By Jim Slotek, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Liam Lacey and Bonnie Laufer

We are already one week into the 47th annual edition of the Toronto International Film Festival and there is still so much left to see before the festival wraps September 18.

Original-Cin writers are previewing as many films as possible to help you build a can’t-miss schedule of screenings. Check out our TIFF preview piece and watch for incoming ephemera such as interviews. Note that because of TIFF embargoes, our capsule reviews are tied to a film’s second public screening, not its first.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Special Presentations)

Wed. Sept. 14, 9:30 pm, Scotiabank 2; Fri, Sept. 16, 3:15 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

War is more hellish than ever in this, the first German-made version of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic WWI novel — and Germany’s choice to represent the country at the Academy Awards. Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) is a teen who forges his parents’ signature to join his friends in what they imagine to be a great adventure in occupied northern France. Some will live long enough to see the others die. By the end, soldiers are killed in what seems like every possible way, from flame throwers to a fork. As a counterpoint, director Edward Berger hops from the nightmare to the perverse comfort of government officials trying to negotiate a ceasefire as Germany’s losses mount. Daniel Bruhl has a small but effective role as the most humane among the negotiators. The rest is two-and-a-half hours of inhumanity writ large. JS

Black Ice (Gala Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 9 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1.

Director Hubert Davis wraps nearly 130 years of anti-Black racism in pro hockey around the saga of the Coloured Hockey League, a Maritime league that ran from 1895 to 1930. This barely remembered history is used as a springboard for the tale of Herb Carnegie, the best Black player to never get a chance to play in the NHL, flipping to recent years when African-Canadian players (including P.K. Subban, Wayne Simmonds and Akim Aliu) have had to endure N-bombs from the crowds and other players, and suffer indignities like hurled bananas. On the positive side, we get to see young Black players meet their heroes and see the determination to call out the racists in the system and in the stands. Click here to read an interview with director Davis, women’s hockey star Saroya Tinker, and producer Vinay Virmani. JS

Broker (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 8:30, Royal Alexandra Theatre.

A young woman drops her newborn son in a “baby box” at a church in Busan, which ends up setting her off on a road trip with two men who are aiming to sell it to a childless couple in the illegal market. Following them are two detectives working for a unit trying to stop the trade. This isn’t a detective/crime story or a drama. Broker focuses on the characters, how they got to this point, and how their interactions change their lives. This is the latest from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda, who makes quietly offbeat movies about the things that make up a family, often with characters who are outsiders and looking for connection, whether they know it or not. Broker wobbles under the weight of its many characters. Though not his strongest film, there is as always with Kore-eda emotions that feel true, and a deep well of empathy. That is what sticks. KG

Documentary Now! (TIFF Docs)

Wed, Sept. 14, 7:35 pm, Scotiabank 11; Thurs, Sept. 15, 7:35 pm, Scotiabank 11.

Watching Documentary Now! on a large screen made me wonder how different the experience might be if I had been watching on a screen the size for which it was intended. I come in with high expectations for Documentary Now!, a series that boasts the talents of Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, and Bill Hader. My colleague informs me that the series has a strong dedicated following, something of which I was unaware. It’s not hard to see why people would enjoy the show. But the humour that plays so well on television might be too subtle for a movie theatre setting. Still, as a parody of feature film documentaries (I believe one of the episodes spoofs My Octopus Friend), Documentary Now! is nearly flawless. And there is a heart in the film that edges towards sentimentality but pulls back before toppling over the edge. The Documentary Now! presentation at TIFF offers three episodes, and from what I’ve read online, none of the highly praised episodes made the final cut. Still, one can hardly turn your back on a show that has Helen Mirren saying, “If dog is man’s best friend, what is a monkey?” Oh! And Documentary Now! is in the TIFF Docs program but it's not a documentary. So, there’s that. TE

EO (Contemporary World Cinema)

Wed. Sep 14, 8:30 pm, Scotiabank 12.

Conceived under the influence of Robert Bresson’s 1966 spiritual biography of a donkey Au Hazard Balthazar, the film EO, from 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski is experimental, serious and goofy, and oddly compelling. Shot over two years, the film was created by the venerable Skolimowski (The Shout, Walkabout) with co-screenwriter Ewa Paiskowska and cinematographer Mychal Dymek as a series of vignettes representing the donkey’s perspective while observing on the perfidies of the human owners. EO (gender unknown and played by six different donkeys) is first seen working at a Polish circus with a trainer he loves named Magda, until animal rights activists “liberate” him. After a stint in a petting zoo, and getting lost in the forest amongst hunters, EO finds himself hailed as a mascot by a drunken football team, then beaten viciously by its rivals. He’s sent to haul cages on a fox farm, stabled with beautiful horses, and re-imagines himself as a Boston Dynamic robot. Cameras spin in synch to wind turbines, the screen bleeds red and, apart from a weird late sequence with Isabelle Huppert as an imperious matron smashing plates, it’s all in gloriously bewildering ass-vision. LL

Holy Spider (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 3 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1.

Director Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider retells the story of Saeed Hanalei, a serial killer—the Spider Killer—targeting prostitutes working the streets of Mashhad, Iran's spiritual capital. Hanalei's reign of terror has been documented in director Maziar Bahari's And Along Came a Spider (not to be confused with Morgan Freeman's Along Came a Spider). While Abbasi claims Holy Spider is merely based on actual events, whatever fiction he applies runs seamlessly into reality. Holy Spider feels all too real with its use of actual names, the reconstructions of taped interviews from Hanalei's wife, Fatima (Forouzan Jasmshidejad), and son, Ali (Mesbah Taleb), and an accurate depiction of the struggle Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) a female journalist fighting against a killer and a system that turns a murderer into a folk hero. Holy Spider is a frightening and disturbing film in its violence and politics. There are shades of Alfred Hitchock's Frenzy (1972) and director George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1988) in the movie. Unlike those films, Abbasi does not shy away from explicit depictions of sexual acts and violence. Holy Spider is a frightening thriller that threatens to get an American remake. TE

I Like Movies (Discovery)

Wed, Sept. 14, 6:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3; Fri, Sept. 16, 9:45 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

Growing up, making changes, and learning that the world does not revolve around you are part of the endearing charm of this debut from Toronto’s Chandler Levack. Young, aspiring film-student Lawrence Kweller comes of age in this 1990s-era film. Combining equal amounts of awkwardness and awareness, I Like Movies is a film that is easy to like, despite its shortcomings, as it sympathetically draws the audience into recollecting its own collective adolescence. JK

Miúcha, The Voice of Bossa Nova (TIFF Docs)

Wed, Sept. 14, 5:40 pm, Scotiabank 7.

With a style as cool and laidback as bossa nova itself, directors Daniel Zarvos and Liliane Mutti ponder the life and career of the late Brazilian singer Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda, professionally known as Miúcha. The singer-songwriter was at the beating heart of the genre, working closely with the innovators of the form: her first husband João Gilberto plus Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. So why isn’t she acknowledged as one of bossa nova’s greats? Using mostly her voice to narrate the story, and archival visual material that includes home videos and animations of her watercolours, the filmmakers chronicle the life of a vibrant, intelligent, creative artist whose work and singing voice charmed millions but, in an era where women weren’t seen as equals, whose creative voice wasn’t honoured like her male partners and peers. KG

Moving On (Gala Presentation)

Wed, Sept. 14, 12 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1.

The on-screen chemistry between heavyweights Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin may be bankable but it can’t entirely overcome a weak story shot through with cliches and screaming improbabilities of the sort plaguing Moving On. When Joyce dies, her lifelong friends Claire (Fonda) and Evelyn (Tomlin) naturally attend her funeral. Both have a score to settle with Joyce’s widower Howard (Malcolm McDowell) despite the distance of decades and the potential consequences of action. As Moving On traces that faintly ridiculous arc, Claire reconnects with her knock-kneed ex-husband, Evelyn elevates a putatively gay/trans kid, and the pair reconcile with age and aging. In the plus column, writer-director Paul Weitz gives Tomlin a pile of snappy zingers and Fonda looks positively radiant. But McDowell’s overcooked Howard is painful. Little here scans plausibly. KH

One Fine Morning (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 5:30 pm, Scotiabank 1; Fri, Sept. 16, 9:30 am, Scotiabank 4.

Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve makes movies that feel casual and lived in. They’re not built around giant dramatic upheavals but rather more ordinary issues of daily life. We’re drawn into the lives of her protagonists in intimate ways. One Fine Morning centres around Sandra (Léa Seydoux), a young widow whose life is defined by the routines of daily life and family obligations. She works as a freelance translator, is raising her eight-year-old daughter, and attends to her father, a book-loving philosophy professor who is slowly losing his sight and his memory because of a neurodegenerative disorder. Then something new happens. After five years alone, she begins an affair with Clément (Melvil Poupaud), an old friend of her late husband’s whose marriage, he says, has gone stale. In One Fine Morning, we follow Sandra as she manages all of this, and the emotional ups and downs of her life. None of this seems to weigh her down. In fact, we get the sense that Sandra thrives on being part of these relationships. Well-drawn characters and terrific performances, particularly from Seydoux, keep us engaged. The film’s biggest weakness is that it treads so lightly at times it doesn’t offer enough of an emotional connection. KG

Triangle of Sadness (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 5:30 pm, Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

Over three films, Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund has proven himself a master of social satire with wicked insight into modern mores and human nature in general. His latest, the pull-no-punches Triangle of Sadness, divided critics but won his second Palme D’Or at Cannes. (He also won for The Square in 2017). It’s destined to divide audiences as well. The film is divided into three chapters, with a range of locations and multiple characters, but centres on Yaya and Glen (Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson), who are both models and in her case a wannabe influencer. Östlund’s trademarks are in evidence here: wickedly sharp dialogue, scenes that go on long enough to make you squirm, a storyline that doesn’t telegraph where it’s going, and a dark sense of humour in a film that skewers money, status, class and more. It’s not always comfortable, but feels quite deliciously like a cautionary tale. And one with a sad note: Charlbi Dean, who is wonderful as Yaya, died suddenly in August. She was 32. KG

Women Talking (Special Presentations)

https://tiff.net/events/women-talking

Wed. Sept. 14, 2:30 p.m., Princess of Wales Theatre. Fri. Sept. 16, 8:30 p.m., Royal Alexandra Theatre, Sat., Sept. 17, 6 p.m. TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Director Sarah Polley’s take on Miriam Toews’ novel about the women in a closed-off religious colony. They take advantage of the men’s absence to conduct a lengthy, heated discussion over what to do about revelations that they’ve been drugged and abused for years. The legal system is apparently involved, since the men are trying to raise bail. But Women Talking is entirely what its title suggests – an extended conversation about the fear of leaving the only life they ever knew, versus an awareness of wrongdoing that may make them willing to risk losing their entry into the kingdom of Heaven. The cast is stellar: Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Sheila McCarthy. Each personality is sharply defined. Ultimately the film is play-like in nature, like listening in on heated jury deliberations, with plenty of fodder for discussion later. J.S.

The Wonder (Special Presentations)

Wed, Sept. 14, 2 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2; Thurs, Sept. 15, 8:30 pm, Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Hushed in execution but volcanic in impact, director Sebastián Lelio's note-perfect adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel about an Irish girl apparently touched by god and thus able to survive without food is a striking contemplation on how what we believe is kindled by what we need to survive. Florence Pugh plays a damaged but highly alert 19th-century English nurse invited to rural Ireland to observe the girl and prove or disprove her extraordinary claim, which is beginning to draw religious pilgrims and rubberneckers alike. What follows is a test of faith among all involved, though faith comes in many forms. Using natural light and almost hallucinatory candlelight, cinematographer Ari Wegner brilliantly marshals the era with its claustrophobic environs; other details, like Pugh’s constantly soiled skirt hems, bring realism to the story’s evanescent themes. Lelio’s work has been consistently great. The Wonder elevates him to master level. KH

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