September 20, 2024

Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA members.

In Release this Week!

The Arrival (dir. Alyssa Rallo Bennett)

“The film deals with several adults engaging a conversation in a bar/lounge space,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “There is nothing really exciting about any of the conversations, and thus the film fails to hold much interest. The actors go through their lines and cover their characters credibly toys without much fanfare or entraining value to the audience.”

His Three Daughters (dir. Azazel Jacobs)

“Coon’s Katie, the eldest daughter is always angry, and Olsen’s Christina, is her handmaiden. And their stepsister Rachel (Lyonne) is the black sheep who smokes a lot of drugs,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “I was deeply moved, enlightened, intellectually and psychologically stimulated, and glad to have seen it. Jacobs created a magical blend of realism and an unexpected, heightened human fantasy co-existing as they naturally do in life. The drama fantasy unfolds beautifully, elegantly, and in a lifelike manner with performances that are rich, outstanding, award-worthy and unforgettable.”

The Invisibles (dir. Andrew Currie)

“Andrew Currie’s The Invisibles, a metaphysical fable of love and loss gets under the skin fast. Tim Blake Nelson is Charlie and he’s stuck,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “He’s helpless to explain. Then he meets a group of fellow invisibles living in an abandoned bowling alley who like him have been through trauma.  Bruce Greenwood is Carl, the group leader and Jimmy (Bob Ramsay) is its heart and soul. None believe they can return to life, but Charlie’s determined to get home and help them. Heartbreaking, and magical, with shades of Dante’s Inferno, Currie’s crafted a comforting powerful meditation on death and dealing with great perfs by Nelson and Ramsay.”

Mountains (dir. Monica Sorelle; Sept. 24)

“Monica Sorelle’s narrative feature debut is a slice-of-life portrait of an immigrant worker and family man gradually contending with his class aspirations and housing insecurities in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood,” notes Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Though the main character is a male, she infuses the power of women, through his wife, quiet, foreboding and strong in keeping the family together. There are long shots of demolition and the routines are captured realistically though they do slow down the narrative.”

My Old Ass (dir. Megan Park)

“Although the subject matter couldn’t be more different, the same endearing and complex soul that existed in The Fallout can be found in My Old Ass,” says Rachel Ho at Exclaim!. “Park, who also wrote both films, finds a way into the heart of the matter that will feel relatable to the older-ass crowd, especially those who look back on their youth with apprehension or remorse, and to the young-ass crowd who simply wants every other generation to leave them alone and let them be young and dumb, just as we once were.” Ho also chats with director Megan Park about the continuity between her first and second features: “There’s a lot of similar elements to The Fallout and My Old Ass,” explains Park. “They’re different, but there’s this through-line. [It’s] the heartfelt-ness that I really like tapping into as a filmmaker, and I didn’t really expect that.”

“This is not to say that the director resists having some silly fun with her premise. Example: After the give-and-take between young and Old-Ass Elliott, there is another mushroom scene that fails to connect the two, but does involve a Justin Bieber hallucination,” writes Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “If you’re the “I’m not crying, you’re crying!” type, be warned that, in the last act, there will be waterworks. My Old Ass, is ultimately a well-played and portrayed first-love romance, at a level Nicholas Sparks wishes he could pull off.”

Stopping the Steal (dir. Dan Reed)

“The horror ramps up as filmmaker Dan Reed interviews politicians, Trump friends and foes (so many), participants in the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, journalists, academics, and politicians including former Attorney General William Barr, and elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia,” writes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “We know because we heard the telephone call, shortly after he lost the election to Joe Biden, that he ordered Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find me 11 thousand votes. Gimme a break.”

The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)

“Who better than women to tackle the body horror genre? Imagine how all that carefully taught, lifelong self-loathing would inform the filmmaking,” writes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “The performances in The Substance are all terrific and Moore is particularly impressive. It’s interesting how the casting mirrors the message: Moore drags behind her all the breathless tabloid speculation about what she’s had nipped, tucked or lifted in real life. You could view Qualley as the younger, dewier version of her famous mother, Andie MacDowell, and then there’s Quaid, now 70, whose transition from screen heartthrob to thespian seems to have gone without a hitch. Does anyone question his looks?”

“Moore and Qualley are incredible in their dual roles, forming a complex symbiotic relationship that allows both stars to shine,” says Rachel West at That Shelf. “At age 61, Moore has never looked better on screen, nor has she been given this juicy of a role in her career. She is a perfect 10 here, giving a physically and emotionally transformative performance in Elisabeth’s pursuit of youth and beauty. It’s a welcome return for a star who has been largely absent from the screen in recent years.”

“The movie feels alarmingly close to reality in our Ozempic-fuelled age of radical weight loss. To quote All About Eve’s [Margot] Channing: ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!’” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “You can imagine what happens next, but your wildest nightmare probably won’t top what Fargeat throws — and slithers — onto the screen, especially in the eye-popping final 20 minutes. The film is billed as satire but it more accurately registers as pure horror. Everybody has seen photos of celebrity cosmetic surgery gone wrong.”

Succubus (dir. R.J. Daniel Hanna; Sept. 24)

“Sucubus runs like a playful horror piece with sexual teasing,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “The film succeeds at its best as light forgettable entertainment.”

Transformers One (dir. Josh Cooley)

“Exploring the early relationship of future foes Optimus Prime and Megatron, Transformers One is essentially a buddy-cop film that feels more comfortable with action than it does comedy. When the movie opens, Optimus has yet to achieve his Autobot-leader moniker, and is instead called Orion Pax,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “The lowly bot (voiced by an Australian accent-free Chris Hemsworth) toils away in the mines underneath the planet Cybertron, but yearns for something greater. Enter Megatron/D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), who similarly feels underappreciated, but possesses a slightly more envious streak.”

Will & Harper (dir. Josh Greenbaum)

“A funny, heart-warming documentary with a stealth political punch, Will & Harper stars comic actor Will Ferrell on a road trip with former Saturday Night Live writer, Harper Steele, who announced her transition at age 61,” explains Liam Lacey at Original Cin. “Together, they take a 16-day road trip in a vintage wood-panelled Grand Wagoneer across the United States to process their evolving relationship through heartland America from New York to Los Angeles.”

“A reunion with co-stars and staff at the Saturday Night Live offices rejuvenated them so they set off, as Kristen Wiig began work on a theme song for them,” notes Anne Brodie at What She Said. “Their eye-opening journey revealed a kinder America than they’d expected, as people of all stripes leaned in to learn more. They never encountered danger. Steele says she’s learned as a woman, and as a trans person to expect anything so she was ultra-cautious, but the trip seemed to settle her. A nice tribute to a long friendship and acceptance l but I would have liked it to be more varied and balanced. And maybe learn a little about Ferrell.”

Wolfs (dir. Jon Watts)

“There are a few decent laughs in the caper comedy Wolfs. There’s also a smart one: the fact that its lead characters, played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, are not named. Why pretend this movie is anything but a vehicle for the actor-producers, firm pals in real life, to banter with each other on screen once again?” asks Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “It should also inspire Clooney and Pitt to new comic heights of cinema comradeship, since Wolfs depends so much on their ability to make ruthless paranoid rivals seem amusing.”

“Another hallmark of their work is the neither are screen hogs. They are generous to other actors, letting each have their moments.  Austin Abrams in particular gets to shine,” notes Karen Gordon at Original Cin. “Wolfs moves quickly from wrinkle to wrinkle. And given the twists and turns, Watts’ action experience comes in handy. The movie location-hops and doesn’t skimp on action sequences. Somewhere around the halfway point, there’s a 15-minute action sequence that involves a foot chase AND a car chase through a snowy Manhattan Chinatown. All of it is shot by Larkin Seiple, who was the director of photography on the action-heavy Everything, Everywhere All at Once.”

“Yet once the half-clever set-up is established by Watts – what happens when two lone wolves must work together? – the film is content to merely coast on the charms of its stars,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “That’s not such a big problem when you have Clooney and Pitt, both of whom still command the screen like few other leading men working today. But without, say, Soderbergh’s idiosyncratic visuals or Tarantino’s tongue-rolling dialogue, the two men can only nudge and wink their way through weak material for so long before the gig is up.”

“Wolfs kicks into buddy comedy mode as the fixers accept to reconcile their differences,” writes Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “Watts doesn’t really aim for anything original here as Clooney and Pitt do a contemporary Abbott and Costello routine with traded barbs and lines flipped back upon one another. It’s not exactly Ocean’s 11—or, hell, Ocean’s 13—but it’s hard to deny that few actor combos have the chemistry that Clooney and Pitt share. Their rapport can sell pretty much anything, and they’re clearly having a lot of fun together here. Give them a buddy comedy and they gamely elevate the material. It’s hard to complain about such a pair of sly silver foxes.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage: TIFF in the Rearview

ICYMI: Members of the TFCA shared their picks for the best films of the festival.

At Variety, Jennie Punter surveys the state of Indigenous cinema at TIFF and speaks with several filmmakers about how they put their films together, including Rez Ball director Sydney Freeland. “One of my biggest things was that the basketball had to look good,” Freeland told Punter. “In the Venn diagram of Natives who play basketball and Native actors there’s a lot of overlap. From 5,000 submissions for 10 speaking roles, we brought 32 prospects to New Mexico for casting callbacks, chemistry reads and basketball drills. There are no stunt doubles in this film…these kids ooze authenticity, and they bring their communities.”

At the Toronto Star, Peter Howell picks the 10 best films at TIFF and susses out their Oscar prospects. Atop the list: Conclave. “Ralph Fiennes commands attention as a Vatican dean of cardinals forced to play detective in Edward Berger’s masterful political thriller, set during a papal election,” notes Howell. “Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence, fighting doubts about his church but not his faith, combines humility with Colombo-style intuition as he navigates warring progressive and conservative forces seeking to succeed a pope who died suddenly and suspiciously. Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Lucian Msamati help round out a divine cast.” Howell also speaks with director David Cronenberg about his latest film The Shrouds, which draws inspiration from his own loss. “It’s a perversion of art, I guess,” Cronenberg tells Howell.

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz reports on a star-studded comeback for the festival. “More importantly, though, the actual movies clicked. Nearly every big fall film was represented in the ever-massive lineup, so much so that even the most cynical of cinephile would have a hard time complaining,” notes Hertz. “The Canadian contingent was the strongest it has been in years, too, from R.T. Thorne’s propulsive and incendiary 40 Acres to Kazik Radwanski’s gently disarming Matt and Mara to Matthew Rankin’s wholly unique Universal Language, the latter of which took home the Best Canadian Discovery Award on Sunday.” Hertz also reports an update in the ongoing Russians at War controversy in that producers have given legal notice to TVO after the public broadcaster withdrew its support for the documentary.

At Afro Toronto, Gilbert Seah picks the best films of TIFF. He also offers 80 capsule reviews from the festival.

At Zoomer, Brian D. Johnson reports on a refreshing TIFF trend: mature stars blazing on screen. “But what was remarkable about many of the movies making waves at TIFF was the number of stars in their 50s and 60s leading the charge, redrawing the boundaries of what’s expected from actors of their generation. They range from Nicole Kidman, 57, playing a high-powered executive who sheds her clothes and her dignity as she’s humiliated by a male intern in a string of S&M trysts, to Daniel Craig, 56, who performs graphic sex scenes with young men in Queer, adapted from the auto-fiction novella that William Burroughs distilled from his travels through Latin America in the 1950s,” writes Johnson. “At a certain age, movies stars are expected to slink from the spotlight and fade gracefully into dignified character roles, leaving the playing fields of love and sex to younger bodies.  But this generation of older actors seem intent on defying Hollywood’s laws of gravity.”

At Exclaim!, Rachel Ho picks the best and worst of TIFF with People’s Choice Award winner Life of Chuck being one of the festival’s lesser choices: “Horror auteur Mike Flanagan steps away from his usual genre with an apocalyptic drama about death and the vibrancy of each individual’s internal universe. It has a clever approach to some heavy themes — but the smugly self-serious tone and saccharine score aim too hard for profundity, making The Life of Chuck crumble under the weight of its own ambitions. It won the People’s Choice Award, and we’re pretty sure the people need to reconsider their vote.” Ho also picks some festival highlights at The Asian Cut, including My Sunshine: “The grain of the film, the warmth of the palette, the joy in which the two young actors are captured learning an ice dance routine — everything points towards a soaring film about adolescence.”

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen reports on a great year for TIFF Docs: “There was perhaps no better display of the art of documentary than the TIFF Docs standout Mistress Dispeller. Director Elizabeth Lo’s portrait of a love triangle captivated with its breathtakingly intimate window into a troubled marriage. The film’s a stunning product of perseverance and trust. The respect that Lo afforded all parties in the affair helped to deliver some of the most jaw-dropping material in a film this year.”

File Under Miscellaneous

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz recaps 15 movies to keep an eye on at the movies this fall, including the sweaty sword-crossing of Gladiator 2: “Director Ridley Scott once again asks audiences if they are not entertained with this sequel to his quarter-century-old epic. While Russell Crowe is sitting things out, Scott has rounded up a killer cast of new Romans to participate in his circus for some hard-earned bread. Paul Mescal leads, joined by Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal and Joseph Quinn. Plus deadly monkeys, rhinos and sharks, oh my!”

TV Talk/Series Stuff: Saluting Canada’s Band

At POV Magazine, Pat Mullen looks at The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal and chats with director Mike Downie about telling the story of his brother Gord and the band that united Canadians through music: “You don’t hear the term ‘sold out’ a lot anymore, but you sure used to,’” Downie says. “The Hip never got close to that. They built up a lot of trust in Canadians that they weren’t going to take this investment of attention and celebrity and then monetize it. They really stayed true to that, and I think that matters. That’s what a lot of people had when they were getting emotional, talking about their connection to the band and the music, and to Gord and his passing.”

At What She Said, Anne Brodie looks at the doc series Lie to Fly: “Joe Emerson, a lifelong plane fanatic and pilot, faced an insoluble, systemic problem that’s more common than we might think. He finally realised his dream of flying planes professionally as a pilot for Alaska Airways out of Seattle.  He’d had some mental health challenges, depression and anxiety but did not disclose them when asked. And all pilots are asked if they are being treated for psychological problems.” She also previews the rom-com series Nobody Wants This: “Kristen Bell and Adam Brody go head-to-head as a loudmouth non-believer podcaster and a rabbi in a jam who meet at a party. She’s Joanne, mindlessly dissing the partygoers with her funny friend Ashley with the gravelly voice. Sherry Cola is a hoot as Cupid.”