May 22, 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

I Love Boosters (dir. Boots Riley)

“The film I Love Boosters is an acquired taste,” admits Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “It celebrates Boots Riley’s style, similar to Sorry to Bother You, where satire, class politics, and absurd comedy are mixed together, like in this film.  Those who like their political satire subtle and quiet will hate this, but I Love Boosters leans towards the wild satire and the absurd.”

“I Love Boosters is avowedly anti-capitalist, with a lot of plot points revolving around workers’ revolts that travel from Chinese sweatshops to monochromatic fashion stores to Christie Smith’s head office, which for some reason is in a leaning tower, tipped at 45 degrees,” writes Chris Knight at Original Cin. “It adds up to a fun ride, backed by a boppy, toe-tapping score by the Tune-Yards, who also worked on Sorry to Bother You and seem to include kazoos and pennywhistles in their box of instruments. Riley is consistently inventive in his shooting styles, mixing in animation that reminded me of Wes Anderson, and stop-motion creatures that looked like they escaped from an old Ray Harryhausen movie.”

“Fashion icon Coco Chanel once gave the enduring advice, ‘Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” However, Boots Riley seems to have taken one glance at a cut of I Love Boosters and added 27 accessories,” Pat Mullen says at That Shelf, and chats with Riley about politics and sleeves.  “It’s really hard to figure out how to do something different than how the economic system dictates,” Riley says. “I don’t put forward in my art that the people at the top are just choosing to do it in a way; they could choose to do it a different way. I put forward that the answer is that the working class overthrows the ruling class and creates a world in which the people democratically control the wealth that we create with our labour. That’s the real thing.”

Ladies First (dir. Thea Sharrock)

“The film has a solid comedic premise, though a bit outdated for 2026, which is put to relatively good use in the script, despite its one joke idea premise,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

The Last Anniversary (dir. The Butler Brothers)

“This group of people unravels psychologically as the film progresses while trapped in a decaying hotel at the literal end of the world,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.  The slow burn of the horror drama set in a not-too-credible last day before the end of the world setting, with unbelievable and annoying characters that no one would want to spend time with, is a messy, boring piece of theatre that one cannot wait to end.”

“There are some internal logic issues in the script, and the actors are fine, just not the first thing you think of when you consider what it is that reaches out and grabs you about The Last Anniversary (the demon girl aside). It’s the story, and the Butler brothers’ clever use of minimal resources to create a mood. There’s psychopathy behind the characters’ motivations, and the urge to create something audacious seems to trump all else,” says observes Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “Take away the stylishness of their filmic exercise, and The Last Anniversary would be a clunky play about a shared secret.”

The Mandalorian and Grogu (dir. Jon Favreau)

“More recently, the small screen has been in ascendance. In fact, it’s been seven years since a new Star Wars movie came to a theatre near you, but that same period has seen 11 TV series, some of them amazing,” writes Chris Knight at the National Post. “All of which makes The Mandalorian and Grogu feel like an event. Sure, it’s based on three seasons of The Mandalorian (plus The Book of Boba Fett, which might as well have been a fourth). But it also makes great use of the big screen, with exciting dogfights, laser shootouts and creature-on-creature violence, including a wrestling match between Hutts that can only be described as a slugfest. It’s literally one battle after another.”

“Mandalorians live and die by the creed, ‘This is the way.’ Disney abides by a different motto: you can’t have too much of a good thing. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu was custom-made to please the streaming series’ fans. It features all the exotic alien worlds, perilous missions, and beloved character dynamics that made Din Djarin and Grogu pop culture staples, and transitions them to the silver screen. But transferring these elements to the big screen doesn’t automatically make this movie feel like a cinematic event,” says Victor Stiff at That Shelf. “The Mandalorian and Grogu plays like a slightly beefed-up The Mandalorian episode, but a watered-down Star Wars movie.”

“The film lacks emotional traction, though the film contains no lack of special effect action set pieces.  These are impressive enough and include a large middle section, which becomes a large-scale adventure across several planets,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Passenger (dir. André Øvredal)

“As with The Last Voyage of the Demeter, I feel like Øvredal is a much better filmmaker than his films would suggest. There are moments of startlingly creative camerawork that mess with reality (including a scene in which, every time Maddie turns around in a parking lot, her van is farther away), and a spooky scene in the woods, lit by a projector playing Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn,” says Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “But style doesn’t overcome lack of story. While it’s a welcome change of pace to have the psycho in a big-screen off-road horror story not turn out to be a local yokel, Passenger doesn’t replace that trope with anything convincing, or even scary.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage: Cannes and Inside Out

At the Toronto Star, Peter Howell picks the best films at Cannes. Atop the list? Minotaur: “In a strong but uneven Cannes ’26 Palme competition, this slow-burning thriller by Russian exile Andrey Zvyagintsev stands out as an indisputable triumph,” writes Howell. “Adapted from Claude Chabrol’s 1969 film The Unfaithful Wife, Zvyagintsev’s first feature in nearly a decade, following a near-fatal illness, shows he’s lost none of his mastery of form and storytelling. Nor has he softened his focus on moral collapse, here embodied in a man whose personal downslide mirrors the corruption and expediency of Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine. Protagonists in Zvyagintsev films resemble spiritual zombies. This describes Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), an affluent CEO in Russia in 2022, who finds his once-profitable transport company under siege from corporate pressures, staff defections, layoffs and compulsory military call-ups.” He also reviews Paper Tiger and the latest Lennon doc.

At Afro Toronto, Gilbert Seah offers capsule reviews from the festival.

At Variety, Jennie Punter reports on the business side and speaks with Canadian director Mayumi Yoshida, who is working the market with her film Akashi: “Having ‘Akashi’ at the Cannes Marché this year feels especially meaningful with Japan being the country of honor,” Yoshida tells Punter. “Cannes has always been a place where international cinema finds momentum, and it’s exciting to present a Japanese Canadian story like Akashi on a prestigious global stage.”

At Classical FM, Marc Glassman picks five films to see at Inside Out, including Lunar Sway: “A genuinely odd comedy, Lunar Sway is a very strange Western. Cliff (Noah Parker) is a good-looking young man, who drifts from experience to experience throughout the film. He may be gay but is willing to sleep with women, too, including one who initially claims to be his mother. He does have a gay lover, a painter who has the unfortunate tendency to forget faces, an odd condition for a visual artist. Cliff makes signs and neon images in a very small Western town, which is hardly loaded with people who would want to buy any of them. Perhaps that’s why his mother—actually his adopted mom—keeps on offering him money and food; he might starve otherwise.”

At Original Cin, Liam Lacey speaks with Andreas Vatiliotou, the writer of Inside Out’s throuple flick, I Come Home: “For me, in writing the film, it’s less about polyamory being a wonderful option, which it certainly is for people who want to be in polyamorous relationships, or about how many people are in the relationship, but then how good the people are to one another in the relationship. Are they willing to extend one another grace? Can they forgive and give compassion to each other?”

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen picks documentary highlights at Inside Out, including Antidiva (“frequently surprises”), Give Me the Ball! (“serves tennis icon realness”), and Hunky Jesus (“Anyone who likes a well-hung Jesus should say ‘Amen!’).

TV Talk/Series Stuff

At Original Cin, Karen Gordon reports on Netflix’s The Boroughs: “The Boroughs balances character relationships with the details of a supernatural, sci-fi mystery thriller. To its credit, it never stoops to cliches about old people. It treats them as individuals, living their lives vitally in the moment,” says Gordon. “They have experienced love, loss, grief, regret, but no one is hanging it up yet. That life experience brings with it good bullshit detectors, but also compassion and empathy.”