One of our very best actors, Brian Cox, makes a somewhat belated directorial debut with the Toronto world premiere Glenrothan, in which he also stars. Set in his native Scotland and lovingly photographed, the film tantalizes even without a terribly original story. Family conflicts ripple and get fairly predictably resolved. But the cast gallops right past the clichés.
To tell the story of two estranged brothers, Cox turned to another Scottish-born actor, Alan Cumming, who gives the most surprising and resonant performance in the movie. The brothers have not communicated for many years. Cox’s Sandy runs a family distillery in the Scottish Highlands. Cummings’ Donal has been running a music club in Chicago. But when that is destroyed in a fire, he decides to return to Scotland, along with his daughter (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter (Alexandra Wilkie), to see if there is any chance to renew family ties.
Glenrothan
The Bottom Line
The cast compensates for missteps.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Shirley Henderson, Alexandra Shipp Director: Brian Cox Screenwriter: David Ashton
1 hour 37 minutes
The outcome of that long-simmering family quarrel is never really in much doubt, but there are still a few neat surprises involving a couple of rare bottles of whiskey and the fate of two family businesses. Cox is now probably best known for playing Logan Roy in the multi-Emmy winning series, Succession, for several seasons. But he also has had many vivid film roles, including the first incarnation of Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s movie Manhunter. He’s graced Hollywood epics Braveheart, Troy, The Bourne Identity, mixed in with smaller gems like Rushmore, Adaptation and L.I.E. It’s a pleasure to see him at home in the Highlands, and as a director he’s predictably generous with his fellow actors.
Cox was wise to hand the co-star role to Cumming, who shatters his usual image by “butching up,” as the actor noted at the festival. (This film offers a good lesson in the rewards of refusing to typecast actors.) Cox helps Cumming to bring off one of the most rewarding performances of his long career. Shipp also scores as the daughter who knows just when to take charge of her father, and veteran British actress Shirley Henderson proves that she has the presence to make the most of a smaller role as a workhorse at the distillery, who earns a satisfying payday at the end.
Even though the film runs just 97 minutes, it sometimes seems padded and plucks a bit too strenuously at the heartstrings. The overemphatic score by Tommy Reilly and Roddy Hart only exacerbates this tendency to overstate. Cox sometimes needs to place more trust in the actors and the central story without resorting to sentimental flourishes.
Yet the superb cinematography by Jaime Ackroyd helps to ride over excesses in the direction. Cox’s love of the Scottish countryside is apparent, and the beauty of the landscapes works on Donal as he comes to appreciate the homestead that he abandoned. Even those who have an aversion to earnest tales of family reconciliations may give this likable picture a pass. In interviews he gave in Toronto, Cox has said he might direct again, and we look forward to the results.
If there was any lingering doubt regarding Bob Odenkirk‘s late-career reinvention as a legit everyman action star, Normal handily seals the deal. Having proved himself up to the task after Nobody and Nobody 2, he wildly ups the ante with an unapologetically over-the-top small-town crime thriller.
Directed by genre-hopping Ben Wheatley and written by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad from a story hatched by Kolstad and Odenkirk, the subversive Western is a take-no-prisoners gore fest that peppers all the visceral carnage with an equal sprinkling of dry wit. Given that it shares so much of its DNA with those Nobody movies (also penned by Kolstad), it would be understandable if some might think it’s actually Nobody 3, which wouldn’t necessarily work against it. Given the energetic reception that greeted the movie’s world premiere as part of TIFF‘s genre-heavy Midnight Madness section, the indie production should be able to corral U.S. distribution with little difficulty. Amazon MGM Studios has the film for Canada.
Normal
The Bottom Line
A bone-crunching good time.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Midnight Madness) Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey Director: Ben Wheatley Screenwriter: Derek Kolstad
Rated R,
1 hour 30 minutes
As a recent arrival to the quaint town of Normal, Minnesota (population 1890, at least before the bloodbath begins), Odenkirk’s Sheriff Ulysses is more than okay with his temporary placement in the half-abandoned municipality, especially since he seems to be escaping some trauma from his recent past. “My goal is to leave this town just the way I found it,” he maintains, as he leaves yet another unanswered phone message for his estranged wife.
But that proves more easily said than done when Ulysses starts to notice a few cracks in Normal’s genteel exterior. Maybe it’s that overabundance of firearms on display in all the local establishments, or the suspicious death of his predecessor, Sheriff Gunderson, or the town’s oddball Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler). Or maybe it’s that spirit animal of a mysterious mammoth moose that keeps popping up.
Those suspicions are confirmed when, responding to a botched bank heist in progress, Ulysses discovers everybody’s keen on shooting the sheriff, including his two deputies (Ryan Allen and Billy McLellan).
Left with no one to ally himself with except the two failed robbers (Rena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher), Ulysses opts to fight back, whining, “I’m tired of running away from every goddamn thing!” In the middle of unleashing an insane amount of violence, they make the discovery that the bank vault is hiding a substantial stash of gold bars belonging to the incoming Japanese Yakuza, which had been using Normal to hide a portion of their illicit profits in return for a percentage divided among the struggling townspeople. What starts out as a geographic and comedically thematic companion piece to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo decisively shifts gears into Tarantino-worthy grindhouse excess and never looks back. There’s an inventive, Rube Goldberg precision to the barrage of violence that keeps things involving, especially when the Yakuza arrives on the scene.
Handling it all with a detached, shrugging sense of doom, Odenkirk proves the right man for the job at hand in both of the film’s two tonally separate halves, and he’s supported by a colorful cast including Lena Headey as the town’s enigmatic barkeep and McLellan as one of those two deputies, whose squeaky stiff leather jacket keeps announcing his arrival.
The wintry Winnipeg, Manitoba, backdrops provide some stark contrast for all the spilled bits of red, effectively captured by cinematographer Armando Salas (Ozark) in hues of blue and amber, while British director Wheatley marks a welcome return to his earlier works — in particular 2016’s Free Fire, which took home TIFF’s Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award that year.
Even though Wheatley’s previous film was the considerably less enthusiastically received sequel Meg 2: The Trench, one can’t help wondering what tantalizing possibilities a Meg vs. Ulysses match-up might hold.
In introducing his new comedy just ahead of its TIFF world premiere, director Bobby Farrelly noted that Dumb and Dumber, the 1994 release that introduced him and brother Peter to jaded audiences hankering for something edgier or grosser, or, yes, dumber, was also a road movie. But while that 1994 Jim Carrey-Jeff Daniels hit firmly established the Farrelly Brothers brand, the latest solo effort is pretty benign stuff by comparison.
In Driver’s Ed, an earnest but naive high school senior (Sam Nivola), worried that his college freshman girlfriend may have broken up with him, commandeers his driving instructor’s canary-yellow KIA and, joined by three classmates, embarks on a three-hour excursion to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to ensure his fears are unfounded. Those expecting more of a Farrelly-style joyride will have to settle for a casual Sunday drive that cruises along pleasantly but without inspiration, following safely within the established boundaries of Thomas Moffett’s formulaic script. Granted there’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach and, fueled by a charismatic young cast, the vehicle reaches its intended destination with few wrong turns on the way.
Driver’s Ed
The Bottom Line
Sticks safely to the slow lane.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Sam Nivola, Sophie Telegadis, Mohana Krishnan, Aidan Laprete, Molly Shannon, Kumail Nanjiani Director: Bobby Farrelly Screenwriter: Thomas Moffett
1 hour 42 minutes
Handed its gala premiere at the tail end of TIFF, the picture has yet to secure a U.S. distributor. Prime Video has it for Canada.
Nivola, who recently made an impression as Jason Issacs’ and Parker Posey’s sensitive youngest kid in the third season of White Lotus, is well cast as lovelorn Jeremy, a Wes Anderson-obsessed budding filmmaker who fails to see what everyone around him knows all to well — that his girlfriend, Samantha (Lilah Pate), has moved on.
Still unconvinced, he makes the decision to hear it from the source while in the middle of a driving lesson being given by Kumail Nanjiani’s Mr. Rivers, a card-carrying goofball of a substitute instructor with both of his arms in a cast. Opting to accompany Jeremy on his fact-finding mission are cynical Evie (Sophie Telegadis), overachieving valedictorian Apurna (Mohana Krishnan) and, most notably, the high school’s permanently stoned resident drug dealer Yoshi (Aidan Laprete, handily stealing every scene with his pitch-perfect deadpan line-readings).
Meanwhile, harried Principal Fisher (the always reliable Molly Shannon) is doggedly determined to track down the motley crew, snarling “I’m not going to let three dipshits and the valedictorian f-ck me out of tenure!”
Aside from encountering a few inevitable bumps in the road, including an empty gas gauge and almost running over a three-legged cat whom they name Tripod, the trip functions mainly as a journey of self-discovery. The compact KIA functions as a rolling confessional in which the young passengers share their deepest fears, darkest secrets and the realization that they’re all on the same anxiety and depression meds. It all culminates at a prolonged frat party that allows the characters to pair off predictably, arriving at the sort of conclusion that feels like peak John Hughes.
Allowing everything to unfold at an unhurried pace, underscored by a gentle acoustic John Frizzell score, Farrelly hasn’t lost the knack he shared with his brother for mining promising young talent and giving them a platform to shine. Following in the career-boosting footsteps of the likes of Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz and Anthony Anderson, Laprete makes a lasting, tragicomic impression here, which could be a jumping-off point for his film and television future, provided he’s able to sidestep inevitable typecasting.
Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.
Taking the notion of skeletons in the family closet quite literally, Alex Winter‘s Adulthood sets out to expose something sinister lurking just beneath suburbia’s fake wood-paneled veneer of respectability. In the case of adult siblings, Megan and Noah, it’s the discovery of a seriously decomposed cadaver stuffed behind one of the basement walls of their childhood home that forces them to reassess their seemingly conventional upbringing.
It’s certainly a tasty premise — one that holds considerable noir-tinged promise — and for at least the first half of the film, the quirky blend of increasingly grisly goings-on and wryly observed social commentary forms a cohesive whole before veering irretrievably out of sync.
Adulthood
The Bottom Line
Suffers from arrested development.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Josh Gad, Kaya Scodelario, Billie Lourd, Anthony Carrigan, Alex Winter Director: Alex Winter Screenwriter: Michael M.B. Galvin
Rated R,
1 hour 37 minutes
While Kaya Scodelario, Josh Gad and a cast of colorful characters keep it all reasonably engaging, the film, which was handed its world premiere at TIFF and is scheduled to arrive in select theaters Sept. 19 ahead of a streaming bow four days later, falls short of reaching its full potential.
Reuniting at their small-town family homestead when their invalid mom has been further incapacitated by a stroke, methodical Megan (Scodelario) and her melodramatic brother Noah (Gad) are reliving childhood memories in their musty basement when they make that fateful discovery behind some damp drywall. It doesn’t take long for them to make the connection that the rotting corpse is that of their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Metzger, who had gone missing back in the ’90s.
Whispers at the time implicated her since-deceased husband as the culprit, but this recent development has Megan and Noah putting their mom and late dad on top of the list of likely suspects. Afraid to call the cops at the risk of losing their inheritance to a crime scene, Noah, an out-of-work L.A. screenwriter, contends he knows what’s best after having worked two seasons on Blue Bloods: They’ll bury Mrs. Metzger’s body in the swamp.
Alas, she doesn’t stay submerged very long, and in short order the police pop up at the hospital where their recovering mother is still unable to speak. Meanwhile, her plotting caregiver (Billie Lourd) shows up at the house claiming Mom admitted to killing Mrs. Metzger and she will take that information to the authorities unless she’s paid $10,000.
Now in full panic mode, Noah calls in back-up in the guise of their weird cousin Bodie (a terrific Anthony Carrigan), who’s something of an Uncle Fester-Freddy Krueger mash-up with a scary weapons collection. But the more he and Meg try to dig themselves out of the nightmare, the deeper they get pulled in, with a mounting body count to match.
In his director’s statement, Winter, whose more recent behind-the-camera output includes documentaries profiling Frank Zappa, YouTube and showbiz kids, counts Alfred Hitchcock, Dashiell Hammett and Bong Joon-ho as key influences in his artistic vision for the script by Michael M.B. Galvin (Fat Kid Rules the World.). That may have been Winter’s intention — there’s also more than a whiff of the Coen brothers figuring into all the mordant mayhem — but the execution proves trickier to pull off for a sustained period. While Winter maintains an effective grip on the desired “noir-lite” tone early on in the proceedings, as Megan and Noah’s lives begin spiraling helplessly out of control unfortunately so does that crucial dark/light balance. By the time Megan seizes control of the reins at the film’s close, the abrupt denouement feels jarringly disconnected rather than organic to the storytelling.
Winter’s cast is certainly up to the seriocomic challenge, with Gad playing a pitch-perfect man-child in an Alamo Drafthouse t-shirt who can’t help but notice that his life has turned into one of his unsold scripts. Meanwhile, Scodelario (Teresa in the Maze Runnerfilm series) is convincing as a wife and mother already contending with a high-stress job and a diabetic child, who comes to rationalize that the apple might not fall far from the tree where her larcenous mama is concerned.
The production also takes good visual advantage of its many scenic Ontario, Canada, locations, especially a sweeping pivotal sequence that’s shot on the SkyBridge, which holds the record as the longest pedestrian bridge in North America.
If only Adulthood could have ended up making it to the other side.
Harrison Browne, the first-ever publicly transgender pro hockey player, now has the challenge of boosting trans representation as he brings his directorial debut Pink Light for a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend.
“It’s really important to show trans athletes as people, because that’s the best way to humanize this community and create those pathways for empathy,” Browne told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday.
Pink Light takes the inspiring sports drama genre, where athletes have to overcome obstacles in their sport and personal lives, in a new direction as Browne tackles the worsening debate around trans athletes in the media and political spaces.
“This is not an issue of trans people taking over sports. This is an issue being magnified and being disproportionately used for a moral panic,” the director argued as he pointed to the number of trans athletes in school and pro sports, including the Olympics, being vanishingly small, compared to the total number of athletes in sports.
Pink Light
Toronto Film Festival
“Society is villainizing the community. And its really easy to use that community as a scapegoat when you don’t know anybody, when you don’t have a face for that term,” Browne added. Pink Light centers on Scott, a trans man and an ex-pro hockey player who is left disoriented after being hit while playing in a beer league hockey game.
His head injury seemingly sparks flashbacks in the film to his 18 year-old self, Scotty, at a college frat party as he talks with a fellow party-goer for the first time about possibly leaving women’s hockey to transition to becoming a man.
The dramatic tension in Pink Light comes from Scotty feeling stuck being a young woman to remain in hockey and the only comfortable space he had ever known in life, but also being unable to feel openly comfortable as a man after he completes a transition. “I really see this film as my goodbye to hockey. It feels like it’s a closure for me in a way I wasn’t expecting when making this film as a love letter to my younger self,” Browne explained.
Pink Light
Toronto Film Festival
The gender-blending short has a dazed and confused Scott, as he time travels to his pre-transition past as Scotty, discovering his earlier self as he waited for his life as a man to begin had already become the person Scott longed to be. “We wanted to highlight some of the struggles that transgender people go through. Scott feels lost. And as he gives up his identity as an athlete, he’s kind of floating and doesn’t know he fits in,” Harrison insisted.
Browne plays Scott in Pink Light, while CJ Jackson, a first-time actor and the first non-binary professional hockey player to come out in real life, plays Scotty. Donald MacLean Jr., Nicolette Pearse, Max Amani and Shaun Benson also feature in the ensemble cast.
Browne is also developing a feature length version of Pink Light to be set in a college athletic space and to expand on Scotty’s story line against the backdrop of locker room, athlete-coach and dating dynamics.
Pink Light is produced by Macaulee Cassaday and Nicolette Pearse, with David Palumbo and Rachel Browne executive producing, and Emily Zhang serving as the cinematographer. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors pro teams, helped finance the short film.
Back in the early 2000s, a pair of blue-eyed Scottish lads with dreams of becoming the next Eminem — but dismissed as sounding like “the rapping Proclaimers” — proceeded to pass themselves off as Southern California hip-hoppers, remarkably managing to pull off a hoax that gets them signed by a major record label.
It’s the stuff that episodes of VH1’s Behind the Music are made of, but in the talented hands of James McAvoy, making his directorial debut, those well-traveled, rise-and-fall tropes nevertheless make for an underdog dramatic comedy that proves hard to resist.
California Schemin’
The Bottom Line
A thoughtful charmer.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Cast: Seamus McLean Ross, Samuel Bottomley, Lucy Halliday, Rebekah Murrell, James McAvoy Director: James McAvoy Screenwriters: Archie Thomson, Elaine Gracie
1 hour 47 minutes
With a charismatic cast headed by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley, California Schemin’ is a nimbly paced yarn that may not have set out to reinvent the wheel, but makes for a buoyant excursion nonetheless. It wouldn’t be surprising for the film to emerge from TIFF, where it was handed its world premiere, securing a U.S. theatrical distribution deal.
Finding it tricky to establish hip-hop street cred when you’re two baby-faced kids from Dundee, rap duo Billy Boyd (Bottomley) and Gavin Bain (Ross), better known as Silibil N’ Brains, have been occupying their waking hours spitting bars with a decidedly Scottish brogue. Realizing they’re going to need to up their game if they have a shot of making it into the big leagues, they grab a map of California and proceed to create a fake backstory for themselves: They claim to hail from Hemet (!) after their first answer, “the projects of Beverly Hills,” fails to fool a record exec (James Corden) and they cobble together a semblance of an American accent studying movies like Jerry Maguire and The Usual Suspects.
They take the rebooted Silibil N’ Brains for a test run at a club, where they capture the attention of a talent scout (Rebekah Murrell) for Neotone Records in England. A hotshot producer (McAvoy) agrees to sign the boys to a recording contract.
Initially the scheme is to drop their facade during a scheduled appearance on a popular MTV show where they would decry the industry’s “racism.” But Gavin, finding himself swept up by the more excessive trappings of their new lifestyle and growing resentful of Mary’s emotional tug on Billy, reneges on the deal, driving a widening wedge between them.
Taking its cues from Bain’s 2010 tell-all, Straight Outta Scotland, which in turn inspired the 2013 BBC Four documentary, The Great Hip Hop Hoax, their story held understandable attraction for McAvoy, himself no stranger to the concepts of authenticity and remaining true to oneself. Despite his hailing from Glasgow, over the course of his 30 years as a film actor there have only been a handful of times when he’s actually played Scottish characters.
Sharing a tangible feel for the characters and their working-class milieu, McAvoy demonstrates an unfussy sincerity in his directing approach, one that, especially before things take a darker turn in the second half, evokes the sort of easy charm found in the films of fellow Scotsman Bill Forsyth.
Given that the Silibil N’ Brains story played fast and loose with the truth, it should come as no surprise that the screenplay by Elaine Gracie and Archie Thomson obviously takes its own dramatic license. For example, their record deal was actually with Sony Music UK and their break-up happened years before the hoax was revealed; it was not the cause of the split, as depicted in the film.
At the end of the day, Bain and Boyd may have duped the public, but they didn’t have to hang their heads in Milli Vanilli shame. Fake accents aside, it was still their own voices doing the rapping. And while that 15-minutes-of-fame schematic might be an all-too-familiar tune, California Schemin’sultimate success is all in the delivery.
Brian Cox, a proud Scotsman, left little to the imagination on Thursday night as he wore a kilt to the world premiere of Glenrothan, his Scotch whisky drama and directorial debut, at the Toronto Film Festival.
“Is it that bad?” an immodest Cox asked after a film-goer in the Roy Thomson Hall audience during the post-screening Q&A put up his hand to warn the manspreading Successionactor he was showing on stage far more than sturdy calves as his traditional black tartan pleated skirt unceremoniously lifted.
“Or that good?” a grinning Cox then asked the audience by now in raucous laughter. “You have to wear the kilt the proper way. The kilt is designed to make you cool and free. And it’s a fucking wonderful freedom,” Cox then insisted after finally putting his knees together.
Cox turned his attention to Glenrothan, his Scottish family drama set in the rural highlands and centering on two estranged brothers who reunite in the land of their birth. Donal, played by Alan Cumming, has returned home from America to see his older and ailing brother Sandy (Cox), only to reopen old wounds and finally reconcile with their shared past to save the family whiskey distillery.
While arguing he wanted with Glenrothan to tell the story he wanted to tell, unlike other filmmakers in Hollywood who just “cover their ass… or not,” a ruffled Cox then added with another below-the-belt jibe about his kilt fashion.
“What an unfortunate phrase. I’m really sorry about this. I never thought I’d be in this position,” Cox told the TIFF audience apologetically. Still later, when calls of “Your legs! Your legs!” were heard again from the first few rows of the TIFF venue, Cox called out to Glenrothan producer Neil Zeiger in the audience for apparently urging him to dress to kilt for the world premiere.
“Whose idea was it to wear these fucking kilts?” Cox cried out with faux outrage. “Certainly not my idea. It was the producer’s idea. They always try to fuck you up, at the end of the day. They can be so vengeful sometimes,” he added.
“You’re probably wearing underpants,” Cox then questioned Zeiger, who was himself wearing a tartan kilt and who nodded in the affirmative. “The kilt is about being free and easy,” Cox then advised, before adding sheepishly: “It’s hard not to wear underpants.”
The Toronto Film Festival continues through to Sunday.
A feature documentary about Paul Shaffer, best known David Letterman’s longtime sidekick and Late Showbandleader, is in the works.
The life rights to the story of the musician and TV personality from Thunder Bay, Ontario, who got his start as the musical director of a 1972 Toronto stage production of Godspell, have been acquired for a film to be titled Say Hello to Our Good Friend Paul Shaffer.
The documentary will be produced by Ballinran Entertainment, Grace Street Media and White Pine Pictures, with a director still to be attached to the project. UTA Independent Film Group came on board to handle world sales after discussions this week at the Toronto Film Festival.
Also at TIFF this week, Shaffer appeared for the world premiere of the Nick Davis documentary You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution …. That film recounts Shaffer’s first professional gig as part of the hippie musical Godspell alongside fellow breakout talent like Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas and Jayne Eastwood.
That stage production with its improvisational comedy opened the way to classic TV series like SCTV and Saturday Night Live. Schaffer was hired as the musical director for Godspell after he made a positive impression on composer Stephen Schwartz when playing the piano for a girlfriend who was auditioning.
Shaffer joined up with Letterman in 1982 for the launch of Late Night With David Letterman on NBC, leading the World’s Most Dangerous Band. In 1993, he made the move with Letterman to CBS for TheLate Show to lead the CBS Orchestra after NBC passed Letterman over for the Tonight Show hosting job in favor of Jay Leno.
Say Hello to Our Good Friend Paul Shaffer will also recall the musician’s rise with the original Saturday Night Live band (he played the piano when Bill Murray famously sang the Star Wars theme) and collaborations with musical icons like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sly Stone and Ray Charles.
“I’ve been the luckiest guy in showbiz. I’ve had a front-row seat to music history. This film isn’t just about me. It’s about the soundtrack of our lives, and how music connects, inspires and remembers us,” Shaffer said in a statement.
The project will be executive produced by Vern Freedlander (Grace Street Media), Craig Thompson (Ballinran Entertainment) and Peter Raymont and Stephen Paniccia (White Pine Pictures). The same execs negotiated the life rights signing deal with Shaffer.
High school can really get under your skin, as Emile Hirsch is discovering in this exclusive first look image from the horror-comedy Lice.
Hirsch stars in the film, which is in post-production, as a burned-out science teacher, Mr. Shanker, whose school is thrown into chaos when a parasite begins infecting the student body, turning the teenagers into maniacs. The uninfected students and staff are left to reign in the chaos and get to the bottom of the illness — a possible government experiment gone wrong. And, in a first look at the film, Hirsch’s Mr. Shanker is clearly not having a good time.
Elsewhere in the movie, from director Jonathan Bensimon, are the overwhelmed and over-imbibing Principal Van (Justin Long) and Detective Sikorski (Kevin Connolly), who is working outside the school grounds to contain the outbreak before it consumes the entire town.
Connelly is pulling double duty, producing under Connolly’s ActionPark Productions banner, with Jeremy Alter and Gary Goldman also acting as producers.
Anthony Musella and Lizze Gordo wrote the screenplay for Lice, which is for sale out of the Toronto Film Festival with Highland Film Group handling international sales.
Eternity is an old-school crowd-pleaser. Directed by David Freyne, it’s big and brightly lit, the type of movie you watch during the holidays despite it having nothing to do with Christmas. It’s full of beautiful people and whimsical flourishes and features a premise so instantly appealing it begs the question, How hasn’t this been done before? A woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives in the afterlife and has to choose which of her two deceased husbands to spend her afterlife with: her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died in military service shortly after the pair married, or her second husband, Larry (Miles Teller), whom she was married to for 65 years and raised her family with. It’s an impossible and irreversible choice between pursuing the life she never got to have and continuing to build on the life and memories she did. But for a movie with such high and clear emotional stakes, it sure has a lot of jokes.
A lot of these jokes add to the movie’s texture, particularly those embedded in the movie’s intricate (after)world-building. For example, each newly dead person has to choose a specific “eternity” to spend forever in, and among the infinite choices they’re presented with are eternities like “smokers’ world: because cancer can’t kill you twice” and “capitalist world: What’s the point of being rich if someone else isn’t poor?” At one point, an announcement plays over a loudspeaker, issuing a reminder to the deceased: “Geopolitical differences don’t matter; you’re dead.” Jokes also land with regularity thanks to the actors who deliver them, in particular John Early and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who play “afterlife coordinators” tasked with helping Joan and Larry plan their afterlife. They function as de facto rom-com sidekicks offering comic relief.
But the movie never slows the pace of jokes enough for such relief to feel necessary. Even the central characters, for whom you’d think this would all be heartbreaking, constantly deliver quips. Comic beats interrupt otherwise affecting scenes, like when Joan and Luke relive their life together in a video archive of their memories on Earth, and an embarrassed Joan skips past a memory of them having sex: “No, no, no!” Larry and Luke develop a rivalry in which any genuine hurt they are causing one another gets sidelined in favor of petty squabbling; in one scene, Larry tries to discount the valor of Luke’s war death: “It was Korea, buddy. Relax!” The result is that the premise plays like a 1950s-sitcom predicament. Joan, discombobulated by the choice she’s presented with, is appropriately tortured at times by the gravity of it all but seems just as likely to put her hands on her hips, pout, and exclaim, “What a pickle!”
None of this is to say Eternity needed to be another Past Lives, telling the story of a woman forced to confront the divergent paths of life with two possible romantic partners in as aching a tone as possible. Pure comedies have their place. But in the movie’s final act, Freyne clearly wants to evoke tears. There are big romantic sacrifices, sad good-byes, and wrenching looks of longing and regret that don’t hit as hard as they could, because the audience hasn’t been given space to feel these characters’ emotions build over the course of the film. Eternity didn’t need to be a melodrama, but sometimes a little schmaltz goes a long way.
More From the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival
The Last Viking, the latest collaboration between Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen and his longtime muses Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, is a wild, darkly comic fable about brotherhood, identity and the limits of sanity.
The frankly bonkers plot follows two brothers. Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber whose loot is entrusted to his traumatized younger brother Manfred (Mikkelsen). But by the time Kaas is released from prison, Manfred — a former Viking obsessive — has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. He now believes he’s John Lennon. To jog his memory as to where he stored the cash, Kaas decides to find a collection of similarly afflicted patients — ones that think they’re George, Ringo and Paul — and bring the Fab Four back together.
For Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas, who have previously pushed Jensen’s brand of lunatic sincerity in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice, The Last Viking was another chance to dive headfirst into the madness while keeping hold of something real. “The brother story was, I thought, really beautiful,” Mikkelsen notes. “That way we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where they saw each other for who they were.”
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas to talk about why they keep returning to Jensen’s universe, how they found the reality inside these extreme characters, and whether they’re team Beatles or team Abba.
What made you decide to come on to this absolutely nuts movie? What about the story pulled you in?
NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS For me, it was basically the question about identity and how we have to accept that we are different people. We’re in the same community, and we have to coexist with all our differences. I think it’s a great question to raise, and that was the main reason I saw this as a great project. We also talked about the brothers and how they have to accept each other because they have this huge difference from the start.
MADS MIKKELSEN I was attracted to these guys, and because it’s Anders Thomas. This theme of being yourself, as well, but the brother story was, I thought, really beautiful. We enhanced it, made sure it was the heart of the film. That way, we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where [the two brothers] saw each other for who they were.
KAAS Because Anders’ universe is so crazy, full of all these wild personalities, we knew we had to focus on the bond. What is their profound connection? That was where we kept our attention.
You’ve both pushed the limits with Anders Thomas before, in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice.
MIKKELSENWe’ve both gone to the edge of what’s possible with Anders. We might even have crossed it a few times. But it’s a nice place to be — in Anders’ universe, with friends who know how far to go. You feel comfortable reaching for that limit because you know they’ll pull you back if it’s too much. I don’t think I’d do that with any other director.
How did you approach Manfred — a grown man who thinks he’s John Lennon?
MIKKELSENI approached him as a child — a kid seven, eight, nine years old — with the same impulses, the same narcissism, and the same sense of poetry and beauty in places no one else sees. That also makes him very difficult to live with. That informed everything I did, how he moves, how he talks, how he reacts to things. He’s a guy who tends to throw himself out of windows when things don’t go his way.
Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in The Last Viking.
Courtesy of TrustNordisk
The film touches on identity and even identity politics. How does that discussion play out in Denmark, and how does it connect to the film?
MIKKELSENEverything that comes to Denmark comes five years later, and with a smaller wave. So yes, the discussion is there too. But it hasn’t influenced my life in a big way. It was very important for the media to deal with it constantly for a period. I don’t know if that’s why Anders made the film but, for me, it’s not the main theme. It’s more the “hat” the film is wearing. If you make films about politics — and you just called it “identity politics” — it’s boring. Everything is boring when it’s about politics. It has to be about human beings and their behavior. That’s the heart of a film. Then you can put a political hat on top. But it can’t be the core.
KAASI think the film raises a big question mark about the idea of identity. It doesn’t make a statement. It asks: Can we accept our differences? That is so important. We have to coexist. That’s the main plan for everyone — to find a way, because we all have to be here.
MIKKELSEN Exactly. And Anders also shows how quickly we build walls, because somebody says, “They’re the problem.”
Which Beatle do you self-identify as?
MIKKELSEN Which one is alive? Ringo. I’d be Ringo.
KAAS I’d say the same. He’s a really nice guy; everybody talks about how nice he is. He seems to have the best time.
MIKKELSEN And he’s got no gray hair.
KAAS Exactly. I’d choose Ringo as well.
A major conflict in the film is between Abba and Beatles fans. Are you team Abba or team Beatles?
KAAS You can’t put them up against each other.
MIKKELSEN Exactly — why does there have to be a conflict? They’re great for different things. We grew up with Abba and were proud of our neighbors making music that went global. But in terms of the music itself, that’s really up to a musician to answer.
KAASI love both worlds. You can’t say one is better than the other.
What was the most fun moment on set?
MIKKELSEN The funny thing is, if you play the “straight guy,” as Nikolaj does, then you’re standing next to complete insanity. That’s a hard job, because you’re not part of it. Being in that insanity is easier — you rarely crack up because you’re in that bubble. But being the one looking at it can be absurd.
KAASDefinitely. But honestly, we held it together better on this one. On Men & Chicken, that was tougher. You have to remind yourself that these characters don’t see their world as absurd or comedic. This is reality to them. That’s the most important thing in Anders’ films — to keep it real, even in the midst of insanity.
What makes Anders Thomas Jensen’s films so different?
KAASI don’t think he has a choice, that’s how his mind works. In Denmark, a lot of directors envy the fact that he’s that bold. His storytelling has something of the fable about it. He creates his own realm every time.
MIKKELSEN It’s there even in his first film, Flickering Lights, that poetry was there. He didn’t really get the credit for it — people called it a “boys’ film.” But he’s always been dealing with big subjects: Family, death, life, God, Satan. Enormous things. For him, the only way to tell those stories without being pretentious is to wrap them in insanity. But inside there’s big honesty and big poetry. That’s what makes him unique.
Many of Anders Thomas’ films have been adapted into English. Do you think his work translates well internationally?
KAAS That’s a good question. I’ve seen some of his films received in the U.S., and the approach is completely different. His films tend to be received very differently in different countries. Even Canada receives them differently from the U.S.. And I honestly don’t know how Sweden will take this one.
MIKKELSEN I once accepted an award on his behalf for The Green Butchers. For Best Drama. Now, that film is obviously not a drama. But that’s how they travel sometimes. Anders is also very wordy, and subtitles can only capture maybe 30 percent of it. Those words are very important to his universe. If people still like the film despite missing that layer, then they’re getting something else out of it. But it’s hard to say what.
KAASThat’s why I’m always curious to see what happens abroad. And yes, maybe even a little worried.
MIKKELSEN Especially with Sweden. They’re so close to us, yet sometimes the establishment there interprets things very differently. But I hope they’ll love it.
Speaking of adaptations — Mads, one of your most acclaimed films, Another Round, is being remade in the U.S. What are your thoughts on that?
MIKKELSENI’m fine with people doing it — as long as I don’t have to. (Laughs.) I don’t know how it works, honestly. Another Round had a very specific Danish approach: It looks at heavy drinking not by condemning it, but by finding comedy in it. Finding comedy in the drama without making it into a comedy. That tonality is hard to replicate. My fear is they’ll turn it into a straight comedy or a finger-wagging “don’t drink” story. But if they can’t find the same balance Thomas did, then why do it? Maybe they’ll change it completely. But then it becomes a different story.
You both work internationally but keep returning to Denmark. What brings you back?
MIKKELSEN My language, my friends, and this kind of storytelling. Anders Thomas’ films are unlike anything else. It’s just nice to come home. I love being abroad, but I love being home too. So far, I’m lucky enough to do both.
KAAS For me, it’s specifically Anders Thomas. You don’t find his kind of storytelling anywhere else. That’s a big reason to keep working with him in Denmark.
In Poetic License, Hoffman is like a Gen-Z Vince Vaughn, bullshitting sophistication at a mile a minute, but also too sensitive for this world. Photo: Toronto International Film Festival
There’s an early scene in Poetic License, Maude Apatow’s directorial debut, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend, in which an idiosyncratic college senior with family money, played by Cooper Hoffman, floats the idea of creating a LinkedIn account. His best friend, a comparatively buttoned-up economics student named Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman), asks Hoffman’sAri what he would write on it. Ari chews on the question for a beat, a quizzical expression on his face as it morphs subtly from curiosity to bafflement to worry to contentment. Finally, he retracts his flight of fancy: “Never mind.” There aren’t many actors doing intense character work between the setup and punch line of a joke. In Poetic License, Hoffman establishes himself as one of them.
Poetic License is a movie about transition. By coincidence or otherwise, it comes from the Apatow school of zooming in on characters at major turning points in their lives (Apatow’s father, Judd, is a producer, and her mother, Leslie Mann, co-stars in the movie). Ari is aimless and has made the executive decision to wean himself off his antidepressants; Sam is tortured by the prospect of going straight from college into a boring and unfulfilling career at Morgan Stanley. Everyone around them is in transition, too. The boys become enamored with Liz (Mann) in a poetry class at their college, which she’s auditing to cope with the fact that her daughter, Dora (Nico Parker), is about to move away after high school. Their professor, Greta (Martha Kelly), is going through a messy divorce. They all turn in stellar work — particularly Mann, who finally gets the role befitting her talents that Judd has been trying to write for years. All of which makes Hoffman’s standout performance all the more impressive.
Some of this is owing to the script, courtesy of first-time screenwriter Raffi Donatich. The dialogue crackles with witty, fast-paced rapport, and Hoffman gets many of the best individual lines. At one point, upon seeing Liz pull out of the school’s parking lot, he turns to Sam and remarks, “I love a woman who can drive.” When Sam points out that that isn’t an identifiable archetype, he hits back, “It is if you’re from New York.” But Hoffman also imbues the character with an innocent, slippery charisma. He’s Gen-Z Vince Vaughn, bullshitting sophistication at a mile a minute, but also too sensitive for this world. In an early conversation with Liz, she remarks that Sam and Ari have a special connection, and he says with precocious gratitude, “You’re so perceptive of what we have.” He punctuates line deliveries by flashing his eyes and curling his face into endearing half-smiles, which grow more manic as the movie progresses and his medication wears off.
About halfway through the film, Ari and Liz talk about his decision to stop taking his antidepressants. Liz asks him why he thinks it’s safe to do, and Ari replies that he’s unconcerned because the medications are diminishing his “sparkle.” It’s supposed to be a ludicrous argument: How could anything diminish this guy’s sparkle? a viewer might think. It’s a credit to Hoffman that that comes across.
Maude Apatow’s directorial debut Poetic License is an intergenerational coming-of-age film about an aimless middle-aged wife and mother who comes into the lives of two college students with problems of their own. When her husband (Method Man) accepts a position as an economics professor at a prestigious university, Liz (Leslie Mann) decides to audit a poetry class to fill her time while their daughter Dora (Nico Parker) starts her last year of high school. In a new town full of people she doesn’t know, Liz is floundering while both her husband and daughter quickly adjust and make new friends. When Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) and Ari (Cooper Hoffman) meet her in poetry class, Liz becomes a romantic fixation for both of them. But Liz is oblivious to their feelings and the growing rivalry between the two for her attention and affection — she’s too busy obsessing over Dora and the looming realization that her daughter doesn’t need her as much anymore.
As a former couples therapist, Liz immediately clocks the codependent relationship between Ari and Sam, spending time with them mainly because she’s intrigued by their dynamic. Ari is a rich kid who lives alone in a lavish apartment with no ambition beyond getting Sam to move in with him. But Sam would rather live in the dorms and be an RA, while working on his degree in economics. Sam also has a girlfriend (Maisy Stella) whose presence is a constant source of annoyance for Ari.
Poetic License
The Bottom Line
Warm and well-acted but disappointingly generic.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Cast: Leslie Mann, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Nico Parker, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Martha Kelly, Maisy Stella, Will Price Director: Maude Apatow Writer: Raffi Donatich
1 hour 57 minutes
But both boys agree on Liz, asking for her advice and approval at every turn. She gives her time to them freely, simultaneously revisiting her youth while also acting as a parental figure. And despite her lack of confidence, Liz gives Sam and Ari some solid advice throughout their time together.
Mann, Hoffman and Feldman are clearly having a good time, and their comedic chemistry carries the film. But for the most part, Poetic License feels just as aimless as Liz, wandering from scene to scene without much of a vision. Each scene seems to end too quickly, not giving the characters and their dialogue enough space to breathe. Even in the emotional moments, the audience is never given time to sit with the meaning behind what’s being said. The scenes in the poetry class feel perfunctory, suggesting no real interest in writing, form or meter. The professor (Martha Kelly) never actually teaches her students anything, instead rambling about her ongoing divorce and conflicts with her soon to be ex-wife. Kelly is funny in the role, but she never feels like a poetry professor and there’s a sense that if the film had centered on just a regular creative writing class everything would have played out in the exact same way.
Nothing feels specific about Poetic License and all the details seem randomly chosen. “Poetry” and “economics” are portrayed like topics drawn out of a hat, with no real reasoning behind their inclusion in the narrative. We don’t know why Sam or Liz’s husband are into economics in the first place or what it means for both these characters to share an area of study. We also don’t know why Ari is taking the poetry class at all, or even what his major is.
The film’s script, written by Raffi Donatich, works best as an exploration of the troubled bonds between Ari, Sam, Liz and Dora. But everything around them comes off as superficial, with interchangeable details that only serve to set the scene. This gives the movie a generic quality, most obvious in the scenes involving Liz’s husband. Method Man seems lost in Poetic License, woefully miscast as a no-nonsense academic with no real personality to speak of. His role in Liz’s life functions as a built-in barrier to ensure that the film’s love triangle has no real romantic stakes. Parker fares a bit better as Liz’s level-headed daughter, even though her personality is just as ill-defined as her father’s.
As a first-time director, Apatow shows some promise, especially in the tender scenes between Mann and Parker. Apatow shoots Mann with the eye of an adoring daughter, in awe of her mother’s seemingly effortless humor and warmth. The camera also loves Hoffman, who quietly steals the movie whenever he’s onscreen, giving dimension to a character who could so easily come off obnoxious.
Despite its shortcomings, Poetic License is a film with a big heart populated by talented actors genuinely having fun with their characters. It’s a shame, then, that the story begins to fade from memory as soon as the credits roll.
As a priest clinging to faith, O’Connor is silly, sincere, and steals the new Knives Out movie from Benoit Blanc. Photo: Netflix
Like any good mystery series, the Benoit Blanc movies know the value of repetition. You could call it a formula if you felt like knocking this series of films from writer-director Rian Johnson, which kicked off with Knives Out in 2019 and continued with Glass Onion in 2022. As those two films did, Johnson’s latest, Wake Up Dead Man, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to this year’s most rabid crowds so far. Once again, Johnson has gathered together an all-star cast — this group includes Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, and Josh Brolin — to set up the pins so that Daniel Craig’s dapper Southern detective can knock ’em all down. But while Wake Up Dead Man is another murder mystery, the most compelling crime in the film occurs in plain sight, as Josh O’Connor outright steals the film out from under Benoit Blanc, and he does it dressed in the vestments of a Catholic priest.
O’Connor plays Reverend Jud Duplenticy, a young priest seeking his own salvation. He gets sent to a small upstate New York church to assist Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin), a kind of Catholic Colonel Kurtz — aggressive and territorial and half-mad. O’Connor plays his half of the power struggle between the two priests initially as light comedy; the English actor (playing American again, as he did in Challengers) is downright nebbishy in moments. He’s a great fit for Johnson’s tendency to puncture the moment with comic relief, which is kind of infuriating. No one that handsome should also get to have good comic timing.
But it’s in the film’s surprising degree of sincerity that O’Connor makes himself invaluable. Wake Up Dead Man is the most earnest (and least comedic) of the three Blanc films. And it’s sincere about faith, of all things, and politics, too. My guess is that will occupy a great deal of the reaction to this movie. If Knives Out and Glass Onion were sideswipes at the anti-immigrant right and Silicon Valley fascists, respectively, Wake Up Dead Man is Rian Johnson taking dead aim at Trump and his band of hard-liners. The all-star cast mostly plays Wicks’ parishioners, each with their own little set of personal foibles that at any moment could become a motive to kill. Because yes, there is eventually a murder, and Blanc turns up in town full of theories and brio.
But this is Father Jud’s movie. We get a third of the way into it before Blanc arrives, and by then, O’Connor has already more than capably put the film on his shoulders. An idealistic priest with a profound belief in the Church’s power to save souls could be a tough sell for another actor, but O’Connor capably lands every beat — he’s awfully formidable for a pretty boy, and awfully sympathetic for a priest. There’s a darkness on the periphery of his performance, too. No man of such intense religious faith can ever be ruled out as a killer, after all.
Daniel Craig was deservedly lauded for the first two Blanc films, and he’s no less winning in this one. But with Wake Up Dead Man as interested in salvation as it is in its whodunit yarn, Josh O’Connor ends up as the film’s MVP: Most Valuable… Priest. (So dumb.)
The agitated, ominous vibration of giant power lines and quaking transmission towers feels like a Greek chorus throughout Paul Greengrass’s intense new wildfire thriller, The Lost Bus. Over the course of the film, Greengrass regularly cuts away to the churning cables and metal structures, as well as to the roaring flames of the 2018 Camp Fire, as the blaze makes its way across the mountains and cliffs of Northern California. This helps us follow the spread of this real-life disaster, and it also conveys the puniness and impotence of the mortals fighting it. Based on real-life stories from the Camp Fire (still the deadliest wildfire in California history), The Lost Bus, which just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival ahead of a short September theatrical release and an October 3 debut on Apple TV+, offers plenty of suspense and heroism. But it’s all tempered by the knowledge that these fires are inescapable, growing, and unstoppable.
At heart, The Lost Bus is a disaster movie — a great one — and it has some of the classic moves of a disaster movie, complete with the slightly on-the-nose narrative shorthand designed to introduce characters quickly and efficiently. Greengrass cuts across a number of arenas and people, including the various fire crews trying to deal with this rapidly deteriorating situation, but the central narrative belongs to Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey), a down-on-his luck school-bus driver in Paradise, California, who returned here after his life fell apart elsewhere. Kevin is already having one of the worst days of his life even before everything burns down: His dog is dying, his teenage son is home sick from school (and also hates him), his mom is elderly and out of it, and his ex-wife is berating him on the phone. He’s also missed his bus’s inspection appointments, he’s running out of money, and his supervisor thinks he’s a flake. Once the flames come roaring into town, however, Kevin will be the only one in a position to drive a busload of elementary-schoolers, along with their teacher, Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera), through the downright biblical flames and out to safety. It’s Speed meets the end of the world.
McConaughey was made for parts like this: the good old boy facing extraordinary circumstances. He knows exactly how to sell this character and his desperation — not with confidence, but with a “damn the torpedoes, I’ll try anything once” bravado. Honestly, they should cast him in every disaster movie. Plus, he makes a fine match with Ferrera, whose teacher must exude outward calm for the benefit of her kids while she’s not-so-secretly freaking out inside. (Both Kevin and Mary have their own kids elsewhere that they’re also worried sick about.) As everything falls apart around them in ways both big and small, we enjoy watching these two opposites butt heads and quibble and then learn to function as a team.
The film feels like a homecoming for Greengrass, who cut his teeth in the world of you-are-there television documentaries before helping redefine the modern action movie with the handheld urgency of hits like The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. The director also carried that approach over to docudramas like United 93, Captain Phillips, and July 22 (as well as his earlier, masterful Bloody Sunday, the movie that put him on the map back in 2002). But the “shaky cam” style ran its course some years ago; his last effort was the stately and old-fashioned Tom Hanks western News of the World, a beautiful picture whose release got swallowed up by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In The Lost Bus, Greengrass combines his thriller side with his reportorial side. He films Kevin and Mary and the schoolkids’ journey through hellfire as a no-holds-barred action spectacle full of immediacy and awe, complete with hair’s-breadth escapes and incredible visions of destruction. (It’s frankly a shame that The Lost Bus isn’t getting a wider theatrical release; it was clearly made to be a big-screen experience.) Some incidents have been a bit sensationalized, but Kevin and Mary’s heroism was very real, as evidenced in Lizzie Johnson’s exhaustively researched and absorbing 2021 nonfiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, on which the film is loosely based. To that end, the film also offers a more diffuse and heavily researched portrait of what goes into battling a wildfire, and Greengrass’s vérité style lends authenticity to the scenes of fire chiefs strategizing, of ground crews and air crews trying to combat the blazes and save lives. The picture thus combines the excitement of an old-school disaster spectacle with a fly-on-the-wall portrait of institutions struggling to function in the face of a calamity. The effect is singular: We enjoy the thrill ride immensely, but it’s the realism that sticks with us. Movies end, but the fires are here to stay.
The opening credits of the heist thriller Fuze flicker and shake like action-movie credits used to do back in the good old Tony Scott days. That’s an early indication that the film, from director David Mackenzie and writer Ben Hopkins, has a clear sense of what tradition it wants to honor. The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.
Mackenzie, the director behind sturdy films like Hell or High Water, keeps Fuze trotting along at a steady clip. It begins as a story of civic suspense: A London construction crew unwittingly digs up an unexploded bomb from the Blitz, similar to an event that really happened in Plymouth last year. It’s a compelling setup, connecting the sleek modernity of Fuze to a horror of the past. The clock ticks all too swiftly as the police and military work to clear the area and bring in a special team, led by an army major played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who will try to defuse the bomb.
Fuze
The Bottom Line
Meat and potatoes, well-prepared.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw Director: David Mackenzie Writer: Ben Hopkins
1 hour 38 minutes
While they perform that bogglingly dangerous task, another series of events is unfolding beneath them. Theo James and Sam Worthington (this is a film admirably committed to the casting of hunks) are down in the basement of a suddenly abandoned building, surely up to no good. It soon becomes evident that they are using the distraction to stage a raid on a bank vault, up against their own ticking clock as they drill through brick and concrete.
The fun of this opening stretch is that we’re rooting for both groups to succeed, for London to be saved and for the thieves to get their hands on whatever they’re after. Mackenzie smoothly toggles between storylines, ratcheting up the tension and giving us quick but useful character sketches.
Fuze has a lively energy, a cool, daylit bravado that occasionally brings to mind Spike Lee’s Inside Man. Like that shrewd film, Fuze is more than first meets the eye. Before long, the two narratives have intertwined and the film rollicks away from its initial premise and into the realm of double-cross, job-gone-wrong crime caper. Some of the plot mechanics may strain credibility, but one does not come to a film like Fuze looking for docudrama. The internal logic of Hopkins’ busy script is sound enough to hold our attention as we try to suss out just who is zooming whom, and how.
Throughout, Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography is bright and crisp, holding the film in the glossy, liminal space between A-feature and B–movie. That’s a great place to be, one that used to be occupied by many studio films every year. Not so much in our streaming era, when there is a stark aesthetic divide between what makes it to theaters and the toss-off stuff that is designed to only ever exist in the digital bazaar of the internet. One hopes that an enterprising American distributor will give Fuze a go at multiplexes; it earns that distinction.
The actors are having fun, too. Taylor-Johnson is a convincingly intense and sweaty hotshot, while James gamely dons a South African accent to play a slimy operator who seems a step or two ahead of everyone else. Gugu Mbatha-Raw radiates steely competence as a policewoman overseeing things from a multi-screen control room—any movie of this ilk worth its salt needs that kind of omniscient observer. Worthington is perhaps a little underserved, but it’s always nice to see him outside the blue fugues of the Avatar films.
Mackenzie has now debuted two solid thrillers at Toronto in a row. So why not make that a new annual custom? Hampering the dream some is that Relay, which premiered here last year, didn’t do much business when it opened in the U.S. in late August. But maybe Fuze, with its more easily parsed and marketable premise, will break through. It’s not high art, but not everything ought to be. And anyway, riding the middle is its own tricky maneuver; it takes a lot of smarts to not overthink things.
Sydney Sweeney shan’t talk pant at the Toronto International Film Festival. In the pages of Vanity Fair, the actress shut down all American Eagle jeans ad talk ahead of her appearance at the fest. Sweeney went to TIFF to promote her new movie Christy, a biopic of professional boxer Christy Martin. “I am there to support my movie and the people involved in making it, and I’m not there to talk about jeans,” Sweeney said. “The movie’s about Christy, and that’s what I’ll be there to talk about.”
Folks want Sweeney to talk denim because of her recent American Eagle ads which some saw as akin to nazi propaganda. The campaign put forward the idea that Sydney Sweeney has “good jeans” that are passed down from generation to generation. Critics of the ads said they were white supremacist and pro-eugenics. Those who defended them said basically the same thing, but in a different font. And Sweeney is saying nothing. She previously refused to talk about jeans at the premiere for Americana.
Wall Street is still talking about the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad, however. The collection sold out within a week. But American Eagle saw slightly declining sales overall during the last financial quarter, per the New York Times. Gap seemingly responded to the eu-jean-ic controversy with an ad featuring girl group Katseye dancing to “Milkshake” by Kellis. The commercial has seen streams of “Milkshake” going through the roof, as well as a TikTok trend of doing the band’s dance inside actual Gaps. Daren Criss, time to once again get your ass to The Grove. Could be funny.
John Candy is having a bit of a moment. While it has been more than three decades since the beloved Canadian comic actor died tragically too soon, at the age of 43, of a heart attack, his legacy continues to burn brightly. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of Splash, the film that really jump-started Candy’s big screen career; next month sees the release of the biography, John Candy: A Life in Comedy, penned by Paul Myers (brother of Mike); and this week the Toronto International Film Festival kicked off its 50th anniversary edition with the premiere of John Candy: I Like Me, a big-hearted documentary that’s as embracing and generous of spirit as the man himself. It launches on Amazon Prime Video starting October 10.
Directed by Colin Hanks, and featuring testimonials and reminiscences from those who knew him best — family, friends and colleagues including Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Andrea Martin, Bill Murray and Hanks’ dad Tom, who played his brother in the aforementioned Splash — the assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter while also provoking plenty of tears. Residing just beneath that easygoing, eager-to-please, everyman exterior was a chronic anxiety that reached a crippling peak during his final years.
John Candy: I Like Me
The Bottom Line
The affection is infectious.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Airdate: Friday, October 10 (Prime Video) Director: Colin Hanks
1 hour 53 minutes
As Hanks charts Candy’s career trajectory from the Second City stages in Chicago and Toronto to cult sketch series SCTV to serving as John Hughes’ muse in eight collaborations — including Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, from which the documentary derives its title, and Uncle Buck — he never loses sight of that nagging undercurrent of insecurity that would haunt the actor despite those successes. As O’Brien puts it, “This industry is very unhealthy for people-pleasers.”
Toronto-raised John Franklin Candy was a shy, introverted big kid who was all of 5 years old when his own father died at age 35, also from heart disease. He’d gain confidence performing improv and sketch comedy, but it was his character work on SCTV, including his inspired takes on Pavarotti, Julia Child and Orson Welles, that made industry folk sit up and take notice.
Spielberg would come calling with a part in 1941. Mel Brooks, on the high praise friend Carl Reiner had for Candy after directing him in Summer Rental, proceeded to cast him as the half-man, half-dog Barf in Spaceballs. “He stuck acting in his back pocket and behaved like a human being,” says Brooks of Candy’s professional ethic.
Despite all that good stuff coming his way, there was still that stubborn undercurrent of melancholy. In response to news of John Belushi (who had tried to persuade his old Second City buddy to join him on Saturday Night Live) dying of a drug overdose in 1982, SCTV colleague Dave Thomas tearfully recalls a despondent Candy saying, “Oh God, it’s starting.” As Thomas elaborates, he carried the weight of his father’s passing every day.
Ironically, eating and drinking would become Candy’s coping mechanism, even as he was aware of his family history. And while his wife Rose shares he would often work out with a trainer and go on extreme diets, she adds that “the industry wanted him big” and his representation wasn’t exactly thrilled when he once shed close to 100 pounds.
By the early ’90s, when he was no longer picking the hits — as one interviewer not-so-gingerly puts it, “You’ve been in more turkeys than a stuffing mix” — Candy embarked on a second career as co-owner of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, along with Wayne Gretzky and Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall.
By then increasingly plagued by panic attacks, he’d die in his sleep on March 4, 1994, while on location in Durango, Mexico, filming the ill-fated comedy Wagons East.
Hanks — who previously directed a pair of music-themed documentaries, including All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records — knows to give the assembled wealth of comedic talent, along with Candy’s widow and two adult children, all the space they need to share the many lively and affecting anecdotes. He accompanies those with a generous sampling of memorable movie and TV clips, archival interview and home movie footage, not to mention a stirring Cynthia Erivo cover of “Every Time You Go Away” by Daryl Hall & John Oates.
