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Tag: toronto international film festival

  • Screening at TIFF: Akinola Davies Jr.’s ‘My Father’s Shadow’

    Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Chibuike Marvelous Egbo and Godwin Egbo in My Father’s Shadow. Courtesy of Fatherland Productions

    A powerful work of memory and political fragility, Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow is a stunning semi-autobiographical feature debut. Set during the 1993 Nigerian election—when military dictator Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida overturned unfavorable results—the story unfolds through the eyes of two young brothers and follows them on a day trip to Lagos with their estranged father, whose interactions they watch and absorb.

    Fittingly co-written by Davies Jr. and his older brother Wale Davies—the pair’s father died when they were young—the movie follows bickering siblings Akin and Remi, aged 8 and 11. The two boys are also played by real brothers Godwin Egbo and Chibuke Marvelous Egbo, who bring a playful, naturalistic energy to their childish arguments over paper cutouts of professional wrestlers. When their father Folarin (Sopé Dìrísù) arrives unexpectedly one afternoon, showing up indoors like a phantom, their surprise isn’t so much about seeing someone they didn’t expect but someone they never expected to see again. Davies Jr. shoots Folarin like an unknowable spirit, both revered and intimidating, as the film embodies both wish fulfillment and agonizing memory. It feels, at the outset, like a means for the filmmaker to better understand himself.

    Folarin bluntly scolds the boys and drags them to the city to collect money he’s owed, during which he shows them a fun time and catches up with old friends and political comrades (who all lovingly call each other Kapo). They even run into a few astounded relatives along the way, who are surprised to see Folarin after so long. Without explicit gestures, the film becomes a ghost story of sorts. Folarin may be alive and well in the literal plot, but Davies Jr. often collapses time in ways that hint at something more soulful and more painful than a linear retelling.

    Cinematographer Jermaine Edwards’ thoughtful use of high-contrast celluloid yields a warm and detailed texture, turning My Father’s Shadow into a living photograph—a memento of the past—breathing life into the city’s jam-packed rhythmic tapestry. On occasion, something in the movie’s fabric seems to slip, as if a projectionist had nudged the film strip aside to insert a few stray (and damaged) frames of darkened flashbacks, which Folarin appears to “see” in moments he zones out. With news of political atrocities on the TV and radio, Folarin and his children’s trip (surrounded by armed guards) becomes a visit not just to crowded Lagos markets but an excursion to 1993 from an omniscient future vantage, as though Davies Jr. were attempting to use images to send messages back in time—or to receive them from the past.

    MY FATHER’S SHADOW ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars)
    Directed by: Akinola Davies Jr.
    Written by:  Akinola Davies Jr., Wale Davies
    Starring: Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, Godwin Egbo
    Running time: 94 mins.

    This sense of premonition, woven throughout the movie’s fabric, is counterbalanced with a childlike simplicity. All throughout the visit, Akin and Remi try to reconcile their father’s love with his frequent absence—a scenario so far beyond their understanding that it causes tantrums. However, despite this tale being told through the adolescents’ eyes, the camera remains tethered to Dìrísù’s introspective conflict without cutting away, always feeling within inches of a satisfying answer. Both in 1993 and today, Folarin remains an open wound for Davies Jr., but observing this cinematic version of him—entirely in his element and among friends and acquaintances—is perhaps the closest the filmmaker can come to truly knowing him.

    If there’s a flaw in the movie’s approach, it’s only in how it’s packaged for international viewers. There’s a florid naturalism to the dialogue, which switches between English and Yoruba, but the former—a slang-filled Nigerian Pidgin—is often subtitled in ways that westernize the dialogue, robbing it of its flavor. Phrases like “No vex” become “Don’t be angry,” while longer, more detailed statements are oversimplified. The gossipy exchange, “Meself just resumed last week. I don’t know you hear Chioma born twins inside January?” is reduced to the far more clinical and formal “Personally, I just resumed last week. I don’t know if you heard, Chioma had twins in January?” in the lower third.

    While this happens throughout, it’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but My Father’s Shadow was notably the first Nigerian film to make it to world cinema’s most prestigious stage: the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition. This speaks to the fact that international distribution still needs to catch up to how the rigidity of language can hinder artistic expression. These western subtitle standards in particular clash with the movie’s keenly observed realism, while the more accurate, more colorful alternative would have been an easily understood window into Davies Jr.’s recollections.

    Still, keen eyes and ears are likely to absorb the film in full, given its vivid dramatic presentation. From its gentle introduction to its jarring final scene—a lifelike anticlimax that makes sense spiritually more than logistically—My Father’s Shadow acts as both a retrospective and a soulful reconstruction, breathing life into the past while distinguishing the personal and pragmatic details that inform the complexity of a person—even one who exists entirely in memory.

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    Screening at TIFF: Akinola Davies Jr.’s ‘My Father’s Shadow’

    Siddhant Adlakha

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  • ‘Normal’ Review: Bob Odenkirk Fires on All Cylinders in Ben Wheatley’s Jaw-Droppingly Excessive Blast of a Crime Caper

    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.

    Michael Rechtshaffen

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  • ‘Driver’s Ed’ Review: Sam Nivola Stars in Bobby Farrelly’s Genial but Uninspired Road Trip Comedy

    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.

    Michael Rechtshaffen

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  • ‘Adulthood’ Review: Alex Winter’s Dark Family Satire Is Not Exactly an Excellent Adventure

    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 Runner film 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.

    Michael Rechtshaffen

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  • ‘California Schemin” Review: James McAvoy’s Assured Directorial Debut Makes for an Engaging if Familiar Underdog Story

    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.

    “You actually sound American,” remarks Billy’s girlfriend, Mary (Lucy Halliday). “You sound, like, entitled!”

    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’s ultimate success is all in the delivery.

    Michael Rechtshaffen

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  • Paul Shaffer to Get Feature Doc Treatment (Exclusive)

    A feature documentary about Paul Shaffer, best known David Letterman’s longtime sidekick and Late Show bandleader, 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 The Late 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.

    Etan Vlessing

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  • Eternity Should Be Sadder

    Photo: Leah Gallo/A24

    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.

    Hershal Pandya

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  • Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas Talk Beatles, Abba and Brotherhood in Anders Thomas Jensen’s ‘The Last Viking’

    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.

    MIKKELSEN We’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?

    MIKKELSEN I 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?

    MIKKELSEN Everything 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.

    KAAS I 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.

    KAAS I 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.

    KAAS Definitely. 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?

    KAAS I 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.

    KAAS That’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?

    MIKKELSEN I’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.

    Scott Roxborough

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  • You Can’t Look Away From Cooper Hoffman

    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’s Ari 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.

    Hershal Pandya

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  • Vanity Fair and Four Seasons Celebrate TIFF’s 50th Anniversary

    “It was a very emotional screening for us,” she continued. “It’s as if the film is suddenly born and it’s not yours anymore. It doesn’t belong to you anymore. It’s the end of something, and the beginning of something else.” Many of Winocour’s previous features, including 2012’s Augustine, 2015’s Mustang, and 2022’s Paris Memories, played at the festival as well. “It’s a bit surreal, but Toronto is really a place that is really special to my heart,” she said.

    Toronto always proves to be one of the busiest festivals of the season, and this year’s party provided a space for filmmakers to mingle and relax with one another at the Four Seasons before what was sure to be another busy day. This event was part of an ongoing partnership between the Four Seasons and Vanity Fair that includes exclusive industry dinners, cast toasts, and conversations in New York, Paris, London, and at other festivals. Other guests at the party included Jeremy O. Harris, Kerry Condon, Lee Byung-hun, Aziz Ansari, Diego Boneta, Sam Richardson, Edward Berger, Ben Foster, Angourie Rice, Park Chan-Wook, William H. Macy, and Hikari.

    Maude Apatow, Kerry Condon and guestsVivien Killilea/Getty Images for Vanity Fair.

    John Ross

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  • Josh O’Connor Takes Wake Up Dead Man to Church

    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.)


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    Joe Reid

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  • The Lost Bus Is an Instant Disaster-Movie Classic

    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.


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    Bilge Ebiri

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  • ‘Fuze’ Review: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James Headline David Mackenzie’s Savvy, Hunk-Filled Heist Thriller

    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. 

    Richard Lawson

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  • ‘John Candy: I Like Me’ Review: Colin Hanks’ Doc Portrait Pays Poignant Tribute to a Comic Icon’s Life and Legacy

    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.

    What’s not to like?

    Michael Rechtshaffen

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  • Jude Law Contributes Nothing But Full-Frontal Nudity in ‘Eden’

    The mostly nude ‘Eden’ character Friedrich Ritter (played by the neurotic hilt by Jude Law) and his companion-bedmate (Vanessa Kirby), who eventually loses her mind. Jasin Boland

    After a dismal debut one year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival and a universal refusal of commercial release by every major film company, Ron Howard finally decided to open his dreadful, independently produced and directed film Eden with his own money. Curiosity centers on one word: “Why?”

    EDEN ★ (1/4 stars)
    Directed by: Ron Howard
    Written by: Noah Pink
    Starring: Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl, Sydney Sweeney
    Running time: 129 mins.

    It’s a strange, creepy departure for Howard, who grew up in the movie business, from a cute kid on Andy Griffith’s TV sitcom and family-fit movies like The Courtship of Eddie’s Father to a mature, Oscar-winning director of box office hits such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. Like Steven Spielberg, his films are usually polished, coherent, and suitable for all ages. His obsession with Eden delivers none of those things, and it’s so vile, pretentious and confusing in style over substance that a lot of it is downright unwatchable. 

    Set in the years after World War I when fascism was growing in fear and chaos, it centers on a small group of obnoxious German dissidents who denounce Hitler’s allegedly civilized society and withdraw to an ugly, barren volcanic island in the Galapagos called Floriana, led by an eccentric Teutonic doctor-philosopher named Friedrich Ritter (played to the neurotic hilt by Jude Law), who spends his days glued to a broken-down typewriter writing a book about the New Order. Ritter believes the only way to save the world is to destroy the old one and create a new one. He drags along his companion-bedmate Dora (Vanessa Kirby), who writhes and jerks her way through the agony of multiple sclerosis before eventually going stark raving insane.

    Any warped would-be Nietzsche like Ritter is bound to attract supporters, so it’s just a matter of counting sheep before other followers and fans show up. Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Bruhl) and his wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) bring along a son with tuberculosis, thinking Ritter will welcome them, but he is hostile and hateful, warning them that life on Floreana is unsurvivable. (That doesn’t begin to cover it. There’s no fresh water, and food consists of muddy roots, dead animals and wild pigs.)

    Next comes the loopy Baroness Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner Basquat (Ana de Armas) with her sexual threesome, phony accent and vicious dog Marquis de Sade. She eats only canned food, and plans to build a luxury resort hotel with whatever she can beg, borrow and steal. In what seems like an eternity, they all argue, vomit and resort to violent blows. While we watch them fall apart, Howard lays on the horror. Jude Law contributes nothing more than an abundance of full-frontal nudity because that’s what he does best in almost all of his films. There’s plenty of sex, disease and animal cruelty, while most of the cast dies from food poisoning after eating rotten chickens. But it’s really Sydney Sweeney who wins the top prize for unspeakable suffering in a long, unbearable sequence of natural childbirth without anesthesia while a pack of hungry, snarling dogs watch and wait, hoping to make a meal of the newborn placenta.

    The deadly screenplay by Noah Pink brings to the assignment zero knowledge of form, craft or discipline. No character is developed seriously or deeply enough to reach more than the most superficial surface identity. Eden is supposed to be an adventurous examination of what happens when civilization breaks down and man’s true nature is revealed, but it comes off more like one of those boring, incomprehensible Wes Anderson films that they make up, scene by scene, as they go along.

    Jude Law Contributes Nothing But Full-Frontal Nudity in ‘Eden’

    Rex Reed

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  • Colin Farrell Risks It All in Wild Trailer for Edward Berger’s Netflix Movie ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

    Colin Farrell finds himself in a high-stakes state of mind in the teaser trailer for Netflix‘s Ballad of a Small Player.

    Netflix releases Edward Berger‘s feature in select U.S. theaters Oct. 15 and in select U.K. and Ireland theaters two days later before it begins streaming Oct. 29. Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings and Tilda Swinton round out the cast.

    Ballad of a Small Player centers on Lord Doyle (Farrell), a high-stakes gambler who is dealing with debts and his questionable past. While trying to keep a low profile in Macau, he receives a tempting offer from mysterious casino employee Dao Ming (Chen) while also avoiding private investigator Cynthia Blithe (Swinton).

    The eye-catching trailer features a collection of quick scenes as Farrell is shown sitting on the floor of the shower, cracking open a lobster in a hotel room, screaming during a card game and watching a raging fire.

    “I may be out of puff, but I still have my balls,” Farrell declares in the footage.

    Berger helmed the film from a script by Rowan Joffe that is based on author Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel. Berger, Mike Goodridge and Matthew James Wilkinson serve as producers.

    Colin Farrell (left) and Fala Chen in Ballad of a Small Player.

    Courtesy of Netflix

    Ballad of a Small Player is set to premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival before screening at other fall festivals. Farrell is set to receive the Golden Icon Award when the movie plays at the Zurich Film Festival on Sept. 27.

    Berger directed Netflix’s 2022 film All Quiet on the Western Front, which was nominated for nine Oscars. His most recent film was last year’s thriller Conclave, with the Focus Features release landing the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.

    Ryan Gajewski

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  • Sony Pictures Classics Lands TIFF Title ‘On Swift Horses;’ Daisy Edgar Jones, Jacob Elordi Star

    Sony Pictures Classics Lands TIFF Title ‘On Swift Horses;’ Daisy Edgar Jones, Jacob Elordi Star

    EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures Classics is closing a deal to acquire On Swift Horses, the Daniel Minahan-directed drama that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month as a Special Presentation. The film stars Daisy Edgar Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter and Diego Calva.

    Pic takes place in the 1950s, where married Muriel and her brother in law Julius embark on separate but parallel straight life paths, only to discover their closeted desires bubbling to the surface. On Swift Horses is scripted by Bruce Kass and produced by Peter Spears, Theresa Page and Christine Vachon produced it.

    UTA Independent Film Group is brokering the North American deal with SPC, and Black Bear International is handling the international territories.

    Mike Fleming

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  • Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein to Star in Netflix Rom-Com ‘Office Romance’

    Jennifer Lopez, Brett Goldstein to Star in Netflix Rom-Com ‘Office Romance’

    Jennifer Lopez has clearly gotten a kick out of her recent Netflix films, as the performer is preparing to return to the streamer for her next feature.

    Lopez and Ted Lasso standout Brett Goldstein are set to star in the Netflix rom-com Office Romance, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

    Goldstein is writing the script with Joe Kelly. Plot details have not been shared, and a director is not yet attached.

    Earlier this year, Lopez starred in director Brad Peyton’s Netflix sci-fi flick Atlas, opposite Simu Liu and Sterling K. Brown. Prior to that, she led the streamer’s 2023 action film The Mother for director Niki Caro.

    Lopez’s next movie is director William Goldenberg’s sports drama Unstoppable, which Amazon MGM Studios is set to release in December after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. Centering on real-life wrestler Anthony Robles, the film counts Matt Damon and Lopez’s estranged husband Ben Affleck as producers.

    The actress is known for her work in the romantic comedy space, having starred in popular titles including The Wedding Planner and Maid in Manhattan. Lopez’s more recent offerings include Marry Me and Shotgun Wedding.

    Goldstein is a two-time Emmy Award winner for his breakout role as Roy Kent on the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso. His other credits include the romantic feature All of You, which premiered at TIFF this month, while he co-created the Apple TV+ series Shrinking.

    Kelly worked as a writer and executive producer on Ted Lasso. He has also written for Detroiters, Saturday Night Live and How I Met Your Mother.

    Deadline was first to report on Office Romance.

    Ryan Gajewski

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  • Toronto Awards Takeaways: Feinberg on an Off-Year for the Fest

    Toronto Awards Takeaways: Feinberg on an Off-Year for the Fest

    The Toronto International Film Festival — which I have been attending since 2007, and from which I just returned — has long been an important launching pad for Oscar contenders, from 1981’s Chariots of Fire to 1999’s American Beauty to 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire to 2018’s Green Book. But a few years ago, that status was jeopardized when the fest grew resentful of the fact that a number of films that it was advertising as “world premieres” or “North American premieres” were, in fact, first sneak-screening at the Telluride Film Festival, which takes place a few days before it does.

    Even though virtually no TIFF attendee would have balked at seeing a film that had previously screened for a relatively small number of people in a remote town in the Rockies, TIFF decided to adopt a hard-line position: it told film makers and backers that if they showed their film somewhere else in North America before TIFF, that film would not be permitted to screen in any of the marquee venues at TIFF during the fest’s opening weekend — the Friday, Saturday and Sunday that follow Thursday’s opening night screening — which is the stretch of time when most media are on the ground to cover the fest.

    Over the years since this policy was adopted, we have not been able to get a real sense of its impact, partly because in several of those years the pandemic and the strikes were already making TIFF feel very different. But this year, with neither the pandemic nor the strikes an issue, we found out. As one top awards strategist put it to me, “Opening weekend just felt dead.” Indeed, there were chunks of empty seats throughout the major venues; there was little buzz on the streets and in the restaurants; and there were very few world premieres of films with any real awards potential.

    Amazon/MGM’s Unstoppable and The Fire Inside proved to be solid entertainments, but with very limited awards paths. A24’s We Live in Time is an effective tearjerker, but it’s more The Fault in Our Stars than A Star Is Born. Searchlight’s Nightbitch stars the great Amy Adams, and some liked it more than others, but it’s not going anywhere with the Academy. And I could go on. The only opening weekend world premiere of an awards hopeful that seemed to matter at all was the one for The Wild Robot, an animated feature which was produced by DreamWorks Animation (in its 30th year on the scene) and will be distributed by Universal.

    It wasn’t until Monday, though, that the fest began to roll out heavy-hitter contenders like Netflix’s Emilia Pérez and and Neon’s Anora (by way of Cannes and Telluride), Focus’ Conclave (via Telluride) and Vertical’s The Order, A24’s Babygirl and Queer and Sony Classics’ I’m Still Here and The Room Next Door (all directly from the Lido). And by that time, much of the press — and therefore much of the potential awards buzz — was gone.

    TIFF certainly caught some bad breaks this year. For one thing, it’s not a particularly deep awards season to begin with, which meant that the fest had limited options. Additionally, while a few big names showed up — among them, Elton John (on behalf of the Disney+ documentary feature Elton John: Never Too Late), Robbie Williams (Paramount’s Better Man), plus a bunch of Netflix talent including Angelina Jolie (Maria), Denzel Washington (The Piano Lesson), Will Ferrell (Will & Harper) and Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) — many others did not. Nicole Kidman (A24’s Babygirl) had to bow out after her mother passed away. None of the stars of Focus’ Conclave — Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow — were able to get out of work obligations in Europe. Emilia Pérez helmer Jacques Audiard suffered a back injury that prevented him from traveling. And the list goes on.

    But for the most part, the humdrumness of this year’s fest feels like the result of self-inflicted injuries — and not just the silly festival-exclusivity policy.

    My understanding is that TIFF outright rejected September 5, which was the hottest sales title that played at the Venice and Telluride film fests — and, THR reported this morning, has landed at Paramount — ostensibly because it might generate controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, fearing a backlash, the fest did not screen a film that is going to get a best picture Oscar nomination and maybe even win — it could have done so on opening night, which was, appropriately enough, Sept. 5 — but did screen Russians at War, a documentary thats sympathetic portrayal of Russians involved in the Ukraine conflict did result in protests of such a scale that the fest ended up pulling the film.

    The rest of the TIFF sales market was largely comatose. The only deals of real note were A24’s acquisition of the U.S. distribution rights for The Brutalist, a nearly four-hour VistaVision film with an intermission, after it generated a strong response at Venice; and Hulu’s surprising eight-figure purchase of the opening night film Nutcrackers, which stars Ben Stiller, but about which there was decidedly muted enthusiasm.

    A lot of other films, many with big-name talent, came to the fest hoping to find a buyer, but left without one, including The Last Showgirl (Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis), On Swift Horses (Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones), The Friend (Naomi Watts and Bill Murray) and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (the feature directorial debut of Embeth Davidtz).

    Which brings us to the TIFF audience award, which has long been a harbinger of Oscar success — each of its last 13 winners went on to at least a best picture Oscar nomination, and three of them, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, 2018’s Green Book and 2020’s Nomadland, took home that prize — but which this year, we learned this morning, went to Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.

    The Life of Chuck may be a lovely film, but it had virtually no profile coming in to the fest, generated virtually no discussion at the fest, and still does not even have a U.S. distributor. Passed over for it were Emilia Pérez (which finished second), Anora (which finished third) and The Wild Robot (which the fest apparently tried to boost a little by giving it twelve screenings).

    In other words, if TIFF’s relevance to this awards season was in doubt prior to the announcement of the audience award, the audience award announcement certainly did not help its standing.

    Scott Feinberg

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  • ‘The Deb’ Review: Rebel Wilson’s Directorial Debut Is a Campy, Mixed-Bag Teen Musical

    ‘The Deb’ Review: Rebel Wilson’s Directorial Debut Is a Campy, Mixed-Bag Teen Musical

    When Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes) gets suspended from school after a political demonstration backfires, her mother (Susan Prior), who also happens to be the institution’s principal, sends the Sydney teenager to live with her cousin Taylah (Natalie Abbott) in the Australian outback.

    Dunburn, the fictional locale in which Rebel Wilson’s uneven directorial debut The Deb is set, is a small town recovering from a years-long drought and dereliction of duty by national ministries. The local government desperately needs money to maintain their water supply and have resorted, in one of the film’s more humorous gags, to making a viral video to bring attention to their plight. Of course, none of these issues concern Maeve, who arrives in Dunburn already plotting her escape. 

    The Deb

    The Bottom Line

    Overstuffed with both good and bad.

    Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations)
    Cast: Rebel Wilson, Shane Jacobson, Tara Morice, Natalie Abbott, Charlotte MacInnes, Julian McMahon
    Director: Rebel Wilson
    Screenwriters: Hannah Reilly, Meg Washington, Rebel Wilson

    2 hours 1 minute

    Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Deb chronicles Maeve’s fish-out-of-water adventures in Dunburn. Upon arrival, the cosmopolitan teen loudly rejects the town’s regressive traditions. In particular, Maeve bemoans the annual debutante ball, which Taylah dreams of attending. She can’t understand why her cousin would submit herself to such retrograde pomp and circumstance. Soon, of course, Maeve realizes that she can’t so easily write this small town or its people off.

    The Deb is based on the well-received stage musical of the same name by Hannah Reilly (who returns to write the screenplay) and Meg Washington (who serves as an executive producer). It’s a campy movie musical whose cultural self-awareness when it comes to teenage life might draw comparisons to this year’s Mean Girls musical adaptation but whose narrative owes much to Muriel’s Wedding. Taylah, like Muriel, is a big-hearted country girl who dreams of love and social acceptance — the kind of underdog screen protagonist who has become more common since P.J. Hogan’s 1994 film premiered at TIFF. 

    Whereas Muriel wanted to get married, Taylah wants to find a date to the debutante ball, a tradition that makes her feel closer to her deceased mother. Her transformation and friendship with Maeve drive most of the film’s action and offer a heartwarming, if predictable, relationship to root for. It helps that MacInnes (who played Maeve in the stage production) and Abbott fully embrace their characters and the exaggerations required of the movie musical. Their performances, as well as a handful of others including Shane Jacobson as Taylah’s father Rick and Tara Morice as a local tailor, soften the film’s more glaring contrivances. 

    Outside of the acting, which leans into the ridiculous and amplifies the campy nature of the film, The Deb struggles in its translation to the screen. The music is contemporary pastiche — riffing on different genres and arranged in ways that recall the Pitch Perfect covers — and although a handful are memorable, thoughts of many fade with the credits. Wilson’s direction is similarly uneven, especially toward the middle of the film, which packs in convenient plot points to distract from narrative thinness. The result is off-kilter pacing that threatens to undo the film’s more successful parts. 

    Like this year’s Mean Girls, The Deb does successfully play with the tools of the social media age, adjusting the aspect ratio to mimic iPhones and incorporating the use of platforms like TikTok or Instagram into its storytelling. The film opens with a bullish pop number (one of the movie’s strongest) introducing Maeve’s world at an elite private school in Sydney. The new teenage experience involves documenting every aspect of their lives and engaging in Plastics-like mocking and cruelty.

    The catch, of course, is that all of these students are hyper-attuned to injustice so they always punch up instead of down. Maeve’s popularity — both IRL and online — stems from her outspokenness on feminist issues. But she’s also a classic bully, and after one of her political acts goes awry, her classmates are more than eager to obliterate her reputation. In the spirit of the most high-profile cancellations of the 21st century, Maeve retreats from public life to reflect. 

    The country air doesn’t suit our chronically online city girl, so from the moment Maeve arrives in Dunburn, she begins plotting her departure. She plans to make her great return to Sydney with a podcast that chronicles her small-town life and begins recording all of her interactions. She ropes in Taylah, making her journey to the deb ball the main narrative, and interviews the resident mean girls, Danielle (Brianna Bishop), Chantelle (Karis Oka), Annabelle, (Stevie Jean) and Annabelle’s mother Janette (played by Wilson), a beautician who makes Regina George seem angelic. As Maeve zips around town investigating, she’s also pursued by a bad boy named Mitch (Hal Cumpston), whom we never learn all that much about. 

    A significant portion of The Deb’s plot revolves around Maeve keeping the true intentions of her podcast a secret while forming a genuine friendship with Taylah, but there are other narratives stuffed into this film. One involves the fate of Dunburn, which is in desperate need of government funds, and the other concerns a will-they-or-won’t-they romance between Rick and Shell (Morice), the town’s tailor. These threads are introduced with confident set pieces and catchy tunes that accompany decent choreography, but the balance is lost once the plot lines require more involvement. Despite its 2-hour runtime, parts of The Deb can feel frustratingly shallow. 

    That could be forgiven if the rest of the movie meaningfully cohered, but it doesn’t. The Deb, much like Maeve’s experience in Dunburn, is ultimately a mixed bag. 

    Lovia Gyarkye

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