October 10, 2025

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

In Release this Week

Carmelo (dir. Diego Freitas)

“Carmelo demonstrates that an extraordinary film can be made from a simple story told with artistic simplicity, with a dash of spirit and emotions, and in this case, canine emotions,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Netflix has come up with quantity and quality with Carmelo.”

Deathstalker (dir. Steven Kostanski)

“Deathstalker has all the ingredients ripe for an affectionate and energetic Kostanski-fied reappraisal: swords, sorcery and the severing of so very many limbs, all delivered with a loving wink and a playful nudge,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “And the key to unlocking all of Kostanski’s previous films has always been his unwavering belief that there is joy to be found in the crevasses of junk. But there are too many points in Deathstalker where it feels like Kostanski has convinced himself that he’s making an honest-to-goodness epic, a genuine challenger to Conan’s skull-lined throne.”

A House of Dynamite (dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

“The filmmakers learned facts more terrifying than any horror movie. Even with the world’s most sophisticated missile-defence system, trying to destroy a nuclear warhead in midair requires the lucky accuracy of “a bullet hitting a bullet,’” says Johanna Schneller at The Globe and Mail, who gets some words from Kathryn Bigelow and writer Noah Oppenheim. “I made this film to remind people – it certainly reminded me – that there are nine countries in the world with nuclear capabilities, and only three are in NATO,” Bigelow says. “Right this minute, there are countless competent individuals working thanklessly behind the scenes 24/7, monitoring 12,000 nuclear warheads, to keep our world safe.”

“Action specialist Bigelow, an Oscar-winning filmmaker who considers this new film part of an unofficial trilogy with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, expertly calibrates the tension, parcelling out information and rewinding the clock in 18-minute segments that match the missile’s transit time,” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “She, screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (Jackie) and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd cut between the three main locales and the shifting location of the president, who is away from the White House. New to the job and reluctant to unleash hell, he’s accompanied by a military aide (Jonah Hauer-King) whose task it is advise him how best to use the ‘nuclear football’ the commander-in-chief always carries in the event retaliation is called for. The aide carries a folder of colourful sheets indicating the severity of various attack methods. It resembles a restaurant menu — you want fries with your apocalypse?”

“Bigelow has structured the film in a relentless fashion, showing a tight time frame over and over again from different perspectives,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “We go from seeing the nuclear threat from the point of view of regular military service people failing to thwart the missile heading towards a major American city to a strategy room with officials trying to deal with the terrifying situation unsuccessfully to a higher-level operation in a hidden underground room protected from foreign attacks attempting to decide what can be done given the efficacy of the attack to the perspective of the President, who has been at an athletic media op, where he has been playing basketball with kids, having to deal with a doomsday scenario.”

“This immersive production style ensures that each actor excels with a performance that allows audiences to feel both the personal and collective stakes of those 18 minutes. Rebecca Ferguson anchors the first act with a gripping performance. The humanity she brings to Captain Walker, a mother whose love for her child—and fear that she’ll never see it again—fuels her to keep a steady head while tossing the word salad of abbreviations and techno babble that these military types trade while saving the nation. For all the jargon, Oppenheim, Bigelow, and the actors keep it accessible,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “A House of Dynamite truly excels as an ensemble piece, though, with each part perfectly cast—it illustrates why it’s high time for the Academy to award an Oscar for casting.”

John Candy: I Like Me (dir. Colin Hanks)

“Both the book and the film are glowing tributes. But they offer up vastly different experiences, emotionally. On the page, Myers coolly chronicles Candy’s life and career with assiduous research and reporting, crafting a richly detailed biography that leaves us room to conjure up the actor on our own terms,” says Brian D. Johnson at Zoomer in a story on the documentary and biography about John Candy. “But on the screen, Candy is virtually reincarnated – physically in front of us as we time-travel through footage of him playing with his kids in the family pool; struggling to maintain his dignity while a shameless female TV host suggests his ‘handsome’ face is wasted on the body of ‘a fat man’; or as the heart-breaking shower-hook salesman Del Griffith standing up to Steve Martin’s sarcastic assault in Planes, Trains and Automobiles: ‘Well, you think what you want about me. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.’”

“John Candy was a giant of his generation. Physically big, yes, but in spirit, personality and comedy gifts, a behemoth. Born in Newmarket, Ontario and once established, a Queensville farm owner, his artistic journey to the top of the comedy heap was rapid,” notes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Colin Hanks and Ryan Reynolds’ documentary John Candy:  Like Me is thorough and incredibly moving. Son, daughter and wife Chris Candy, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan, Rosemary Candy offer heartfelt love and admiration of the late actor as do his friends and colleagues including Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Macauley Culkin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Don Lake, Harold Ramis, Robin Duke and more.”

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen looks at the film’s consideration of mental health with some words from Colin Hanks and Ryan Reynolds at TIFF premiere: ““There’s something fascinating about that intersection between somebody who has a predilection for people-pleasing and is also struggling with mental health because a people-pleaser does not ever want to burden another person with themselves,” says Reynolds. “You’re always pulling that back, but mental health doesn’t move forward inexorably or in any way whatsoever without speaking about it, without actually opening it up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not okay.’ That’s a tricky thing for the people-pleaser because more often than not, you’re going to get, ‘I’m fine.’”

The Perfect Neighbor (dir. Geeta Gandbhir)

“Perfect Neighbor is a nearly perfect film, one constructed entirely out of found materials that still manage to have a laser-like focus and clear editorial and directorial intent,” says Jason Gorber at POV Magazine. “While the form of using existing footage in ways this subtle and effective isn’t new, Gandbhir’s film joins the likes of Brett Morgen’s masterful June 17th, 1994 as a showcase for this type of filmmaking, which is no small amount of praise. Brilliantly crafted and presented, this remarkable film transcends the tiny neighborhood in which it is set in ways that astonish, while never for a moment forgetting the singular tragedy that forms the heart of the story, the lives of those affected, or the death that’s not doomed to simply be a statistic or a footnote.”

Roofman (dir. Derek Cianfrance)

“[A] crowd-pleaser with broad appeal anchored by easygoing chemistry between Tatum and Dunst,” says Joe Lipsett at Queer Horror Movies. “Naturally that the crime and romance plots intersect in the climax, but it’s proof of Roofman‘s effectiveness that the audience is rooting for Jeff to stay with – or at least confide in – Leigh, as much as we want him to take the money, his hilariously atrocious hairpiece, and flee.”

“The film is poignant and also very funny. It’s directed by Derek Cianfrance and co-written by Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn. The performances are uniformly good — Dunst is particularly appealing — but there’s something unsatisfactory about the storytelling,” writes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “The issue for this viewer was not learning nearly enough about Jeffrey Manchester or what made him tick. The details of his life on the lam are really interesting, and he is obviously intelligent, but just how and why he undertook a life of crime isn’t looked at too closely and that’s a pity. Who is this guy, exactly?”

“Derek Cianfrance has taken the very strange story of the roofman and turned it into an occasionally funny, somewhat romantic tale,” notes Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “It’s a thriller with a difference. You’re cheering on a guy whose whole life is a lie, pretending to be a good Christian man—much of Leigh’s social life is at the church—while he’s stealing to make a living. And, for a good measure, sneaking back into Toys “R” Us to sleep and eat endless candy bars. One has to wonder who the real Jeffrey Manchester was—the thief, the Christian, the roofman?”

“Director Cianfrance, who also co-wrote the script, ups the ante on charm with the film’s subject’s personality of always being a good guy, meeting the story,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. The film plays as a romance, a comedy with a few very funny parts and a bit of a thriller.  Everyone loves to root for an underdog, especially with one as nice as Roofman, Jeff.  Roofman is better and more entertaining than the film looks.”

“For all the lies, though, Roofman asks audiences a harder question about where they draw the line with deviant behaviour. Does Jeffrey’s kindness redeem him? Can good people do bad things and still be on the right side of the moral order? Or are the greater crimes that threaten American families more corporate than criminal? The film deftly draws us into these questions and invites audiences to explore the dynamics of working class life where shitty managers and well-meaning petty thieves exist on a spectrum,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “Cianfrance presents a film with no easy answers, and Tatum’s absolutely winning performance walks a tricky high-wire act that makes Jeffrey so impossibly likable even if he is, categorically, a criminal.”

Tron: Ares (dir. Joachim Ronning)

“In past films, the neon-hued action inside the Grid’s digital reality always felt sterile and soulless. Transplanting most of the story outside into meatspace imbues the movie with a crackling energy the franchise has long lacked,” says Victor Stiff at Exclaim!. “The series never feels more alive than during an earthbound motorcycle chase where Ares and Eve tear through back alleys and parking garages. The gritty real-world cinematography, slick visual effects, and propulsive score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (here working as Nine Inch Nails, the first time they’ve used their band name for a film score) combine to deliver the most electrifying action sequence of the Tron legacy yet.”

“It is far from the most offensively bad movie of the year (an honour that still goes to The Ritual). And it’s nowhere near the worst big budget effort (it may prove impossible to ever take that title from Megalopolis). Instead, the almost impressive blandness of Tron: Ares simply makes it one of the most forgettable,” sighs Jackson Weaver at CBC. “This does ignore some of the benefits the movie offers, including sleek cinematography — though nearly the entire film takes place outside of the visually beautiful Grid, the main selling point of the franchise’s cinematic world.”

“Lee seems increasingly weary of her green-screen surroundings as the action unfolds, the actress finding herself an especially long way from her starring role in Celine Song’s Past Lives,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “And although Peters sinks his teeth as deep as they can go into his Elon Musk-y antagonist, his commitment can only go so far. The less said about Gillian Anderson’s walk-on role as Julian’s domineering mother – a part that feels as if it was filmed in a day – and the overwhelming blankness of Leto, Hollywood’s most successful dud of a movie star, the better.”

Solvent (dir. Johannes Grenzfurthner)

“The film’s camera techniques look like a combination of cinema verité, found footage, and grainy celluloid that does not always work,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Not only is the narrative difficult to decipher at times, but it is also difficult to see too, what is going on.”

The Woman in Cabin 10 (dir. Simon Stone)

“There are Hitchcock overtones in the film.  When reporting the missing woman in Cabin 10, as in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, she is told, as Cary Grant’s Richard Thornhill was, that it was all in the imagination and no one was in the house/cabin that was reported,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Though it is mentioned in many of the reviews of the film, that one could have identified the culprit in the whodunit, Hitchcock always said that it made sense to know who the killer is in a mystery, so that every move the killer would make would have created suspense.  But the murderer on a ship was best tackled in Herbert Ross’ famous 1973 whodunit The Last of Sheila when the guests are invited on a yacht, when the host knew that his wife’s killer in a hit-and-run is one of them.”

Your Host (dir. D.W. Medoff)

“The suspense, the uneasiness, the anxious build that such films thrive on — it never quite lands. The contestants squabble, the host rants, and the wheel of misfortune spins, but rarely does it stop on fear,” says Thom Ernst at Original Cin. “There’s potential here. The conceit of a game show-turned-death trap is fertile ground for satire and horror alike. But Your Host too often plays like a stalled taping — long pauses, missed cues, contestants unwilling to play along.

TV Talk/Series Stuff

At What She Said, Anne Brodie checks out The Denial Machine, which “features several individual workers, nurses in the Interior Health system who appear on camera with their horror stories. They’d given their SIN numbers to IH, someone hacked IH’ system, stole the numbers, and sold them on the Dark Web. The buyers netted 28K health care workers’ info and via fake accounts tax refunds and credit card purchases, taking their money and identities.” Meanwhile, Murdaugh: Death in the Family has a great performance from Jason Clarke but “[t]he problem is that this dark retelling of the Murdagh story is unpalatable and brutally in yer face. If you’re looking for a feel bad series, this is it.”

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen speaks with Michelle Ross: Unknown Icon director Alison Duke about telling the Toronto drag queen’s story on screen and celebrating the work of a performer who brought the queer community together: “‘There’s so little material I was thinking this film needs to help build on that,’ says Duke, who feels an exhibition on Ross is long overdue. ‘You don’t really see a lot of exhibitions on queer Black people,’ adds Duke. ‘The legacy is not honoured in the way it should be. I’m hoping this film helps that.’”