As a first-time press member at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), I had a fantastic experience! Over two weeks, I saw nearly 50 films and felt so fortunate to meet many fellow critics from across the globe. The staff and volunteers at TIFF were top-rate, and whatever trepidation I had going in about getting from one theater to the next was squashed on day one when it became clear that everything was nearby and, if you planned correctly, you would be able to see pretty much anything you set your mind to. Over the next five days, I will release my reviews from TIFF in the order I saw them. Most of the films screened at TIFF don’t have a release date or are still waiting for a distributor, so most of these are the capsule reviews requested by the studios and PR teams representing the movies. When a film does get released, I will expand my review (note that several films have been released, and there are links to these films at the end of the capsule review).
Here is a link to all of the films I saw at TIFF.
Stay tuned for more film festival coverage in 2024 – exciting things are already booked and planned!
My full film festival coverage (including Tribeca, SXSW, Fantastic Fest, Fantasia, etc.) is here.
Thank you!
Summer Qamp
Director: Jen Markowitz
Synopsis: At Camp fYrefly in rural Alberta, queer, non-binary, and trans teens get to be kids in a supportive space, surrounded by counselors who can relate to their experience ― and help them toast the perfect marshmallow.
Thoughts: As a young and sheltered only child, YMCA summer camp terrified me when I was faced with having to go. I went from having my own space and sleeping in a bedroom alone to spending a week in a cabin with nine other boys with different experiences. Having yet to find my voice and extrovert personality, I didn’t enjoy it, so I was the kid who cried all week, wanting to go home. It’s horrifically embarrassing now, and I’ve spent the last thirty years wishing I could go back to have a do-over, watching as many camp-related movies/TV shows as possible and living vicariously through them.
I wish I had known there were other camps out there to try, like a theater camp that would be more tailored to my interests or the kind featured in Summer Qamp, a documentary by Jen Markowitz. Located in Alberta, Camp fYrefly provides a safe environment for LGBTQ youth and allows them to mingle with their peers who have a shared understanding of what it’s like being a member of this community. Staffed with counselors who have faced similar challenges and can relate, the camp is a valuable resource for youth who are often ostracized from their student group based on their self-identification. Coming into this camp environment where everyone is on the same page, the fear of being judged or cast out is lessened (social norms being as they are, there is always going to be a division of hierarchy), and the campers can instead focus on having fun and being treated like any other camper would be.
Originally conceived as a television documentary, you can feel some of that smaller scale come through in the assembly of the material Markowitz filmed with cinematographer Lulu Wei. Following several campers before and during their camping experience, there is a slightly disjointed feeling in the narrative flow, which makes it hard to get very close to anyone. You get the sense of the filmmakers wanting to have the best of both worlds in the documentary realm, to be both flies on the wall to pick up off-the-cuff moments and get in there and ask the subjects probing questions about their time at the camp. That can hamper the film with some clunkiness. Still, Summer Qamp is recommended overall for its resistance to not just being a promotional piece for Camp fYrefly but being as interested in its subjects as it wants us to be.
Seagrass
Director: Meredith Hama-Brown
Cast: Ally Maki, Luke Roberts, Nyha Breitkreuz, Remy Marthaller, Sarah Gadon, Chris Pang
Synopsis: A week at a couples’ therapy retreat — where kids can explore the Pacific coast while their parents work on their issues — exposes the fractures in a biracial family.
Thoughts: There’s no right way to grieve, and everyone goes through that process differently. For many, grief can be The Great Equalizer, bringing clarity into one’s own life that assists them in coping. Pieces of your routine suddenly are unnecessary, tiny allowances you could overlook become dealbreakers, and seizing precious moments is a driving factor toward happiness once you realize how everything can change instantly. When we first meet Judith (Ally Maki, Shortcomings) in Meredith Hama-Brown’s Seagrass, she’s still struggling to move through the recent death of her mother. Raising two young girls with her husband (Luke Roberts, The Batman) in Canada sometime in the ’90s (it’s never pinpointed), she’s reached a point in her marriage and motherhood where she’s looking for additional support. They’ve all come to a secluded resort for the week so the couple can work on their marriage in intense therapy sessions, and the girls can mingle with other couples’ children in session. Each family member can wake up a bit during their time, opening to their passion, curiosity, shortcomings, and ultimately to one another. Hama-Brown brings some of her own experience to the film, and while it tends to drift into a dreamy state with gossamer edges, it never loses its focus on the dynamic interplay between the families. With a tinge of the supernatural (maybe) filtering in and out of the narrative, it keeps what could have been a rote bit of family agony elevated to a higher plane. Maki is excellent, capable of making a character that is hard to warm up to, one the audience can empathize with. This is a small movie in scope but not in execution. With a clearly conveyed tone and an ear for dialogue that resonates, Hama-Brown is a filmmaker to watch out for in the future.
Chuck Chuck Baby
Director: Janis Pugh
Cast: Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Emily Fairn, Edyta Budnik, Cat Simmons, Celyn Jones, Sorcha Cusack
Synopsis: A film of love, loss, music, and female friendship, set in and around the falling feathers of a chicken processing plant in industrial north Wales.
Thoughts: Many filmmakers will be making their feature-film debuts at TIFF after working in television and limited series for years, and for most, the transition to a full-length movie is a natural progression. I’m not sure if all these movies needed to be as fleshd out as they turned out to be, though. Take Chuck Chuck Baby, for example. Written and directed by Janis Pugh, this is a queer rom-com semi-musical, but it never can figure out how to entirely focus on either niche long enough or with the degree of success needed to maintain our interest. That’s not to say there aren’t elements to the movie that do work. Louise Brealey is a quirky lead, a woman who lives with her dolt of an ex-husband and his wacky girlfriend so that she can be close to her kindly ex-mother-in-law. Working to make ends meet at a local chicken plant, she reunites with a female high school crush who has recently returned to town and offers the sheltered woman an opportunity at happiness. Their relationship comes at a cost, though, with small-town gossip threatening to ruin this good thing. The musical elements are more karaoke than anything, finding the actors singing along to songs playing over the radio and other broadcasting systems. If Pugh had only gone all the way with the musicality of it, immersing the two women along with their lively bunch of co-workers into a fantasy world and out of their hum-drum lives, it would have given the movie a bit more of the zing I think it was going for. I understand wanting to keep the narrative grounded, but who hasn’t been working a mundane job and imagined an elaborate production number livening things up? Pugh’s film has a good heart but never really sings like it should.
Anatomy of a Fall
Director: Justine Triet
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Samuel Theis, Swann Arlaud, Jehnny Beth, Milo Machado Graner, Saadia Bentaïeb, Antoine Reinartz, Camille Rutherford
Synopsis: Winner of this year’s Palme d’Or, A woman is suspected of her husband’s murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.
Thoughts: Starting my TIFF in-person journey off right, I began my journey with the Palme d’Or winner from Cannes, Anatomy of a Fall. Director Justine Triet poses enticing questions throughout Anatomy of a Fall, and the discussions of them by the characters are so rich that it doesn’t matter if she fully answers them or not by the end. That’s part of the deep resonance of the world she’s created: the human realities of the tragedy that happens initially to the family and the possibly more devastating fallout after the fact. It’s as if Triet is asking, through the lens of a polarizing courtroom thriller, the cost of over-examining personal flaws and using those as evidence of guilt in a more significant crime. Running 2 ½ hours, you’d never know it because of the breathless pacing and because Triet kept the question of guilt up in the air for so long. How the verdict falls is for you to experience, but it’s almost beside the point by the time we get there. Triet and Sandra Hüller have given you enough evidence through performance and narrative structure by that time for you to decide what you believe. Even an explanation as a summary near the end doesn’t seem to close the book on the subject.
Full Review Here
The Zone of Interest
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Johann Karthaus, Luis Noah Witte, Nele Ahrensmeier, Lilli Falk, Medusa Knopf
Synopsis: Jonathan Glazer won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes for this horror about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife, who quite literally live amongst the ashes of their actions.
Thoughts: Crossing the second big Cannes winner off my list on my first day at TIFF was an excellent way to start the day, even if it meant confronting my typical aversion to Holocaust dramas. What a deserving film to be recognized, though. Director Jonathan Glazer hasn’t directed that many films, and the ones he has (2004’s Birth and 2013’s Under the Skin) are conversation starters, to put it mildly. He finds common ground with The Zone of Interest, one of the most haunting films about the atrocities in Auschwitz I’ve ever seen, and not because it depicts in any graphic detail what went on inside the camp. Instead, Glazer’s focus is entirely outside the walls of the camp, in the home of the commandant and his family, who live in quasi-luxury (regularly pilfering the goods/clothes stripped from the prisoners) while heinous evil is happening mere feet away. The contrast between the stunning cinematography that suggests a home in the German countryside and the sound design, which always has the faint sound of pain and death ringing in our ears, will gnaw at your bones for days/weeks after. In her second terrific performance I’ve seen today, Sandra Hüller (as the selfish wife of Christian Friedel’s aloof captain) cements that this is her year for major recognition in her field.
National Anthem
Director: Luke Gilford
Cast: Charlie Plummer, Eve Lindley, Mason Alexander Park, Rene Rosado, Robyn Lively
Synopsis: A young construction worker accepts a job with a group of queer rodeo performers and discovers formerly dormant parts of himself in photographer Luke Gilford’s captivating feature debut.
Thoughts: Armed with a frankness, authenticity, and respect for tone that most queer-facing cinema lacks, there is a simple beauty in much of what we see in Luke Gilford’s first feature. Part of that comes from Gilford’s journey growing up in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association with his father. This world provided context for the community he creates in National Anthem. Forced to grow up faster than he’d like to support his mother and small brother, a young man takes up odd jobs around his home in New Mexico, eventually landing one on a ranch where a queer rodeo lives and trains. Drawn by some unknown pull to this foreign world, emotions he has tamped down, and his boss’s girlfriend create less of a coming out story and more of a coming home journey that is told with sensitivity. Charlie Plummer (who plays a similar role in 2017’s Lean on Pete) has the right mix of curiosity and tension recognizable to anyone who’s been on a similar path, and Eve Lindley is a breath of fresh air as the catalyst for his willingness to be vulnerable. The real revelation of the film is Mason Alexander Park as a rodeo chanteuse who doesn’t sugarcoat words but conveys great care all the same. The script gets a little thin near the end and probably falls too quickly into the traps of a generic third act, but Gilford’s eye for detail throughout (and the stark beauty of the untouched New Mexico land) is a sight to see.
Evil Does Not Exist
Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Cast: Hitoshi Omika, Ryô Nishikawa, Ryûji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani
Synopsis: A place of bucolic serenity is threatened by cynical urban developers in this exquisite slow burn from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi that reveals the hidden potential for transformation on both sides of its fraught power dynamic.
Thoughts: The worldwide success of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car in 2021 came as a bit of a late-breaking shock to much of Hollywood, even those that were buzzing about it out of Cannes, where it nearly won the top prize but left with Hamaguchi taking Best Screenplay instead. Eventually winning Best International Feature at the Oscars, Hamaguchi became the third Japanese filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director, and with those credits alone, seeing his new film Evil Does Not Exist, which made its North American Premiere at TIFF, was a no-brainer. I’ll say that I appreciated Drive My Car’s structure and its performances, but I also felt it was too long and repetitive. That’s probably why I gripped the armrests on my seat as Evil Does Not Exist started its slow unspooling at TIFF because you get the impression from the beginning that Hamaguchi is out to test his audience. Well, maybe that’s unfair. I don’t think a filmmaker is ever out to alienate a viewer deliberately. Still, ‘challenge’ is a more accurate word to describe the acclimation to this chilly would-be thriller that covers several hot-button issues without addressing them directly. After a prolonged dialogue-free opening, Hamaguchi switches gears to a lively debate about urban development overflowing with words and then eases off again. It’s a constant battle of extremes and compromises on a personal and artistic level. That’s where the success of Evil Does Not Exist is found. Unfortunately, it’s a fleeting win, and much of the movie comes across as extraneous extra pieces, which, like Drive My Car, I feel should have been excised.
Kill
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Cast: Laksh Lalwani, Raghav Juyal, Yogita Bihani, Yatin Karyekar, Tanya Maniktala, Rupesh Kumar Charanpahari, Calib Logan
Synopsis: A passenger train bound for New Delhi becomes a bloody battleground of brutal close-quarters combat as a pair of commandos square off against a 40-strong army of invading bandits in this relentless martial arts thriller
Thoughts: Maybe it’s because I caught this at the end of a long first day with inordinately heavy material that Kill disappointed me so much, but what I thought would be a violently fun actioner was an overlong trip with lackluster style. Proof that you can have too much of a good thing is found in a movie like Kill. While this gonzo-gory action thriller has some delicious moments, they could almost be counted as filler sandwiched between long stretches of tragically poor dramatics. Some of that is with the intention of director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat and the moviemaking industry in India; it’s just how movies are assembled. By this point, I understand the tonal differences inherent between countries, but that can only take you so far when you’re desperately searching for a fizzle when things have gone flat. A man trying to save his love and her family from a rogue group of thieves on a speeding train has all the makings of a rollicking winner (and you know a US remake of Kill can’t be far off), and there is a decent amount of story here to cut a great film out of. I did think the direction was sometimes hideously ugly with its bloodletting, even though it has moments of ravaging revenge that have midnight cult hit in the making all over it. What, ahem, kills this one is a feeling that it will never reach its destination, though. The long run time gets exhausting, making it hard to recommend, even as a time waster.
The Boy and the Heron
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Karou Kobayashi, Shinobu Otake
Synopsis: Encounters with his friends and uncle follow a teenage boy’s psychological development. After finding an abandoned tower in his new town, he enters a magical world with a talking grey heron.
Thoughts: With much fanfare and a tinge of sadness, Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement after the release of The Wind Rises in 2013. The news was monumental in the world of animation, considering Miyazaki’s films are consistently ranked among the highest and most influential. As it turns out, the then 72-year-old wasn’t quite ready to hang up his paintbrush, and it wasn’t long before he was back to work on small projects that led to the announcement of his return to Ghibli with The Boy and the Heron. Of course, all eyes were on the film to see if this would be the master returning in full force or a pale reflection of what had come before. Thankfully, Miyazaki proves again to be the best of the best, and the 10-year gap between features doesn’t show any noticeable change in his magical touch. Based on a 1937 novel, it follows a boy who travels with his father and stepmother to her country home, where he finds a hidden world in the surrounding grounds. Talking birds, ghosts of the past, hungry parakeets with a taste for children, and family secrets are all discovered during his adventures, all told with typical Miyazaki tenderness balanced with a historical edge that doesn’t shy away from exposing the lasting impact of WWII on the Japanese. The Boy and the Heron is brimming with the kind of delights Miyazaki fans have been waiting for and will be an excellent gateway to new fans who are now at the right age to view it and then travel back in time through the director’s previous films. There’s rumored to be more Miyazaki in the pipeline, and with The Boy and the Heron already a gigantic hit in Japan, once it arrives in US theaters, I can’t imagine the coffers won’t be full enough to fund more flights of fancy.
Working Class Goes to Hell
Director: Mladen Đorđević
Cast: Tamara Krcunovic, Leon Lucev, Momo Picuric, Ivan Djordjevic
Synopsis: A small-town labor union turns to the dark arts for empowerment against the corrupt forces in their community in this timely and disturbing socio-horror satire.
Thoughts: Arriving from Serbia, Working Class Goes to Hell has a heckuva wonderful title and caught my eye with several buzz words in the plot description that seemed like the movie was made with me in mind. Unfortunately, Mladen Đorđević’s film has a first-gear premise with a neutral execution. I’m all for the blending of horror and dark comedy, but when there is so little of both that you are left with no genre to latch on to, you begin to realize the pointlessness of the filmgoing experience. You keep waiting for something, anything, to connect, but it never follows through with what it lays out. That’s unfortunate because there is so much material presented that could have led to a more compelling narrative. In our cash-strapped economy and with unemployment rates being what they are, there is a place for a film depicting a town dying out because of factory jobs vanishing and the community looking to evil deeds and low-level witchcraft to influence their changing fortune. Alas, when Đorđević does make a bold and/or bloody statement, it’s a feeble battle cry drowned out by a weak production. A strong lead performance from Tamara Krcunovic is the only pro grounding the film in place, but too many oddball supporting characters (some who can barely mumble out their lines) muddy the dark waters. Running past the two-hour mark, it must be cut by at least 30 minutes before it can be commercially released, or I doubt anyone can sit through it.
Woman of the Hour
Director: Anna Kendrick
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson, Autumn Best, Tony Hale
Synopsis: Examines uncomfortable gender dynamics with the stranger-than-fiction story of Rodney Alcala’s appearance on The Dating Game in the middle of his 1970s murder spree.
Thoughts: One of a few films at TIFF directed by A-list actors (and making their feature debut), I don’t think anyone expected Anna Kendrick’s film to leave the festival with the most accolades. Yet, Woman of the Hour is terrific, a confident and tense look back at a pop culture factoid that’s never treated with cheap triviality. This world premiere (picked up by Netflix for 11 million) is two stories in one. The first follows a struggling actress (Kendrick) in 1970s Los Angeles who agrees to go on The Dating Game on the advice of her agent to get her face out there for potential work. One of her possible matches is Rodney Alcala, a charming man who’s a little…off. In reality, Alcala was a serial killer who had murdered several women and would victimize more after his appearance on the nationally broadcast program. It’s a story that seems like it could only be made up for the movies, but Ian MacAllister McDonald’s skilled screenplay bounces back and forth between Kendrick’s actress storyline and Alcala’s terrifying encounters with his victims. Kendrick’s dramatic side has consistently been underestimated (underappreciated?), but this should seal the deal for solid respect. Tightly paced and nicely evocative of the era, the supporting performances shine, too. As Alcala, Daniel Zovatto is rattling, and he shares a sustained sequence with Kendrick that is more tense than most full-length suspense thrillers I’ve seen. I also appreciated the driving urgency of the performances from Nicolette Robinson and Autumn Best. This won’t arrive until 2024, and I hope Netflix positions Woman of the Hour well for Kendrick to get the proper recognition for a job well done. She wasn’t originally supposed to direct this (only star in it), but she handled both roles with strength and compassionately focused on the women who weren’t as lucky as her character.
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Director: Viggo Mortensen
Cast: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garret Dillahunt
Synopsis: Set in the 1860s, the fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a relationship with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen.
Thoughts: Is the Western dead? Check in with Viggo Mortensen on the genre’s status, and he’ll sit you down to show you a print of The Dead Don’t Hurt as an example of how the Western can thrive with the right creatives in command. Mortensen takes on a multi-hyphenate role in the film, serving as producer, writer, director, and star. Oh, and he composed the original score, most of it before the movie even started filming because, in his mind, the movie was matched to the music, not the traditional other way around. The result is a beautifully rendered take on the Western, free from the usual leathery garb of dusty horses and nooses. Instead, Mortensen etched out a love story and let his co-star shine brightest. As if I didn’t love Vicky Krieps enough, she does enough acting with a single tear in this gah-orgeous dream of a Western to more than justify the TIFF Tribute Performer Award she received at the festival. The love story created between the characters Krieps and Mortensen play is familiar but far from simple, and it’s played out by two ace actors. That makes some of the narrative blandness excusable because the characters are rich in flavor. I’ll be interested to see how they market The Dead Don’t Hurt when it is time for release; this delicate film needs the perfect platform to catch the right audience.
Reptile
Director: Grant Singer
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi, Michael Pitt
Synopsis: Tom Nichols is a hardened New England detective, unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems, and it begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life.
Thoughts: Evocative of the procedural thrillers that were popular in theaters and direct to video in the mid-to-late ’90s but died off as collateral damage with the revitalized serial killer genre, Reptile is slick entertainment that isn’t out to break the mold it comfortably fits into. It’s a right up-my-alley kind of film, from A-list stars who lead the cast down to the dependable character actors who fill out the most minor supporting roles. A woman’s murder opens the door to an investigation that uncovers a viper’s nest of hidden agendas, cruel motives, and soulless corruption. For a detective (Benicio del Toro) newly transplanted to the area, it’s a chance to crack a case more significant than he realizes, but the cost of his digging comes at a hefty price. Many will receive it as ” standard, ” but it’s incredibly effective and often viciously ruthless. Directed by Grant Singer, making his fiction feature debut, Reptile convinced me that del Toro (who co-wrote the screenplay) is one of the greats. Co-star Justin Timberlake might have enjoyed a few more good notices on this if a certain autobiography hadn’t arrived around the same time this made its debut on Netflix…but his victory lap for a solid job was short-lived. Also, let me say again that I’m always a fan of Alicia Silverstone’s appearance in anything. There’s a complexity to her role that was fascinating and, if not fully explored, made you crave her presence even when she was offscreen.
American Fiction
Director: Cord Jefferson
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Keith David, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown
Synopsis: A wicked satire about the commodification of marginalized voices and a portrait of an artist forced to re-examine his integrity.
Thoughts: (Note: I wrote this after seeing this early on at TIFF): Well, there you go. American Fiction can’t be beaten for the surefire crowd-pleaser, with laudable performances and a biting script. It should be considered a must-see for TIFF23 audiences and be on everyone’s radar when released in November. By now, saying Jeffrey Wright is giving an awards-worthy performance seems old hat, but let this be true with his work here. Cord Jefferson’s film is timely and effective, with a stacked cast down to the minor turn—big props to the always grounded/grounding Erika Alexander and Tracie Ellis Ross. I can’t wait to see this again.
(Added after the film won the Audience Award, often an early indicator of Oscar potential): I’m so thrilled that TIFF audiences embraced this one as fully as I hoped they would. I’m also glad that when I said, “I can’t wait to see this again,” I meant it because I could see the movie once more on the closing night of the festival, confirming that it deserved the prize. If anything, American Fiction gains laughs on a second viewing, and the deep satire present in Cord Jefferson’s screenplay comes out with more razor-sharpness. Let us please live in a world where Jeffrey Wright gets an Oscar nomination for his work here and where the film, Jefferson, and the ensemble cast are recognized by the appropriate awards entities when it comes time to vote.