‘Penguin Bloom’: Naomi Watts Succumbs To Ableist Tropes & Overwrought Metaphor In Glendyn Ivin’s Film [TIFF Review]

After Game of Thrones ended, in the summer of 2019, fans were looking forward to watch Naomi Watts in a Game of Thrones prequel. The King Kong star was roped in to play a crucial character in the prequel set 5,000 years before the members of the Lannister House walked into Winterfell and set the ball rolling for the events of the GoT.

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.

“The people who work for the city work for you,” explains Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, to a room full of his constituents. “They’re there to service you.” That simplest of ideas, a real gimme in the not-too-distant past, stands at the center of “City Hall,” the latest of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary deep dives into the nuts and bolts of America’s institutions.

Also Read: 'Shadow in the Cloud' Star Chloe Grace Moretz on Fighting Through Her Claustrophobia to Play WW2 Pilot (Video)“Overnight, his relationship, the love of his life, they’re soulmates these two, they met when they were kids, and he changed into principal carer, and I thought that was a magnificent story to tell that I hadn’t seen before on film,” Lincoln added.

Near the beginning of the film is a scene where Joe Bell (Mark Wahlberg) stands in front of an assembled group of high schoolers to speak about bullying. The gruff father shares two points: Understanding begins at home and everything will be fine if you are true to yourself.

No genre romanticizes America’s manifest destiny mythos more than the western. For decades, the construct featured white men conquering the frontier from Native Americans and law enforcement.

“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.

No genre romanticizes America’s manifest destiny mythos more than the western. For decades, the construct featured white men conquering the frontier from Native Americans and law enforcement.

It’s 1963, and throngs of Black folks have packed the National Mall for the March on Washington. Images of jubilant men and women holding flags, and dressed in their Sunday best, strewn across the screen.

Naomi Watts said co-starring with a live magpie in Penguin Bloom at first gave her the jitters. "That made me nervous.

Occasionally, in this line of work, you end up watching a movie bad enough to make you regret taking the assignment. Roseanne Liang‘s “Shadow in the Cloud” is a movie so bad, it made me regret choosing the profession.

Fans of “Gone Girl” who have been patiently waiting for star Rosamund Pike to sink her teeth into another delectably devious role, rejoice. J Blakeson’s “I Care a Lot” provides the best showcase of Pike’s darkly ambitious drive since her Academy Award-winning breakthrough in 2014.

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.

“Penguin Bloom” may star Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln and Jacki Weaver, but it’s the film’s scene-stealing birds that are nabbing all the attention — including from the stars themselves.

Gregg Goldstein Naomi Watts and director Phillip Noyce are joining forces for the thriller “Lakewood,” set to begin filming Sept.