For much of the film industry, the beginning of September means one thing: it’s time to head to Toronto. We’re on the ground once again at the Toronto International Film Festival, better known as TIFF, which has been home to some notable premieres over the years. But this time, we’re covering things a little differently — and it’s going to get pretty busy. This page will be home to all of our thoughts on the many films we’ll be watching, sort of like a running live blog full of small reviews (and a few big ones) of everything we see.
That list includes the heartwarming Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck, two different takes on body horror with The Substance and Nightbitch, Hugh Grant being surprisingly scary in Heretic, and whatever Megalopolis actually is.
The festival runs until September 15th, so stay tuned here for all of the latest.
- Neon’s bringing Chuck to theaters.
Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Life of Chuck was a standout at this year’s TIFF, and Neon has just acquired the rights to debut the film in theaters sometime next year.
- Rumours hits theaters next month.
Bleecker Street’s black comedy Rumours from co-writers / co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson was a surprise delight at this year’s TIFF, and it’s finally making its way to theaters on October 18th.
40 Acres is a gruesome parable about finding hope in the apocalypse
Image: Hungry Eyes Film & TelevisionIn a media landscape that is thoroughly saturated with postapocalyptic movies centering white families whose stories of survival are assumed to be relatable, cowriter / director R.T. Thorne’s debut feature 40 Acres stands out as an inspired new entry in the genre’s canon. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, the film plays things straight with its brutal exploration of what it takes for hope to take root in a world that seems doomed.
Set in a near future where the world has been ravaged by a global pandemic, widespread famine, and the outbreak of a new civil war in the United States, 40 Acres tells the tale of Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) a soldier-turned-farmer fighting to keep her family safe. With society largely collapsed and the food production system destroyed by the depletion of arable land, fertile farms like Hailey’s where crops still grow are a precious gift that people would gladly kill for.
Read Article >- 40 Acres.
Former soldier-turned-farmer Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) is tough on her children because she knows how much more dangerous the world has become after pandemics, famine, and a second civil war in the US.
People would kill for their fertile plot of land up in Canada where precious produce still grows. And when gangs of hungry cannibals start popping up, the Freemans have no choice but to take up arms and stand their ground.
Equal parts post-apocalyptic thriller, family drama, and ode to Octavia Butler, the film is a brutal and beautiful debut from director R. T. Thorne.
Hungry Eyes Film & Television What the hell did I just watch?
Image: LionsgateThere’s a refreshing idealism to Megalopolis. In a time overflowing with grim, nihilistic postapocalyptic stories, Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film is a retrofuturistic parable about creating a better world through architecture, science, and dreams. Unfortunately, that sheen fades almost immediately. The film wants viewers to imagine an idealistic future. But its vision for that future is so vague as to be meaningless. For all of its good intentions, Megalopolis is a confusing, bloated disaster.
This shouldn’t be too surprising, as the lead-up to the film’s release has mostly been focused on one controversy after another. There’s the long development time, with director Coppola working on the movie in some form since 1982, forced to self-finance the entire $120 million production because studios passed on it. There are the reports of inappropriate on-set behavior (and a subsequent lawsuit), specifically hiring actors “who were canceled at one point or another,” and all of those fake AI-generated review quotes. The four-decade-long process of bringing Megalopolis to theaters was an absolute mess, much like the film itself.
Read Article >- We Live In Time.
An ol’ fashioned tear-jerker about Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield), who quickly fall in love after the former hits the latter with her car. The film does a great job of balancing its heart-rending story with hilarious jokes, but the most notable thing is the way it deftly jumps around in time.
Its non-linear story seems sporadic initially, yet I was never lost or confused, because it moves around in a way that lets you follow the highs and lows of their relationship in a completely natural way. Just don’t forget Kleenex.
Nightbitch doesn’t have enough of that dog in it
Image: AnnapurnaIn Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch, an unnamed woman’s unfulfilling life playing homemaker becomes so all-consuming that she snaps. She’s angry, horny, and hungry, which are all feelings she can understand. But she also suspects that she might be transforming into a dog, an idea that both terrifies and excites her.
All of these beats and plenty of Yoder’s prose are present in writer / director Marielle Heller’s new adaptation of the 2021 novel. But whereas the book was a deeply weird character study of a woman interrogating what it means to be a mother in a patriarchal society that demands unfaltering perfection, the movie is more of a cheesy comedy that feels skittish about really baring its teeth. And while Heller’s take on Nightbitch has a handful of moments that almost seem ready to dig into the meat of the book’s ideas about motherhood, it never quite musters up the courage to go wild.
Read Article >- The Listeners.
This one is a TV series from the BBC, but in just two episodes I was hooked. Rebecca Hall stars as a woman who suddenly starts hearing a low, persistent hum. The problem is that it seems she’s the only one who can. There are all kinds of physical side effects — bad sleep, nosebleeds, anxiety — but the real issue is the mystery of it all. Not only what the sound is, but why her?
Part supernatural story (maybe!), part tense family drama, I’m really itching to see where The Listeners goes after its great start.
Image: TIFF Hugh Grant is absolutely terrifying in A24’s horror flick Heretic
Image: A24We’re in a pretty great period for established actors doing weird shit. Obviously, there’s Nic Cage, playing everything from an ancient vampire to a deranged satanist to an average man who haunts your dreams. But the likes of Amy Adams (mom who transforms into a dog) and Hugh Grant (oompa loompa and evil wizard) are also in experimental eras. Now, Grant has taken perhaps his most surprising role: the antagonist in A24’s horror movie Heretic from codirectors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Even more surprising? He’s scary as hell.
Heretic is centered on two young Mormon missionaries — Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) — who aren’t having much luck preaching the good word door-to-door. So, when they meet Mr. Reed (Grant), who is extremely interested in a religious discussion, they let their guard down a little too much. But the bad signs are there: a wife that never seems to appear, a fake blueberry pie baking in the oven. By the time they realize they need to get out of there, it’s obviously too late.
Read Article >- Saturday Night.
What if Uncut Gems was a comedy? That’s how this film from Juno director Jason Reitman feels.
It covers a very specific moment in Saturday Night Live history: the 90 minutes before the first episode in 1975. Series creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) desperately tries to keep everything together despite not really knowing what he’s doing. Also, the lighting director quit, they have too much material, and Chevy Chase and John Belushi won’t stop fighting.
It’s a stressful race to the finish line, but eases the tension with lots of jokes.
- We’re watching all of the movies.
OK, maybe not all of them, but Charles and I are covering TIFF again this year and filling this stream with our many, many thoughts. Highlights so far include The Substance and The Life of Chuck. But you can check out plenty more right here.
The Life of Chuck dances through the end of the world
Image: Intrepid PicturesWhen Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass) adapts a Stephen King story, you might expect something spooky. That was true with his takes on Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game. It’s not the case with The Life of Chuck, which isn’t trying to creep you out or tap into your darkest nightmares. It’s a story about celebrating what we have while we have it — a feeling encapsulated by a dazzling seven-minute-long dance sequence from Tom Hiddleston.
The Life of Chuck actually starts out as a postapocalyptic tale. When Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a newly divorced high school teacher, is doing his parent / teacher interviews, no one is interested in test scores or behavior issues. Instead, the parents can’t stop talking about whether the internet is really down for good or how California is steadily crumbling into the ocean. One dad is moved to tears thinking about a life without Pornhub. The tragedies are so persistent that they’re impossible to ignore: major cities underwater, wildfires torching huge swaths of land, volcanoes erupting in Germany, and on the very same road that Marty takes to work, sinkholes swallowing up cars.
Read Article >The Substance is a grotesque takedown of our obsession with youth
Image: MubiAs much as studios love hyping up their latest scary movies as being so terrifying that they traumatize audiences, it is rare for features to live up to that kind of buzz. But The Substance writer / director Coralie Fargeat’s new body horror is infinitely more disturbing (a feature, not a bug) than any of its early trailers have let on.
Films about the agony of living up to female beauty standards aren’t new, but The Substance weaves them into an incisive feminist parable that feels jacked directly into the moment that has given us on-demand Ozempic and Brat. And what the film lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with an inspired — if stomach-turning — story that’s meant to get all the way under your skin, no matter how secure in your body you might feel.
Read Article >- Wild Robot.
The nods to Iron Giant and Castle in the Sky are pretty obvious, but even still Wild Robot carves out its own distinct vibe. It’s centered on a helper bot (Lupita Nyong’o) that washes up on an island filled with wildlife but no humans. Quickly it finds a mission: preparing an orphaned gosling for migration.
What follows may be a fairly straightforward story about finding yourself, but there’s so much heart that it doesn’t really matter. The all-star cast — which also includes Pedro Pascal, Matt Berry, and Catherine O’Hara — only makes things better.
- The Shadow Strays.
Super assassin 13 (Aurora Ribero) has one problem: she actually has feelings. That’s how she ends up pulled into Jakarta’s underworld searching for a young boy. The film is full of derivative moments you’ve probably seen in other revenge-fueled action flicks — blood on the snow in Japan, a neon-lit shootout in a club, drug deal gone horribly wrong — but makes up for it with some inventive fight choreography and an escalating level of cartoonish ultraviolence.
If there was an award for best use of a frying pan, this movie would win hands down.
- Ick.
An amazing name for a horror satire that can’t really decide what it wants to be. Its story of a high school science teacher (Brandon Routh) saving a small town from an infestation of violent plants is meant to be a send-up of ‘90s-era horror like The Faculty. It looks and sounds the part, but leaves itself stranded in the middle: not funny enough to be a spoof, and not scary enough to work as horror.
Image: TIFF - All of You.
In the future, a test makes it possible to scientifically determine your ideal soulmate. (It’s a premise very similar to last year’s Fingernails, only less gross.) Initially, it seems that the film is going to do the typical romcom thing when best friends Laura (Imogen Poots) and Simon (Brett Goldstein) have a clear connection despite their opposing views on the value of the test.
But instead of being obvious, All of You skillfully explores the mess, chaos, and pain inherent in love. I wish its sci-fi elements were more developed, but the rest hits hard.
Image: MRC Entertainment - Piece By Piece.
Before N.E.R.D, The Neptunes, and becoming one of the more convincing arguments for the existence of vampires, Pharrell Williams was a kid from Virginia Beach who didn’t know that most people don’t see sounds as colors. He had no way of knowing that his love for music would transform him into one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. But those who knew him could always see that he was destined for greatness.
The doc is gorgeous, but far from revelatory, and features too much Robin Thicke and Justin Timberlake for its own good.
- Nightbitch.
Though mother (Amy Adams) loves her husband and son, she can’t deny feeling trapped in her life of suburban domesticity. She would never admit to feeling like a caged animal — a dog, specifically — being driven mad. And yet when she starts sprouting hair from strange places all over her body and craving red meat, her feelings seem to be transforming her in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
The film skews more comedic than the book, and eases up on the body horror to its detriment. Adams is great, but this could have been so much meatier.
- Superboys of Malegaon.
For broke cinephiles like Nasir Shaikh (Adarsh Gourav), piracy is the ultimate form of flattery. It’s the only way he can bring the world’s films to his hometown where his families expect him to be responsible and get a humdrum job.
It’s hard for Nasir to explain why he can’t get over his dream of making films. But when he starts creating experimental parodies, his peers can’t deny his talent or their desire to join in. As biopics go, the film’s a stunner that starts wobbly but sticks the landing.
- The End.
An oil tycoon (Michael Shannon), art curator (Tilda Swinton), and their son (George MacKay) are separated from the apocalyptic horrors outside, spending their time in a bunker writing books, arranging flowers, and eating lots of cake. But the facade steadily slips away after a young survivor (Moses Ingram) enters their home.
Filled with dark humor and even darker revelations, the film also happens to be an uplifting musical, but those two sides never gel in a satisfying way. Instead, it ends up feeling bloated and, even worse, doesn’t have memorable songs.
Image: TIFF - The Substance.
Nobody shines quite like TV aerobics star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), but when her sexist boss fires her on her 50th birthday, she spirals into an existential darkness that feels like death.
All she wants is for the world to see how powerful she still feels inside, which is why she doesn’t think twice about injecting a mysterious cosmetic drug known simply as “The Substance.” And while The Substance gives her exactly what she wants, it comes with some deliciously nightmarish, Cronenbergian side effects that will speak to the Malignant lovers out there.
- William Tell.
An attempt to turn the story of the Swiss folk hero into a historical epic, which ends up quite bland. There’s a lot of build-up to the moment — you know the one, where Tell (Claes Bang) shoots an apple off his son’s head — but once that’s over so, too, is the film’s momentum. Despite being a movie filled with blood and dirt, it’s all too clean, adhering to a strict formula of daring heroes, cartoonish villains, rousing speeches, and battles that, like the arrow hitting the apple, are never in doubt.
Image: TIFF - Rumours.
It’s nice to think the G7’s septet of world leaders would be able to commit to a plan of action in response to a mysterious global crisis.
But in Bleecker Street’s surreal black comedy Rumours, German Chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and her fellow heads of state are too busy losing their minds to get anything done as their summit is besieged by... horny monsters. The ghouls might actually just be protesters — you’re never meant to know for certain.
But you are meant to spot the kernels of reality baked into this batshit story.
- U Are The Universe.
Space trucker Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) spends his days hauling nuclear waste from Earth to Jupiter’s moon Callisto, enjoying the solitude by listening to records and playing chess with a joke-obsessed robot. But a disaster, possibly a world war, destroys the Earth while he’s flying — making that solitude a lot more permanent.
So when Andriy hears a voice message from somewhere near Saturn, he clings to it with a ferocious intensity. The film laughs its way through tragedy with plenty of dry humor, but ultimately ends on a beautiful and hopeful moment.
