There’s no question that teenage girls are Wild about Harry Styles. They lined the streets around the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto yesterday to catch a glimpse of the pop star. When I mentioned to a 20 year old volunteer that it was like Beatlemania, he looked at me blankly. What the heck is that?

Inside the POW the audience was enthusiastic but not quite so over the top. Harry got a big ovation during the introductions and then things settled down. At the end of the time, the audience showed its appreciation, but there were no panties thrown on the stage.

Now come the reviews and so far, on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has scored a 50 from 8 reviews. That’s not a lot of reviews, but it does point to the response in general. I wrote last night that “My Policeman” looks like a Merchant Ivory production of a Harold Pinter play. Three people are caught in a triangle. One of them does something terrible to another, in the process ruining their lives. It’s all very polite, except for the sex between the two men, which may seem surprisingly graphic to the teen age girls. And for straight men, “My Policeman” will not be a destination movie.

Amazon Studios has nevertheless produced a smart looking, reverential film of high quality. For a certain audience beyond Styles fans I’m sure there will be debate and discourse. The acting, of course, is vivid. I really enjoyed Linus Roache and Gina McKee as the older versions of Styles and Emma Corrin (who is a star in this film a la Carey Mulligan). McKee has to sell her character’s simultaneous concern and duplicity, and pulls it off with aplomb. Roache brings a grief to the adult version of the Styles character that you don’t expect.

But what I didn’t understand about all these characters is how they proceeded to live after the events of the film. The story takes place in 1957-58. The two men have an affair. There’s a trial because being homosexual in Britain is a crime. The married couple, Tom and Marion. do not divorce. David Dawson’s Patrick, a museum art curator — goes to jail for two years. And then, they just… went on? I couldn’t figure out how Tom and Marion got through the sexual revolution of the 60s and the freewheeling 70s not having sex, or children, or any connection to each other. Also, how Tom didn’t know what Marion did in 1958. It never occurred to him?

One last PS: Dawson’s Patrick is five foot eight inches, He reminded me of Charlie Chaplin. Yet, 40 years later, played by Rupert Everett, he’s six foot four and substantially larger physically even sitting in a wheelchair. Those intervening years must have been hectic.

Sometimes you don’t know what to expect from a film and then you’re pleasantly surprised.

Such is the case with Netflix’s “The Good Nurse,” starring two of the top actors of the younger generation: Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne.

“The Good Nurse” is based on the true story of nurse Amy Loughren who helped police unmask a serial killer nurse in her hospital named Charlie Cullen. It’s thought that Cullen killed hundreds of patients in the nine hospitals he worked in, just because he could.

Tobias Lindholm has constructed a taut thriller that works not despite but because you know right away Cullen is crazy.

Chastain and Redmayne have serious chemistry and are working each of them at the top of their game. Each of these actors is settling in for the long haul, and it’s thrilling. There’s also great supporting work from Noah Emmerich, Nnamdi Asomugha, and Kim Dickens. (Poor Noah– for years he was duped by the Russians on “The Americans.” He finally figures out a case early this time!)

“The Good Nurse” gets a theatrical release for Oscar eligibility at the end of October. I’d love to see it in the Hamptons Film Festival.

Total hit tonight fir Michael Grandage’s “My Policeman,” the second Harry Styles movie of the season styles fans mobbed the street in front of the princess of Wales theater as if Harry were the Beatles or Frank Sinatra.

Styles acquits himself well in this taut drama of a married gay cop in Britain in 1957 who is also gay. It’s as if Merchant Ivory made a Harold Pinter movie. I’ll have a longer review later but for now Amazon Studios has a success.

And yes, the crowd inside loved the movie as much as the fans outside.

I’m nervous to say a film got a long standing ovation or is headed to the Oscars after so much bloviating has gone on the last two weeks.

But Steven Spielberg for the first time ever brought a film to a festival and knocked everyone out.
“The Fabelmans” played in Toronto tonight to a rapturous audience. The film not only got a long standing ovation but actor Judd Hirsch actually got huge applause during the screening when his character appeared in a sustained cameo.

“The Fabelmans” is Spielberg’s most personal work ever but he assured the sold out audience at Princess of Wales theater that he’s not retiring. He just felt it was time to address some autobiographical facts because of the pandemic. He wanted to talk about his parents, each of whom died in the last few years at very old ages.

The movie covers the director’s childhood in the late 50s and early 60s up through the time he goes to college in 1964. Tony Kushner has — no surprise — written a wonderful, richly realized screenplay that will reap its own awards later this year. But it wouldnt work so well without this tremendous cast. Michelle Williams is the mother, Paul Dano is the father, Seth Rogen is the couple’s best friend, and there’s terrific work from Jeannie Berlin and Robin Bartlett. Newcomer Gabrielle LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman, the stand in for young Steven.

There’s also a surprise appearance by David Lynch as director John Ford.

I was lucky enough to have lunch with Spielberg’s mother maybe a decade ago at kosher restaurant in Los Angeles. She was 95 years young and a spitfire. Spielberg’s choice of Michelle Williams to play her is brilliant. This may be Williams’s best work and that’s saying something after movies like “My Week with Marilyn” and “Blue Valentine.” Spielberg said during the Q&A that after seeing “Blue Valentine” he’d asked to meet Williams and kept her in mind for a future role. Thank goodness he did.

What a joy “The Fabelmans” is. Audiences are going to love it. This is a really beautifully constructed family saga with lots of humor and pathos. It’s the kind of movie we go see in theaters to have the communal feeling of the shared human experience.

Mazel tov!

Judd Apatow knows how to make gifted comedians into movie stars. He did with Amy Schumer and “Trainwreck,” and again with Pete Davidson and “The King of Staten Island.”

Now Apatow has produced Billy Eichner’s “Bros,” the first big studio broad gay comedy with an all LGBTQ cast that’s a rom com first. Hilarious and well made, “Bros” will also be an education for a lot of people.

Safe to say that at this point, nothing in “Bros” is an actual shock as Billy’s character of Bobby gets into a romantic seesaw with Luke McFarlane’s Aaron. Bobby is 40ish, funny, a podcaster and happy to be single (he has sex with guys he meets on apps). He doesn’t consider himself a player. Aaron is a hunk who spends a lot of time in the gym and admits to being boring.

Bobby is also, in the subplot, helping to launch an LGBTQ+ Museum in Manhattan. So needs the help of Aaron a probate and estates lawyer, to help raise the money.

That’s the basic set up. Along the way we meet a variety of LGBTQ+ folks, all extremely amusing and nothing at all like characters you’ve seen in past rom coms. But in many ways they are exactly the same, supporting the main players as they try to find themselves and each other.

The screenplay is peppered with Eichner’s pungent punchlines and one liners, set up jokes that land squarely each time. Director Nicholas Stoller and Apatow know how to construct a sturdy foundation so that Eichner can spout off on gender politics, etc and still keep the story moving briskly forward. The audience tonight at the Toronto Film Festival ate the whole thing up, and that’s what Universal Pictures is aiming for when “Bros” opens wide on September 30th.

Oh, yes: Garth Brooks may become a gay icon once “Bros” is released. McFarlane’s Aaron is a huge country music fan, especially Brooks’ music. This figures into the story when Bobby writes a song and performs it for him. The song, “Love is Not Love,” will likely be a Best Song nominee at next winter’s Oscars, sung by Eichner. Brooks would be smart to get in on this ASAP — a duet, maybe?

Spit Take Number 2: After all the scandals, rumors, and carrying on, Warner Bros. can sing “Don’t Worry Baby” about “Don’t Worry Darling.”

Harry Styles fans have made the movies’ preview IMAX show on September 19th the fastest selling IMAX show of all time.

They sold out 21 of the 100 locations on the first day of sales, a total of 13,000 tickets. The sold out locations are in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and more. More than 15 additional locations are above 50% sold out.

The IMAX LIve show is drawing like crazy because Harry will appear LIVE from New York hooked up to all locations. Meantime, a red carpet premiere will be going on in the Big Apple. Screaming girls will set sound records in IMAX locales. Will anyone even hear Dave Karger’s Questions? Or Harry’s answers? (Olivia Wilde will be on stage with him, too, which should rev up the audience into a frenzy.)

It’s Harry’s House, you see, and we are all just guests!

Casting Styles over Shia LaBeouf, for whatever reason, will be the saving grace for this movie– at least the first weekend when it opens that Thursday night. All his fans will be going in One Direction — to movie theaters.