11 Days of Canadian and International Cinema
TIFF 2025 Volume 4
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.
HAMNET
The powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
Director: Chloé Zhao | Stars: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe
The hottest ticket at TIFF50 wasn’t a horror premiere or a star-studded ensemble. It was a period drama about Shakespeare’s dead son. Go figure.
Chloé Zhao returns to the intimate, spiritually attuned filmmaking of her early work, leaving Eternals firmly in the rearview. Co-writing with novelist Maggie O’Farrell, she crafts a mostly fictional account of the marriage between Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley, Wicked Little Letters) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers). He builds a career in London; she tends to their children in Stratford, including little Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). When the boy dies, his grief-stricken father channels the loss into his most enduring work. The names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable then, and watching Buckley witness the premiere performance, shoulder to shoulder in a packed crowd, is a staggering gut-punch of emotion.
Buckley has been hit or miss lately, but here she’s devastating. You wonder how she recovered between takes. Mescal matches her beautifully. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal shoots Herefordshire like it has its own pulse. Max Richter’s score provides the emotional architecture that lets you surrender completely. My screening was a battle, a last-minute addition with a second-row seat too close for Zhao’s compositions. I’m eager to revisit under ideal conditions but it didn’t matter where I sat; this won the People’s Choice Award for 2025 for good reason.
Read my full review here.
ADULTHOOD
The lives of two siblings are completely upended when they discover a dead body, long buried in their parent’s basement, sending them down a rabbit hole of crime and murder.
Director: Alex Winter | Stars: Kaya Scodelario, Josh Gad, Anthony Carrigan, Billie Lourd
Someone, anyone, please: stop trying to make Josh Gad happen on screen. It’s never going to happen.
Frozen was lightning in a bottle, but that’s voice work. In live action, Gad is cinematic poison. Here he plays Noah, who returns to his childhood home with his sister Meg (Kaya Scodelario, Crawl) and discovers a corpse in the basement walls. Instead of calling the police, these two geniuses decide to hide the body themselves. Hijinks ensue. Sort of.
Alex Winter‘s (Bill of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) suburban noir aims for manic energy but lands on staid. Scodelario plays it straight while Gad goes broad; they’re not even believable as siblings. The funniest person is Anthony Carrigan as their sketchy cousin, especially in a late scene involving swords, a crossbow, and two katanas. The ending lands with the dull thud of a body wrapped in an old rug. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what happens.
DRIVER'S ED
A group of teens steal their school’s driver’s ed car to go on a road trip to help a high school senior track down his college-freshman girlfriend and win her back.
Director: Bobby Farrelly | Stars: Sam Nivola, Kumail Nanjiani, Molly Shannon
Bobby Farrelly, the man who was one half of the wonder brother directing duo who made Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary is now 67. Whatever magic he once had back when he made those earlier films has evaporated, along with his better half of his filmmaking partnership.
Sam Nivola, fresh off White Lotus infamy, plays Jeremy, a beta-male high school cinephile whose girlfriend Samantha (Lilah Pate) just started college at UNC. Terrified she’ll slip away, he commandeers a driver’s ed vehicle and drags three classmates on an ill-conceived rescue mission to North Carolina. The journey aims for screwball odyssey. It arrives at forgettable detour.
Nivola (Maestro) deserves better. He’s got genuine screen presence and wrings humanity from a character the script treats as a template. His carmates, Aidan Laprete‘s affable burnout, Mohana Krishnan‘s overachiever, and TikToker Sophie Telegadis channeling the energy of a generation before her time, create the only sparks worth watching. Their chemistry suggests a livelier film trapped inside this one.
The adults walked into a trap. Molly Shannon (People We Meet on Vacation) battles a one-note principal role. Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals) flails as a substitute teacher hunting for jokes that never materialize. You sense both signed on for the Farrelly name, but the Farrelly name doesn’t mean what it used to.
Writer Thomas Moffett occasionally hints at something personal beneath the formula, but the direction flattens every quirk. Road-trip detours pile up without purpose: a dog owner, a thief with radioactive veneers, an inexplicable scene in a refrigerated fur truck. None of it lands. Drone shots swoop over backroads while generic soundtrack cuts blare. The cut corners of a rushed 24-day shoot are visible everywhere. Ninety-eight minutes crawl past like rush hour traffic.
There’s no malice here, just absence. A teen comedy so frictionless it slides right out of memory. The young cast earned a better vehicle. This one stalled before it left the lot.
JAWS (50TH ANNIVERSARY IN 35MM)
Celebrating 50 years, Jaws remains one of the most terrifying movies ever made, and announced Spielberg’s arrival as one of the most powerful filmmakers in the world.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Few films suit TIFF’s 50th anniversary better than the movie that invented the blockbuster. Fifty years later, it’s still a damn good time.
The mechanical shark kept breaking, so Spielberg showed it sparingly. That accident became genius. What you don’t see is far scarier than what you do. John Williams’ two-note theme still crawls under your skin. Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody remains one of Hollywood’s iconic roles. And Robert Shaw nearly steals the whole thing with a monologue on the boat that’s as unnerving as anything involving actual teeth. I still can’t believe Shaw didn’t even land a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It’s criminal.
With astronomical hype attached to any classic, Jaws could easily disappoint. It doesn’t. It surpasses. That lean approach to showing the monster remains one of cinema’s most effective decisions. Essential viewing, still.
And wow…did it look and sound amazing in a 35MM presentation to commemorate it’s 50th Anniversary.
LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY
Behind the scenes of Sarah McLachlan’s legendary all-women music festival and features interviews with performers including Bonnie Raitt, Erykah Badu, Olivia Rodrigo, and Emmylou Harris.
Director: Ally Pankiw | Producer: Dan Levy | Featuring: Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile
Before #MeToo, before anyone was theorizing about it, Sarah McLachlan saw the imbalance and did something.
This documentary traces how Lilith Fair emerged from a simple frustration: radio programmers who refused to play two songs by women back-to-back. McLachlan’s response was a touring festival organized exclusively around women artists. It ran from 1997-1999, proved wildly successful, and was relentlessly mocked by media that didn’t know any better. Time has vindicated them. The interviews today with Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile, Erykah Badu, Bonnie Raitt, Jewel, Indigo Girls, Mya, Natalie Merchant, and Emmylou Harris are filled with joy and genuine emotion.
Director Ally Pankiw and producer Dan Levy trace the origins, growth, controversies, and end. The irony now is that women artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Beyoncé are the biggest draws in live music, making “grouping them together” almost unnecessary. But Lilith Fair’s influence in challenging how women were marginalized remains undeniable, even if relatively few today remember it as the trailblazing event that it was.
EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT
A mix of a documentary and concert film made using unused footage from Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, the film of Elvis’ legendary 1970 Summer Festival in Las Vegas and Elvis’s road concert film from two years later, Elvis on Tour, that were found during the production of 2022’s Elvis.
Director: Baz Luhrmann | Documentary
This is the Stop Making Sense or U2: Rattle and Hum of Elvis movies. I almost left Toronto without catching it. Thank God I didn’t.
While preparing to film his Elvis biopic, Baz Luhrmann discovered 68 boxes of 35mm and 8mm footage in the Warner Bros. archives, including outtakes from Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and Elvis on Tour, plus unheard interview audiotapes. Much of the footage was silent; syncing it took two years. The result is told entirely in Elvis’s own voice. No outside interviews. Just the artist who transformed live performance forever.
Luhrmann weaves Presley’s confessional tapes between songs, creating the closest thing to a real concert experience without a time machine. Thanks to restoration, the sweat has never glistened so sharply. The 35mm images pop. If you thought Luhrmann explored every corner of the King in his 2022 blockbuster starring Austin Butler, prepare to be blown away. From the sound of the roaring, jam-packed crowd at my IMAX screening, they were as wow-ed as I was.
Find the biggest screen possible when it opens in February, it’s one of the rare instances where upgrading to IMAX is essential.
NORMAL
In the aftermath of a bank robbery, interim sheriff Ulysses uncovers a criminal conspiracy at the heart of his small-town Minnesota community.
Director: Ben Wheatley | Stars: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey
Who dreamed it would be Saul filling the big action-star void in Hollywood? And yet here we are with another rock ’em, sock ’em, unpredictable action thriller starring Bob Odenkirk, who continues to demonstrate a knack for picking scripts that play to his strengths.
Odenkirk (Little Women) plays Ulysses, a substitute sheriff in a Fargo-esque Minnesota town where the previous sheriff died under mysterious circumstances, possibly involving a moose. The film opens in Japan with a Yakuza loyalty test that ends very badly. Then nothing action-wise happens for 40 minutes. That’s typical Ben Wheatley (Kill List): slow and easy until pow. When two bank robbers are disappointed to learn “nobody uses cash anymore,” Sheriff Ulysses walks in like Gary Cooper in High Noon.
From the siege on, it’s nonstop carnage in nifty ways. Derek Kolstad‘s script, co-written by Odenkirk, channels ’50s classics like Bad Day at Black Rock. Henry Winkler and Lena Headey round out a cast of colorful character actors having visible fun…and not just with Minnesota accents. Wheatley keeps shooting deranged chaos, and Normal manages to exceed the Nobody action levels. Everything here is perfectly pitched. So much fun. And a great way to close the book on my in person time in Toronto!
AT THE FEST BUT SEEN AFTER...
IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU
With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.
Director: Mary Bronstein | Stars: Rose Byrne, Christian Slater, Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky
Rose Byrne delivers some of the rawest work you’ll see this year. You’ll be captivated and wrecked. Possibly both at once.
Director Mary Bronstein drew from her own experience: her daughter’s illness forced them into a San Diego motel for months, crushed into a bathroom after 8pm bedtimes, drinking cheap wine and binge-eating fast food. That authentic dread permeates every frame. Byrne plays Linda, a therapist drowning in maternal anxiety whose apartment ceiling literally collapses (a spectacular practical effect). The film never shows the daughter’s face until the final scene, a gamble that doesn’t totally pay off.
Conan O’Brien, in his film debut, plays Linda’s therapist with surprising restraint. A$AP Rocky brings unexpected warmth as a motel superintendent. This won’t work for everyone. It’s exhausting by design, like Uncut Gems, and I’m not sure I could endure it again. But for those willing to sit with maternal burnout depicted in all its ugly, terrifying reality, this is rare and uncompromising.
Read my full review here.
GOOD FORTUNE
A well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker and a wealthy capitalist.
Director: Aziz Ansari | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer
If the Academy had any guts, they’d nominate Keanu for this. I’m not even sure his studio (Lionsgate) put him up for it. What a pity. He’s doing terrific work.
Keanu Reeves plays Gabriel, a mid-tier guardian angel who switches the lives of broke gig worker Arj (Aziz Ansari) and rich tech bro Jeff (Seth Rogen) to prove money can’t buy happiness. Spoiler: money fixes kind of everything. Arj thrives and doesn’t want to switch back. Gabriel loses his wings. Jeff, stuck in Arj’s car, has to confront what being broke in L.A. actually means.
Reeves is a revelation. Gabriel could’ve been smug, but Reeves plays him with deadpan earnestness that somehow works. He’s warm, awkward, never above the material. The man broke his kneecap during filming and came back to finish a dance number. That’s commitment. Tonally, this lands somewhere between Trading Places and Scrooged. After Ansari’s derailed projects and public scrutiny, Good Fortune feels like an intentional reset. It works like the most observant comedies often do, because it presents a slightly surreal reality that winds up making more sense than our current world does.
Read my full review here.
RENTAL FAMILY
An American actor in Tokyo struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese ‘rental family’ agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients’ worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.
Director: HIKARI | Stars: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Akira Emoto
For a film about people pretending to love each other, Rental Family is surprisingly sincere. Lovely and almost delicate, the opposite of what I expected.
In Japan, agencies let you rent actors to play friends, spouses, or relatives. No scams, just emotional outsourcing. Brendan Fraser plays Phillip, a washed-up American actor known as “Toothpaste Man” from a Japanese commercial, who takes a job as a professional mourner. The funeral is fake. The man in the coffin is alive. Welcome to “Providing Perfect Happiness.”
Fraser is well-cast, a gentle presence who earns empathy without forcing it. But the ensemble steals the film: Takehiro Hira as the cool-headed agency owner, Mari Yamamoto as a guarded colleague, and especially Akira Emoto as a retired actor with dementia. The storyline with a schoolgirl who believes Phillip is her absentee father toes risky ethical territory, but director HIKARI handles the fallout with grace. Jónsi and Alex Somers’ score swells with melancholic warmth. Keep an eye on HIKARI. This feels like filmmaking for the future.
Read my full review here.
NUREMBERG
In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right-hand man.
Director: James Vanderbilt | Stars: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Leo Woodall
You don’t have to squint to see the present in this one. Propaganda, denial, strongman politics. Less history, more mirror.
Rami Malek plays Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist sent to evaluate top Nazis before trial. Russell Crowe, shedding the bloat of recent roles, plays Hermann Göring as dangerously charismatic, not frothing but persuasive. That’s exactly how these movements endure. Malek, surprisingly, more than holds his own as Kelley’s professional detachment erodes watching Göring rewrite history in real time.
Michael Shannon brings haunted intensity to Justice Robert Jackson. Leo Woodall, in a smaller role, nearly steals the film with a third-act monologue that punches through the courtroom procedure. What elevates Nuremberg beyond solid period piece is its refusal to settle for moral clarity. It explores how fascism festers through legal channels and mass denial. Trials are still happening. People are still denying. Silence remains the most dangerous accomplice.
Read my full review here.
DEAD MAN'S WIRE
In 1977, former real estate developer Tony Kiritsis puts a dead man’s switch on himself and the mortgage banker who did him wrong, demanding $5 million and a personal apology.
Director: Gus Van Sant | Stars: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Al Pacino, Cary Elwes
A disturbing ’70s hostage case gets the Bob Ross treatment: paint-by-numbers, oddly placid, shockingly bland for a Gus Van Sant film.
In 1977, Tony Kiritsis took a mortgage company president hostage with a homemade device that captivated the nation for three days. Van Sant’s retelling looks the part but never finds its pulse. Bill Skarsgård commits fully, maybe too fully, delivering capital-A Acting that calls attention to itself. Dacre Montgomery is flatly mediocre throughout. Cary Elwes plays a detective buried under a wig that makes him look distractingly like Paul Rudd.
It may have the longest producer list I’ve ever seen, but none of that money made it to the screen. Despite nonstop exposition, the film never goes anywhere. If there’s a saving grace, it’s Al Pacino as the elder Hall, whose trademark hamminess actually works here. The closing credits include real archival footage, revealing that neither lead remotely resembles the real people. Not one of Van Sant’s best.
Read my full review here.
THE SMASHING MACHINE
In the late 1990s, up-and-coming mixed martial artist Mark Kerr aspires to become the greatest fighter in the world. However, he must also battle his opioid dependence and a volatile relationship with his girlfriend Dawn.
Director: Benny Safdie | Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader
Without his brother Josh, Benny Safdie seems lost. The jittery energy that made Uncut Gems electric becomes aimless here.
Dwayne Johnson disappears into MMA pioneer Mark Kerr with stunning commitment. Behind prosthetics and careful voice work, the action star excavates genuine dramatic depths, capturing Kerr’s contradictions: soft-spoken Ohio wrestler turned “Smashing Machine” while battling painkiller addiction. Johnson is the real deal here.
But the film is too cool to care. Emily Blunt faces an impossible task as Kerr’s girlfriend, defined solely through reactions to his addiction, either screaming or sulking. Even her talent can’t animate this thankless role. The camera keeps its distance, draining fight scenes of visceral power. End credits reveal crucial context about Kerr and Coleman’s impact on MMA that the film never examines. Safdie had rich material and turned one of MMA’s most fascinating pioneers into something unforgivable: boring.
Read my full review here.
SIRÂT
A man and his son arrive at a rave lost in the mountains of Morocco. They are looking for Marina, their daughter and sister, who disappeared months ago at another rave. Driven by fate, they decide to follow a group of ravers in search of one last party, in hopes Marina will be there.
Director: Óliver Laxe | Stars: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona
If you’ve ever buried something painful, refused to look at it, told yourself you’d deal with it later, this movie is going to find you.
Óliver Laxe’s Cannes Jury Prize winner operates less like a film and more like a transmission from somewhere you’ve been avoiding. Luis (Sergi López) and his young son travel to a Moroccan rave searching for his missing daughter. When the ravers head deeper into the Sahara for one final gathering, they follow. What unfolds takes so many turns that describing even one of them would spoil everything.
Laxe creates a controlled hallucination. The electronic score pounds beneath every scene. Super 16mm cinematography captures Morocco as sanctuary and threat simultaneously. Most of the cast came from Europe’s underground rave scene, bringing something no professional could fake. López gives the performance of his career as a man with no vocabulary for what’s happening to him. When something unbearable happens, the camera stays. I wasn’t prepared for how deeply it reached inside. I don’t think you can be.
Read my full review here.
JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Director: Colin Hanks | Documentary featuring Dan Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, Steve Martin, Bill Murray
John Candy was the first celebrity death I cried over. I was older than 43 when I realized I’d outlived him. This documentary gave me the proper goodbye we never got.
Colin Hanks approaches with genuine reverence. Working with producer Ryan Reynolds, he’s assembled never-before-seen home videos, rare outtakes, and intimate interviews: Aykroyd, Levy, Martin, Murray, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Tom Hanks. But this isn’t a greatest-hits reel. Hanks sidesteps the predictable timeline and leans into Candy’s internal life, his early struggles, his teenage sadness, his lifelong battle with feeling like he wasn’t enough.
Candy’s father died when he was five. That trauma followed him everywhere. His children, Chris and Jennifer, speak with disarming honesty about their father’s struggles. These comedians let themselves be sad. They remember not just the loss but how he lives on. The secret weapon is a haunting cover of a Paul Young ballad paired with Candy’s quietest moments. It destroys you. Big-hearted, quietly sad, impossible not to love. Just like the man himself.
The full review is here.