11 Days of Canadian and International Cinema
TIFF 2025 Volume 3
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.
NINO
Nino is a young man on a journey to reconnect with the world and himself in the streets of Paris, following the suggestion of his doctors. In three days, he will face a major challenge.
Director: Pauline Loquès | Star: Théodore Pellerin
Théodore Pellerin is a star. This film, along with 2025’s Lurker, proves it.
Nino walks into a hospital expecting a note for missing work. He walks out with a cancer diagnosis, an HPV connection, and three days to decide whether to freeze his sperm before chemo makes the choice for him. He’s turning 29 tomorrow. Pauline Loquès’ debut feature spends those three days watching him pretend everything is fine, because in Nino’s view, everyone is always pretending anyway.
Pellerin plays it almost entirely internal. His face refuses to crack, but you feel the pressure building behind it. Loquès and cinematographer Lucie Baudinaud shoot him like they’re spying, tracking him through hallways and around corners with an intimacy that borders on voyeuristic. By the time he finally tells someone, the release hits like a wave. We learn everything and nothing about Nino across these 100 minutes, but Pellerin makes that paradox feel like the point.
DUST BUNNY
Ten-year-old Aurora asks her hitman neighbor to kill the monster under her bed that she claims ate her family. To protect her, he must battle an onslaught of assassins while accepting that some monsters are real.
Director: Bryan Fuller | Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Sophie Sloan, Sigourney Weaver
Bryan Fuller finally makes a movie, and it’s exactly the beautiful, creepy surreal work of art you’d expect from the guy who gave us Hannibal and Pushing Daisies.
Ten-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan, a Scottish newcomer doing a flawless American accent) lives in a decaying apartment complex with foster parents who barely notice her. She watches her mysterious neighbor in 5B through her window. One night, as a Chinese New Year celebration is happening around them and overhead, she sees him take down armed men who emerge from a Chinese dragon. To her, he’s slain an actual dragon. Now she needs him to kill the monster that ate her family.
Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt) plays the neighbor with his usual magnetic restraint. Sigourney Weaver (The Good House) shows up as a handler carrying one of the most ingeniously strange weapons I’ve seen on screen in years, clearly having a blast being wicked. Fuller and cinematographer Nicole Whitaker craft a world where every color feels wrong, every set tilted at an uncomfortable angle. The finale gets swirly, spectacle outpacing story, but until then I was fully on board. Delightfully weird, perfectly Fuller. Discover this one late at night when you want something beautiful and creepy to tuck you in.
The full review is here.
FRANKENSTEIN (2025)
Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
Director: Guillermo del Toro | Stars: Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz
Guillermo del Toro spent decades chasing this project. It was worth the wait.
Jacob Elordi (Priscilla), stepping in after Andrew Garfield’s scheduling conflict, delivers a performance people will reference for years. He studied butoh dance and his golden retriever’s innocent movements to create a Creature that’s simultaneously human and monstrous. The quiet moments land hardest: a tilted head, a searching glance. Watching him learn language, experience rejection, and embrace vengeance is genuinely moving. Oscar Isaac (Dune) plays Victor with tragic bravado. Mia Goth (MaXXXine) pulls double duty as mother and fiancée, adding Freudian undercurrents that enrich rather than distract. Christoph Waltz sheds his usual smirk for something more menacing.
I saw it twice at TIFF, where it was runner-up for the People’s Choice Award. What struck me most on the second viewing was the sadness. Yes, it’s a monster movie. But it’s also about unwanted children, creators who destroy what they can’t love, and systems that exile problems they created. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s score are flawless. At 149 minutes, it demands patience and the biggest screen you can find. Some will ask if we needed another Frankenstein. After this, the question is whether anyone can top it.
The full review is here.
BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER
Amid the glittering casinos of Macau, a gambler running from his past—and his debts—becomes fascinated by an enigmatic woman at the baccarat table.
Director: Edward Berger | Stars: Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen
Gorgeous to look at. Gorgeous to listen to. Too long by half.
Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a disgraced aristocrat drowning his past in Macau’s casinos. Crisp suits and yellow gloves perform wealth he no longer has. Farrell is magnetic, playing a man who’s already been flattened and keeps standing up out of reflex. It’s another career-defining turn from an actor who keeps redefining himself.
Edward Berger, fresh off Conclave, stages Macau as paradise and trap simultaneously. James Friend’s cinematography captures gold-plated casino floors like temples to addiction. And Volker Bertelmann’s score? The most beautiful symphonic panic attack you’ll ever hear. Don’t miss the wild, vivid closing credits.
But the mystery meanders. Tilda Swinton (The Killer) brings eccentricity without emotional ballast. Fala Chen deserves more interiority than the script allows. The deliberate pacing tests patience. This ballad should have been a ditty. Still, Farrell and that score make it worth the gamble
The full review is here.
THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE
The extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers.
Director: Mona Fastvold | Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie
A historical drama about the 18th-century founder of the Shakers. I know. Stay with me.
Mona Fastvold, co-writer of The Brutalist, directs Amanda Seyfried (The Housemaid) in a performance that goes so far beyond “good” I’ve struggled to find the right words. Seyfried accesses kindness, tenderness, power, and madness, all in the same body. She learned a Mancunian accent from the 1700s with no audio reference. She endures graphic childbirth scenes, four babies who all die. The singing, drawn from original Shaker hymns by composer Daniel Blumberg, operates unlike any musical I’ve encountered.
Lewis Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick) brings emotional heft as Ann’s devoted brother. Thomasin McKenzie’s (Last Night in Soho) narration is serious, wry, and surprisingly playful. I saw this in 70mm. Seek that out if you can. Fastvold shot on 35mm in Budapest for $10 million after years of industry rejection. Like The Brutalist, not a single frame looks compromised. Together, these films form a devastating double feature on American myths. Both visually stunning, emotionally shattering, and made for less than Marvel’s catering budget.
Read my full review here.
TRAIN DREAMS
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
Director: Clint Bentley | Stars: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon
Not every film has to shout to leave a mark. Some just whisper. This one stays with you longer.
Adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, Train Dreams follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton, The Plague), a logger in the early 1900s American West, through a life of expansion, isolation, and devastating loss. Edgerton delivers the quietest, most restrained performance of his career. Grainier says less than he feels and feels more than he shows. In a career of interesting choices, this might be his finest work.
Felicity Jones (The Brutalist) makes Gladys more than a memory despite limited screen time. Kerry Condon (Night Swim) arrives with calm confidence that matches the film’s tempo perfectly. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso captures Washington’s forests in damp, misty texture. And Bryce Dessner’s score floored me, moving with the film without ever overwhelming it.
It caught me at TIFF and has followed me since. Not in a sad way. In that rare way certain stories do when they show you a life that could’ve belonged to someone you know. Or someone you miss.
Read my full review here.
HONEY BUNCH
Diana’s husband is taking her to an experimental trauma facility deep in the wilderness, but she can’t remember why… As her memories begin to creep back in so do some unwelcome sinister truths about her marriage.
Director: Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli | Stars: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Kate Dickie, Jason Isaacs
Grace Glowicki was nearly ready to give birth at the premiere, looking radiant alongside husband Ben Petrie. They were there representing someone else’s vision of a troubled marriage while their own film, Dead Lover, played Midnight Madness down the street. That’s a busy festival.
Directors Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli follow up their must-see debut, Violation, by channeling Rosemary’s Baby & Don’t Look Now for this subdued ’70s psychological thriller. Diana (Glowicki) and Homer (Petrie, rocking the most ’70s stache of the year) recuperate at a gothic countryside estate after a car accident. She starts seeing things. The film keeps you perpetually uneasy, never revealing where it’s headed or what destruction it might leave behind.
Glowicki and Petrie’s real-life chemistry translates into something thorny and tender onscreen. Their banter feels lived-in even as Diana’s health instills genuine dread. Kate Dickie (Prometheus), one of our great character actresses, plays both sides of a particular coin so effectively you’re never sure where it’s falling. Jason Isaacs (Juliet & Romeo) adds weight to the mystery. The zooms, the sepia tones, the exaggerated line readings all work to create an atmosphere that burrows under your skin.
Then the final stretch swerves into mean-spirited ugliness that felt like a betrayal. The film had a lovely note to land on and refused to take it. Ambitious, atmospheric, deeply unsettling for most of its runtime, with a real-life couple making fictional marriage feel dangerously alive. I just wish it trusted its own gentler instincts.
NOUVELLE VAGUE
After writing for Cahiers du cinéma, a young Jean-Luc Godard decides making films is the best film criticism. He convinces producer Georges de Beauregard to fund a low-budget feature, and creates a treatment with fellow New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut about a gangster couple. The result? Breathless, one of the first features of the Nouvelle Vague era of French cinema.
Director: Richard Linklater | Stars: Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin, Alix Bénézech
Full disclosure: I’m not a French New Wave guy. The snobbery that surrounds those films has always kept me at arm’s length. I expected to admire this from a distance. Instead, it completely enchanted me.
Richard Linklater (Bernie) chronicles the chaotic 23-day shoot of Breathless in 1959 Paris. Guillaume Marbeck plays Jean-Luc Godard as a bundle of neurotic energy, rewriting daily, baffling his crew. Zoey Deutch (earning an Independent Spirit nomination) plays Jean Seberg with terrific chemistry opposite Aubry Dullin‘s Jean-Paul Belmondo. Shot in gorgeous black and white in the Academy ratio, it feels less like a biopic and more like a love letter to the moment when young artists decided old rules didn’t matter.
Linklater makes icons feel accessible, finding humanity without diminishing achievement. I still haven’t watched Breathless itself, but when I do, I’ll think of this immediately. Maybe that’s the ideal double feature: the revolutionary paired with the tribute.
Oh, and with a cameo by an actress playing the woman herself, can this please be the start of the Agnes Varda-verse?
Read my full review here.
F**K MY SON
An X-Rated descent into demented comedy and maniacal horror, as a desperate mother drags an innocent stranger into an absurd, filthy nightmare beyond comprehension. An unflinchingly loyal adaptation of transgressive artist Johnny Ryan’s joyfully disgusting comic book.
Director: Todd Rohal | Starring: Tipper Newton, Steve Little, Robert Longstreet
Rated NC-17, X, or unrated depending on who you ask. Honestly, it qualifies for all three.
A mother with a gun. A hostage situation involving her grotesque son. A child who’ll be baked in an oven if mom doesn’t comply. And somehow, the biggest controversy that emerged from Toronto was the ninety seconds of bad AI it featured.
Todd Rohal built this provocation as a tribute to boundary-pushing comic artists, and boy does it push. The creature design alone deserves some kind of award for sheer audacity. But what ignited the internet wasn’t the depravity onscreen. It was Rohal’s satirical use of intentionally awful AI: a fake theater pre-show with nightmare crowds, and “Meatie Mates,” a Christian cartoon that degrades with each appearance like watching a media company’s soul rot in real time. The AI isn’t laziness. It’s the point. And wow, did a lot of people just not get it.
Toronto’s midnight crowd lost their minds with joy. I laughed at far more than I should have and felt terrible about it immediately…but never guilty. Letterboxd reviews exploded with surprising fury the next morning. I don’t blame Rohal’s head for spinning around, unable to reconcile the two reactions. The hatred simply wasn’t in that room. Sure the frenzy of the opening ten-fifteen minutes started to evaporate, but the laughs were consistent. If you were there, you knew.
Here’s what was in the room: commitment. The cast throws themselves into this filth so completely that it becomes oddly lovable. The practical effects team deserves medals. (At least for keeping their dinners down while working). Every time you think it can’t escalate, it finds another gear. It’s truly vile garbage, but one person’s putrid garbage is another cinephile’s rancid reel revelation. Keep it out of living rooms for a while. Here’s Rohal’s task: force people into theaters where strangers can scream together. That’s where this thing belongs.
WAYWARD (TV SERIES)
A small-town cop suspects that the local school for troubled teens — and its dangerously charismatic founder — may not be all it seems.
Creator: Mae Martin | Stars: Mae Martin, Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon, Alyvia Alyn Lind
Mae Martin‘s high school best friend got shipped to one of those “troubled teen” programs. Years later, Martin heard the stories. The facility was eventually shuttered for abuse. Turns out the whole industry traces back to ’70s self-help cults. That history fuels every frame of this Netflix thriller. Anyone shaken by the Netflix documentary Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare will find unsettling echoes here.
Martin plays Alex, a cop relocating to rural Vermont with pregnant partner Laura (Sarah Gadon, Dracula Untold), who grew up there. The town revolves around Tall Pines Academy, where Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette, Muriel’s Wedding) runs a program that’s less therapy than theater of cruelty. Collette calibrates perfectly between maternal warmth and ice-cold control. You can’t look away from her. Parallel to Alex’s investigation, two teenage best friends get swallowed by Tall Pines, their bond serving as the show’s emotional spine.
Not everything lands equally. Martin and Gadon crackle together, but their relationship guards secrets the scripts only gesture toward. The teen storyline sometimes hammers its parallels too hard. Certain subplots drag. You’ll check your watch during stretches that don’t hold attention as tightly.
But when it works, it really works. Set in 2003 for that pre-smartphone unease, this is tailor-made for anyone whose inner teenager still thrills at watching terrible adults get destroyed. Martin clearly hopes for more seasons to excavate what’s been planted here. The foundation is sturdy enough to build on.
OBSESSION
After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.
Director: Curry Barker | Stars: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette
Midnight Madness always has one title that arrives pre-sold, and this year’s hot ticket went to Focus Features for fifteen million dollars before anyone outside the festival had seen a frame.
I caught it from my rental apartment instead of the theater. Turned out to be smart. This thing earns its scares, and having familiar walls around me helped when they landed. Fair warning: patience is required. The setup sprawls. You’ll wonder what justified that price tag. Then the payoff arrives and keeps arriving.
Bear pines for Nikki. She sees him as furniture. When his cat dies, he stumbles into one of those shops that only exists in horror movies and finds a wishing toy. One snap later, Nikki’s obsessed with him. Not romantic-comedy obsessed. Standing-in-the-corner-watching-him-sleep obsessed.
Curry Barker came up through YouTube, and his debut shows a filmmaker who trusts silence and space over exposition. The premise is vintage curse-object horror, but the execution feels contemporary, particularly in how it interrogates Bear’s choices. He knows something’s wrong. He proceeds anyway, prioritizing his fantasy over her autonomy. That tension gives the horror real teeth.
Inde Navarrette gets a showcase that should launch careers. There’s a party sequence where everything detonates, and she plays it at eleven without losing control. Johnston matches her with quiet desperation. The finale goes places I won’t spoil. I’m genuinely excited to sit with a packed house when this opens in May and hear the screams.
A PRIVATE LIFE
Following the death of Paula, one of her long-time patients, psychiatrist Lilian Steiner becomes convinced that her supposed death by suicide is actually an unsolved murder.
Director: Rebecca Zlotowski | Stars: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric
Jodie Foster (Nyad) speaking French for nearly two hours, investigating a dead patient’s possible murder. I wanted to love it. I settled for respecting it.
Foster plays Lilian Steiner, a psychiatrist convinced her patient was killed. It’s her first French-language lead since A Very Long Engagement in 2004, and she’s exceptional, conveying volumes through pursed lips and those searching eyes. Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, and Mathieu Amalric provide solid support. Director Rebecca Zlotowski crafts a character study that rewards patience.
The problem? For roughly 98.5% of the runtime, nothing really happens. I wanted the whodunit it promises; I got a meditation on a woman confronting her own secrets. The abrupt ending doesn’t help. Foster on film is always a win, so I’m not upset it exists. But walking out, I realized I’d spent two hours waiting for something that never quite arrived. The mystery worth solving is Lilian herself. Whether that’s enough depends on your patience.
Read my full review here.
EASY'S WALTZ
A down-on-his-luck comedian-crooner navigates modern Las Vegas with old-school Vegas personalities.
Director: Nic Pizzolatto | Stars: Vince Vaughn, Al Pacino, Simon Rex
The first real turkey of TIFF50. And I mean gobble-gobble disaster.
True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto‘s feature directorial debut follows Easy (Vince Vaughn, The Internship), a Vegas crooner who never made it despite his “talents.” That’s the film’s assertion, anyway. The problem: Vaughn’s overemphasized atonal singing will make your skin crawl. His takes on “Vienna,” “Silent Running,” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” are actively painful, made worse by awful sound mixing. Al Pacino (Dead Man’s Wire) shows up, looks energized, and is great. Simon Rex (Red Rocket), might be wildly miscast, but he gets the job done. And I can’t deny that Vaughn’s acting is solid. It’s everything else around him and his singing that’s truly tragic.
The script is ludicrous. The dialogue sounds like it needed another take. Every take. Subplots appear and vanish randomly. Pizzolatto cannot write a decent woman’s role to save his life. That’s what Mary Steenburgen, Kate Mara, Cobie Smulders, and even a nearly unrecognizable Shania Twain are treated as baubles. This is for all the dads who sit in driveways with garage doors up, singing karaoke after a few Old Milwaukees on a Thursday night. Then again, even they might walk out once Vaughn starts in on another agonizing ballad. This is a pressure-sealed disaster where nobody stepped in to avert catastrophe. Easy’s Waltz doesn’t even cha-cha with minor greatness.