June 12, 2026

Welcome to the TFCA weekly, a round-up of reviews and coverage by members of the Toronto Film Critics Association.

In Release this Week

Another World (dir. Tommy Ng)

“The story is interesting enough, actually, for children, though director Ng’s film leans more towards adults, with little humour, cutesy bits or songs.  The film will be tough to appreciate for those who dismiss reincarnation.  To enjoy this colourful piece of work, it is best to just go with the flow,” advises Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“Thus, Another World, which starts like a comforting Miyazaki movie, turns darker and darker as it heads into the abyss. When an obstinate soul holds onto anger and guilt, it sprouts a seed of evil that turns meekness into monstrous Wrath. The transformations are rendered with gore and dread. When all redeeming quality is lost, these Wraths must be taken out by the defender Dark Sky, lest Another World be ultimately destroyed,” says Alice Shih at Original Cin.

Blue Film (dir. Elliot Tuttle)

“Blue Film builds a titillating game of showing versus telling as Tuttle favours the art of the camboy confessional,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “Moore, who made a strong impression in Netflix’s short-lived series Boots, gamely meets the challenge. He commands the frame as Aaron bares himself literally and figuratively. Moore locks eyes with the camera lens to ensure our rapt attention. It’s an electrifying performance with great command and vulnerability. The camera rarely dips below the hips and instead locks into Moore’s piercing eyes as he bares himself for Hank’s pleasure. The film understands how emotional nakedness can be far more erotic. Whatever gets you off.”

Disclosure Day (dir. Steven Spielberg)

“[B]y mixing far-reaching — at times inscrutable — observations with both an alienating storytelling conceit and Spielberg’s typical melodrama, the result tends to track into a half-compelling, half–finished grab bag of disconnected ideas,” writes Jackson Weaver at CBC. “There are other hints at Spielberg’s challenging himself. From E.T. to A.I., the vast majority of his filmography rests on the theme of hope in the simple but effective metaphor of children and childhood. But they are nowhere to be found this time around, despite Spielberg dealing with that theme more directly than almost any of his other movies.”

“Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day feels like a mashup of some of his own films, including his friendly alien pics E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as well as his paranoid sci-fi thriller Minority Report. It also has a political message that’s as big and obvious as that boulder chasing Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” writes Glenn Sumi at Go Ahead Sumi. “The fact that the picture is set against an encroaching third world war makes Spielberg and Koepp’s point rather obvious. If we only listened to each other, if we only saw things through someone else’s eyes, the world would be much better.”

“The biggest problem with Disclosure Day isn’t so much the film itself, which supplies the tingles and wide-eyed wonder expected of the director. It’s mid-tier Spielberg, which is still better than the best work of many other filmmakers,” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “But it’s been sold – make that oversold – as some kind of reality reset, a massive alien mic drop that will forever change how we view the universe and ourselves. It’s nothing of the sort, and never seriously tries to be, despite its insistence otherwise, yet it amusingly nods to a couple of truisms of modern life.”

“The film turns into both an action flick with lots of car chases and hanging on the edge of trains, with occasionally too many bits for the film’s own good.  But this is what moviegoers demand these days, and Spielberg knows it and delivers in the action and his audience’s anticipation and suspense, a genre he is totally comfortable with,” discloses Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“As Margaret’s premonitions and linguistic outburst combine with Kellner’s analytical skills, Disclosure Day resonates with their fight for the truth. The final act provides a timely treatise on the importance of old-school journalism and stories supported by sound reporting and verifiable facts. As the world looks on in awe at videos of aliens, Spielberg makes compelling arguments in favour of authentic images in the age of A.I. The film presents a worthy reminder that seeing is believing, but that audiences needs to be skeptical of images at a time when anything—even E.T.—can be generated to look like the real deal,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf.

“The film has its flaws. It feels a bit too binary: good guys and bad guys and very similar in tone to the family and kids in ET versus the government officials, whose mission to capture ET overruled their basic empathy, and were therefore somewhat cartoonish. Even the most exciting chase scene in Disclosure Day has our heroes pursued by a villainous character who feels like a Bond villain,” adds Karen Gordon at Original Cin. “The rest of what we see — the images and videos that Kellner is carrying, Margaret and Kellner’s memories of their childhood abduction involving animals and a sensation of walking through walls — are based on true stories, as followers of UFO/UAP revelations will know.”

“The big question Spielberg is wrestling with in Disclosure Day and Close Encounters is: Do aliens walk among us?” asks Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “His films are crucial entries in a genre that began with the rise of science fiction with visionary novels by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne in the late 19th century. A peak was reached when Orson Welles’s notorious fake news broadcast of an invasion from Mars (based on H.G. Wells) intended as a Mercury Theatre radio hoax actually created panic in the streets during Halloween 1938. After the Second World War, in 1947, a news sensation was created when the US government shut down investigations of reports that a flying saucer had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Many didn’t believe the government’s claim that the air born debris found in Roswell was caused by a military mistake. Since that time, UFO (unidentified flying objects) conspiracy theories have abounded.”

Everyone Is Lying to You for Money (dir. Ben McKenzie)

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen speaks with Ben McKenzie about his documentary that explores cryptocurrency from all angles, including the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele. “Bukele’s ruling with an iron fist. He’s imprisoning an enormous number of people in a very small country and building that huge prison that Trump had sent some people living in America too,” says McKenzie. “So you’re talking about an authoritarian regime. The irony there is quite thick: the supposedly emancipatory fund of money in the only place where it’s being tried is under an authoritarian. The reasons it didn’t work are the reasons that plague crypto more broadly. The system doesn’t work that well. People can’t really use it, and so they don’t trust it and they shouldn’t.”

The Furious (dir. Kenji Tanigaki)

“Not since Gareth Evans and The Raid has the action community been turned on its ear with the spectacular collision of frenetic styles that we see here in The Furious,” observes Dave Voigt on In the Seats with…, along with an interview with Tanigaki on bringing the action epic to life.

“What follows: breathtaking beatings and bloodletting. The fight scenes are magnificent and almost indescribable in their complexity, a bit like some gravity-defying combo of Simone Biles or Kōhei Uchimura and the World Double Dutch Freestyle competition set in a vertical wind tunnel. Never mind,” notes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “As usual in a martial arts movie, guns are for losers. That’s not to say there are no weapons — ball peen hammers, ladders, shovels, blocks of ice etc. are used to smash people — but the real damage is done with flying hands and feet. The dialogue may be dubious and the plotting obvious, but the great satisfaction of The Furious are fight scenes you can actually see.

“The plot is only secondary to the film, but at least the film plays the plot as if it is all important, which is a good plan,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The action sequences are excellent and better than the average Hollywood action flick.  The introduction of an archer bad guy and a strong man bad guy helps, too. Just sit back and enjoy the violence.”

I Am Frankelda (dir. Arturo and Roy Ambriz)

“Despite the complicated plot, this is a visually breathtaking achievement as well as an impressive milestone for Mexican animation, filled with imagination and gothic fantasy,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

It’s Dorothy! (dir. Jeffrey McHale)

“The doc hardly tells of Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, as it assumes that audiences are already familiar with the story, but the film examines why Dorothy continues to matter more than 125 years after her creation,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Maternal Instinct (dir. Jessica Dimmock)

“The doc is deliberately played as a whodunwhat and whodunit rather than the typical mystery whodunnit. The tactic works as the audience’s anticipation enhances the doc’s entertaining value.  Everything comes clear at the end,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Renoir (dir. Chie Hayakawa)

“The film covers too many issues, such as a sex predator and leaves too many unanswered questions about the issues brought forward.  One can argue that life is similar without many solutions, and director Hayakawa is providing a nuanced, though authentic, story of her past,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“Renoir features a couple of wonderful performances,” observes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Lily Franky, an award-winning actor and illustrator most famous internationally for his funny, charismatic leading role in Shoplifters is terrific as Keiji, the dying father. An immensely appealing performer, Franky etches in a portrait of a quiet, nerdy man, who desperately wants to stay alive. He’s matched by young Yui Suzuki, who holds our attention on the screen as Fuki. Without playing in a cheap or maudlin manner, Suzuki makes us care about her—not an easy thing to do.”

STOP! THAT! TRAIN! (dir. Adam Shankman)

“There are lots of winks at the film’s obvious modest budget — the opening shots feature a model train — but the film looks decent enough, and the production numbers (Shankman began his career as a choreographer, remember) pop,” notes Glenn Sumi at Go Ahead Sumi. “But RuPaul’s scenes, especially one involving the president’s competent but overwhelmed press secretary (Matt Rogers), are fun. And Ginger Minj and Jujubee make appealing, resourceful underdogs who go through their own friendship issues about popularity and fitting in.”

“Like The Big Bus, STOP! THAT! TRAIN! has too many misses in the hit-and-miss ratio of jokes,” admits Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “But who cares, as when the film gets funny, it does get a few laugh-out-loud laughs that will forgive a lot of the missed humour, Tess and DeeDee try very hard to dottier best to entertain, and it shows.  The dance choreography is excellent, reminiscent of Paris Is Burning, where the drag queens do their thing!”

“In the grand tradition of Drag Race acting challenges like The Dakota Wind or Gay’s Anatomy, it’s an over-the-top riot that’s appropriately off the rails,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf, who also speaks with director Adam Shankman about the film. ““I said to everybody, we’re not playing any of these characters as drag queens,” says Shankman. “Drag doesn’t exist in this universe… If we had made them up as drag queens, then that would have been the joke and that joke would have gotten tired. In order to keep the cavalcade of humour going, they needed to just not be drag queens. They just needed to be characters, for my version of this movie, certainly.”

This Ordinary Thing (dir. Nick Davis)

“The doc delves deeply into the motives of the sympathetic non-Jews like Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims who helped the Jews,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “‘There is no collective soul.’ These words are splashed on the screen. Souls with feelings are only present in individuals – not in governments or groups.  There is evil and good, and something has to be done to stop the killing of the Jews. The doc elicits great gut-wrenching emotion when it shows what it is like, by archive footage and a voiceover of what the Jew ghetto was like.”

“The film is not concerned with collective efforts by collective resistance groups or Jews who helped rescue other Jews. Nor does This Ordinary Thing explore examples of the cases of ordinary individuals with mixed motives who saved Jewish lives,” writes Liam Lacey at Original Cin. “Those issues aside, This Ordinary Thing has value as an audience-friendly introduction to some of the rare positive stories that emerged in the wake of the Holocaust. And implicitly, it raises the familiar ethical question: What would you have done in similar circumstances and what are you willing to risk today?”

“A holocaust documentary explores the heroism, bravery and self-sacrifice of non-Jewish people throughout Europe who risked their very lives to hide Jewish strangers, a powerful reminder that one person can make a difference,” says Dave Voigt at In the Seats with… He also chats with Davis about the documentary.

The Voices of Our Mother (dir. Mark O’Brien)

“[A] beautifully bent piece of cinema from one of Canada’s up and coming storytellers who isn’t afraid to get a little bit bent,” says Dave Voigt on In the Seats with… “From writer/director Mark O’Brien who you might remember as an actor from memorable turns in films like Arrival and Nuremberg and his debut feature The Righteous gives us a horror laden family drama that is steeped in some of the classics from the past.” Voigt also interviews O’Brien about his sophomore feature.

“The film is all over the place and unintentionally hilarious at that,” adds Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The film is a mix of dysfunctional family drama (such as family gatherings like Thanksgiving or Christmas, but this one, when the mother is hospitalized), possession and exorcism horror, all dumped together, so that anything can happen at any time.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage: Toronto Japanese Film Festival

At Original Cin, Jim Slotek and Thom Ernst preview the Toronto Japanese Film Festival titles, including Samurai Vengeance: “This adaptation of an award-winning novel by Sayako Nagai, begins where you’d expect it to end. Set in Edo-era (1810), it opens with a young kabuki actor having an actual fight to the death onstage with a character who is accused of murdering the young man’s samurai father. A year and a half later, an officious and slightly comical ronin investigator shows up to ask questions about the killing. The light touch (including the investigator’s constant appetite) hides a thorough Columbo-like approach to piecing together hidden motives and identities. Part police procedural and, yes, part Rashomon tale, director Takashi Minamoto unravels a complex web of murderous and suicidal loyalty, motive-manipulation and deception. J.S.”