15 Festival Favorites From TIFF

“Pretty Woman by way of the Safdie Brothers’ manic Uncut Gems” is an over-simplified short-hand for this fractured, whirlwind romance between an escort (Mikey Madison) and her Russian party boy client (Mark Eydelshteyn). But, that reduction misses the point of The Florida Project and Red Rocket filmmaker Sean Baker’s latest authentic American yarn about the pursuit of freedoms, both spiritual and sexual. His titular sex worker is more than a nameless object of obsession and only described physically - a Pretty Woman. And the film’s hero, who is vividly brought to life in a career-defining performance by Madison (2022’s Scream, “Better Things”), is much more than Ani, her exotic dancer’s nom de plume. She’s Anora, a full-fledged force of nature. And you best not forget that name when awards season rolls around.

Filmmaker Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) breeds The Shining with Society to spawn a body horror with brains that plays like a fish-eyed ad campaign for how amazing it is to be Margaret Qualley. She plays Sue, an idealized iteration of fallen superstar Elisabeth Sparkle, who is Demi Moore in what could be her best performance ... ever? It’s certainly her most fearless and shocking to date. Upon turning 50, Sparkle is fired from her primetime aerobics slot, so she turns to the mysterious Substance that promises Fountain of Youth results if only a few simple rules are obeyed. And just like nobody can help but feed a Mogwai after midnight, directions are NOT followed as we fall down a nightmarish rabbit hole of women’s beauty standards, aging in Hollywood, and a blood-soaked finale that will delight iron-stomached cinephiles and Gwar concert-goers alike. It’s not subtle filmmaking whatsoever, in fact Fargeat is striking a piano with fists made of concrete. But, I adore the tune she’s playing.

Remember AMC’s “heartbreak feels good in a place like this” lady? Well, this is her now – amazing as ever in Bodies Bodies Bodies director Halina Reijn’s exploration of gender roles in the workplace. As she’s done in Eyes Wide Shut and To Die For, Nicole Kidman in playing a powerful businesswoman having an affair with her intern (Triangle of Sadness’s Harris Dickinson) once again proves she’s our finest freak-flag-flying phenom in what could be seen as a modern-day Disclosure, but with a fresh twist on a story that hasn’t quite made up its mind about whether or not all this sex is as taboo as everyone claims. And by Reijn’s own design, Babygirl will spark the best kind of discussions — uncomfortable ones with plenty of pitfalls. But, if we push through and embrace that awkward, unknown territory, we may learn a little more about ourselves at the other end. I definitely learned that Reijn has an impeccable eye for character archetypes, like Antonio Banderas as Kidman’s slope-shouldered pushover of a husband and for Dickinson as a definitive Gen Z f**k boy with more confidence than should be legal.

Denzel Washington has never been a one-hit wonder when it comes to the films he produces, or in his adaptations of August Wilson’s plays (Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), or in having incredibly talented children. His son Malcolm announces himself as a major talent, a gifted writer/director who is capable of stunning visuals in the film’s opening, a firework-lit piano heist, as well as the generational trauma of a family pulling itself apart over the sins of the father, and of the crackerjack exorcism finale that’s on the level of ghostly scare-meisters like James Wan or Mike Flanagan. John David Washington, Denzel’s eldest, stretches himself to play the scheming Boy Willie, and at times, his performance can make the film feel like “Masterpiece Theatre,” a filmed version of a stage production, but John David is surrounded by such an unbelievable supporting cast that all boats rise in this tide together. Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, and Michael Potts all shine, but once Ray Fisher’s simple-minded Lymon takes centerstage, the elements coalesce into one of the year’s best dramas.

Never have I so badly wanted to shout a film’s entire plot, beat for beat, into the face of an unsuspecting stranger, just as this film did to me, while taking brief breaks to ask, “Well, did ya see THAT coming?” But, everyone should experience this tuneful tornado as it unfolds with no preconceived notions about the journey you’re about to take. I went in cold, only knowing Emilia Pérez is a musical set in Mexico, and that the plot involved drug cartels in some manner. And filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet) had so much hidden up his sleeve that my brain was exhausted by the spectacle of it all, including knockout performances from Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón, a Spanish actress who you’re about to hear about for months on end. I made sure to memorize it during the audience’s 10-minute standing ovation when she and Saldaña were brought out on stage after the movie.

Comedy ain’t pretty. And it sure ain’t nice. Keep that in mind while watching director Jason Reitman’s (Juno, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) breathless ode to working with creative iconoclasts, the bull-headed first cast of “SNL” comedians who were so certain that they were onto something fresh and funny, that they would steamroll their own mothers for getting in their way. Reitman, who I had the chance to interview in Toronto about the film along with Lamorne Morris, Ella Hunt, Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Dylan O’Brien, and more of his stellar cast, doesn’t go for the sentimental when dramatizing what it’s like to stalk the halls of 30 Rock in those final 90 minutes before the first showtime, and that’s the perfect choice. First season breakouts John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and head-writer Michael O’Donoghue can be remembered for the marks they left on comedy and the surrounding chaos that made it possible, but they should not be heralded for how they treated everyone around them on the road there. The film and the now 50-year-running sketch comedy titan want to capture that feeling of creative spark, then keep moving onto the next sketch, the next season, the next cast, the next decade, and never allow themselves to bask in the beauty of their own accomplishments, because where’s the humor in that?

The “Douche and Turd” episode of “South Park” gets the Vatican treatment in what filmmaker Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) calls a “papal thriller” about the rigid and rigorous process of voting for a new pope after the sitting pontiff unexpectedly dies. Ralph Fiennes takes the reins and tries to tame the blasphemy and bedlam as factions split their support between Stanley Tucci’s reformer cardinal, Sergio Castellitto’s traditionalist cardinal, John Lithgow’s sneaky cardinal, and a few other also-rans. Just beyond the sealed doors of the Vatican, an unnamed unrest is threatening to tear the world apart, both mirroring the electoral process dramatized in the film as well as a not-so-subtle nod to the state of the real world currently, but our “brave” cardinals soldier on to elect the least worst candidate! Try to see it before you vote in November’s presidential election as it may be too difficult to live through another campaign so soon after.

I first became aware of Amy Adams in a very different film about motherhood called Junebug, but let’s be real, all other movies are very different from filmmaker Marielle Heller’s primal scream piece about a woman’s worth after childbirth, including Heller’s excellent earlier efforts Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. What struck me about the pure-hearted country bumpkin she plays in Junebug, and what still holds true for her canine fursona in Nightbitch, is that Adams commits harder than any other actor working. Was there one ounce of hesitation in her unhinged fairytale princess of Enchanted and Disenchanted? Absolutely not. And Nightbitch is another unblinking, unshakeable performance, carrying the film on her shoulders (or more likely in a chest-strapped BabyBjörn) without ever breaking a sweat as the film begins to run out of steam by the final act on its central motherhood metaphor. If nothing else, see it for the scene with the tail, the doggy meals that Adams shares with her son, and the first encounter with Zoe Chao at Book Babies – Adams’s sudden recoil had me break the theater’s silence with loud cackles. Not to mention that’s all contained in 95 minutes and served up fresh in a stainless steel dog bowl that’s never been used.

Challengers director Luca Guadagnino is already back in theaters with a new film, and this time he’s giving into all of his Gen X vices for a dream project based on William S. Burroughs’s transgressive, spiritual sequel to his landmark work, "Junkie." The Call Me by Your Name and Suspiria director has wanted to adapt Queer since first reading it at 17, but he would have never been able to cast former 007 Daniel Craig as Lee, the debauched and delirious lead as well as a stand-in for the real Burroughs. Nor in his youth would he have been able to conjure such a deeply damaged love story before he had embarked on a nearly 30-year career of exploring romance in all of its forms, both beautiful and terrible. But, the soundtrack may have been stocked with just as many grunge rock gems if he had been able to make Queer in the early ‘90s, including what may be the best ever use of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” during a scene where Craig’s Lee prowls the dusty streets of 1940s Mexico to find a fix and his fixation, Drew Starkey (“Outer Banks,” The Devil All the Time) as the flighty and reserved Allerton.

On the flip-side of the romance genre, Brooklyn and The Goldfinch director John Crowley cooks up a more conventional love story starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, but he deliberately serves the recipe out of order, flowing with thematic connections and visual handoffs, instead of chronologically detailing a tragic tale that begins with a silly meet cute (FloPu hits Garf with her car), progresses to the hilarious and thrilling birth of their child in a gas station bathroom, and comes to a truncated end with a cancer diagnosis that changes the trajectory of their fairytale. The leads are as charming as ever, but it’s the non-linear editing that will either wrap you up in its magic spell, or leave you cold and questioning why you care if these two kids can make it in this crazy world.

Co-writer/director/star Matthew Rankin might need a translator for what feels like his new comedic vernacular – a lo-fi, surreal, and so-subtle-that-it-might-not-even-be-happening style of humor that is at first bewildering before its rhythms make themselves known. Think the artsiest version of Napoleon Dynamite mixed with the Coen Brothers’ Fargo minus all their darkness and vitriol. Instead, there’s a Canadian kindness in this minor odyssey from Québec to Winnipeg, from the Beige District to the Grey District and back again, with all the gentle misunderstandings that ensue when a son tries to visit his mother in their rapidly changing hometown.

Pamela Anderson has gone through hell to get here, and she allows every personal trial and tribulation to shine through the lines in her face as Shelley, an aging Las Vegas dancer who reconnects with her estranged daughter (Billie Lourd) during the final weeks of Le Razzle Dazzle topless revue, the live show to which Shelley has dedicated her life. Beyond director Gia Coppola’s dreamy lensing, the plot doesn’t have much else to offer and can feel stagnant if you aren’t ready to kick back, light up your last cigarette, and breathe in the hot and dusty desert air alongside Sin City’s finest, like Shelley, her surrogate stage daughters (Kierna Shipka and Brenda Song), their soft-spoken back-of-house manager (Dave Bautista), and a living trainwreck of a cocktail waitress (Jamie Lee Curtis), who could prove to be a vision of Shelley’s future if she doesn’t reform.

Ragtag gangs of filmmakers with more gumption than know-how is one of my favorite sub-sub-genres (Ed Wood, Bowfinger, American Movie), so I was quickly on board with Superboys, the Hindi-language feature from Gully Boy director Reema Kagti. Based on a documentary with almost the same name (Supermen of Malegaon), Kagti and her delightful cast expand upon the story of starry-eyed villagers who try to make a no-budget version of the Indian epic Sholay that is set in their hometown of Malegaon and starring whoever can pitch in.

It’s not quite Jackie Chan’s Police Story or the Fast & Furious franchise, but this South Korean super-cop saga goes hard with an overly complicated serial killer mystery that could have been dreamed up by one of the supervillains in Batman’s Rogues Gallery. Writer/director Ryoo Seung-wan (Crying Fist, Veteran) has more bombastic ideas and frenetic images at his fingertips than he knows what to do with, and I wish he’d allow them to do the talking more often than the intrusive electric guitar score that underpins almost every single action-packed scene, but it’s almost impossible to not get pumped up when the good guys triumph over evil with a ballet of karate kicks and flying punches.

“Narcos” and Griselda director Andrés Baiz presents a personal passion project that feels like Death Race 2000 and The Road Warrior meets Blow. His ballad for the pimpineros (or smugglers) who illegally traffic cheap Venezuelan gasoline over the border into Colombia can be derivative at times, but Baiz fuel-injects his story with enough tactile heft and tragedy that the film never idles, although it can feel like an entire season of television crammed into two hours.