11 Days of Canadian and International Cinema
TIFF 2024 Volume 2
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival delivered another unforgettable celebration of cinema, and I was thrilled to be a part of it for my second consecutive year. Over the course of the festival, I immersed myself in 61 films spanning genres, countries, and styles, each adding a unique thread to TIFF’s rich tapestry. Across six volumes, I’m excited to share my reviews, offering snapshots of these cinematic experiences with links to full analyses as they’re published.
As always, TIFF reminded me why I love movies—their power to transport, challenge, and connect us. From hidden gems to high-profile premieres, this year’s lineup didn’t disappoint. I’m grateful for the opportunity to take it all in, for the city of Toronto’s warmth and energy, and for the anticipation of returning in 2025 for TIFF’s 50th Anniversary. Until then, here’s a look at the films that made TIFF 2024 such a memorable journey
MR. K
After spending the night in a remote hotel, Mr. K is stuck in a claustrophobic nightmare when he discovers that he can't leave the building.
Crispin Glover enters the realm of the deliriously bizarre in a film that feels like a Kafkaesque fever dream directed by Wes Anderson after a particularly unsettling night.
From the moment MR. K begins, there’s a sense of deliberate, meticulously crafted strangeness that seems perfectly tailored to Glover’s unique performative sensibilities. The first half crackles with an audacious energy that promises something truly extraordinary – a hotel-bound nightmare where reality bends and twists with each increasingly surreal corridor.
But like many ambitious artistic endeavors, the film ultimately cannot sustain its initial promise. What starts as a tantalizing exploration of the bizarre gradually deflates, with the narrative cannibalizing its own potential.
The visual richness remains, but the storytelling becomes increasingly sparse, leaving viewers with a sense of something brilliant that didn’t quite stick the landing. Glover navigates this strange world with his characteristic blend of intensity and otherworldly detachment, making him the perfect guide through a landscape that feels perpetually on the edge of making sense and completely unraveling.
SEVEN DAYS
Imprisoned activist Maryam gets rare medical leave from Iran. She must choose between escaping or continuing her battle for human rights and democracy
Ali Samadi Ahadi’s SEVEN DAYS transforms a seemingly simple premise into an exploration of personal sacrifice, familial love, and political resistance that resonates far beyond its immediate narrative. Vishka Asayesh delivers a performance of extraordinary depth as a human rights activist granted a brief medical leave from prison – a moment that becomes a crucible of moral and personal reckoning. The film operates simultaneously as an intimate family drama and a nail-biting political thriller, revealing the personal costs of standing up against systemic oppression.
What makes the film truly remarkable is its refusal to simplify the complex emotional and political landscape it explores. The protagonist’s potential escape isn’t presented as a straightforward choice between personal freedom and political commitment, but as a deeply layered moral decision that speaks to the interconnectedness of personal and community struggle. It’s in this way that Asayesh brings a remarkable subtlety to her performance, communicating volumes through the smallest gestures and expressions.
The narrative maintains a terrific tension throughout, keeping viewers fully invested in the Asayesh’s internal and external journey. It’s the kind of small, mighty picture that might easily be overlooked in a crowded film landscape, but which ultimately provides a profound meditation on resistance, love, and the often invisible costs of fighting for justice.
SHARP CORNER
A dedicated family man becomes obsessed with saving the lives of the car accident victims on the sharp corner in front of his house - an obsession that could cost him everything.
There’s a new David Cronenberg movie (THE SHROUDS) playing TIFF this year, and I wonder if the director of the infamously NC-17 Crash might wander into a screening of SHARP CORNER and think one of the characters from his movie somehow got loose. While not as explicit (or reprehensible) as that 1996 film, director and co-writer Jason Buxton’s Canadian thriller can’t help but remind viewers intelligently attuned to that cinematic lineage.
New homeowners Ben Foster and Cobie Smulders have barely settled into their home in a peaceful part of town when a horrific car crash occurs right on their front lawn. As it turns out, their property sits right at the edge of the titular curve in the road, it’s proven to be a deadly route for years, and this won’t be the last accident they will witness. Why this hasn’t been addressed by city officials or revealed to them before they bought the house is a mystery. Smulders wises up fast and wants to move their child to a safer neighborhood, but Foster digs in, sensing an opportunity to be a hero and taking extreme measures to ensure that he’ll be prepared if there is an accident. As the couple sees their world shattered and divided, Foster spins further out of control in his quest to be the savior. The more fascinated he is with the destruction caused by the accidents, the more dangerous he becomes.
I’ve always liked Foster as an actor, but this turns out to be a strange role for him. It’s almost a Mr. Rogers-type approach to the character, making you wonder when he’ll drop the drip act and get wholly unhinged. Decently made but relatively rigid, it’s a harmless weekend watch but not one I’d spend a festival slot on.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE
Copenhagen 1919: A young worker finds herself unemployed and pregnant. She meets Dagmar, who runs an underground adoption agency. A strong connection grows but her world shatters when she stumbles on the shocking truth behind her work.
Of the buzzed-about titles coming out of Cannes this year, Magnus von Horn’s bleak fiction feature based on actual events in Copenhagen is a white-knuckle watch but a rewarding one.
Set in the final days of The Great War and shortly after, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE follows Karoline (a riveting Vic Carmen Sonne), a seamstress in a factory whose husband never returned from battle. Unable to pay the rent on her home, she’s forced into squalor, and, if you can believe it, only goes downhill from there. When she becomes pregnant by the factory owner, who promises to marry her but turns out to be a massive mama’s boy, she attempts to take matters into her own hands before turning to Dagmar (colossally excellent Trine Dyrholm), who offers another solution.
Filmed in crisp black and white with silhouettes framed as friendly shadows of hope or ominous omens of danger, von Horn doesn’t spare his characters or the viewer from the atrocities of life’s ugliness, both internal and external. It was a real wonder of creativity in the way it made the strange seem normal and vice versa; my heart ached for these people almost as strongly as it was pounding for what they were doing. Even with all the suffering, by the haunting ending you understand von Horn’s point of view being offered up as observant and true to life.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
An absurdist triptych of seemingly unconnected stories find a mysterious point of intersection in this tale set somewhere between Winnipeg and Tehran.
Matthew Rankin’s officially selected Canadian Oscar submission is a cinematic magic trick that defies easy description – a deliriously oddball comedy that creates an impossible version of Canada where linguistic and cultural boundaries dissolve into something wonderfully absurd. Having won the Directors’ Fortnight audience award at Cannes, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE arrived at TIFF with significant buzz, and remarkably, it more than lives up to its reputation.
There’s a specific kind of wizardry in Rankin’s approach – a ability to make the completely impossible feel not just plausible, but almost inevitable. The film exists in a linguistic and cultural landscape where Persian and French coexist as official languages, creating a world that feels simultaneously familiar and utterly alien. Humor and profound emotional moments exist in perfect, delicate balance, with each unexpected narrative turn revealing deeper truths about language, identity, and human connection.
The best approach to the film is total surrender – enter without expectations, allow the unique rhythms and unexpected emotional notes to wash over you. It’s a mini-masterpiece that speaks to the power of cinematic imagination, challenging viewers’ understanding of narrative, language, and cultural boundaries.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT
In the most unlikely of places, four siblings find a loving shelter in an unexpected turn of circumstances.
Despite the positive buzz surrounding Payal Kapadia’s debut fiction feature, this film failed to ignite my enthusiasm.
Moving between urban landscapes and a seaside setting, the narrative of ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIHT proves frustratingly inert, lacking the momentum needed to truly engage. While the film promises an exploration of two nurses experiencing personal transformative moments with hints of potential romance, it moves at a glacial pace that feels more like stagnation than nuanced storytelling.
Admittedly, my disconnect might be attributed to festival fatigue or simply a misalignment with the film’s overall artistic vision, but I found myself longing for something with more momentum. It’s a reminder that critical darlings don’t always resonate on a personal level, and, y’know, that’s perfectly okay.
NUTCRACKERS
In the most unlikely of places, four siblings find a loving shelter in an unexpected turn of circumstances.
Coming off of the three modern Halloween films and an embarrassing attempt to reboot The Exorcist, writer/director David Gordon Green had taken several left turns away from his indie roots. With NUTCRACKERS, Green’s attempt to return to simpler storytelling falls disappointingly flat.
Written hastily over a weekend, the film follows a familiar fish-out-of-water comedy template where city-guy Ben Stiller’s character becomes responsible for four mischievous rural orphans after a tragic accident. While the movie deserves credit for avoiding overly saccharine melodrama, it ultimately feels forgettable—a particular disappointment given Green’s previous work and how it had a way of sticking to the bones.
The script hits its expected beats without much distinction, suggesting a missed opportunity to truly explore the potential of its premise. The four boys are naturalistic enough to keep an audience engaged but overall it’s so workmanlike that you can almost smell the paychecks being printed. It’s a formulaic heartwarmer that neither offends nor excites, simply existing as a middling attempt to tug at audience heartstrings.
THE CUT
A retired boxer returns to the ring for one last shot at the title but only if he can make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight cut program with an unscrupulous trainer.
First coming to audiences’ attention statewide for his performance in The Lord of the Rings films, Orlando Bloom landed another choice franchise with the Pirates of the Caribbean series. However, outside of that, he has struggled to find the appropriate role that would take him to the next level as an actor capable of operating without the cushion of a built-in audience. I can appreciate what Bloom is trying to do as an aging boxer wanting one last chance in the ring in Shawn Ellis‘s THE CUT, which had its world premiere at TIFF. However, the gritty production is perhaps just too grim and grime-y.
This down-and-dirty story of Boxer (all he is ever identified as) never finds its footing despite terrific supporting turns from Caitríona Balfe as Bloom’s sparring partner in the ring and out and John Turturro as the man hired to get him back into fighting form in mere hours at any costs. Though the film seems like it’s headed in a fine direction as a dank comeback story for most of the movie, it takes a seriously dark and altogether strange turn about 3/4 of the way through with the introduction of Mohammed Mansaray’s secondary boxer character. That’s when it goes down for the count and never comes back up swinging.
Strong accents make Justin Bull’s screenplay hard to follow, and because the movie is shot in reverse chronological order to capture Bloom at his lowest weight, Ellis gets the performances at an extreme imbalance. Everyone here deserves better. Bloom is good enough to warrant a valid star vehicle, and both Balfe & Turturro waste committed performances on a film that is far from a knockout.
THE SUBSTANCE
A fading celebrity takes a black-market drug: a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
I’m still trying to wrap my puny male mind around Coralie Fargeat’s scorchingly good THE SUBSTANCE, which opened TIFF’s Midnight Madness to a roaring, appreciative crowd.
One thing I do know is this. All the early buzz you’ve heard, any hype you’ve read…it’s 100% accurate. If you thought quality horror had been steadily climbing this year, it officially reached its apex (and then some) with this absolutely exquisite and beautifully grotesque fantasia. It’s Death Becomes Her thrown in a blender with razor blades and battery acid — and I never wanted it to end.
The makeup effects are superb, Margaret Qualley continues her supernova ascent without missing a beat, and it represents career-best work for Demi Moore in a role I can’t imagine any other actress playing half as well. Don’t call it a comeback because she never “went” anywhere, but few women of her generation would/could embrace this material with the same kind of cat scratch fever fervor. Moore is unforgettable, and so is Fargeat’s brilliant barn-burner of a film.
Be warned, though, this movie is in-your-face gross, and any shimp fans out there will never look at Dennis Quaid the same way again…
Here is my full review of THE SUBSTANCE, published post-TIFF for its general release.
THE BRUTALIST
When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious and wealthy client.
Singular cinema, masterpieces of the medium, come along so rarely in our modern times that to witness one being born is an emotional experience.
That’s what happened for me at TIFF with co-writer/director Brady Corbett’s THE BRUTALIST. It’s a stunning work of art, graced by Adrian Brody’s mesmerizingly unforgettable performance. Exceptionally cast, you’d be hard-pressed to extricate anyone from this group because you get an eerie sense they were destined to play these roles. Though she doesn’t appear on screen until after the intermission, Felicity Jones is transfixing as a wife who has fought to live and won’t allow anyone (or anything) to stand in the way of happiness for her family. Guy Pearce is brought back from skirting the B-movie wasteland with an Oscar-worthy performance. Joe Alwyn and Stacy Martin play Pearce’s twin children, who grow up believing in very different ideas of compassion.
Daniel Blumberg’s score is riveting and could tell an entire story if you listened with your eyes closed. The whole production is enormous, bold, and connects on a level that speaks to culture, identity, and human expression. Audiences are bound to fear the runtime (3:35), but I’ve waited at stoplights that felt longer.
Comparisons to The Godfather (and Part II) aren’t that far off the mark, but it’s like saying one five-star chef’s chocolate cake is better than another. The taste is still fantastic, even if the ingredients are wholly different.
This is a must-see in a theater at any cost. Tickets for this were impossible, and I feel fortunate to have seen it when I did.
THE LAST SHOWGIRL
A seasoned showgirl must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run.
In the past several years, Pamela Anderson has been on a journey. The former Playboy playmate and Baywatch superstar had a painful part of her life replayed as scripted entertainment on Hulu, and she revealed who she is behind the fake eyelashes and artificial enhancements in a striking Netflix documentary. In a way, her role in Gia Coppola’s feature debut THE LAST SHOWGIRL is perfect for her.
An aging performer in a long-running Vegas show has to contend with looming unemployment when her show announces an unexpected closing and an estranged daughter (Billie Lourd) renters her life as she’s playing a mother figure to several girls in her show. On paper, Anderson would seem like the right choice for the part, and throughout the less than 90-minute film, there are brief flashes of brilliance in the performance. However, there is simply only so far a range to stretch, and the rapid shooting schedule didn’t allow time for Coppola to work with her leading lady on bringing things down a bit. Anderson is lucky to have two co-stars (Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista) who lift her up, with Bautista’s major scene being the unequivocal highlight. Curtis is spray-tanned for the gods and does a clothed solo dance on a table in the middle of a busy casino that is equal parts bold and pathetic, signaling again how deeply committed she is to her characters.
Kate Gersten’s script and Coppola’s direction aren’t spotless, either, with the latter half riddled with inexplicable lapses in logic, characters that change on a dime, and dots that don’t connect. I wonder how this could have turned out with more time allotted for Anderson to shine as bright as she does in select scenes. Then we’d really hit the jackpot.
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