It’s nuts to think how much has changed across the world in the time since we last crossed the border to visit Toronto — one of the best cities on the planet, tbh — and attend TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), which is a festival just as amazing as its home. We attended each of the digital festivals in 2020 and 2021, and as good as both of those were, well, we were missing the boots-on-the-ground energy that comes from hubbub and buzz (and also you can’t get physically geolocked out of screenings unless you get deported for insulting Molson or something). But folks, we’re back: We’re on site in the Great White North, working hard to figure out how to cram practically every single thing we can into the 10 or so days that we’ll be here and making sure to overdose on Vitamin D in the process of trying not to get sick. With all that said, here are five films we’re excited about at this year’s fest.
Triangle of Sadness
Imagine having a decade like Ruben Ostlund: You release a film like Force Majure, which is so instantly iconic for a whole host of people that it inspires a hideously shitty Will Ferrell remake, and then you follow that up by winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes for The Square, your expansive art-world satire, making Claes Bang an international star in the process. So, what do you do next? Well, you make an even more ferocious satire about a doomed cruise with Harris Dickinson and Woody Harrelson, and you win another Palme. That’s right: Two, in five years. Everything about this movie sounds ridiculous, and we’re stoked to check it out, provided they’re able to have barf bags on site to control the contagious vomiting that might follow from mimetic audience members.
Devotion
J.D. Dillard’s Sweetheart was an awesome Sundance surprise a few years ago, and we’re especially excited for his latest film, a Korean War-set drama about Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors), the first black man to become a naval aviator, and the bond he forms with his fellow pilots, including Top Gun: Maverick‘s Glen Powell, even as he kicks against the pricks of institutionalized bigotry and the challenges of flying a plane like the F4U Corsair. We’ve heard whispers that this film is something special after it test-screened a few months ago, and we’re also pretty hyped that it’ll be screening at the festival in IMAX. Cue up that ’50s-styled cover of “Danger Zone,” y’all.
The Fabelmans
As much as we love Daniel Craig and murder mysteries, forget Glass Onion — this here’s the true crown jewel in the Gala Premiere line-up. How could it not be? You’ve got Steven fucking Spielberg making a semiautobiographical movie about his childhood and his parents’ divorce with a genuinely incredible cast (Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, even… David Lynch?), and nobody’s seen a frame of footage from it just yet. This was a big score on the part of the TIFF programmers, and we’re pretty sure their hard work will pay off, at least if we’re judging by how fast the tickets went for this one.
Butcher’s Crossing
Look, there’s no way that we’re going to leave a Nicolas Cage movie off of the list here, especially when it is a Nic Cage Western. Let us run this back by you in case you didn’t quite hear us: A. Nic. Cage. Western. But more than that, it also sounds lovely — it’s an adaptation of John Williams’ classic novel, which tells the tale of a young college dropout who heads to the plains to hunt buffalo with Cage’s well-worn trapper. Friction emerges between the two, and you probably can imagine where this is headed, especially if you know all about the buffalo. Might want to get some tissues ready for this one, as well as a nice flask of stiff-yet-watered-down bourbon so you can pretend that it’s just the drink.
The Whale
Trying to predict if a Darren Aronofsky movie is going to be any good is somewhat like roulette: if you just bet a color (say, red is “interesting” and black is “pretentious”), you’re likely to get good odds, but once you get into the nitty-gritty of the wheel, that’s where things start to go haywire. But we’ll say this: mother! was one of the most entertaining TIFF screenings we’ve ever attended, but we imagine this drama — about a morbidly obese writing instructor who’s able to hide away the facts of his existence by simply turning off his webcam — will be a much more subdued affair. We’re mainly interested by the fact that Aronofsky is returning to something that resembles the real world after a decade in stylized, metaphorical cinema and the fact that the pairing of Brendan Fraser (who received a six-minute standing ovation at Venice and was brought to tears by it) and Baskets writer Samuel D. Hunter feels like a match made in heaven.