Owen G. on Toronto Pics

Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman writes at length about Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (loves it, but wishes Moore had been more reserved) but also drops some tidbits as to his reaction of Up in the Air (looks to be a grade A) and A Serious Man (probably loved it too)

Film festivals often have an uncanny way of channeling the mood of the moment. But I doubt if that dynamic has ever been at work more strikingly than it is at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival, which got underway yesterday. In an age of shrinking specialty divisions and financially battered media outlets, gather a bunch of movie people and a bunch of journalists in the same place, and you can just about taste the currents of anxiety in the air. (The mood is especially noteworthy in clean, orderly, mall-friendly Toronto, one of the most un-anxious cities I’ve ever been in.) The thing is, the anxiety — economic, romantic, spiritual – is streaming off the screen as well. The first three movies I’ve seen here — Michael Moore’s scathing, mad-as-hell Capitalism: A Love Story, Jason Reitman’s exquisitely funny and touching Up in the Air (a comedy of love, loneliness, and downsizing), and the Coen brothers’ uncharacteristically humane slice of spilkes A Serious Man — all ripple with echoes of the current age of monetary woe and cosmic uncertainty. I’ll talk about Up in the Air and A Serious Man in my next two posts, but for right now, let me devote the headline to a man who still has no peer at grabbing headlines…