May 16, 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

Deaf President Now! (dir. Nyle DiMarco, Davis Guggenheim)

“A look at students at one of the world’s most unique universities standing up for the quality and equity of their education, Deaf President Now! is an important reminder that no one has to accept someone else’s idea of what’s best for them, especially if that idea of ‘the best’ holds you back in the process,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate. “It’s an inspiring, critical, and sometimes intriguingly contentious look back at a movement that informed the history of hearing impaired persons forever.”

“Deaf President Now! is a rousing film about resistance, showing the impact that can be made when demands are just,” adds Jason Gorber at POV Magazine. “Years on, the four people who stood up and asked to be heard are given a well-deserved victory lap via a compelling story of change that still resonates today.”

Final Destination: Bloodlines (dir. Adam Stein & Zach Lipovsky)

“By focusing on a fraught, but well-constructed family dynamic, Final Destination: Bloodlines is able to offer up more than just a bunch of bodies for the grist mill, making it the best instalment of the franchise overall since the first,” argues Andrew Parker at The Gate.

Friendship (dir. Andrew DeYoung)

“The fascinating part of watching Friendship with an unaware audience is noting what people are reacting to,” observes Andrew Parker at The Gate. “There were some moments where a good number of people in my theatre were laughing, but I didn’t register much of a reaction. At others, I was the only person laughing at things I’m pretty sure were meant to be funny and not profoundly sad. Or maybe I’m a sicko. Or maybe everyone else is a sicko. And that’s kind of the point of Friendship. We’re all sickos, but in different ways.”

“While Friendship no doubt rewards devoted viewers of I Think You Should Leave, the film is far more than a stitched-together series of sketches,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “As Craig and Austin’s relationship leapfrogs from BFFs to grudge-holders to something more venomous, DeYoung picks away the scabs of modern masculinity with an increasing fervour. But the more queasy the film becomes – in both story and style, with the director preferring unusually moody natural light and nerve-rattling zooms – the funnier it gets.”

“Paul Rudd has star credits in the film, though he has only a supporting role, not to mention that he is mostly unrecognizable with his moustache. The star of the film is Tim Robinson,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Despite the script’s occasional and directional flaws, he is the one who steers and holds the film as a whole.  He plays the man-child Craig with control and emotion, balancing humour and dramatic tragedy.”

Garbo: Where Did You Go? (dir. Lorna Tucker)

“To director Tucker’s credit, her doc works like quiet an informative and educational biopic of Garbo covering in detail her life form early Sweden as a young girl, working hard to help support her poor family up to her stardom,” writes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Going deep into her files and writings, the audience is immersed in her emotions and outlook on life.”

Hurry Up Tomorrow (dir. Trey Edward Shults)

“When Shia LaBeouf opted to publicly pick apart his self-destructive tendencies, the result was the infinitely gorgeous and eye-opening Honey Boy. When Pete Davidson questioned his own unambitious success, the result was the incisive The King of Staten Island,” notes Jackson Weaver at CBC. “Tesfaye’s examination fails because it does not feel the burden or responsibility of entertaining an audience that does not owe you their time. That’s even as modern movies are given the benefit of the doubt to higher and higher degrees. With Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis or Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, many critics felt they should at least acknowledge the bravery of the creators. They did something original at least, didn’t they? Don’t we owe them thanks for that?”

“But the film that follows is a complete mess,” sighs Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Hurry Up Tomorrow feels and is a vanity project that is badly conceived and executed, and arguably the worst film opening this year.”

“It’s a work of such hubris and unfiltered thoughts that it has more appeal to the person who made it than anyone unfortunate enough to go see it,” admits Andrew Parker at The Gate. “And within that, there is some nobility, even if the film itself has almost no real value beyond camp and cult appeal for those (like myself) with a soft spot for baffling train wrecks. Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t so much a movie as it is a wealthy man’s unhinged diary entry interpreted into images by a sentient bag of cocaine.”

“A recent trend in documentary sees producers and distributors, mostly streamers, churn out music docs to accompany album releases,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “These behind-the-scenes docs generally offer little more than self-congratulatory marketing collateral. There’s no real depth to them, but they make amiable tie-ins that illuminate the stories behind the songs. It seems the fad has spread to scripted film with Hurry Up, Tomorrow serving as the latest gobsmackingly awful feat of feature-length self-promotion. It’s a self-indulgent music video by The Weeknd, starring The Weeknd, and seemingly for the benefit of nobody but The Weeknd. Hurry Up Tomorrow basically serves as a feature-length prologue for his new song. And, unfortunately, the film proves so dreadful that anyone who endures it won’t have good vibes connected to the track.”

The Liver King (dir. Joe Pearlman)

“Ultimately, The Liver King is about someone disgusting (like Trump?), typical America – their nonsense and what stupid Americans believe in,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “It is an ok observation of The Liver King, but not really worth watching as a documentary.”

The Old Woman with the Knife (dir. Min Kyu-Dong)

“Director Min directs the action set-pieces with finesse, on par with Hollywood blockbuster action films,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “But here the film fails in the storytelling.  Laboured by too many flashbacks, many too confusing moving to and from the present to the past, the story appears too confusing, despite its relative simplicity.”

The Unrestricted War (dir. Yan Ma)

“The Unrestricted War is a strange film. It may look like a Canadian thriller but it’s clearly an attack on China,” says Marc Glassman at Classical FM. “There’s nothing wrong with that—Chinese human rights practices are appalling—but it’s not the sort of piece one expects to see being made here. Director and co-scriptwriter Yan Ma, an exile from China, has made a personal film in the guise of a genre piece and it may strike a chord in a country that has been having increasingly bad relations with the Chinese government for years.”

File Under Miscellaneous

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz picks the 25 best summer movies, from left-field surprises like Tenet to summer staples like Jaws: “Who knows how many audiences never went in the water again after watching Spielberg‘s killer-shark thriller, but they sure as hell came back to the theatre, sometimes vomiting on the way…Jaws not only terrified and enthralled a generation but defined summer at the movies. Peter Benchley’s novel opened with four simple words that not only heralded the violent spectacle to come, but the dawn of a new era of moviegoing: ‘And so it began.’”

At What She Said, Anne Brodie catches up with The Brutalist, a long movie for the long weekend: “Never cared for brutalist architecture but have new eyes now, appreciating its roots, utility and potential for greatness.  Even the title and credits rolls are wonderful to watch. And the score!!! Seemingly a mechanical cacophony, it melts into luxurious little symphonies, what pleasure! Interesting fact – proportions of some of his work match the confines of his camp imprisonment.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz speaks with Hot Docs’ new executive director Diana Sanchez about embracing the challenge of the beleaguered festival. “We found a model that’s worked well, and the next steps will be polishing what we’ve done and growing incrementally,” Sanchez says. “I think this year worked really well, so imagine taking that and doing more to what you already have: more guests staying for longer, more industry elements. Not scaling up, just polishing what’s already there.”

At Variety, Jennie Punter speaks with Canadian creatives premiering their films at the festival and working the market, like Rylan Friday, director of Terror/Rising: “As I continue to explore the horror genre through an Indigenous lens, my goal is not only to depict supernatural terror but also to confront real-life horrors — discrimination, colonialism and the challenges faced by queer and Indigenous communities,” Friday says. “I believe that by subverting harmful stereotypes and amplifying Indigenous and LGBTQ2S+ voices, we can rewrite narratives that have long been dominated by colonial perspectives, reclaiming space for stories that have yet to be fully told.”

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz reports on Canadians at Cannes, including Félix Dufour-Laperrière, whose animated feature Death Does Not Exist is premiering at the festival. “It’s breaking the boundaries. There’s no public audience for adult animation, it doesn’t exist. So it’s a real pleasure to screen an adult animated feature in a general cinema context,” Dufour-Laperrière tells Hertz. “I’m joyful about having the opportunity to share this kind of work with moviegoers in a festival that permits it to stand out.” There’s also that Canadian Tom Cruise lighting up the Croisette.

TV Talk/Series Stuff

At What She Said, Anne Brodie sends flowers to Motherland: “a refreshingly honest portrait of, you guessed it, middle class English mothers. Anna Maxwell Martin kicks things off with Lucy Punch, Diane Morgan, Phillipa Dunne, Tanya Moodie with honorary mum Paul Ready as they get through their hellishly complex days holding down jobs, getting kids where they need to be, communicating with their husbands and maybe a few seconds here and there with one another or alone.”

At That Shelf, Pat Mullen calls Overcompensating “a genuinely heartfelt, sweetly funny, and refreshingly raunchy coming-of-age and coming-out-of-the-closet story” and gets some words from Benito Skinner about his college do-over: “That’s when I met my female best friend who I think really changed my life in every way, and saved my life, says Skinner. “That relationship between gay men and women was the whole spark of the show. And, I think, is the love story of the show.”