‘Empire of Light’ is more than a movie about movies | TIFF movie review

Set on the moody southern coast of England in the 1980s, Empire of Light follows a lonely movie theater worker who finds herself in a whirlwind romance.

There is something otherworldly about sitting in a movie theater. The artistry. The magic. That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before. We’re not just entertained, but somehow reborn together. Those dazzling images on a huge silver screen. The sound that we can feel. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this (and I believe I’m the first person to ever describe the theater this way). Sam Mendes’s ninth feature film Empire of Light, which debuted at Telluride before crossing the border to the Toronto International Film Festival, bottles up this sentiment expressed so eloquently by Nicole Kidman in her AMC ads.

Mendes—best known for American Beauty, Skyfall, and 1917—solutes cinema as he follows a group of employees working at a movie theater on the southern coast of…