By John Corrado Ancestors is the directorial debut of Irish filmmaker David Turpin, who previously co-wrote the Gothic horror movie The Lodgers. This is also, in its own way, sort of a ghost story, with Turpin using the AIDS epidemic as the backdrop for a film about legacy. Turpin’s film is set in London in… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Ancestors (Discovery)
By John Corrado In Fjord, his second Palme d’Or-winner following 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu crafts a complex film that masterfully balances being a family drama, coming-of-age story, and courtroom procedural. This is a film that exists purely in shades of grey, even literally with the washed out… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Fjord (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In Coward, his third and most ambitious feature yet, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont (Girl, Close) takes us back to World War I. Dhont’s works all explore gender identity and burgeoning sexuality, and those themes get fine-tuned here as he explores the homoerotic tensions between young Belgian soldiers who arrive on the front… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Coward (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The latest from Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, All of a Sudden is primarily a film about the different ways we care for each other, weaving themes about the bureaucratic power structure of a nursing home into a character drama. It’s an ambitious undertaking, even more so when you account for the fact… Read More #TIFF26 Review: All of a Sudden (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Sheep in the Box, named for a passage in The Little Prince, is the latest work from Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, who has proven himself a master of quietly observed character studies that raise thorny emotional questions. On paper, at least, this makes Kore-eda, serving as both writer and director, a natural fit… Read More Movie Review: Sheep in the Box
By John Corrado Alpha is the third feature from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, whose previous films Raw and Titane both shocked and repulsed audiences while drawing critical acclaim. For Ducournau to follow up a film as thrilling and visionary as her sophomore feature Titane was always going to be a nearly impossible task, especially after… Read More Movie Review: Alpha
By John Corrado A young girl is selected to bake a cake for her school in honour of President Saddam Hussein’s birthday in Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi’s debut feature The President’s Cake, which serves as a charming neorealist throwback. Hadi’s film is set in Iraq in the early 1990s, where, despite mass starvation caused by… Read More Movie Review: The President’s Cake
By John Corrado The first thing we hear in filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski’s new French-language thriller A Private Life (or Vie privée) is the distinctive strains of The Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer.” The song is leaking into the office of psychiatrist Lillian Steiner (Jodie Foster), as it’s being blasted by her neighbours in the apartment… Read More Movie Review: A Private Life
By John Corrado In his coming-of-age film Olmo, Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke finds the right balance between enjoyable portrait of bratty adolescence, and heavier, more dramatic scenes, telling a small but nuanced father-son story. There’s also some star power behind the film, having been produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. The titular Olmo (Aivan… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Olmo (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In The Last One for the Road, Italian filmmaker Francesco Sossai crafts a delightful hangout movie around Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla), two hapless, middle-aged vagabonds bopping around their hometown of Veneto. Their nights are spent drifting between local bars, trying to find a spot for one last drink. They pick… Read More #TIFF50 Review: The Last One for the Road (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The latest work from Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych, To the Victory! is an interesting and narratively playful portrait of life finding a way in an imagined post-war country, and also a meta-textual look at an artist trying to use the decimated backdrop to create something. Vasyanovych stars in the film as Roman,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: To the Victory! (Platform)
By John Corrado The latest film from Korean director Park Chan-wook, following up the gauzy, neo-noir, romantic mystery of 2022’s stunning Decision to Leave, No Other Choice is a wildly entertaining film that moves so seamlessly between dark comedy, drama, and murderous thriller, that it seems to defy genre itself. The story centres around Man-soo… Read More #TIFF50 Review: No Other Choice (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado In his latest film, the Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, formerly imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi crafts another complex and involving portrait of modern day Iran. The film follows a group of people who find themselves at the centre of a moral dilemma, when a worker named Vahid (Vahid… Read More #TIFF50 Review: It Was Just an Accident (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In his mixing of paranoid espionage thriller and absurdist dark comedy, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers a culturally specific portrait of his country in the late 1970s in The Secret Agent, seen through the eyes of a man on the run during the waning days of the military dictatorship. The man… Read More #TIFF50 Review: The Secret Agent (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado A man gets off the subway and tries to exit the station. But every time he turns a corner, he ends up back in the same place, stuck in a seemingly endless loop. This is the premise behind the Japanese film Exit 8, a fun and suspenseful little puzzle box thriller from… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Exit 8 (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Director Oliver Laxe’s Sirât opens on a memorably cinematic scene as a group of outcasts hold a rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert. We see evocative images of massive speakers being set up in the desert, as bodies bop and gyrate in time to the blaring techno music, the beat… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sirât (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Sentimental Value is Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s followup to his 2021 modern classic The Worst Person in the World, reuniting him with that film’s star Renate Reinsve. If Worst Person was about a quarter-life crisis and searching for meaning in your twenties, Sentimental Value aims for something even more ambitious in scope.… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sentimental Value (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Ne Zha II is the Chinese blockbuster that became the highest grossing animated film of all time, beating the record previously set by Inside Out 2 just last year, almost entirely from what it grossed in China alone. The film had previously been released in North American theatres earlier this year, and now we… Read More Movie Review: Ne Zha II
By John Corrado In his latest film I’m Still Here, which received a surprise Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) offers a portrait of life during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s through the lens of mainly being a family drama. Salles’ film serves as a biography of… Read More Movie Review: I’m Still Here
By John Corrado Director Maura Delpero’s Vermgilio, Italy’s International Feature submission for the Oscars, is set at the end of World War II in 1944, but the war is happening entirely offscreen. Instead, this is a slow-burn slice-of-life portrait of a large family in the mountain village of Vermiglio. The patriarch of the family is Cesare… Read More Movie Review: Vermiglio
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