Film
At TIFF, Barbara Kopple follows exploited delivery workers, William Greaves revives the Harlem Renaissance, and Iranian filmmakers find private lives shadowed by surveillance, war, and repression, yet also beautified in some cases.
Tom Cruise delivers a virtuoso turn, but Iñárritu buries a potentially potent climate-change comedy beneath exposition, self-congratulation, and stunts.
Three Toronto premieres — John Trengove’s “The Smell of Apples,” Avi Nesher’s “Our Loves,” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” — locate private lives within political violence, historical memory, and the seductive artifices of storytelling.
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa transforms a revenge thriller into a chilling examination of guilt, conspiracy, and the violence that permeates modern life.
Lili Reinhart charms as a cancer-curing Stanford Ph.D. candidate, but Amazon’s uneven adaptation works best when it follows Olive’s friendship with Anh—not her contrived fake-dating romance.
“Edie Arnold Is a Loser” is a divinely idiotic punk-rock Catholic-school comedy: sweet, predictable, outrageous, mildly blasphemous—and infectious.
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s rigorously constructed follow-up to “No Other Land” uses testimony from Israeli military whistleblowers to expose the systems of surveillance, dehumanization, and moral evasion that shaped Israel’s war on Gaza.
The festival’s strongest films find courage, comedy, and unexpected forms of kinship amid political repression, mortality, war, and the complications of family.
From Matthew Rankin’s delirious Brian Mulroney spectacle to Ashley Duong’s intimate family history, TIFF’s Canadian slate offered films unlikely to draw attention anywhere else.
Zach Cregger’s comedic instincts have overtaken his skill as a horror director. Resident Evil is more like a gory stoner comedy than an all-gas-no-brakes horror ride.
Food Commentary: “The Real Food Show” — The Galloping Propagandist