Consider this a preview for not just the films you’re going to see in months to come, but reviews you’re going to read on this site over the next ten days. All 20 of these films have been assigned to our TIFF team, including Marya E. Gates, Zachary Lee, Jason Bailey, Monica Castillo, and yours truly. Of course, we’re also excited to write about more than a dozen movies that played Cannes, Venice, or Telluride, films like “Sentimental Value,” “Hamnet,” “Blue Moon,” “The Smashing Machine,” and more. However, we wanted to focus our curtain raiser on the new hits—the movies that the audience will see for the first time in Canada. Come back starting Friday morning for non-stop coverage.
Note: All synopses below credited to TIFF.
“Bad Apples”
Saoirse Ronan, the incandescent star of Lady Bird (TIFF ’17), Little Women, and The Outrun, returns to the screen with one of her most daring and memorable roles in Jonatan Etzler’s satirical thriller Bad Apples. This audacious and timely film questions the depth of our commitment to widely accepted beliefs.
Ronan plays Maria, an elementary teacher at a ritzy private school, whose class is plagued by the epic bad behaviour of one extremely foul mouthed and disruptive child, Danny. After he has a violent altercation with another student, Maria is forced to take action. And when Danny doesn’t show up for the next few days, she is shocked at how easily the parents accept his absence — and don’t want him back. As things spiral even further out of control, Maria is caught between her own bad choices, the utter lack of concern from her community, and the less-than-angelic behaviour of her other students.
“The Choral”
Propelled by Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes, this inspiring drama from veteran director Nicholas Hytner (The Lady in the Van, TIFF ’15) depicts a British choir director’s efforts to assemble an ensemble during the darkest days of the First World War. Written by Hytner’s frequent collaborator, revered playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Alan Bennett (The Madness of King George), The Choral is a testament to music’s power to sustain our souls in troubled times.
The year is 1916 and the Great War is draining a Yorkshire town of its men, leaving the local choral society without voices. For a performance of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, the society’s director, Dr. Guthrie (Fiennes), is forced to recruit his singers from among the town’s adolescent population. Guthrie is a demanding taskmaster, yet under his guidance these teens will come to know the transcendent joys of singing together, while steeling themselves for their impending conscription.
“The Christophers”
This incisively witty chamber comedy from Oscar winner and Festival fixture Steven Soderbergh ushers us into a tangled web of art, commerce, and long-brewing resentments. Written by Men in Black scenarist Ed Solomon and featuring an acerbic turn from the great Ian McKellen, The Christophers is one of Soderbergh’s most delicious entertainments in years.
Having all but given up her own art practice, thirtysomething Lori (I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel) divides her time between freelance art restoration and working the window of a food truck. Her fortunes promise to change, however, when she’s approached by the estranged heirs (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) of renowned painter Julian Sklar (McKellen) with a tantalizing proposition: Lori is to apprehend a series of long-abandoned paintings from Sklar’s London home, complete the paintings using her masterful imitation skills, and receive a third of the profits from the sale of the paintings following the old man’s imminent death. Lori accepts the gig, infiltrating Sklar’s home under the pretense of becoming his new assistant, but the ruse quickly goes awry in a series of titillating twists and shifting allegiances.
“Christy”
By turns devastating and triumphant, the latest from Australian auteur David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) chronicles the astonishing life of pioneering women’s boxer Christy Martin. Featuring career-best performances from Sydney Sweeney (TIFF ’24’s Eden) and Ben Foster (TIFF ’24’s Sharp Corner), Christy is a fierce tale of self-actualization in the face of terrifying adversity.
Born in West Virginia — her nickname, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” derives from her father’s profession — Christy (Sweeney) excelled at sports and attended college on a basketball scholarship. In the late 1980s, she starts fighting in — and winning — “Toughwoman” contests before beginning training with boxing coach Jim Martin (Foster) and embarking on what will prove to be a hugely successful career in a still-nascent sport.
“Couture”
Anchored by a memorable star turn from Oscar winner Angelina Jolie’s French-speaking performance, the latest from writer-director Alice Winocour — last at the Festival with 2022’s Paris Memories — is a compelling new film , set in the Parisian fashion industry, that weaves together multiple threads in which women of different ages and cultural backgrounds seek to wrest control of their destinies.
Maxine (Jolie), an American film director, arrives in Paris to helm a video for a fashion event. Maxine thinks fashion is “useless and unnecessary,” but the opportunity is lucrative and she has financial burdens. She is in the midst of a divorce, has a teenage daughter, and is preparing her next feature film. But her tightly ordered life is about to unravel as Maxine is given a serious medical diagnosis.
“Dust Bunny”
Like many children, Aurora (Sophie Sloan) fearfully believes a monster lurks beneath her bed. And she has good reason to: her foster parents have been eaten by one. Fortunately, she has arrived at a practical solution. She will hire the enigmatic hit man who lives next door (Mads Mikkelsen, also at this year’s Festival in The Last Viking) to slay the beast. But procuring her neighbour’s services will not be easy, for he believes her family was mistakenly dispatched by an assassin’s bullets that were meant for him.
Savvy genre fans will be quick to recognize the pairing of a brooding killer with a precocious little girl as a nod to Léon: The Professional, but writer-director Bryan Fuller infuses his feature debut with such delightfully infectious whimsy and vibrant visual style that comparisons to the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet are more precise. Proceeding nearly without dialogue for its first third, much of this macabre fairy tale is skilfully conveyed through Sloan’s expressive features. It’s an endearing performance that brilliantly contrasts Mikkelsen’s, whose signature stoicism soulfully fractures with emotion as their unlikely circumstances escalate towards more fantastic heights.
“Eternity”
Out of everyone you have ever loved, who should be your partner in the hereafter? This is the question at the core of this transporting fantasy dramedy from director David Freyne (TIFF ’17’s The Cured), starring Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, and Miles Teller as souls in transit tangled in a troubled love triangle.
Following decades of marriage, elderly couple Joan (Olsen) and Larry (Teller) die within a week of each other. That means they needn’t wait long to reunite in the afterlife, a way station where every soul has one week to decide who to spend the rest of eternity with. (Here, everyone reverts to the appearance and age of their happiest moment, hence the young cast.)
For Joan and Larry, the answer would seem to be straightforward. Enter Luke (Turner), Joan’s first husband, who died in the Korean War and has been waiting 67 years to have his one-and-only back in his arms. Does Joan choose to revive the passionate love of her youth? Or does she stick with the time-tested fortitude of her second marriage?
“The Fence”
Within the walls of a private construction company in Africa, British supervisor Horn (Matt Dillon) hangs around with his colleague Cal (Tom Blyth) while expecting his wife Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce) to stop by for a visit. There is a sense of foreboding in the air — earlier that day a worker was killed in an accident. Soon, Alboury (Isaach De Bankolé), a local villager and brother of the deceased, arrives and demands to collect the body.
Tensions start to rise, and things start to unravel as Alboury demands answers. Leonie gets caught up in the chaos, struggling to understand the circumstances and in shock from the events and revelations that quickly unfold. Cal’s manic energy escalates and the construction site effectively starts to feel like a powder keg waiting to explode.
“Good Fortune”
Featuring a heaven-sent ensemble that includes Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves, Keke Palmer, and Sanda Oh, this irreverent fantasy-satire from Aziz Ansari, who also co-stars, posits a massive what-if? in the City of Angels — which in this case is populated by actual angels.
After a bleak spell spent living out of his car and using an app to seek menial gigs, things seem to be finally turning around for Arj (Ansari). A chance encounter with affluent tech bro Jeff (Rogen) leads Arj to a lucrative new job — and a big dinner date with his beguiling new colleague Elena (Palmer). When the exorbitant bill arrives, near-broke Arj uses his boss’ credit card to pay, which gets him quickly fired.
But a junior angel named Gabriel (Reeves) steps in. Pained by the unfairness of Arj’s situation, he forces Arj and Jeff to swap lives, believing that each can learn something from walking a mile in the other’s shoes. A disgruntled pauper trades places with a spoiled millionaire: what could go wrong?
“Hedda”
Transplanted to mid-century England, this ingenious reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s beloved play from writer-director Nia DaCosta (2021’s Candyman) infuses its source material with fresh, feminist power and energy. Starring Tessa Thompson (Passing), Imogen Poots (TIFF ’15’s Green Room), and Christian Petzold regular Nina Hoss, Hedda is an original work of cinematic invention.
Newlywed and precariously dissatisfied with life, Hedda (Thompson), gun-loving daughter of the late General Gabler, has convinced her husband George (Tom Bateman), a timid but ambitious scholar, to throw a lavish party the couple cannot afford. On the teeming guest list is Eileen Lovborg (Hoss), a celebrated author of a book exploring sexuality — and George’s key rival for a coveted academic post. Hedda sees the guests as pawns in an elaborate game she plans to orchestrate with ruthless precision.
“John Candy: I Like Me”
Among the most beloved comedic actors in the history of film and television, John Candy was one of a kind. This inspiring, wildly entertaining documentary from director Colin Hanks celebrates Candy’s life and work through brilliantly curated archival materials and heartfelt testimonies from those who had the privilege to be part of the great man’s world.
John Candy: I Like Me begins and ends with eulogies, one from his The Great Outdoors co-star Dan Aykroyd, the other from Candy’s SCTV teammate and fellow Torontonian Catherine O’Hara. Between these touching tributes are candid interviews with the likes of Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Macaulay Culkin, who still remembers how kind Candy was to him as a child actor during production on Uncle Buck. It’s a delight to revisit Candy’s endlessly hilarious body of work, from the ingenious array of characters he created for SCTV to his big-screen roles in Splash, Spaceballs, Home Alone, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles — the John Hughes film from which “I Like Me” takes its title.
“The Lost Bus”
Based on real events that transpired during the deadliest fire in California history in November 2018, this heart-pounding docudrama from Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass (United 93) stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey as a driver in a desperate struggle to bring a busload of children to safety.
“Another dry and windy day in paradise” is rapidly transforming Northern California into something close to an inferno. Fires are spreading, and huge plumes of smoke fill the horizon. School bus driver Kevin McCay (McConaughey) is ending his day when he gets a call requesting help for 23 children stranded at Ponderosa Elementary School. As the disaster escalates, Kevin knows that navigating his way toward the school could prove perilous, but a sense of responsibility, along with memories of personal loss, sends him hurtling into harm’s way.
“The Man in My Basement”
Charles Blakey’s (Corey Hawkins) life is falling apart. He’s lonely, he can’t find work, and he’s boozing way too much and about to lose his family’s Sag Harbor home. When a mysterious white man, Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), offers to rent his basement for a hefty sum, a hesitant Blakey acquiesces despite serious doubts, especially about the decidedly odd accommodations Bennet requests.
While prepping the room for his tenant, Blakey discovers some mysterious heirlooms, possibly African tribal masks, which hint at a history he knows absolutely nothing about. An antiques buyer (played by Nanny’s Anna Diop) can fill in the gaps while embodying a compassionate counterpoint to his apathetic views.
“Normal”
For Sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk), his provisional posting to the quaint Midwestern American town of Normal was meant to be a welcome respite from both his marital woes and recent moral injuries in the line of duty. But when a botched bank robbery interrupts the municipality’s tranquil pace, a sordid secret is inadvertently exposed, and Ulysses learns that the town is anything but its namesake. Suddenly, everyone is trying to shoot the sheriff, even his own deputies, and our put-upon policeman must rely on his affable mettle and some motley crooks if he is to survive the night.
Little time is wasted in chambering the quirky players of director Ben Wheatley’s homespun shoot-em-up, based on a story by Odenkirk and screenwriter Derek Kolstad (John Wick). Its first gunshot rings out like a starter pistol to a rip-roaring turkey shoot as Odenkirk thrillingly evades and explodes a lively ensemble of bloodthirsty constituents, demonstrating his effortless prowess at playing a cordial badass (see “Nobody,” also written by Kolstad). Among the heavies and heels are wickedly fun turns from Lena Headey to Henry Winkler—not to mention a host of Canucks—but I haven’t even mentioned how the Yakuza figure into all of this. And believe me, they do.
“Poetic License”
Poetic License, the directorial debut of actor Maude Apatow, is a gentle and delightful comedy about college life, focusing on three seemingly mismatched people who find unlikely companionship at a pivotal point in their lives.
Ari (Cooper Hoffman) and Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) are longtime friends, despite being very, very different. Ari is goofy and self-centred and has to get the last word on everything. The far more conservative, buttoned-down Sam is pursuing a career in finance, in hopes of gaining financial security and mollifying his family.
Enter married mother Liz (Leslie Mann), who’s auditing the boys’ poetry class. Having just moved to this small college town at the insistence of her husband (Cliff Smith, a.k.a. Method Man), she’s utterly discombobulated, feeling increasingly distanced from her daughter (Nico Parker), who’s desperate to return to big-city life. The trio’s friendship is soon imperiled when both boys fall madly for Liz. The ensuing complications cause unexpected and hilarious friction between Ari and Sam — and in Liz’s family.
“Rental Family”
This poignant comedy-drama stars Oscar winner Brendan Fraser as an American actor in Tokyo who lands a perfect job with one very big catch. Balancing wisdom and whimsy, the latest from director HIKARI (TIFF ’19’s 37 Seconds) explores how each of us have unique roles we play in life, some with great responsibility.
Philip (Fraser) has lived in Japan for seven years. During this time, his biggest claim to fame has been a toothpaste commercial in which he’s costumed as a cross between Superman and Gumby. Everything changes when he’s recruited to play “sad American” at an actual funeral. Thus begins Philip’s tenure with a company that hires actors as surrogates to help clients through some of life’s biggest challenges.
Through Philip’s surrogate roles, we become intimately immersed in a web of intriguing characters and lives across the city of Tokyo. We also grow to know the inner workings of the agency and the people who run it. On the surface, surrogate work seems to benefit all involved, but unexpected complexities soon set in and Philip finds himself intricately entangled. Through much trial and error, Philip is forced to face inwards when he realizes that the role of a lifetime is being himself.
“Roofman”
Powered by Channing Tatum and Oscar nominee Kirsten Dunst, this big-hearted drama from Oscar-nominated director Derek Cianfrance (TIFF ’12’s The Place Beyond the Pines) tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Jeffrey Manchester, the “Rooftop Robber,” and his fiercely imaginative efforts to evade capture.
A US military veteran unable to make ends meet, Jeffrey (Tatum) gets caught robbing McDonald’s restaurants to provide for his kids. He’s tried, sentenced, incarcerated — and promptly breaks out. While on the run, he finds his way into a Toys “R” Us, where he crafts a makeshift hideout behind a wall. Months pass, the manhunt is all but forgotten, and Jeffrey finds himself falling for Leigh (Dunst), one of the store’s employees. A connection is forged, though Leigh knows nothing of Jeffrey’s criminal status nor his current residence inside her workplace.
“Sacrifice”
The attendees at an environmental conference/benefit in Greece seem more like the guests at an A-list Hollywood party than a serious intellectual summit. There’s actor Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), the oblivious star of numerous successful action movies, who’s now undergoing an existential crisis. He hopes to deliver a rousing speech demanding a real response to climate change, and to reset his brand in the process.
Braken (Vincent Cassel), a fusion of your least favourite billionaires, is present to muster support for a highly questionable deep-sea mining effort targeting essential minerals.
Complicating their efforts is Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), the leader of a doomsday eco-cult. She and her acolytes are convinced the only way to prevent the catastrophic, world-ending eruption of the huge volcano burbling off the coast is to offer up suitably famous sacrifices.
“Steve”
Director Tim Mielants and Oscar winner Cillian Murphy reunite, after Small Things Like These and Peaky Blinders, for a powerful adaptation of author and screenwriter Max Porter’s bestselling 2023 novella, Shy.
It’s the mid-’90s. Steve (Murphy) is the passionate head of a crumbling “last chance” reform school for teenage boys. With meagre resources, overstretched staff, and a mounting sense of futility, Steve must navigate one pivotal and precarious day made more tense by the arrival of a documentary news crew profiling the school, and the result may prove to be more exposé than commendation.
The school is part institution and part last-ditch social experiment conducted in a shoddy rural manor house run by tired adults who believe their students still have something to offer the world. The boys, meanwhile, navigate an uneasy border between volatility and vulnerability. Mielants captures this tension and the quiet ruptures of the day with raw immediacy, shifting between verité-style footage (complete with interviews) and intimate glimpses of private moments. Fights break out, staff flounder, and mistakes are made as Steve clings to the belief that things will turn out well.
“Wake Up Dead Man”
In 2019, Oscar-nominated writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig revitalized the British drawing room murder mystery with the gleeful, star-laden Knives Out, creating their own version of Agatha Christie’s unflappable detective Hercule Poirot with Craig’s brilliant Southerner, Benoit Blanc. The follow-up, Glass Onion (TIFF ’22), focused on a tech-bro billionaire, ratcheting up the humour and evoking Herbert Ross’ cult classic The Last of Sheila. (It also threw in the added fun of seeing obscenely rich people’s gaudiest stuff get trashed.) Wake Up Dead Man shifts gears again with a relatively sombre look into the tensions between faith and logic.
This time, Johnson riffs on the dark, gothic elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue — a seemingly impossible locked-room scenario involving a corpse — while still incorporating many of the series’ signature elements. Set in a small town and focusing on its local church, Wake Up Dead Man is packed with stars, including Josh O’Connor as a the younger cleric to Josh Brolin’s autocratic, abrasive priest, Glenn Close as his right-hand person, plus Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner (whose likeness had a memorable appearance in Glass Onion), and Mila Kunis as a local cop who is as determined as Blanc to solve this seemingly insoluble case. And there’s a murder that presents itself as an impossible crime. All that and Craig delivers perhaps his best Blanc yet.
