYN

BROOKLYN

Director:

 John Crowley

Writers:

 Nick Hornby 

Starring:

 Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Michael Zegen

A young woman in Ireland in the 1950's can't find work and her priest has arranged a job for her in New York.  She doesn't have any family in New York but stays in a female boarding house with a host of characters.  She tries to settle in and feel comfortable with her move to another country but doesn't feel like she fits in until she meets a handsome Italian plummer who is from Brooklyn. He shows her the beauty of New York and she starts to feel comfortable until a family tragedy sends her back to Ireland and she gains a new perspective on what her life may have been if she had stayed. She is now forced to make a choice between staying in her homeland or moving back to Brooklyn to be with the man she fell in love with.

I watched this film with a group of my film festival friends and one of them happened to be from the same town in Ireland and there were a lot of similarities in her own journey with the exception of the Italian man.  This film really got to her and there were a few of us in the group that went through a host of emotions while a couple of the guys just didn't understand as much.

This film was a nod to the old Hollywood romance films.   It isn't a face paced film but it's a beautifully told story about ones homeland and fitting into a foreign environment.

I would say 8 out of 10 of us really loved this film.   Art is subjective so I don't like to rate films but if the majority of a group of people like a film then you know you have something special.

My TIFF Film Picks

TIFF - The Toronto International Film Festival is just about to begin a milestone year with it's 40th Film Festival starting next week.  Now is the time when people are quickly planning their 10 or 11 days at the festival.  Every year the festival gets bigger and bigger and it gets tougher to try and see all the films you want to see in such a limited time span.   With a couple hundred films at a dozen different theatres it's tricky to figure out where to be and when and what to see.  So planning has been the key for many successful longtime film goers.  Some of my friends create Excel spreadsheets to map out where there films are.   This year I used the spreadsheet that created by Tiff and whittled it down to the picks of films I want to see.

Art is very subjective and this list is the films I want to see.  Your list may be very different.  I choose my films based on subject matter, sometimes an actor that I think will be very good, sometimes it's a director and sometimes it's just something I think would be just a lot of fun.

One thing I have learned in my 15 years doing TIFF is that it's hard to get everyone to agree on the same film.  With my 30 odd Tiff teammates we can all see the same movie and there will be a few in the bunch that weren't fans of the film while it hit home to others.  A dozen of us saw a film last night and a few cried while it didn't touch others the same way.  So you never know what films you will connect with.

Here is my list of films I hope to see either at Tiff or the near future and I hope a lot of them end up being Academy Award Nominated films this year.

I won't go into detail now about the films or why I chose them but I write about the ones I do get to see later.

I hope you get to see a few goods films and look out for some of these at screens in the future.

FILM Title	Programme	Director(s)
45 Years	Special Presentations	Andrew Haigh
About Ray	Special Presentations	Gaby Dellal
Amazing Grace	TIFF Docs	Sydney Pollack
An	Contemporary World Cinema	Naomi Kawase
Beeba Boys	Gala Presentations	Deepa Mehta
Being Charlie	Special Presentations	Rob Reiner
Black Mass	Special Presentations	Scott Cooper
Born to be Blue	Special Presentations	Robert Budreau
Brooklyn	Special Presentations	John Crowley
Casual	Primetime	Zander Lehmann
Demolition	Gala Presentations	Jean-Marc Vallée
Desierto	Special Presentations	Jonás Cuarón
Every Thing Will Be Fine	Masters	Wim Wenders
Eye in the Sky	Gala Presentations	Gavin Hood
Five Nights in Maine	Discovery	Maris Curran
Freeheld	Gala Presentations	Peter Sollett
Guilty	Special Presentations	Meghna Gulzar
He Named Me Malala	TIFF Docs	Davis Guggenheim
Hyena Road	Gala Presentations	Paul Gross
Into the Forest	Special Presentations	Patricia Rozema
Janis: Little Girl Blue	TIFF Docs	Amy Berg
Keith Richards: Under the Influence	Primetime	Morgan Neville
LEGEND	Gala Presentations	Brian Helgeland
Len and Company	Special Presentations	Tim Godsall
London Fields	Special Presentations	Mathew Cullen
Miss You Already	Gala Presentations	Catherine Hardwicke
Mississippi Grind	Gala Presentations	Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden
Mr. Right	Gala Presentations	Paco Cabezas
Our Brand Is Crisis	Special Presentations	David Gordon Green
Remember	Gala Presentations	Atom Egoyan
Spotlight	Special Presentations	Tom McCarthy
The Danish Girl	Special Presentations	Tom Hooper
The Dressmaker	Gala Presentations	Jocelyn Moorhouse
The Family Fang	Special Presentations	Jason Bateman
The Lady in the Van	Special Presentations	Nicholas Hytner
The Lobster	Special Presentations	Yorgos Lanthimos
The Man Who Knew Infinity	Gala Presentations	Matthew Brown
The Martian	Gala Presentations	Ridley Scott
The Meddler	Special Presentations	Lorene Scafaria
The Steps	Contemporary World Cinema	Andrew Currie
The Witch	Special Presentations	Robert Eggers
This Changes Everything	TIFF Docs	Avi Lewis
Trumbo	Special Presentations	Jay Roach
Truth	Special Presentations	James Vanderbilt
Women He's Undressed	TIFF Docs	Gillian Armstrong
Youth	Special Presentations	Paolo Sorrentino

Starving Foodie's guide to Best places to Eat during Tiff

Starving Foodie's guide to the best place to eat while at TIFF?  (Toronto International Film Festival 2015)

I compiled this list for my Starving Foodie Blog but I thought it would interest all the Film lovers attending the festival.

I have been doing Tiff for about 15 years and some years I hardly have time to get any food so sometimes you grab a bagel at Tim Horton's but other times you have an hour to wait in between screenings when you just want to sit down and have someone serve you a good meal and have a rest between running around to theatres or parties.

This list will help you if you are new to TIFF or just don't know where the best place to eat near a theatre is.

Now if you are looking for Celebrity Spotting you might only see a few here or there probably grabbing a Starbuck's coffee but mostly they are the high end places because if you are George Clooney or an A list celeb you can afford to go anywhere you want to and most of the time George and his pals go to restaurants you have never heard of or haven't even opened to the public yet  or are nowhere near where you would expect them to be because they have drivers that can drive them anywhere they need to go.   

So my suggestion is to forget about Celebrity Stalking and just go where you can get fast or great food depending on what you have time for and save your energy for seeing as many films as you can.

These are my choices for places I would recommend going to that are pretty close to each theatre.   There are thousands of restaurants in Toronto and I have curated it down to a few based on variety and proximity.  I have generally left out Food Courts because they close early.  
If I haven't added YOUR favourite place it's because I haven't been there or didn't think it was one I would recommend for various reasons.

LEGEND

*     Starving Artist
**    Gotta Job
***   A list Celebrity $$ 

TIFF CINEMA	RESTAURANT	LOCATION	STARS
1. TIFF Bell Lightbox	Ravi Soups Burrito Boyz Wahlbergers O&B Canteen Montecito	224 Adelaide St. W.  322 Adelaide St. W. 6 Blue Jay Way 350 King St. W, 299 Adelaide St. W.	* * ** *** ***
2.  Elgin/Wintergarden 189 Yonge Street	Richmond Station The Chase Foodwares	1 Richmond St. W. 10 Temperance St, 176 Queen St. W.	** *** **
3. Scotiabank Theatre 259 Richmond Street West	Melt Thoroughbred  Khao San Road Milestone’s	300 Richmond St. W, 304 Richmond St. W. 326 Adelaide St. W. 132 John St.	* *** ** **
4. Princess of Wales 300 King Street West	Tim Hortons PAI Byblos	322 King St. W. 18 Duncan St. 161 Pearl St.	* ** ***
5. Roy Thompson Hall 60 Simcoe Street	Ritz Carlton  Elephant & Castle Los Colibris  El Cabalito	181 Wellington St.W. 212 King St. West 220 King St. West	*** ** ***
6.  AGO 317 Dundas Street West	Mean Bao Frank Pizzaiolo Village by the Grange Food Court	275 Dundas St. W.  317 Dundas St. W. 281 Dundas St.  W. 109 McCaul St.	* *** * *
7.  Isabel Bader 93 Charles Street West	Slab Burgers La Societe The One Eighty	47 Charles St. W. 131 Bloor St. W.  55 Bloor St. W. 51st	* *** **
8.  Ryerson 43 Gerrard Street East	Banh Mi Boys Reds Midtown  Salad King	399 Yonge Street 382 Yonge Street 340 Yonge Street	* ** **
9.  Bloor Hot Docs 506 Bloor Street West	Ghazale  Aroma Espresso  Pauper’s Pub	504 Bloor St. W. 500 Bloor St. W. 539 Bloor St. W.	* * **

Wahlbergers

Richmond Station

Montecito

Banh Mi Boys

Pai

Aroma Espresso Bar

disclosure: The restaurants listed are my own choices and I have not received any compensation from any of the listed restaurants to appear on this list.