TIFF ’24: What to See at This Year’s Fest, Sept. 12
By Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, and Liam Lacey
Has a week already gone by since the launch of the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival? Time sure flies, especially when you’re exploring incomparable storytelling from every corner of the globe. Herewith, we offer another round of capsule reviews to guide you into the dark cinemas that promise the best returns on time investment. We’ll conclude tomorrow. Meantime… watch on!
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
All of You (Special Presentations)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 9:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 9.
What would you do if a simple technology could determine your soul mate? Simon (Brett Goldstein, who co-wrote this sweet love story) wants no part of it, but Laura (Imogen Poots), his platonic best friend from university, is determined to try. And so, she winds up with a wonderful husband and a beautiful child… and the nagging sensation, shared by Simon, that maybe they were actually each other’s perfect mate. Director and co-writer William Bridges wisely keeps the near-future technology low-key and mostly unexplained, while letting the chemistry flow freely between his two appealingly messy leads. This is a story about how we clutch at connection as though it’s a lifeline. Which maybe it is. CK
Dead Mail (Midnight Madness)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 11:59 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Fri, Sept. 13, 4:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 11; Sat, Sept. 14, 7 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
It's not as bizarre, violent, or countercultural as a Midnight Madness screening tends to be, but Dead Mail is weird enough to be interesting. Co-writer-directors Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy have created a crime thriller rather than a horror, with more than a little of the Coen Brothers influence to fall back on. Trent (John Fleck) is a seemingly mild-mannered benefactor who employs and then holds Josh (Sterling Mason Jr.), an electronic synthesizer keyboard salesman, hostage in hopes of him building… well, something of importance. I'm not sure what Trent is after, but it's enough for lives to be sacrificed. The action, such as it is, starts when a bloodied note arrives in the bin of the dead mail office, a place where letters in misaddressed envelopes and with insufficient postage end up. The dead mail staff turn amateur sleuths after deliberating whether the note is real or a prank. Dead Mail is an engaging, creative caper story sure to gain attention on the art-house circuit. TE
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Gala Presentations)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 9:30 pm, Roy Thomson Hall; Fri, Sept. 13, 9 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1.
Challenging title, memorable movie. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same title, chronicles the last days of colonial rule in Rhodesia through the perspective of a young girl named Bobo. Lexi Venter as Bobo delivers an accomplished performance for which some of the credit goes to the film’s director, Embeth Davidtz who reaches beyond precocious to capture Bobo in a place between corruption and innocence. Davidtz, too, gives a complex performance as Bobo’s unstable mother Nicola, who can ignore Black oppression and diminish her white entitlement down to a fear of losing her family farm. Watching the surrounding hills for signs of a civil uprise is Sara (Zikhona Bali), a local village girl whose kindness towards Bobo risks the perception of collaborating with the enemy. TE
Nightbitch (Special Presentations)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 12 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 4; Fri, Sept. 13, 9:30 am, Scotiabank Theatre 4; Sun, Sept. 15, 3:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 14.
In director Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, Amy Adams thinks she might be turning into a dog. It's a good elevator pitch, yet there appears to be no more divisive film at TIFF 2024. People either love it or hate it. For the record, I liked it. Nightbitch centres on Adams playing a celebrated artist who reprioritized her life to look after her two-year-old toddler. As Mother's old life gets put further back on the shelf, more primal instincts beckon. Worse, a physical transformation — whether factual or fabricated —begins. Like the film or not, it's hard to deny that Adams is brilliant. Whether interacting with her child, negotiating with her confused but devoted husband (Scoot McNairy), devouring meat from other people's plates at a restaurant, or simply running with the pack, Adams is all in. But the story has something to say, even if some people can't hear it over the dog antics. That I left the theatre thinking, "So, that's what my wife has been trying to say," tells me that hidden in the film's dark comedy and weirdness is something substantial. TE
Nutcrackers
Nutcrackers (Gala Presentations)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 1 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 1; Sat, Sept. 14, 12:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 2.
Nutcrackers is amiable mush, a fish-out-of-water Christmas family movie starring Ben Stiller as Mike, stereotypically career-obsessed real estate agent from Chicago. When his estranged older sister and her husband are killed in an accident, Mike finds himself the owner of a farm and guardian of four rambunctious boys in rural Ohio. From the moment Mike rolls up to the ramshackle farmhouse in his lemon-yellow Porsche, it’s one madcap prank and funny animal event after another, as a possible romance blossoms between Mike and family services worker (Linda Cardellini). Director David Gordon Green, once hailed as the next Terrence Malick, is now best known for his satiric comic collaborations with his film-school friend, and here executive producer, Daniel McBride (Pineapple Express, the HBO series, Eastbound and Down). Though Nutcrackers is far from subtle, the results are lightly subversive of red state America. The boys, all local weirdos, were home-schooled without religious instruction and trained in ballet by their late mother. The title plays on the idea of The Nutcracker ballet performed by, in this case, a ballet corps of juvenile crackers. LL
The Luckiest Man in America (Special Presentation)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 5:45 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre; Fri, Sept. 13, 6:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 4.
In the 1980s, Michael Larson — an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio — made a small fortune on the TV game show Press Your Luck when he failed to hit a bank-draining “Whammy” on dozens of spins. But he wasn’t lucky — he’d figured out that the “random” game board actually cycled through one of five patterns, which he had memorized. Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell) plays Larson as sweaty and just a little creepy, while a fantastic cast including Walter Goggins, David Strathairn, Maisie Williams and Shamier Anderson portray the show’s makers, desperately trying to figure out in real time why this guy can’t lose, and then what to do about it. After all, he wasn’t really cheating, right? Co-writer and director Samir Oliveros keeps the lid on this pressure cooker for a fast-paced 90 minutes almost entirely focused on the day of the taping. CK
The Swedish Torpedo (Centrepiece)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 2:50 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 4; Fri, Sept. 13, 3:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 14; Sat, Sept. 14, 8:35 am, Scotiabank Theatre 11.
The Swedish Torpedo is a mesmerizing story of human determination against every type of opposition: class, wealth, parenting, political and, of course, the physical endurance needed to swim 15 hours of icy ocean water across the English Channel on the eve of World War II. When it comes to struggle, endurance swimmer Sally Bauer faces it all. It is the human side of achieving her dream that director Frida Kempff focuses on as Sally raises her son by herself, constantly at the mercy of favours and the scarcity of financial backers. Thoroughly relatable to anyone who has had a dream and must contest with the simple everyday challenges of life, this film is a testament to chasing a dream. JK
Vice is Broke (TIFF Docs)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 10 pm, TIFF Lightbox 4.
Documentarian (and author and chef) Eddie Huang gathers many memorable quotes about the spectacular rise and fall of Vice Media, mostly from eyewitness former employees like himself, who were ultimately burned as greed and rubbery ethics drove the organization, once valued north of $5 billion, into the ground. As onetime correspondent Simon Ostrovsky observes. “Most people learn from their mistakes. Vice needed to learn from its successes.” In Huang’s view, what began as a cheeky street mag out of Montreal aimed at (and made by) misfits before morphing into a vast conglomerate with deep links to the coveted youth market didn’t have to implode. Moreover, its messy demise routed the media landscape for the worse. Then again, maybe the fact that Vice was initially led by Gavin McInnes, who would go on to form the far-right supremacist Proud Boys, was an early indicator that not everyone’s heart was in the right place. KH
We Live in Time (Special Presentations)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 3 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales.
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star as Tobias and Almut, a couple interacting at different stages of their relationship which, though presented in a scrambled timeline that occasionally surprises, can’t disguise what’s basically a manipulative weepie. Director John Crowley (Brooklyn), working from a script from playwright Nick Payne, introduce the pair at a critical low point: Almut has cancer. Should they pursue long, difficult, and perhaps pointless treatment or make the most of their last few months together? From there the film shuffles backward in time, presumably through Tobias’ memories, as we learn more about Almut, an uninhibited lover, competitive chef, and alpha partner in the relationship, whose brave example helps turn Tobias from a milquetoast puppy-eyed romantic to a strong supportive partner and father to the couple’s young daughter. The two talented actors wring everything they can out of this material, which might be more aptly titled We Live in a Lifetime Movie with the Reels Out of Order. LL
Your Tomorrow (TIFF Docs)
Thurs, Sept. 12, 9:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Fri, Sept. 13, 12:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 9; Sat, Sept. 14, 9:40 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 5.
A rumination of sorts on what Ontario Place is, was, and might yet still be, director Ali Weinstein’s quietly observational documentary about the nation’s most divisive public park explores the points of view of everyone from dog-walkers to joggers, swimmers to young seasonal staff without overtly passing judgment. Still, it seems clear that cutting down old-growth trees to make way for a European-owned spa is questionable at best, troublingly foreshadowing the Ontario provincial government’s subsequent move to shutter the Science Centre. The only thing everyone can agree on in Your Tomorrow is an acute lack of vision for the waterfront area that has defined — and inspired and vexed — Torontonians for decades. KH