{"id":24203,"date":"2024-09-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=24203"},"modified":"2024-09-10T21:07:50","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T04:07:50","slug":"tiff-dispatch-the-stars-shine-again-in-toronto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/tiff-dispatch-the-stars-shine-again-in-toronto\/","title":{"rendered":"TIFF Dispatch: The Stars Shine Again in Toronto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You can almost hear the industry sighing with relief at the beginning of each day of the Toronto International Film Festival, after last year\u2019s rocky edition<\/a>\u2014at least in terms of festival norms, as the simultaneous writers\u2019 and (especially) actors\u2019 strikes kept TIFF, still rebounding from the COVID break, from being the traditional, star-studded starter-pistol to the fall film season<\/a>. This year, there are big titles and big names a-plenty, and many of them (bonus!) are quite good to boot.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy Adams stars as a stay-at-home mom who\u2019s\u2026. going through some stuff in Marielle Heller\u2019s adaptation of Rachel Yoder\u2019s Nightbitch<\/em><\/strong>, which gets at the down-and-dirty of motherhood, the day-to-day trials and tribulations and outright panic, in a way few movies really have. (Tully <\/em>did, and then there\u2019s\u2026 yeah, I got nothin\u2019.) Heller uses repetition of montage to convey the monotony of these early years, and details relatable struggles (god, the battle of bedtime) and outright exhaustion, counterbalanced with smatterings of occasional joy to convey the messy complexity of motherhood. But Heller\u2019s style is never strictly realist; she gives us strange fantasies, nightmares, and memories, along with a few well-placed splashes of body horror, to put us into a bent-up headspace, and Adams is delightfully game; by the time she\u2019s on all fours in the yard, growling and digging and howling at the moon, it\u2019s clear that this simply would not land with a less committed actor. Grade: A-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Kurzel\u2019s The Order<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>is based on a true story, though the hardest part to swallow is that there was once a time when our country investigated white supremacists, rather than welcoming them into our government. Rest assured, though, it was mostly because the eponymous supremacist sect was a group of common criminals, robbing banks and armored trucks, bombing porno theaters, and printing counterfeit money, their crime spree running up and down the West Coast in the mid-1980s. Nicholas Hoult is their leader, Jude Law is the FBI agent on his tail, and Ty Sheridan is the deputy sheriff who tags along; all three are quite good, and Kurzel\u2019s direction is stylish but not overly imposing. And he thankfully doesn\u2019t push too hard to connect the dots to now\u2014although when we catch a glimpse of an illustration from The Turner Diaries<\/em> of bodies hanging from the gallows in front of the U.S. Capital, he doesn\u2019t really have to. Grade: A-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Daniel Minahan\u2019s adaptation of Shannon Pufahl\u2019s novel On Swift Horses<\/em><\/strong> has the lush, widescreen romanticism of studio pictures of its Eisenhower period, and Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi come off like old-fashioned movie stars of the era, sporting the same kind of jaw-dropping but lived in beauty that Natalie Wood and James Dean had in Rebel Without a Cause<\/em>. That resemblance doesn\u2019t seem accidental; it\u2019s of that film\u2019s ilk but it can say that things Kazan and company could not, explicitly telling a story of sexual fluidity and the secrets we all keep. There\u2019s a kind of simmering sensuality throughout, particularly in Edgar-Jones\u2019s work\u2014hers is a nicely layered performance, carefully revealing the fire under the cool surface. There are some pat scenes in the home stretch, but this is a strong effort overall, with a big-swing ending that connects beautifully. Grade: A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods\u2019s screenplay for Heretic<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>is as narratively efficient as you\u2019d expect from the writers of A Quiet Place<\/em>, hustling to the battle of wits and theological philosophies that sets things in motion, but with just enough character and relationship development to put us on solid ground as they go through that door. The filmmakers conform to the A24 house style without sacrificing a sense of pace or excitement; the picture moves like a shot, comes in as late as possible, and jumps out with similar brevity. It\u2019s a sturdy and effective thriller, and serves as further confirmation that Hugh Grant, playing grippingly against type, is still capable of surprising (and even shocking) his audience. Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embeth Davidtz directs, wrote the screenplay, and co-produces in the film adaptation of Don\u2019t Let\u2019s Go to the Dogs Tonight<\/em><\/strong>, Alexandra Fuller\u2019s memoir of growing up in the former Rhodesia, circa 1980, just before the election of Robert Mugabe. Davidtz\u2019s parents were South African, and this feels like a story told from the inside, filled with recollections more than observations. Davidtz also co-stars in the less-than-heroic role of the mother to the eight-year-old protagonist Bobo (Lexi Venter), wife of a pro-Apartheid mercenary; she sleeps with a machine gun by her side, a spark plug who slowly succumbs to madness and instability. \u201cShe says she\u2019ll fight for this farm with her bare hands,\u201d Bobo tells us, in voice-over narration, adding with a whisper, \u201cI believe her.\u201d Davidtz adopts the little girl\u2019s perspective and sticks with it, not only in the narration (which both sets the scene and shares her thoughts) but in the visual POV. By turns earthy, dreamy, and scary, this is an accomplished piece of work\u2014it feels like neither a debut or a crossover, but an entry snug in the middle of a long and distinguished filmography. Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Can music ruin a movie? This is the question posed by Conclave<\/em><\/strong>, the latest from director Edward Berger, who also helmed All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em> and unfortunately brings back that film\u2019s composer Volker Bertlemann for an even more bombastic and distracting score. The film it\u2019s slathered over is a pretty good one, with the ever-reliable Ralph Fiennes (seriously, does any contemporary actor do weary, impatient intelligence better?) as the cardinal overseeing the conclave to pick a new pope, and Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow as the front-runners. What begins as a tale of religious ritual becomes a white-knuckle political thriller, detailing the behind-the-scenes machinations and intrigue, but countless good scenes are absolutely smothered by Bertlemann\u2019s score, which starts at eleven, from scene one, and has nowhere to go but bigger, louder, and more obnoxious. It doesn\u2019t ultimately ruin <\/em>the movie, per se. But it certainly keeps a good film from being a great one. Grade: B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director Neo Sora (Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus<\/em>) makes his fiction feature debut with Happyend<\/em><\/strong>, \u201ca story about the near future\u201d <\/strong>in which every daily interaction is observed by an increasingly bold surveillance state. (So, more \u201cnear\u201d than \u201cfuture,\u201d really.) His protagonists are a group of disaffected, devil-may-care youth, a quintet of Tokyo high school students, and in its best moments, Happyend<\/em> tunes in to their high-strung energy. It frankly works best as an old-fashioned story of rebellious students taking on their petty tyrant principal, the kind of bureaucratic schmuck who responds to a prank on his goofy sportscar by asking, \u201cIs this terrorism?\u201d Sora works in a quietly hypnotic style, with a dry, borderline absurdist sense of visual humor, though the picture\u2019s hang-out vibe gets a little draggy in the home stretch\u2014I was ready for this one to end a little sooner than the director was, apparently. Grade: B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thom Zimny\u2019s Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>is basically a procedural, documenting the making and execution of the band\u2019s 2023 world tour\u2014their first in six years, thanks to that pesky global pandemic, which followed a planned (but briefer) hiatus. Zimny details it step by step, from set list creation to rehearsals to touring logistics, and if that sounds dull to you, a rock music fan, Road Diary<\/em> might not be for you. If, on the other hand, it sounds like the kind of micro-focused, logistics-laden documentary that you love, you\u2019re in for a treat. Zimny\u2019s primary interest here is in the various moving parts of putting \u201ca real rock show\u2019 together, which is not magic or showmanship but work, hard work; he wants to explore the emotional, intellectual, and physical labor of being a musician, within a group where some of these guys have been playing together for literally half a century. Zimny\u2019s proximity to the subject (with whom he\u2019s made several films) gives it the slight air of a puff piece, but fans\u2014of Springsteen, and of rock music in general\u2014will find much to chew on here. Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first report from the Toronto International Film Festival includes mini-reviews of “Nightbitch,” “On Swift Horses,” “Conclave,” and more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":24207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436],"class_list":["post-24203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24208,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24203\/revisions\/24208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}