11 Days of Canadian and International Cinema
TIFF 2025 Volume 2
The Toronto International Film Festival wrapped its 50th Anniversary celebration from September 4-14, and I was lucky enough to be there for my third year in a row. This time around, I dove into 41 films—a slightly smaller haul than last year since I did most of my viewing in Toronto rather than catching advance screeners. But what TIFF50 lacked in quantity, it more than made up for in quality and variety.
What really struck me this year was just how well TIFF’s programmers understand their audience. There’s truly something for everyone: big crowd-pleasers that get the room buzzing, quiet documentaries that make you think long after the credits roll, experimental films that challenge what cinema can be. Every section felt carefully curated, like each programmer had dug deep to find titles that would connect with different kinds of film lovers in different moods. That’s the magic of this festival.
The access and experiences this year were incredible. I got to see Jaws in 35mm for the anniversary—and it looked absolutely fantastic. I was invited to a private Q&A with the cast of the new Knives Out film. And then there were the parties: at the gatherings for The Lost Bus and Hedda, I actually got to tell Tessa Thompson, Tom Bateman, Nina Hoss, and director Nia DaCosta how much I loved their film. Tessa and I even chatted about what other movies we’d been enjoying at the festival! I also kept running into actors and filmmakers at premieres they were attending to support friends, met up with fellow critics I’d only known online, and just soaked up the energy of being part of this community.
The people of Toronto, the TIFF staff, the volunteers working around the clock—everyone made this feel less like a film festival and more like a homecoming. I’m grateful for the hospitality, the growing connections, and the chance to keep doing this work I love.
Over the next several volumes, I’ll be sharing my reviews with links to the full write-ups as they go live. And yeah, I’ve already booked my AirBnB for next September. See you at TIFF51.
THE LOST BUS
A determined father risks everything to rescue a dedicated teacher and her students from a raging wildfire.
Director: Paul Greengrass | Stars: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera
Nobody makes you sweat through a disaster like Paul Greengrass.
The 2018 Camp Fire killed 85 people and erased the town of Paradise in hours. With Jason Blum & Jamie Lee Curtis producing, Greengrass adapts that horror into a survival story about Kevin (Matthew McConaughey, Mud), a bus driver who answers a call to rescue stranded schoolchildren instead of evacuating his own family. America Ferrera (Barbie) plays the teacher already on board. Together they navigate roads that disappear into smoke and walls of flame that seem to think for themselves.
When Greengrass locks into survival mode, the film is suffocating in the best way. Detours blocked, visibility zero, the sound design turning wind into something predatory. McConaughey underplays beautifully; Ferrera matches him with warmth and grit. The problem? Every time we cut away to Kevin’s estranged son (played by McConaughey’s real-life kid), the tension deflates. It’s the classic Greengrass trade-off: unmatched chaos, underbaked connective tissue. Still, when that bus is moving, you won’t breathe.
Read my full review here.
YOU HAD TO BE THERE: HOW THE TORONTO GODSPELL IGNITED THE COMEDY REVOLUTION, SPREAD LOVE & OVERALLS, AND CREATED A COMMUNITY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (IN A CANADIAN KIND OF WAY)
A documentary about the legendary 1972 Toronto production of the musical about the life of Jesus, which launched many illustrious careers and ignited a comedy revolution.
Director: Nick Davis | Documentary about the 1972 Toronto Godspell production
Theater kid catnip. I was defenseless.
In 1972, a scrappy Toronto production of Godspell assembled a cast that would reshape comedy forever: Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Jayne Eastwood. Before SCTV. Before Saturday Night Live. Before any of them knew what they were becoming. Nick Davis chronicles how cheap rehearsal halls and borrowed costumes created an ecosystem where invention could flourish.
The doc lingers too long on familiar Radner territory and shortchanges some cast members, but the infectious energy wins out. Watching it at the Royal Alexandra, where the show originally ran, with original cast members in attendance? Electric. I left humming “Day by Day” and I don’t even like Godspell that much. The central question resonates: without this company, do those comedy institutions even exist?
WHISTLE
At the Masters of Musical Whistling competition, where virtuoso whistlers compete for global supremacy and bragging rights, we follow an array of quirky personalities and dazzling talents.
Director: Christopher Nelius | Documentary about the Masters of Musical Whistling competition
A documentary about competitive whistling. In IMAX. I pre-swallowed the Advil.
Reader, I was wrong. Director Christopher Nelius follows competitors at the Masters of Musical Whistling with just enough Waiting for Guffman energy to keep things playful without mocking anyone. Japan’s Yuki Takeda keeps finishing second. A Spanish circus performer’s daughter has dreamed of this since childhood. Molly Lewis whistled for Barbie. A former Broadway hopeful now teaches high school in New Jersey.
The often brusque competition founder holds everything together with charm and duct tape, managing finances, egos, and technical disasters. What makes this work is dignity. These people have mastered something most of us dismiss as trivial, and Nelius treats their passion seriously. It joins Spellbound, Well Groomed, The Barkley Marathons, and Air Guitar Nation in the “unexpectedly delightful competition doc” hall of fame. Fame and fortune may elude these whistlers, but they earned a spot in my heart.
STEAL AWAY
Fanny, a naive teenager, starts her journey to adulthood when Cécile, a mysterious refugee, is taken in by her charitable family. As the two girls develop an intense and obsessive bond, Fanny becomes captivated by Cécile’s way of navigating life, leading to an awakening of desire and jealousy. Gradually, both girls realize that the benevolent world they inhabit is not what it appears.
Director: Clement Virgo | Stars: Mallori Johnson, Angourie Rice, Lauren Lee Smith
Gorgeous. Maddening. Frequently both at once.
Clement Virgo‘s sensual fairy tale drops Cécile (Mallori Johnson) and her mother into the palatial estate of Fanny (Angourie Rice, Mean Girls) and her mother. Curiosity curdles into desire, rivalry, and something stranger. Virgo shoots it all like a sweaty dream: mossy textures, candlelight, velvet everything. The costumes alone could tell the story with the sound off.
The problem is the storytelling. It’s elusive to the point of obtuse, with character motivations that wobble when they should propel. The final twenty minutes swerve so hard into recalibration that I got whiplash. Themes of privilege and appropriation float by without landing. Yet the atmosphere lingers like perfume. Johnson is magnetic; Rice finds danger in sweetness; Hilde Van Mieghem is gloriously unhinged as a mute grandmother who may be running everything. Bold and uneven. Your mileage will vary wildly.
FUZE
A long-buried WWII bomb found in central London sparks a mass evacuation, providing the perfect cover for a bank heist.
Director: David Mackenzie | Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
After Hell or High Water and last year’s stripped-down Relay, I expected David Mackenzie to nail this glossy heist thriller. Instead, I watched talented actors drown in leaden dialogue and a twist so obvious I wanted to shake the heroes for not seeing it.
The ingredients look right: tight timeframe, encrypted MacGuffins, a cast including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw doing her best with underwritten material. But the script plays like it was assembled from a “Thrillers for Dummies” checklist. Tom Clancy fans will be three steps ahead before act one ends. The action feels rushed rather than choreographed, and the finale is genuinely dreadful, followed by a coda that brazenly steals from 9 to 5.
Mackenzie has real skill. This material didn’t deserve him, and he couldn’t elevate it. Maybe try a different genre next time.
WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY
When young priest Jud Duplenticy is sent to assist charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, it’s clear that all is not well in the pews. After a sudden and seemingly impossible murder rocks the town, the lack of an obvious suspect prompts local police chief Geraldine Scott to join forces with renowned detective Benoit Blanc to unravel a mystery that defies all logic.
Director: Rian Johnson | Stars: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin
They really need a chef’s kiss emoji. It would save so much time.
Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc mystery is his best, pivoting from Knives Out‘s tart humor and Glass Onion‘s flashy satire into something darker, more contemplative. Set in a cloistered religious community, it follows a young priest (Josh O’Connor, giving the performance of the film) who arrives to assist a monsignor (Josh Brolin) just as an impossible murder shatters their fragile peace. Daniel Craig’s Blanc remains magnetic, his drawl now a tool of disarming investigation rather than Southern charm.
The ensemble is stacked: Glenn Close doing brittle and calculating, Jeremy Renner hollowed by regret, Kerry Washington radiating bitterness, Cailee Spaeny as a once-promising cellist. Only Andrew Scott feels wasted. Visually, it’s candlelit and sinister, Steve Yedlin’s cinematography a stark departure from Glass Onion‘s Mediterranean gleam. Johnson’s puzzle-box plotting stays sharp, but he’s more willing to pause for meaning this time. Questions of belief, forgiveness, and repressed trauma hum beneath the mystery. This franchise keeps getting richer.
Read my full review here.
THE CHRISTOPHERS
The estranged children of a once-famous artist hire a forger to complete his unfinished works so they can be discovered and sold after his death.
Director: Steven Soderbergh | Stars: Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, Jessica Gunning, James Corden
Slight? Maybe. But I liked it more an hour after it ended than when the credits rolled. That’s a good sign.
Steven Soderbergh goes chamber-sized for this tart comedy about art, money, and family greed. Ian McKellen plays an aging painter whose children (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) hover like vultures, waiting for him to die so they can cash in. They bring in Michaela Coel as an art dealer whose intelligence jolts every scene to life. When she and McKellen connect, it’s electric.
The plot is skeletal on purpose. Soderbergh cares more about behavior: ambition curdling into need, families weaponizing grievances. It feels like a play, which is a feature, not a bug. Gunning gets a huge laugh trying to finish her father’s paintings herself. Corden scores some hits and some misses. McKellen savors every dry line without going arid. Dismiss this as slight at your own risk. Both McKellen and Coel are overdue for awards attention, and this might be the dark horse that delivers.
HEDDA
Hedda Gabler finds herself torn between the lingering ache of a past love and the quiet suffocation of her present life. Over the course of one charged night, long-repressed desires and hidden tensions erupt—pulling her and everyone around her into a spiral of manipulation, passion, and betrayal.
Director: Nia DaCosta | Stars: Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss, Nicholas Pinnock, Tom Bateman, Imogen Poots
I’ve seen Hedda Gabler staged a dozen times. I’ve never seen it like this.
Nia DaCosta (Candyman) transplants Ibsen’s 1891 play to mid-century England and gender-swaps the doomed intellectual Eilert into a woman named Eileen. The result is thrilling, impeccably crafted, and showcases the performance of the year that nobody’s talking about. Tessa Thompson (His & Hers) commands the title role, scheming and seething across a gorgeous estate. But this film belongs to Nina Hoss.
Her Eileen is brilliant, bold, ahead of her time, and utterly unprepared for Hedda’s cruelty. Watching her suffer humiliation after humiliation is genuinely painful. Hoss was exceptional in Tár and got overlooked. It’s happening again, and it baffles me. She should be the Supporting Actress frontrunner. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s prickly score punctuates every move. Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography treats the estate as gilded cage and chessboard. Every department fires on all cylinders. I don’t know how I’ll watch the play the same way again.
Read my full review here.
CANCELED: THE PAULA DEEN STORY
From humble beginnings as a Georgia caterer, Paula Deen climbed her way to culinary stardom with Southern charm and buttery recipes, becoming a TV sensation and building a food empire that defined comfort cooking.
Director: Billy Corben | Documentary
Billy Corben made Cocaine Cowboys and its three sequels and God Forbid. He knows how to interrogate complicated subjects. So why does this feel like a press release with a curated soundtrack?
The Paula Deen story has genuinely interesting angles: what “canceled” means for different people, why her tearful apologies failed, and how white audiences drove her downfall while Black audiences shrugged unsurprised. Food historian Michael Twitty clarifies that last point brilliantly. Corben allows Twitty to take over for most of the documentary’s smart analysis of Deen’s personal and professional life.
The rest? Excuses. Every time the film gestures toward accepting accountability, it alters slightly the level of acceptance its subjects are willing to admit to. Deen and her sons steer the narrative while Corben rarely pushes back. The woman who brought the discrimination suit gets undermined. So does a second accuser. There’s a good documentary hiding in here about cancel culture’s inconsistencies. This isn’t it. Not much nutritional value, to borrow a food metaphor.
RETREAT
In an isolated deaf community, Matt's idyllic world cracks when Eva arrives, making him question his identity and the costs of maintaining his supposedly utopian society.
Director: Ted Evans | Stars: Anne Zander, Sophie Stone, James Joseph Boyle
This was one that wasn’t originally on my radar but became a right place, right time surprise. Billed as the world’s first Deaf thriller, it delivers on the promise and then some.
Eva (Anne Zander) travels from Berlin to an English countryside retreat exclusively for Deaf people, hoping to find community among those who understand. She’s welcomed by the enigmatic Mia (Sophie Stone), whose teachings called “The Way” start sounding less like therapy and more like control. Almost the entire film is in British Sign Language, stripping away the sonic cues thrillers usually rely on. During moments of panic, silence becomes its own weapon, broken only by flashing red lights.
I’m kicking myself for missing the Q&A because this demands discussion. Twenty films into the festival after five days, and Stone gave the best performance I’d seen, bar none. Her Mia is warmth curdling into something sinister, benevolence as a mask for manipulation. Director Ted Evans builds dread through restraint, asking audiences to rewire how they experience genre. Bold, intellectually rigorous, and genuinely unsettling. Don’t read more. Just see it.
TUNER
A talented piano tuner's meticulous skills for tuning pianos lead him to discover an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes, turning his life upside down.
Director: Daniel Roher | Stars: Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, Havana Rose Liu
A heist movie where the safecracker tunes pianos for a living. Trust me, it works.
Navalny director Daniel Roher pivots to fiction with this pitch-perfect indie about Niki (Leo Woodall, Nuremberg), a former piano prodigy whose hearing condition turned sound into pain. Now he tunes pianos alongside Harry (Dustin Hoffman, Quartet), whose warmth masks his own fading hearing. When Niki discovers his hyper-sensitive ears can crack safes, he falls in with the wrong crowd.
Woodall, slippery and seductive in The White Lotus, finds a softer register here, his performance blossoming as his connection with music student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu, in her best role yet the same year she appeared in Lurker) deepens. The sound design is extraordinary, pulling you in and out of Niki’s painful relationship with noise. Hoffman brings avuncular charm without overdoing it. The ending delivers genuine sonic catharsis. Small film, big grin on the way out. See it loud.
Don’t forget to check out  Volume 1, Volume 3 & Volume 4