August 22, 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

The Balconettes (dir. Noémie Merlant)

“Unfortunately, all the lady antics are not only self-indulgent but boring and very slanted towards a female audience,” sighs Gilbert Seah at Toronto Franco. “A few attempts at being politically correct are largely left to go nowhere. The story picks up a little in the second half, but interest in these three characters is lost already.”

Eden (dir. Ron Howard)

“Ana de Armas brings the camp in Ron Howard’s surprisingly entertaining true crime take on vindictive neighbours in the Galapagos Islands,” says Joe Lipsett at Murder Made Fiction.

Fall for Me (dir. Sherry Hormann)

“Described as an erotic thriller, the film turns up more as a tease than anything else. There are erotic shots of nipples through wet tops, but never any full nudity,” observes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The danger is also not as threatening as it sounds, while the film moves at too slow a pace to be a satisfying thriller. Positive for the movie, however, are the stunning surroundings of Mallorca (the seas and cliffs) the film is shot and the story is set.”

Gold Rush Gang (dir. Wisit Sasanatieng)

“One can hardly be excited when one has a band of bandits on horses using weapons like little axes and crossbows fighting against a hundred time their number of Japanese soldiers, all armed with military hardware. Yet no bandit is killed,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Honey, Don’t! (dir. Ethan Coen)

“Qualley is deadpan and unflappable in her role as a world-weary P.I. trying to untangle everything. But look here, doll — the story just doesn’t add up,” says Liz Braun at Original Cin. “Go figure, considering that what’s on offer is a film directed by Ethan Coen with a cast that includes Chris Evans as the egomaniacal evangel busy seducing his flock, Aubrey Plaza as Qualley’s cop lover, Charlie Day as a detective who won’t accept that Honey is a lesbian, Talia Ryder as Honey’s rebellious niece and Gabby Beans as her quirky assistant. Hey, kids! let’s put on a show…”

“The driver and, in many ways, the saving grace of the film, Qualley puts on a stellar performance as Honey. Her husky, deadpan delivery fits perfectly in Coen’s Bakersfield, CA, while her striking features lend well to the retro vibe of the film. Qualley gives Honey the rough and tumble hardness needed as a lone woman exposing the underbelly of crime circles, and also finds a vulnerability in the character to give Honey dimension,” writes Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. “It’s through Qualley that the film lives and breathes, as Honey investigates a string of murders that leads the PI to a suspicious local church led by Pastor Drew Devlin, played by Chris Evans.”

“Seeing the films the brothers have made separately has been revealing. Some judgments can be made after seeing Joel’s very dark and atmospheric version of Macbeth with his wife Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as the doomed murderous aristocrats and Ethan’s deadpan contemporary variations on film noir,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “It’s clear that while both are attracted to violent stories, Joel has a grip on plots and consistent characters while Ethan embraces bizarre situations and black comedy.”

“Rather than going for gags and set pieces, Honey Don’t allows us more opportunity to get wrapped up in the pulp driven narrative then this critic ever expected,” notes Dave Voigt at In the Seats. “It’s not high art and quite frankly it was never really meant to be, but Honey Don’t is the cinematic equivalent of a trashy novella you find and read in some beachside motel that you are stuck in overnight while waiting to get your car fixed.  You won’t remember much of it about 5 minutes after you put it down, but you’ll remember you had fun with it….and sometimes that’s enough.”

Ne Zha II (dir. Jian Zi)

“It’s a perfect recipe for a story about belonging and destiny; like everything from Hercules to Hellboy, Ne Zha follows a demigod half-human searching for acceptance. And in so drastically transmuting the character’s original makeup (in Investiture of the Gods, Ne Zha is less a loveable rebel and instead something far more menacing) he’s become a beloved cultural totem,” says Jackson Weaver at CBC. “As an action-packed, martial arts, tear-jerking (multi-hyphenate) comedy-drama, Ne Zha II absolutely deserves the hype.”

“Fire and water often prove the most challenging and impressive elements in animation, particularly as they offer veils of transparent layers atop characters in motion,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “Jiao Zi and his team of animators—reportedly 4,000 pairs of hands across 138 Chinese animation companies—conjure a breathtaking spectacle. Particularly in sequences featuring the Dragon Kings and Queens of the Seas, the film roars with the very best computer animation you’ll see this year. These animators aren’t afraid to flex their muscles, either, and as Ne Zha finds himself faced with increasingly difficult tasks, the animation shows its might in scope, detail, and ambition.”

Relay (dir. David Mackenzie)

“Initially, Mackenzie also seems to be having a ball playing in the same grey space – both morally and aesthetically – as Michael Clayton‘s Tony Gilroy, with Relay finding quiet, sleek menace in the margins of a boardroom or the back of an anonymous surveillance van. And there is a distinct pleasure in watching the director…put Ahmed’s character through the palm-sweat paces, forcing the fixer to gradually lose his cool and embrace a jittery kind of high-stakes anxiety,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “But as nice as it is to see New York play itself or watch Ahmed and Worthington run circles around each other, the entire caper is rendered unsolvable by one big, meatheaded twist that undermines everything that came before.”

“Much of Relay is played out as a series of cat and mouse games in which Tom makes the company’s agents look bad while keeping Sarah safe. But things begin to go awry,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Sarah keeps on reaching out to Tom because, apparently, she needs a more personal connection to someone who is protecting her. While the film never follows Sarah unless she is being threatened or acting on an order from Tom, we are given glimpses of Tom’s narrow life. His real name, we discover, is Ash; he’s a Muslim and a recovering alcoholic.”

“Academy Award Winner Riz Ahmed is once again excellent in the role, mostly without much dialogue in the first half. The use of the relay to promote intrigue and also humour and tension is marvellous,” remarks Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “There is an expert twist at the end that should get the audience. A little slow-paced, but the reward comes with patience and the wait for the conclusion. Also working well is the emotional state and personality of Ash, which makes the film more relatable.”

“Fronted by a great lead performance by Riz Ahmed, Relay‘s greatest asset is how it uses the Tri-State relay system,” notes Joe Lipsett at Queer Horror Movies. “If conspiracy thrillers are your bag, this one is a must-see.”

“Good ideas are hard to come by in Hollywood these days, excellent ones even more so, which makes movies like Relay particularly infuriating to watch,” adds Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. “Perhaps it fell victim to studio influence, or trying to climb above the summit proved too difficult — whatever the reason, Relay squanders a unique premise, great performances and a compelling tonal aesthetic, all in the name of a stale popcorn flick.”

Sweet Summer Pow Wow (dir. Darrell Dennis)

“The pair enjoy sweet moments – he gently fixes her headdress before a show and they are respectful of one another – but must overcome the issues if they want to be together,” says Anne Brodie at What She Said. “The film is aimed squarely at teens and young adults who may identify with the leads’ dilemmas and blossoming relationship even as they make life-changing decisions.”

“Sweet Summer Pow Wow is a love story that delves into tradition and identity, even as it investigates the extra pressure teens endure from their parents — whether those parents are overbearing or woefully uninvolved. Both Jinny and Riley must figure out how they’re going to live their lives and achieve their dreams,” notes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “The film is charming and often funny and the characters are appealing.”

The Truth About Jussie Smollett (dir. Gagan Rehill)

“The ultimate answer to the question of the truth of the hate crime is left unanswered and left to the audience to decide based primarily on Smollett’s testimonies and interviews. The doc is interesting enough as its subject and what had happened to him,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

A Festival of Festival Coverage

At That Shelf, Pat Mullen, Rachel West, Courtney Small, and Jason Gorber look back at 50 years of TIFF memories including the first films they saw at the festival (for Small, it’s Ulrich Seidl’s Models: “The 1999 film was part of a retrospective on the director”), best celebrity encounters (West picks sitting in front of Brendan Gleeson: “He patted me on the hand, called me a ‘sweet dear’ and chatted a bit), pro tips for surviving (“ever watch four subtitled films back-to-back,” says Gorber), the “Dinde d’Or” (for Mullen, it’s The Cobbler: “they will roll out the red carpet whatever hot garbage the stars are willing to come out for after the American press have gone home”) and the best films they saw at TIFF. For the latter, picks include Wild, Moonlight, Rushmore, and a multi-way tie.

At That Shelf, Rachel West looks at some page to screen adaptations coming to the festival including Ballad of a Small Player by Conclave’s Edward Berger: “As his past and his debts start to catch up with him, a high-stakes gambler (Colin Farrell) lying low at Macau’s casinos encounters a kindred spirit who might just be the answer he’s been looking for,” notes West. “Laurence Osborne’s rich source material should provide for a compelling feature film, as did his 2012 work The Forgiven–the source material for the criminally underseen TIFF 2021 film of the same name, starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain.”

File Under Miscellanous

At What She Said, Anne Brodie binges Netflix’s Hostage: “This is a helluva ride, pitting women against one another each with secrets and lies to contain and answering to others who have them in their power.”

At the LA Review of Books, Winnie Wang looks at the US release of The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire: “Far from crafting a traditional biopic, Hunt-Ehrlich presents us with shots of production trucks and filming notices, interspersed with staged reenactments, offering evidence of creation and mythmaking. Crew members linger around the set, a camera assistant marks the scene with a clapper board, a stand-in substitutes for Suzanne while a cinematographer measures the light. In its embrace of showing process, the film resists notions of objectivity and resolution, admitting that it may not hold all the answers, or even hope to.”