REVIEW: The Maltese Falcon [1941]

“You’re a good man, sister” Based on pure coincidence from a conversation that had nothing to do with John Huston’s classic debut The Maltese Falcon, watching Rian Johnson’s Brick later in the same night couldn’t have been more perfect. The latter a modern noir described as Dashiell Hammett in high school, the parallels were hitting me left and right without my realizing that the scribe who inspired it actually wrote the novel the former was based upon. Exchanges are mirrored in Brick—like the lead detectives confronting the law in a…

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TIFF10 REVIEW: The Way [2010]

“You don’t choose a life, Dad. You live one.” When you decide to fit in an almost two and a half hour film about a man hiking an 800 kilometer trail through Spain at the Toronto International Film Festival, you do begin to fear whether the time might be better served elsewhere. Arriving at the gorgeous Winter Garden Theatre to ushers handing out booklets—this film has a guidebook?—only makes you question the decision further. But then director Emilio Estevez came to the stage to help introduce his new work, a…

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