COLUMN

The bug can’t stop the buzz at TIFF 2020

For once this pandemic year, that tingling sensation isn’t the fear of COVID-19.

20 Hot Picks for TIFF 2020

Peter Howell's 20 best bets for TIFF 2020, chosen from the 61 features on offer.

Jerry Garcia’s death, 25 years ago, helped popularize the Internet

A story from the sad day in 1995 when cyberspace rippled as Deadheads grieved.

Can TIFF 2020 dodge a viral bullet?

This is the time of year when the Toronto International Film Festival normally begins its summer-long reveal of plans for its big cinema ...

A coronavirus cough gives Oscar the chills

We’re all familiar with the cautionary adage about not giving an inch to a slippery person or group, lest they respond by taking a mile. ...

With cinemas shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, there is light at the end of the projection tunn

Like many people during these locked-down days, I’ve been having anxiety dreams — more like nightmares — that interrupt my sleep. They co...

Triumphant movies for these troubled times

"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (Twentieth Century Fox) On that awful day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when we were all trans...

Movies my dad would have loved

My dear ol’ dad, John Peter Howell, used to tell me about an unwritten rule in the Royal Air Force, where he served as an aircraft mechan...

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Movies I can't live without

Toronto Star movie critic Peter Howell has written a book about his 25 favourite movies, with highly personal reviews from Apocalypse Now to The Wizard of Oz.

Here's a sample of his review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, his all-time favourite film:

"It was billed as The Ultimate Trip and the hyperbole was justified, then as now.

Stanley Kubrick's space opus still seems like the future, 52 years after its release and 19 years after its significant title year. It never gets old and I never tire of seeing it, even after 50-plus viewings..."