March 28, 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

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (dir. Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto)

“The doc follows the timeline closely, thus providing an informative if not educational, account of the deadly cult,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The doc also demonstrates how foolish the masses are in following fanatical, power-hungry, evil people.”

Con Mum (dir. Nick Green)

“The film benefits from footage taken of Graham and Dionne as well as others who have fallen prey to the con,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The victims also speak candidly to the camera.  The doc plays like a detective mystery, even though the culprit is known.”

Darkest Miriam (dir. Naomi Jaye 🇨🇦)

“Darkest Miriam is magical, mysterious and ultimately heartbreaking, although it ends on a hopeful note. It is quiet, slow-moving and remarkably beautiful to look at. And as Miriam falls in love with Janko,it becomes more beautiful still, as the world reflects her state of mind,” writes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “Kudos to cinematographer Michael LeBlanc and director Naomi Jaye for this painterly creation, brought to life by an understated, brilliant performance from Britt Lower.”

“Naomi Jaye’s psychological drama Darkest Miriam is an intriguing oddity. Britt Lower stars as Toronto librarian Miriam Gordon who seems numbed by the pain of the recent passing of her father. When people ask, she denies he’s dead. Her branch is close to Edwards Gardens and its vibrant plant life which contrasts with her sad, diminished existence,” observes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Jaye’s efforts pay off with a memorable, floating grip on the characters and their worlds – she has little use for fakery.”

Death of a Unicorn (dir. Alex Scharfman)

“If Scharfman made a commitment to take this in a full on, over the top, no bad ideas rejected campy fashion, Death of a Unicorn might’ve been onto something,” notes Andrew Parker at The Gate. “Instead, it’s a film that’s trying to do highbrow comedy and elevated horror at the same time with material that needs a lot more work to bring it up to a useable level. It’s a sliver of a good idea that feels like it was made before it was ready to be filmed. It’s as fun and lively as a lecture on business ethics and nowhere near as potentially enlightening.”

“Death of a Unicorn looks like something that can be written by a primary school pupil at that,” admits Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The special effects are nothing to write about either.  The audience is led to believe that unicorns exist in the present world, with no explanation why they were not discovered in the first place. The premise that these mythical creatures cannot die is also too incredible to believe. Then, there is the question of why they turn on humans like the dinosaurs do in the Jurassic Park movies.  However, the film has garnered a positive rating at the time of this writing of a mere 63% at Rotten Tomatoes.  Audiences do not seem to realize how awful this film is.”

“Wasting a perfectly game cast and a promising premise, Scharfman’s feature directorial debut simply doesn’t know what it wants to do or say, resulting in several narrative and thematic threads that go nowhere,” sighs Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “What do unicorns have to do with the Northern Lights? Why is Odell funding a nature reserve if he has such naked contempt for the natural world? Is the ‘Canada’ of it all – including a last-minute appearance by inept RCMP officers – supposed to be a joke that goes somewhere, or merely included for the hell of it? It is all a big case of ‘why bother?’”

Grand Tour (dir. Miguel Gomes)

“The film works as a romance, travelogue and comedy-drama, with the comedy coming across as odd but workably funny,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The director’s style might take some audiences to get used to, and its slow pace can get a bit testy.  This is not a Hollywood-styled romantic comedy, that is for sure, and one must look at Gomes’s style as a welcome thing.”

Holland (dir. Mimi Cave)

“Nicole Kidman follows the controversial Baby Girl with the controversial, risky and frankly freaky Holland,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “This story culminates in one heck of a kick in the pants. It’s turgid, florid, sarcastic, cartoonish, and plenty of fun. Kidman seems to be enjoying every strange second. No deathless prose or naturalistic acting or whathaveyou. Holland, despite the tulips and clog dancing is loathsome fun.”

The Life List (dir. Adam Brooks)

“From the beginning, the premise is nothing more than a disguise for a romantic comedy, and at over 2 hours long, is a too lengthy one at that,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Mildly funny (if you find something like Hawaiian dancing in the bedroom with one’s long erection in front of kids funny), irrelevant an tedious, the film is fortunately a Netflix original, which means that one can take a break from the film art various points, or just shut it off.”

Misericordia (dir. Alain Guiraudie)

“Catherine Frot is always a pleasure to watch, she being one of my personal favourite French actresses.   Newcomer Félix Kysyl is also marvellous as the quietly sexy troublemaker, who has fate both work against and for him, depending on how one looks at it,” raves Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The twists of fate and unexpected bouts of humour are what make director Guiraudie’s film so entertaining.”

On The Queer Gaze, Joe Lipsett discusses the film’s “surprising resemblance to Tom at the Farm, Patricia Highsmith’s novels, and maybe even a touch of French farce?” and says the film “The film defies simple categorization, and goes to some truly wild places.”

“Wandering through this homoerotic landscape, Jeremie is initially an opaque character, seemingly someone upon whom the others project their desires. There are hints about who Jérémie is — that boyish haircut is super-sus, for starters.  Then there’s a brief sequence when he borrows some of the late Jean-Pierre’s clothes, with Martine’s approval, as well as a moment when he hides in Vincent’s car and frightens him as a way to counter Vincent’s physical aggression,” notes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “Still, in many ways he is unreadable, above all to those who fancy him.”

[A]n unsettling, unobvious thriller, a quiet but gale force knockout that may leave viewers gasping,” adds Anne Brodie at What She Said. “This brainteaser of an experience is realistically uncertain, reveals folks’ second nature, deception and darkness, even in the good guys. Misericordia is an intellectual delight in its depiction of human nature unbound.”

“The oddest element in Misericordia is that the film revolves around sex, but no one is having any,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Usually in films or literature or theatre, when a handsome stranger comes to town, consummation takes place—multiple times with different partners. Not in this film. There’s desire and there’s hostility but nothing physical occurs except for one act of violence. The key to the film is Jérémie who doesn’t know what he wants but is clearly unhappy. Many people want him, but he doesn’t know who he loves apart from the baker whose photographic image has the most impact on his life and memory. Perhaps that’s why he, and many others in Jérémie’s circle, only feel misery as the film concludes.

“Where Stranger by the Lake played sexual availability with an air of dread, Misericordia finds a morbid hilarity in these repeated encounters, which never actually materialize as sex,” writes Saffron Maeve at The Globe and Mail. “There is instead a perverse sense of longing lining the film which fuses with the agitations of these recent deaths; a rotation of characters find themselves at the foot of Jérémie’s bed in the early hours to endear, trap or scold him, for instance. With Misericordia, Guiraudie deftly strikes the balance between the playfully sacrilegious and the sociopathic, rounded out by a seductively bizarre cast of dwellers and clusters of puckered, corpse-fed mushrooms.”

“Just as it takes time for Guiraudie (who made the equally masterful and even queerer Stranger By the Lake) to set the stage for this tale of small town secrets and hidden desires, Misericordia also edges into comedic territory so slightly, but potently that the audience will barely notice it happening,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate. “The dark comedy at the heart of Misericordia is so deadpan that viewers might still have trouble laughing at the film, but they’ll notice that a lot of this has taken a turn to the farcical. It’s a brilliant, character driven thriller that bucks convention at every turn. It’s also a lot of fun for thinking adults, which is a rarity in cinema these days.”

The Penguin Lessons (dir. Peter Cattaneo)

“If anyone can crack Coogan’s vibe it’s this penguin – incidentally, a fine actor –  who puts a spell on all he meets. Inspired by a true story!  It’s warm but it’s also a powerful portrait of a man in crisis who finally reaches outside himself and his pain for the good of another living thing,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “It’s no overnight miracle, but a realistic, natural journey breaking down the shell of a hopelessness and anger. And with Pete comes a widening social circle. House staff, friends and the mean headmaster come to his rooms and emerge feeling better.”

“The shortcomings here are obvious, but excusable, especially if all you want from a film is to be moved, and there are much worse things out there in the world today than that. Also, and I don’t know if I mentioned this or not, there’s a penguin,” writes Andrew Parker at The Gate.

“Slow-moving and never rushed, the message of humanity and kindness amidst a cruel world comes across clearly in this crowd-pleaser,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“[T]he film shifts from its languid pace into something resembling high gear,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “Sofia is suddenly arrested by the police in front of a terrified Michell, who has to inform Maria that her granddaughter is in grave danger. Perhaps inspired by this intrusion of reality into the private school, or possibly because of the silly antics of the penguin, Michell finally becomes an excellent teacher. His students become his accomplices, helping him feed and protect the penguin. Michell’s best friend among the teachers, a Swede played stoically by Bjorn Gustafsson, appears baffled at first by the penguin but eventually becomes amused by him. So, in the end, does the headmaster, who waives his no-pets rule for Michell and his penguin.”

Village Keeper (dir. Karen Chapman 🇨🇦)

“A first feature from Canadian filmmaker Karen Chapman, it tells the moving story of several generations of family angst and trauma. But something about its proportions felt a little off. There was a touch too much flashback, an excess of cutaway, and a slight oversupply of innuendo in the early going that made the big emotional climax feel like it hadn’t quite earned its emotional beats,” says Chris Knight at Original Cin. “Call me a churl, but there you have it. And now that I have that out of the way, let me say how much I enjoyed the performances, especially Olunike Adeliyi. She plays Jean, frazzled mother of two teens, the three of them living with her own mom (Maxine Simpson) in a too-small apartment inside a crowded and dingy building in Toronto’s Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.”

“Actor dancer Olunike Adeliyi [stars] as Beverly-Jean, an anxious widow and mother of two who lives in Grandma’s Scarborough community housing project apartment they’ve had for decades.  Beverly-Jean’s terrified of the violence there but can’t leave,” says Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Beverly-Jean manages her fear by yelling at the kids to be safe. They don’t listen. She obsessively cleans blood in the complex; there is always blood. Little by little we learn of her experiences in an abusive marriage and her concerns about her young son who acts out in violence at school. Grandma (Maxine Simpson) takes a softer, more optimistic approach with the kids, keeps smiling and encourages them.  The film’s delicacy is intriguing, its subtlety is telling and it offers a myriad of sensations and stirred memories that we absorb immediately.  A gem of a film, not to be missed.”

A Working Man (dir. David Ayer)

“As in their previous collaboration, the more self-assured and zippier 2024 thriller The Beekeeper, Ayer and Statham occasionally flirt with the absurd and surreal here, such as outfitting a drug kingpin’s backroom-bar lair as if it were Satan’s throne room or costuming a pair of Russian thugs as if they escaped from Ed Hardy’s discount warehouse,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “But the movie’s outré touches are too few and far between, awkwardly slipped in between set pieces that rely on by-the-numbers melees and shootouts.”

“A Working Man is layered with villains, featuring not just an army of henchmen, but myriad kingpins. Unlike Ayer’s The Beekeeper, which followed a successful formula, this film stumbles by overloading on antagonists,” notes Thom Ernst at Original Cin. “Typically, action films benefit from a standout villain in an unexpected role. But with A Working Man, Ayer, along with Stallone and Chuck Dixon as co-screenwriters, dilutes the role of the villain so much and so often, that it becomes challenging to determine whom to harbour a grudge against and to what extent.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen recaps the programming announcement for this year’s Hot Docs festival.

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz looks at Canadian Film Festival highlights, including Ingrid Veninger’s Crocodile Eyes: “As the long-hailed ‘queen of DIY filmmaking’ goes about collecting cycle-of-life moments that are as authentic as they are unforgettable – including the birth of her grandchild and the death of her father, both documented on film in what feels like real time – Veninger stitches together a film that feels so fiercely alive it threatens to almost combust right off the screen,” says Hertz. “While the result can sometimes appear as if though it’s a collection of craftily staged home movies stitched together, it only takes a few scenes to become fully locked into Veninger’s personal life, which is in turn her artistic life, too – an entire world, ready to be screened for anyone similarly curious and creative when it comes to the human condition.”

At Original Cin, Liam Lacey also previews the Canadian Film Festival, including the droll The Legacy of Cloud Falls: “The film is set among the residents of Niagara Falls apartment complex, wryly narrated by the superintendent (Susan Berger) who sees all and comments on the residents, while basking by the communal pool. The characters include an uptight gay man infatuated with a young drifter, a YouTube influencer dedicated to exposing psychic frauds, and a cheerfully compulsive liar.”

TV Talk/Series Stuff

At What She Said, Anne Brodie checks out the Canuck-laden The Studio: “By the end of his time-wasting, accident-prone, awkward presence, and blocking the driveway, [Sarah Polley] is hollering at [Seth Rogen].  And then there’s the Ron Howard incident. I’ll let you watch Remick’s extraordinarily awkward and misguided interference over 10 eppies and enjoy that this edgy comic slapstick isn’t your life!  There’s a lot of shouting. And it’s fabulous.” Meanwhile, Survival of the Thickest is “silly stuff but it’s a joy to watch” and “full of good intentions.” And Mid-Century Modern is “truly revolutionary for an 80s’ inspired sitcom.”

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen chats with Fight for Glory: 2024 World Series director R.J. Cutler about why baseball remains “America’s game”: “But you also see the great tradition of the game. You see that it is a truly American sport, even as it is a global World Series. It had players from Japan, Latin America, and from around the world in this World Series. Different cultures shared a harmonious landscape. All of those things make it, uniquely American, but more something that part of the fabric of people’s lives. And that’s what it was for me,” says Cutler. “I was a seven-year-old kid who ran out onto the field in 1969 with my dad when the Mets clinched first place in the Eastern Division, and we tore up the sod and brought it home and planted it. And you never forget that. And it’s why I still root for the Mets, no matter. I was ride or die with the Mets from that moment on. Everybody’s got a story like that.

At Afro Toronto, Gilbert Seah catches up with Adolescence: “What makes the series most remarkable is the down-to-earth authenticity of the series.  The impossibility of educating adolescents, the reality of working-class life and the difficulty of navigating adolescent life are effectively captured on film,” says Seah. “The story offers different perspective of the crime from the detective’s, for the psychologist’s, from the suspect as well as from other’s.  Also keeping the intricacies of the plot revealed only at the appropriate moment works wonders.”