‘Good Joe Bell’ Is A Redemptive Drama That Succumbs To Its Own Shallow Straight Gaze [TIFF Review]

Did John Brown, the infamous abolitionist who led the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, really take a cross-dressing teenage slave under his wing and name him Onion? No, not at all. “The Good Lord Bird,” which never purports itself as a true retelling, opens each episode with the tagline “All of this is true.

Men are incorrigible Lothario scoundrels, motherhood is full of loneliness and self-doubt, and complicated father/daughter relationships are constantly tested in Sofia Coppola’s “On The Rocks,” her latest dramedy, an effervescent, charming, and soulful affair.

Solstice Studios has sealed a deal for worldwide rights to filmmaker Reinaldo Green Marcus' Good Joe Bell, a drama starring Mark Wahlberg and written by the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain duo Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The pact — valued at $20 million — comes on the heels of the film's Sept.

Dave McNary Film ReporterSolstice Studios has bought the worldwide rights to the drama “Good Joe Bell,” starring Mark Wahlberg, for about $20 million, a source has confirmed to Variety.“Good Joe Bell,” directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, premiered Sept. 13 at the virtual Toronto International Film Festival.

Also Read: Connie Britton Says 'Good Joe Bell' Can Teach 'How to Be Better Allies' (Video)Solstice is a new distribution house that launched this summer on the back of the Russell Crowe thriller “Unhinged,” making a point to be the first movie released in theaters ahead of even films like “Tenet,” “The New Mutants” or “Bill & Ted Face the Music.” “Unhinged” thus far has brought in $26.4 million worldwide after opening domestically on Aug.

Mike Fleming Jr Co-Editor-in-Chief, FilmEXCLUSIVE: Upstart Solstice Studios has won an auction for the Toronto buzz title Good Joe Bell, the Reinaldo Marcus Green-directed drama scripted by the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain team of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The film stars Mark Wahlberg as the title character.

Set entirely in Wuhan, China during the 76-day COVID lockdown in early 2020, “76 Days” is a tight, tense, and, at times, unrelentingly emotional account of front-line pandemic medical combat. As a piece of high-impact experiential movie journalism, it feels close to the style of a standalone “Frontline” episode, missing only Will Lyman’s low and drama-heightening narration.

David Oyelowo’s directorial feature debut, “The Water Man,” plays like a kid-friendly throwback to Steven Spielberg’s ’80s movies. It’s a coming-of-age story filled with adventure, friendship, and some serious topics that don’t overshadow its young protagonist’s hopes.

Before J. Balvin became a record-breaking chart-topper, he was José Álvaro Osorio Balvín, just another boy in Medellín, Colombia, with big dreams and an even bigger drive to make them come true.

Irish mythology has found glorious ambassadors in director Tomm Moore and the team at animation studio Cartoon Saloon. Their Oscar-nominated titles “The Secret of Kells” (2009) and “Song of the Sea” (2014) are visionary renderings of their homeland’s lore, and with “Wolfwalkers,” an epic and dramatically mature triumph, a perfect trilogy is complete.

Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round” begins with the frenzied depiction of Danish youth completing a beer “case race,” though the debauched fun is fleeting for us – and them. The sequence collides with the film’s opening title cards, which quickly cede to a more sobering reality: a dry faculty meeting.

True to its name, “Violation” is about an unforgivable transgression. Written, produced, and directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, their feature debut follows Miriam (Sims-Fewer) on at least two (maybe more) trips to the woods.

Also Read: 'Good Joe Bell' Film Review: Mark Wahlberg Hits the Road to Make You CryMiller, who plays her son in the film, said he could relate to his character Jadin because he too felt like an outsider in his own school growing up.“I grew up in a few small towns that were very sports oriented, I don’t know if you can tell but I am very much not an athlete, and I was always interested in things that didn’t interest them, specifically the arts, filmmaking, and being creative in general wasn’t

The sprawling plains of Idaho and Utah, their tufted prairies dappled by cloud-filtered light and edged by craggy mountains, provide a spiritual setting for bruising personal reflection in Good Joe Bell.

Also Read: 'Concrete Cowboy' Film Review: Idris Elba Drama Finds Vibrant Life at Street-Corner StablesAn open-hearted, unapologetically emotional story of a man struggling to come to terms with what happened to his son and with his own complicity in it, “Good Joe Bell” makes good use of the Everyman appeal of Mark Wahlberg; if it doesn’t feel like a landmark the way Ossana and McMurtry’s “Brokeback Mountain” or McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment” were, it’s a quietly

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThere are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there is “Good Joe Bell,” a uniquely terrible treatment of an important topic — broadly described as “inclusivity” and “tolerance” by the film’s wild-eyed protagonist (Mark Wahlberg) — whose hubristic title is the first clue that it’s not playing fair. Joe Bell was a man like any other, who attempted to turn tragedy into a teaching moment.

“Don’t take me for a psycho,” explains Alex, the protagonist of François Ozon’s “Summer of ’85,” explains in the film’s opening voice-over. “Corspes are not my thing… Corpses are not my thing.