TIFF 2023

For me, this was Best of the Fest. Ladj Ly cowrote the best film of 2022 (Athena), and directed one of my favorites from 2019 (Les Misérables). No other filmmaker is creating this sort of socially conscious protest films that actually capture the downtrodden collective, without ever exploiting the people involved for the kind of “poverty porn” that so many US productions are guilty of (I’m looking at your “Shameless” for being absolutely ... well ... shameless). Anyway, Indésirables focuses on the rise of a low-level government worker, her disaffected, enraged boyfriend who has had enough, and their downtrodden Parisian community’s who is fighting against corruption with the worst possible solution— more police. The film is the match to a powder keg, and a completely universal story that could be transposed to any large city in the US.

Nicolas Cage plays a schlubby professor who begins to appear in everyone’s dreams in a quirky comedy that explores collective unconscious, Dreamfluencers, and cancel culture. I’m sorry, but did I dream this plot? Regardless, I’ll no longer be the only person who dreams of Cage every night ... Yes, I was destined to like this off-kilter nonsense from A24 that costars Michael Cera, Julianne Nicholson, and Dylan Baker, but it exceeded my expectations in truly being about something much deeper than the weird-for-weird’s-sake noodling of something like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. And the finale makes use of a Talking Heads reference that made me downright misty.

This Palm d’Or and Palm Dog Award winner blew me away with its extremely engrossing and detailed approach to a courtroom drama (a subgenre that is far from my favorite), where a wife is on trial for possibly killing her husband, or was it a suicide? Sandra Hüller is my pick for the Best Actress Oscar as of right now, and I would have been certain that this was going to win Best International Feature, but France chose to submit The Taste of Things instead (Anatomy director Justine Triet was unfortunately a bad sport about this decision and posted her diss-Taste on social media). The 150-minute runtime and multilingual dialogue (mostly in French and German, with some English) will likely scare off the casual viewer, but I’d highly recommend this one to anyone with the patience, because I want to hear if you think Hüller is guilty or not!

Uproarious envelope-shredding hilarity from A24. Written by and starring Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, who swing for the fences with every disgusting joke, roping into their madness the incredible pairing of Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally as an estranged couple caught in Jackson and Sharp’s twisted play on The Parent Trap. Megan thee Stallion has two or three great scenes as the boss, including a showstopping song-and-dance number, and Bowen Yang steals several moments, including the finale, as a very sex-positive God.

One of the major highlights of TIFF ’23 that I’d contribute to a crackerjack Sorkinesque script from Dustin Lance Black, the ever-nimble and focused direction of George C. Wolfe, and a Best Actor Oscar-caliber performance from Colman Domingo. This Civil Rights true story about the man who planned MLK’s March on Washington in 1963 could have easily been an eat-your-vegetables chore that history teachers would love to throw on for an afternoon where they’re less than inspired to teach, but that triumvirate of writer, director, and star make Bayard Rustin’s struggles and triumphs an absolute delight to behold. Chris Rock and Jeffrey Wright make for formidable foes, while CCH Pounder and Glynn Turman grab a little spotlight as Rustin’s allies.

Paul Giamatti and filmmaker Alexander Payne (Sideways) reunite for another dyspeptic dramedy that’s set at a fancy New England boarding school during Christmas break. The film could have easily been a crowd-pleasing knockout, but the episodic structure bites off way more than it can chew and gets in the way of the engaging triangle of tenuous friendships between Giamatti, an overachieving student left behind by his parents for the holidays (played by newcomer Dominic Sessa who looks way too old to be 17), and the scene-stealing cafeteria chef played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph (who has gotten some Oscar buzz, but I worry that Payne doesn’t give her the “big” dramatic speech that would convince voters). If you loved Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but wanted that film to be soapier and 45 minutes too long, then The Holdovers is just what the doctor ordered!

Writer/director/animator Hayao Miyazaki’s genius is staggering and sometimes impenetrable, as it is here in Heron’s dense and sprawling dream world that builds and builds to a finale with a teetering tower of blocks that are meant to represent our own flimsy existence that is threatened to come crashing down at any time. The Heron is revealed to be a tiny awful man who has to be shoved back into his bird suit, and a squad of chubby parakeets arrive late in the game to stop our teen boy protagonist from fulfilling his destiny to re-stack those toy blocks of all reality. It’s going to take at least 5 more watches to begin to understand it.

Jonathan Glazer is one of those filmmakers that I wish would make a feature every year, but when he finally releases what he’s been cooking up in the lab, I’m so pleased he took the time to let it bake. Zone is not your typical Holocaust film as it avoids showing you the true horrors of war, instead focusing on the horrors that people ignore while attempting to live “normal” lives. The leads are the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz and his wife, who is much more concerned with her backyard garden than the screams of pain and torture just on the other side of the perimeter walls. The film is extremely cold and precise, giving you very little to hold onto as you’re left to be a fly on the wall observing their domestic crimes. It’s the UK’s submission for the International Oscar this year, and a frontrunner for the Award. I think Glazer also has a shot at Best Director.

What’s better than an apocalyptic thriller about people trying to survive as the world falls apart around them? One that is extremely plausible and quite possibly a vision from our own future! Jodie Comer is excellent as a mother who gives birth while devastating rains hit London, and she must fight to keep her and the baby alive through rising flood waters, while her husband falls apart quicker than the rest of the society. Joel Fry is likewise incredible as Comer’s broken not-so-better half, and Katherine Waterston fits in perfectly as a fellow young mother on a mission to get to an island commune of wealthy separatists. Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch also have small roles as more broken men who are nowhere near as strong as a woman has just given birth.

Essentially, The Good Son with Macaulay Culkin, but told in the Rashomon tradition of three different perspectives on the same events— first, the mother of a young son struggling to fit into his grade school class, then the teacher who clashes with the boy over his behavioral issues, and finally from the perspective of the boy, or is he actually a Monster? Filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeada paints such deeply felt human dramas about finding families and forging connections in unlikely places, whether it’s the ersatz collection of squatters who become a unit in Shoplifters, or the blackmarket baby sellers in Broker, Monster continues this rich tradition with so more beauty and insight.

This People’s Choice Award winner is going to be a force to be reckoned with at the Oscars this year — Best Picture, Jeffrey Wright for Best Actor (I don’t think he’ll beat Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer, but their showdown will be awesome), Cord Jefferson for Best Adapted Screenplay, Hilda Rasula for Best Editor. At its best, the film combines the literary world of Wonder Boys with the biting social satire of Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, but it’s all wrapped in a comfortable sweater of family melodrama a la Nancy Meyers that is what dragged the film down slightly for me, dulling its own sharp-toothed commentary to focus on what was going on at home, while the world Wright is disrupting with his fabricated “urban” author was far more interesting. Still, definitely worth your time, and your mileage will almost certainly vary on the Meyers of it all.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was a surprise Oscar nominee in Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2022, winning Best International Feature, so this followup had HUGE shoes to fill. It’s another quiet, raw, and simple drama focusing on a small-town’s struggle to keep a luxury “glamping” campsite company from ruining the pristine environs of their community. The film was a big hit at Venice, taking home 5 awards, including the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award, losing the Golden Lion to Poor Things, but the Press & Industry screening at TIFF was met with a huge “Huh?” when the credits began to roll. The final scene confused an audience of (supposedly) smart people, so I worry they’ll frustrate broader audiences, even if everything that came before it was gorgeous and engrossing.

The Palestine-Israel conflict is reflected in the story of a high school teacher (Saleh Bakri) who has a secret life as a resistance fighter and a burgeoning romance with a British volunteer (Imogen Poots). The teacher mentors one local Palestinian boy as a surrogate for the son he lost, while he and his organization has taken an American Jewish boy hostage, muddying the waters of what he believes in and what’s right.

Taika Waititi can be funny with both eyes closed and his arms tied behind his back, and this may be his lowest lift effort, especially on a film of this size (although Thor: Love & Thunder was also pretty lazy). The film is charming, and Oscar Kightley breaks away with the ball whenever he gets the chance as the head of the soccer league (and multiple other jobs all around the island). My main issues with the film are Michael Fassbender who has assault allegations from 2009 that have somehow repeatedly been ignored, and that Waititi ultimately “others” his cast, playing fast and loose with the Samoan people’s cultures for laughs. The TIFF premiere audience absolutely ate up the jokes, but I left with a bad taste in my mouth the more that I thought about this one.

An effective, minimalist approach to documenting true tragedies of the frontlines of a war-torn country, director and driver Maciek Hamela points his camera into the backseat of a van as he taxies Ukrainian citizens from their cities-turned-battlegrounds to safer frontiers in Poland. The refugees find moments of solace, support, or strength in sharing their stories with the camera and the other passengers as they all run for their lives and from everything they once knew.

Benicio del Toro and Justin Timberlake square off as detective and suspect when JT’s girlfriend is found brutally murdered in a crime thriller/neo-noir from music video director Grant Singer (Shawn Mendes, Sam Smith, The Weeknd, Lorde, Taylor Swift, etc). Alicia Silverstone’s dynamic with del Toro is the most interesting piece of this otherwise sleepy (and maybe a little obvious) whodunnit — she plays his wife who also helps investigates his cases when the two are at home.

Filmmaker Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (a.k.a. Fucking Åmål) is a delightful queer teen romance that I discovered on the IMDb Top 250, so I had high hopes for this comedy about a commune’s reunion 24 years after the whole thing fell apart. There are some lovely and funny moments in this silly sendup of VERY specific parts of Swedish history and culture, but the appeals is limited for such a niche satire. Still, if you like Baby Boomer hippies being taken to task for pretending that they were saving the world with free love and drugs, this is worth a look.

The long-gestating courtroom dramedy’s script feels a bit past its prime despite its clear awards-bait intentions for 2024, specifically for Jamie Foxx, who is charming enough as the Johnnie Cochran-aspiring super-lawyer Willie E. Gary (depending on which category seems less stacked, and right now, that might be Best Supporting, they’ll likely toss Foxx in that one for consideration). Tommy Lee Jones is always reliable as an old grump, and the supporting cast of Jurnee Smollett, Alan Ruck, Mamoudou Athie, and Bill Camp all serve their clearly established purposes, but the finished product lacks the depth needed to draw you into its feel-good, #NotAllWhitePeopleAreRacist yarn. A little too much The Blindside and not enough 12 Angry Men for my taste.

Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, whether she intended it to be or not. Her on-stage introduction to the film focused on the influence and lasting legacy of Hunter S. Thompson, the thinly-veiled subject of the book Gonzo Girl, written by Cheryl Della Pietra, a former protege of the dirty beatnik journalist who put a bit too much of himself and his drug-addled proclivities into what should have been objective reporting. But ultimately, I was left despising Thompson, how he treated, exploited, and abused women, and now question if he should even have that influence and legacy. It’s an indictment of a sick and pathetic man who used to be blessed with overflowing creativity, and WIllem Dafoe has an incredible time chewing scenery as the Gonzo Guy to the ably endearing Camila Morrone’s Gonzo Girl. Another former abuser, Sean Penn, pops in for a mostly silent cameo as a coke dealer/painter, Arquette plays the aging assistant who used to be Dafoe’s muse, and Rick Springfield plays himself, a former target of the real Thompson’s annoying pranks.

What happens when an aged mother of three refuses to leave a sofa in a enchanted furniture store? I wish I could tell you, but this meandering, confusing, and bizarre parable for ... something ... went way over my head. Or maybe, just maybe, it was too clever for its own good? Regardless, Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, and Lara Flynn Boyle are left floundering as the adult children of Ellen Burstyn’s malevolent matriarch. Taylor Russell and F. Murray Abraham (in a dual role for seemingly no reason at all) oversee the family business that begins to house Burstyn and McGregor after she refuses to move from her comfy seat. I wanted to love this one for the cast and concept, but the meaning must have gotten lost in the cushions.

Director Craig Gillespie has told better true tales in I, Tonya and “Pam & Tommy,” but his hilarious cast featuring America Ferrera, Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and lead by a lovable loser played by Paul Dano, is undeniably watchable, even if the period piece of just 2 years ago lacks perspective on what just happened.

Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick aren’t given enough to shine in this dusty Australian thriller that feels like Wake in Fright was titled WAIT in Fright. Hugo Weaving has a few decent drunken rants and Daniel Henshall can menace when given the chance, but it doesn’t amount to much. The cathartic violence of the finale may work for some, but it stirred no emotional response in me after 80 minutes of minor misunderstandings and squabbles with the roughneck locals that Garner and Henwick’s backpacking characters serve at an Aussie outback bar as part of a work study program.

This Nigerian dramedy had one of the fest’s best log lines: A recent college grad who is desperate for work decides to help his uncle with an email scam. Understand the title now? It’s the opening line of the old Nigerian Prince swindle that you’d see in the AOL days. Unfortunately, the laughs mostly stop there, as writer/director Ishaya Bako’s film focuses on the wrong character, going for a “Breaking Bad” arc of the overly moralistic grad Kingsley, instead of tracing the rise and fall of Uncle Boniface the grifter a.k.a. Cash Daddy, the film’s most charismatic and compelling character. There’s potential in the actors and filmmakers here, but this is not their crossover hit.

Ever been told a tale where it sounds like the storyteller is trying to settle arguments with a person who isn’t present? Elliot Page has every right to be angry about the treatment of trans people and characters, but this improvised drama feels like a one-sided rant at those who misgendered and misunderstood Page in the past. Besides the pig-headed in-law who doesn’t understand how transitioning works, the supporting roles are all there to do just that— support Page and his new life. And I sincerely support Page taking on more brave, soul-bearing roles, especially ones where he can share his truth with an audience who yearns for authentic representation, but I’d prefer it be with more competent and nuanced storytellers (who write a script before rolling camera).

The documentary fails to investigate its own logline — how did Nickelback become the most hated band in the world? Instead, the filmmakers create a shambolic love letter to a band with a rags-to-riches rise from small-town Canada, up to super stardom, down to pariahdom, and then back to a steady success that will keep all of Chad Kroeger’s family in Ed Hardy shirts for a few generations. TIFF definitely leaned hard into the band’s reclaim of fame and their Canadian-ness, but I doubt that will cross the borders at the box office.