There was much ado about some of the biggest festival favorites and premieres coming to the 50th Toronto International Film Festival, and no shortage of what to watch between the various categories. Among one of the heralded festival favorites to make its Canadian premiere was Chloé Zhao’s breathtaking adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet.” Rich in beauty and astounding performances, “Hamnet” is a stunning domestic drama set in the household of William Shakespeare, but with a twist: in this retelling of the Bard’s life, it is his wife who is the real subject of the movie. 

“Hamnet” follows the story of Agnes (Jessie Buckley), an independent spirit whose mother was closely tied with the land and before her early death, passed many of her remedies and practices to her daughter. She meets an unhappy tutor named William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and the pair begin a passionate affair that leads them to marriage. Their bliss is short-lived as William’s restless creative spirit cannot find peace in the countryside where Agnes finds home and comfort. She encourages him to go to London while she looks after the children, but over the years, the pair must endure the pangs of long distance love and the challenges of raising a family in the era. 

Zhao, who adapted the screen version of “Hamnet” with author O’Farrell, gives the story an enchanting visual style through cinematographer Lukasz Zal’s camera. So much of the movie is meticulously composed, colorful, and detailed, that it almost feels like a romantic fairytale. When the harsh reality of the historical period arrives, it darkens the fantasy, but does not destroy it, for Zhao and Buckley so wonderfully carry the audience through her character’s grief.

This is Buckley’s showcase, a chance to play many parts throughout her character’s life, from lovestruck young woman to a frustrated wife and heartbroken mother. The object of her affection, Mescal’s Shakespeare, falls for her untamed manners and theirs is a tender affair. Zhao captures their romantic intensity in aching closeups framed by the bucolic setting of the English countryside. Now winner of the festival’s People’s Choice Award, “Hamnet” will likely end up on many awards shortlists and year-end favorites. The only detrimental note was the choice of composer Max Richter’s heavily used score “On the Nature of Daylight” from “Arrival” and “Shutter Island.” It leaves this otherwise magnificent film on a false note. 

I had less lofty expectations for director Bobby Farrelly’s new film, “Driver’s Ed,” but ended up pleasantly surprised by its good-natured coming-of-age story about first love and a first road trip with friends. Writer Thomas Moffett and Farrelly make some use of his raunchy comedy hijinks, but the overall story at the center ends on a heartwarming note and a feel-good message about the painful changes that come with growing up. 

Jeremy (Sam Nivola), is a newly minted senior and an aspiring filmmaker wholly dedicated to Samantha (Lilah Pate), his girlfriend who has gone off to college ahead of him. After she stops talking to him for too long and drunkenly breaks up with him one night, Jeremy decides to visit her on campus to clear things up. Jeremy steals a car from driver’s ed full of his friends, including the romantic skeptic Evie (Sophia Telegadis), valedictorian Aparna (Mohana Krishnan), and a depressed-slacker-turned-drug dealer Yoshi (Aidan Laprete), in an effort to save his relationship, if only he can slip past his bumbling driver’s ed substitute teacher Mr. Rivers (Kumail Nanjiani), their poodle-obsessed principal (Molly Shannon), and a security guard (Tim Baltz ) tasked with bringing the kids back from their misadventure. 

Bobby Farrelly and his brother Peter cornered the ‘90s gross comedy market with movies like “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber,” and there are a few low hanging jokes sprinkled throughout the college scenes. But “Driver’s Ed” is more in line with Farrelly’s other recent movies, like the heartwarming sports underdog story “Champions” and the Jack Black-led “Dear Santa.” The beats of “Driver’s Ed” are perhaps a bit familiar and predictable, but they’re still effective thanks to the film’s cast. 

As Baz Luhrmann revealed with his 2022 movie, “Elvis,” the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is still a source of inspiration for him. Thanks to his research on that film, Luhrmann came across rare, never-before seen footage, and now, “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” is bringing the king’s own words and performance back to the spotlight. 

Using archival taped interviews and footage both familiar and never-before-seen, Luhrmann creates a montage of different parts of Elvis’ life, including his relationship with his mother, his time in the army and how it affected his career, his doubts about his time in Hollywood, to his tireless performances in Vegas. Luhrmann lays the soundtracks to Elivs’s life and with editor Jonathan Redmond, creates a visual story to encompass each song or interview, including touching tributes to Elvis’ time with Priscilla and Lisa Marie. 

The quality of the restored footage in “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” is truly dazzling (I did have one question as to whether what looked like an animated photo in the film used AI or not, but I really hope it’s not the case). It’s even better when Luhrmann stops adding too much extra business on top of an already busy screen, like red rhinestoned texts to stand in for headlines explaining what’s happening in Elvis’ life at that moment. These eventually fall by the wayside as he lets Elvis’ interviews tell the story in his own words. It’s also perhaps why some of the tougher parts of Elvis’ story is missing from the film, like some of the problems Priscilla shared from their relationship. As a music documentary, “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” lands somewhere in-between “Moonage Daydream” and the recently released “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” and it’s nonetheless a treat for just about every Elvis fan.

I’m always delighted when films across various sections of a film festival end up tackling the same ideas in different genres. There was a trio of basement-themed thrillers (“Good Boy,” “Bad Apples,” and, of course, “The Man in My Basement”) and no more than three films related to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (two of which starred Joe Alwyn). Exploring similar subject matter through different genres allows audiences to be impacted in various ways by the same idea. In this dispatch, films from Gala, Centrepiece, and Special Presentations all explored how our pasts, if not reckoned with properly, can return to haunt us in pugnacious ways.

Director Yaniv Raz’s “Eternal Return” wasn’t the only high-concept romance film exploring what happens to the love of our lives once they pass. However, it’s worth singling out as the only one that fully capitalizes on Naomi Scott’s singing abilities and her ability to infuse a soulful melancholy into any line delivery. This is an old school fantasy film that doesn’t try to reshape the conventions of the genre it’s a part of, and that isn’t afraid to get saccharine to tug at the heartstrings. That works mainly in its favor as it’s obvious that talent behind and in front of the camera understands why this genre can be so successful.

Scott stars as Cass, who’s reeling from the death of her partner and bandmate, Julian (Jay Lycurgo), who perished after a horrific plane crash. She’s mired in grief until a chance encounter with cartographer Virgil (Kit Harington) and his mentor, Malcolm (Simon Callow), gives her hope she might be reunited with her lover. Virgil and Malcolm are convinced that they can craft a map of emotional landmarks of a person’s life; once someone steps back into an old location that holds significance, portals can open that allow people to re-experience formative moments for them. It’s a literal take on the ways stepping back into a place of significance can seemingly transport us to another place, and as Cass embarks with the two men on their journey, Virgil wrestles with his blossoming feelings for her.

It doesn’t always make for exciting viewing, as the tropes this film will embody are evident well before we reach the final destination. However, if anything, narrative familiarity allows the character work to shine. It’s striking to see Harington play against type as an awkward and bookish map specialist. The charm is there, but his intensity is softened due to his quirky spirit, which makes for a great foil to Scott’s driven Cass. Callow also shines as a wingman to Virgil and brings a spirited “can-do” attitude that helps the audience buy into the believability of the gimmick the characters are chasing after. In contrast to Cass and Virgil, who are optimistic but cautious, Malcolm brings a palpable zeal.

At its core, the film reminds us that “moving on doesn’t have to mean forgetting” and that the past, while important to remember, is something to make peace with instead of trying to recapitulate its greatest hits in the present. There’s a strength to this core message, which makes the film’s diversions into some questionable plot twists by the film’s end or certain erratic characterizations feel as if Raz was trying to overcompensate for a standard narrative. He should have had more faith that sometimes, a familiar story well-executed with charming stars is all we need to come back home.

On a more serious note is James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” a film of prescient urgency and distinguished importance, but whose rote manner of delivery occasionally stifles its ambitions. Nonetheless, it’s an enlivening and compelling courtroom drama, filled with performers who imbue their proceedings with gravitas and skill. Sometimes the strength of a film warrants a straightforward approach to how it tells its story. Still, given that this isn’t the first film made about what transpired (Stanley Kramer’s 1961 film “Judgement at Nuremberg” also dramatized the trials, while Roger reviewed the documentary “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today”), it would have benefited from an approach that didn’t just try to preach to its audience.

To Vanderbilt’s credit, rather than fall into the temptation to make what’s happened more melodramatic than needed, he places viewers right into the heart of darkness, trusting his actors to deliver the needed gravitas. When the film opens, it’s 1945. Hitler is dead, and in a strategic victory, the Allied Forces have captured the highest-ranking Nazi official left alive, Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). While it would be far easier to simply hang Göring and the other imprisoned Nazi officials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon, in one of his best performances) wants to put Göring and his posse on trial. Jackson believes that by trying the Nazis on a global stage and framing their sentencing as a legal victory, it strips the glory that would come with an execution. In a moving monologue, Jackson articulates how, after Germany was forced to “crawl” following World War I, it provided the country with an opportunity to grow not only in strength but also in animosity. If they’re not beaten the right way, Jackson worries the world wouldn’t be able to beat them a “third time.”

As Jackson and his team, including the likes of lawyer David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E. Grant, ever reliable in any film he’s in)  prepare for the trial, the army has psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) speak with the prisoners before their trial to evaluate if they’re not only fit for trial, but also to get to the heart of Nazi psychology.

In this regard, the film is a series of conversations and debates, whether in sessions or as we witness various permutations of the film’s all-star cast debating each other (Kelley debates Göring, Jackson grills Göring on the stand, etc.). It’s a showstopping showcase for all involved. Crowe gives a towering, subtly frightening performance as Göring. He’s dangerously charming, humble, and suave, even while his egotistical nature is so baked in that he can’t imagine a possibility where he’s convicted and on trial. There’s also a seductive layer to his confidence, as if he’s beckoning all those cross-examining him to consider the appealing aspects of Nazi ideology.

Malek does serviceable work as Kelley, as the character is meant to act as a vessel to Göring’s sentiments. Kelley’s work is two-fold, as he hopes to write a book about his experience eventually. His naked ambition for fame clashes with the ethics of his vocation. He thinks he can dance with the devil because he has him on a leash, not realizing that he’s already been devoured by an adversary who’s thinking ten moves ahead.

During the titular trials, Vanderbilt opts to include real footage of the horrors of the concentration camps. We become, for a moment, just like those in the trial room as we witness photo after photo and video after video of the truly barbarous and inhumane extermination enacted by the Nazis. It’s the most uncomfortable part of the film and one of the most moving, and while I see its necessity, it’s one of the few times where such unvarnished brutality is too content with recapitulation. As Jackson says during the trial, “what happened cannot bear to be ignored because it cannot bear to be repeated.” Vanderbilt’s film ensures that we can’t ignore what happened, but what’s missing is space for reflection on how what we see has, in fact, already happened again and again. There’s an urgent, timely, and powerful message “Nuremberg” offers; I just wonder how many more it will convince through its stilted approach who aren’t already on Jackson’s side.

Then there’s “Carolina Caroline,” a romantic crime thriller whose unique blend of sexiness and tragedy sizzles off the screen. Of the three projects featuring Samara Weaving that have been released this year, this is by far the strongest, as director Adam Carter Rehmeier and writer Tom Dean finally gift her material that takes full advantage of her ability to shift between vulnerability and vigor at a moment’s notice. Throw in a scene partner like Kyle Gallner and a smooth-as-whiskey score from Christopher Bear, and it all makes “Carolina Caroline” a film that sucker punches you from its first frame.

When we meet the titular Caroline, she embodies the restlessness of feeling obligated to one’s hometown while desiring to escape it. While caring for her single father (Jon Gries), she finds her ticket to freedom in Kyle Gallner’s Oliver. The two strike up a romance as Oliver teaches her his criminal ways; as their love crescendos, so does the scale of their crimes.

“Carolina Caroline” is full of stick-ups, shoot-outs, and heists, but Dean’s script and Rehmeier’s direction give us characters we care about. At the emotional center of Caroline is her reeling with abandonment by her mother, and the film calls into question the health of her trying to fill that void through seeking violence and thrills. There’s a grainy, hand-held camera aesthetic as the film progresses, almost as if Oliver and Caroline are recording home videos of their crimes to pass on to family members later. We know watching that as much as Caroline and Oliver are riding high on their robberies, the crash has to come somehow, and there’s a skittish tension as we wait for their downfall to come.

Weaving dazzles in one particular sequence, where, after someone is killed, Caroline realizes the terrifying endgame of the life of crime she’s embarked on. She’s reached the point of no return, and that disillusionment is harrowing and disquieting. It’s these moments of character development amidst the spectacle that make “Carolina Caroline” a rip-roaring, tragic, joyride.

TIFF Midnight Madness has long been one of the most popular programs of any film festival, a launching pad for new talent as well as a pedestal for accomplished genre directors. Where else could you see both the Best Picture nominated “The Substance” and this year’s “F*ck My Son!”? The breakout of 2025’s MM section was undeniably Curry Barker’s “Obsession,” which sold to Focus shortly after its premiere for a stunning $15 million. But there were at least three other films in the program that had people talking outside of the Royal Alexandra, where raucous audiences celebrate left-of-center cinema that can only premiere after midnight.

My favorite of these three is the feature debut of TV legend Bryan Fuller, who brings the craft that fans of shows like “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal” to his playfully twisted “Dust Bunny,” a movie inspired by Roald Dahl, Jim Henson, and Jeunet & Caro in equal measure. Some questionable CGI aside, this is one of those films that trusts kids to handle honestly scary themes in how it twists the classic tale of “the monster under the bed” to something that should ring true for all generations. It really reminds me of a better time for family entertainment, a time in which people like Joe Dante and Jim Henson were allowed to legitimately frighten kids. Those are the movies that create future filmmakers, one who are inspired by works like “Gremlins” or “Labyrinth” to make their own fantastical adventures. Let’s hope it reaches them when it hits theaters this December.

In a gloriously dialogue-free prologue of sorts, we meet Aurora (Sophie Sloan), a girl with a monster under her bed. Her foster parents don’t believe her. Neither did the foster parents before them, the ones eaten by said dust bunny from Hell. After the new ones get gobbled up like carrots, Aurora goes to a neighbor in her apartment building—a wonderfully designed setting that exists somewhere between fantasy and reality a la J&C works like “Delicatessen” and “City of Lost Children.” The neighbor happens to be a hit man, and he happens to be played by Fuller’s Lecter, the singular Mads Mikkelsen. At first, he tries to talk Aurora out of her reality, convinced that whoever killed her foster parents were really after him or his handler (played by Sigourney Weaver). The monster could just be how a little girl interprets actual human-based violence. But what if it’s not?

Fuller is having a blast with “Dust Bunny,” never overplaying his themes, choosing to make pure entertainment, first and foremost. And it’s certainly that. Mikkelsen is his wonderfully deadpan self, balanced out by entertaining performances from the striking David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, who end up sucked into Aurora’s inexplicable predicament. Some of the monster CGI is questionable—there are some obvious puppet shots, and one wishes the whole thing was animatronic instead—but this is a movie that really builds momentum as you get on its playful, timeless wavelength. It’s a fairy tale for kids who know fairies are monsters too.

One of the most buzzed films of TIFF 2025 from any program was Kenji Tanigaki’s “The Furious,” a truly bonkers showcase of incredible stunt and fight choreography that drew comparisons to “The Raid” and “Night Comes for Us.” The dialogue is atrocious, the plotting is goofy, and no one will care because Tanigaki has conceived, choreographed, and executed some of the most impressive fight scenes in years. Employing the expertise of veterans from some of your favorite Asian action movies of all time, “The Furious” should be an action hit for the studio smart enough to release it. Someone should get on that fast.

“The Furious” is about two men who essentially take down a massive trafficking ring that they’re drawn into for personal reasons. The mute Wang Wei’s (Miao Xie) daughter is kidnapped by the cartel around the same time that Navin’s (Joe Taslim) journalist wife goes missing while investigating them. They become a dynamic duo of carnage in this “Taken Meets the Raid,” punching, kicking, stabbing, and slicing their way through waves of bad guys to a remarkably bloody climax. Familiar genre faces like Yayan Ruhian (“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum”) and Brian Le (a stunt performer in everything from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to “Bullet Train”) throw their entire bodies into sequences directed by the action designer behind films like “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” and “Raging Fire.”

The plotting of “The Furious” is just silly, and the dialogue sounds so poorly delivered at times that I first presumed it was dubbed, but none of that matters when this movie is in action mode. And it’s no exaggeration to say that roughly 3/4s of the film’s runtime consists of fighting. Not only is the action well-directed and choreographed—reminding one how great it is to see long, unbroken shots of ace stunt work—but the sound design deserves some flowers too. Every snap, crackle, and pop here sounds like it connects, often at the same time.

Finally, there’s the relatively inferior, especially compared to the ingenuity of the other two films in this dispatch, “Normal,” the latest in the surprisingly growing “Bob Odenkirk Kicks Ass” genre. The “Nobody” star is the best thing about this “Fargo Meets Hot Fuzz” riff, but it feels like an afterthought for the prolific Ben Wheatley, a genre director who works so often that he has another movie premiering at another film festival this month. I joked that he made “Normal” in a week, but it might be true. It’s basically a 45-minute set-up followed by a 45-minute action scene. Some of the latter is admittedly enjoyable and Odenkirk actually does differentiate this “normal guy turned killing machine” from his other “normal guy turned killing machine,” but it’s a movie that’s ultimately a tick too forgettable given the talent involved and even the relatively clever premise.

Working from a script by Derek Kolstad (who also penned the “Nobody” movies), “Normal” stars Odenkirk as Ulysses, the interim sheriff of a snow-covered small town. The other sheriff died of a heart attack. Or did he? Ulysses starts to realize that there’s something off about Normal from the slimy mayor (Henry Winkler) to the edgy woman (Lena Headey) he meets at a local watering hole.

When a pair of drifters tries to rob the bank, it sets a motion a series of events that leads to mass carnage. It turns out there’s something in the vault that no one in town wants stolen. And then the Yakuza get involved.

There are a lot of booms and bangs in “Normal,” but it’s all woefully underlit and much of it is poorly edited too. We know something explosive is happening, people die, rinse and repeat. Through it all, Odenkirk glides in his increasingly playful manner, an approach that conveys he knows this is all ridiculous, but he just wants you to have fun. You will for stretches of “Normal,” but not long enough to make it a town worth visiting.

Cultural specificity from a part of the world that too rarely gets spotlighted at international film festivals join the films in this dispatch, even if the trio feel so invigoratingly different. A docudrama, a thriller, and a social commentary that unfolds like a one-act play, these three works have little in common structurally even as they all remind of cultures that deserve more attention from critics and movie goers. Sadly, only one of them truly works, a surprising truth given that the other two were directed by filmmakers who have succeeded in similar waters before.

The best of the three is a movie that wasn’t on many radars before Venice but became a must-see at TIFF after it emotionally devastated Italian audiences. Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” was a breakthrough for the Tunisian filmmaker, earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. She uses her skills with non-fiction filmmaking to emotional effect with the crushing “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a recounting of the events of January 29, 2024, much of which played out on social media. The world listened as a six-year-old named Hind Rajab called into the Red Crescent rescue center in Gaza to report that her entire family had been murdered by Israeli soldiers. As she lay in her car on the bodies of her aunt, uncle, and four cousins, she begged for rescuers to come, turning into a symbol for the human cost of the unfolding genocide. Red Crescent responders were forced to wait until the region was clear enough to save Hind Rajab, their frustration growing with each cry of “Save me.”

Ben Hania makes the daring choice to use Hind Rajab’s actual voice recording in the film, never leaving the Red Crescent center. A significantly worse and more exploitative version of this film casts someone as Hind Rajab and shoots footage on the scene of the murders. By keeping the audience with performers playing the frazzled people on the other end of the line, she not only avoids any sort of arguments over interpretation, she puts us in the shoes of people who feel increasingly helpless against acts of horror.

She goes a step further, even including video footage of the responders overlaid on phones in key scenes. It’s a little hard to explain, but footage of people speaking to Hind Rajab that was recorded on smartphones will often be held up over the actor playing that person. Ben Hania’s camera “films” the actual footage being filmed with her performer blurred in the background. It’s a daring choice that furthers her efforts to include as much historical veracity as possible. So much of what’s going down in that region has been warped and interpreted. Ben Hania’s greatest accomplishment may be in how she diffuses any of that by artistically presenting this tragic event.

Questions will circle around the film’s release. How is “The Voice of Hind Rajab” better than a documentary on the same subject? Well, the truth is that people don’t see non-fiction films as much as they do historical recreations. And amplification of her voice is the clear goal here. Second, is it exploitation to use the voice of a murdered girl? Her mother clearly consented as footage of her is included, and much of the audio here was released before the film was in production, making it a use of available material more than anything else. I’m always a little conflicted when a tragedy involving a child is used in filmmaking, but I also believe that true action sometimes requires being confronted with visions of true horror instead of just reading or hearing about them. “The Voice of Hind Rajab” is the confrontation its victim deserves.

Far less effective is the deeply frustrating “Unidentified,” the latest thriller from Haifaa al-Mansour, who directed the wonderful “Wadja”. As specific and fascinating as that drama was in 2012, this film is depressingly flat and generic, a movie that never digs below the surface for the majority of its runtime before taking a hard right into a ridiculously unearned twist ending that makes the boredom that preceded it feel even more insulting.

Nawal (Mila Alzahrani) is a receptionist in Riyadh, someone who makes copies for her male counterparts and watches a fascinating video stream all the time, one that blends makeup tips and true crime stories. (I actually would have preferred just watching that for 100 minutes.) When a young woman with no identification on her body is found in the desert, Nawal gets sucked into the case, first investigating on her own before basically getting approval from the police chief to get to the bottom of it. The thinking is that Nawal can get closer to the girls who knew the victim, finding out things that her male superiors couldn’t or wouldn’t care to anyway. Feminist themes bubble under the surface of “Unidentified” but too few of them gain any traction through character work or even production design, making it all feel like talking points instead of writing that’s actually interested in humanity or gender bias.

A thriller that uses social issues as mere window dressing would be one thing but “Unidentified” becomes something far more insulting in its final scenes, turning everything that came before it on its head. Al Mansour has spent much of the last decade making TV thrillers like “The Sinner” and “City on Fire,” and I’m afraid it shows with this movie’s dull visual language and insincere plotting.

Another disappointment comes from the often-great Claire Denis, although “The Fence” has just enough going on to justify a look for completists of the filmmaker behind masterpieces like “Beau Travail,” “Trouble Every Day,” and “35 Shots of Rum.” In this case, she adapts Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play Black Battles with Dogs, and there’s a sense that something gets lost through the translation of French playwright’s impression of African culture being filtered through a French filmmaker and into characters played by Brits and Americans. The dialogue has a stunted rhythm that makes it sound more like theater, which is a perfectly fine choice but drains a piece that feels like it reaches for veracity into something more shapeless. Strong performances help give it a bit of form, but it doesn’t help that it also feels like a project with themes Denis has better explored in other projects.

Matt Dillon plays Horn, the supervisor of a fenced construction site in Africa who is confronted by a man on the other side who is demanding the body of his brother. A local villager, Alboury (Isaach De Bankolé) insists that the deceased is turned over immediately, even as Horn tries to talk his way out of doing so in every manner possible. He offers money, he promises to deliver the body tomorrow, etc. No, it has to happen now, even though this exchange will happen in front of Horn’s arriving wife Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce). Meanwhile, Tom Blyth’s co-worker Cal, who clearly knows a thing or two about the “accident,” prowls the grounds behind Horn, awaiting what feels like an inevitable reckoning.

“The Fence” is basically a four-character piece and the quartet given the roles are all effective. Dillon conveys rising inadequacy at the challenge placed in front of him while Blyth represents a different form of foreign invader, the one who sings Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” in his introduction without considering that he’s a fire-starter himself. These are both shallow, impotent men yet they are given power by virtue of money and control. The problem is that “The Fence” doesn’t have much more to offer after it lays bare its themes very early in the drama. It then mostly meanders to its conclusion, lacking urgency, tension, or momentum. It’s ultimately a curiosity in the legacy of a great director’s career more than a new link in her chain.

The Special Presentations description at TIFF is as laconic as it is cogent: “High-profile premieres and the world’s leading filmmakers.” The films in this dispatch boast star all-star casts and tell coming-of-age stories of a sort, but they’re really stories about people who have to accept parts of themselves they’d rather keep hidden, and begrudgingly accept ways community can help ground them while all else spirals out of control.

Chandler Levack’s “Mile End Kicks” is like a song that I liked–but didn’t love–upon first spin, but its melodies and lyrics grew on me to the point where I can’t help but recommend it. “How can someone who is a people-pleaser critique with integrity?” is a question at the heart of her Montreal-set film, and it all-too-relatably explores what happens when we conflate good performance in our work with our goodness as a person.

Levack has always had a knack for crafting characters you are simultaneously infuriated by but can’t help but find comfort in their foibles, and that’s who she’s crafted with Grace (Barbie Ferreira), a music journalist. Grace desires to write a book about the influence of Alanis Morissette (specifically the album Jagged Little Pill), but finds that, as is true when pursuing work as personal as journalism, life’s logistics disrupts our dreams as much as it reshapes them.

As Grace puts it about Montreal, exploring new sights and going to concerts as part of her book research, it’s evident she carries scars from her past place of employment run by her editor (Jay Baruche). Her old workplace constantly found ways to make her second-guess and doubt her work, and she wears that insecurity openly whenever she meets someone new.

The people who become Grace’s community are as colorful as they are underdeveloped, and while it can be hard to care about characters who seem to only have a couple of distinct personality traits, these archetypes serve as a way to further enrich Grace’s journey to accepting her self-worth. There’s her DJ roommate Madeline (Juliette Gariépy, showcasing her range as she plays some decidedly more cheery and decidedly less psychopathic than her character in “Red Rooms”) and two rival love interests: Chevy (Stanley Simmons) and Archie (Devon Bostick). Part of that cocktail of frustration and relatability that carries over so well in “Mile End Kicks” is the pain and understanding of seeing Grace fawn over guys who are not only less interesting than her but who fail to see her for the talent she has. Not that she needs their approval, but it’s evident that she’s someone who’s riddled with destabilizing insecurity, and that’s a narrative she’s inherited from her old place of employment and other men in her life.

I’ll admit I may have appreciated it more if I had a greater understanding of the music world Grace has such easy affection for; for the more cultured eye, they might have appreciated the references on auditory display. Yet I found even this sense of alienation not only an endorsement of Levack’s immersive script that’s imbued with such specificity, but an invitation to go on a journey with her and Grace to discover not only what makes the music compelling, but also to think of art that puts me in a comforted place. Perhaps that’s the greatest compliment I can give to a film like this: it’s far easier sometimes to dig ourselves into deeper holes to justify our self-loathing when in reality, transformation and renewal are just one song and one new undiscovered love away.

Continuing the through-line of embracing characters and their beautiful messes, director John Early’s “Maddie’s Secret” is a film that soars on the fuel of its open-hearted sincerity. In more immature hands, the film could be a stew of bad taste and grating bits, but Early and his team hold such palpable love for its central characters that it’s hard not to be beguiled; you’ll practically want to plunge your hands through the screen to hug everyone within.

Early plays the titular Maddie, a budding foodie who works as a dishwasher in a Los Angeles food content creation company. When a recipe of hers goes viral, she’s given a bigger platform to showcase her culinary skills. Yet what her best friend (Kate Berlant) and loving husband (Eric Rahill) don’t know is that Maddie wrestles with an eating disorder. It’s become almost a liturgical practice that at the genesis of stress, Maddie will voraciously consume a large amount of food, only to throw it up soon after. Her vocation gives her proximity not only to the thing she loves doing but also is a particularly sinister kind of enablement, one that makes it easy to hide. After a particularly life-threatening accident, Maddie agrees to go into rehabilitation, forcing her to confront the source of her pain.

It may be tempting to read Early’s playing of Maddie as a sort of trans commentary or a larger story about the fluidity of identity. I won’t discredit those readings, but I also find it fascinating that it’s thematic territory that Early himself never seems keen on exploring. Maddie can deceive those around her into thinking she’s okay when she knows she still has demons she’s trying to exorcise, and it’s refreshing to see Early play Maddie as fully-formed without needing to be defined by a particular identity. Early’s and Director of Photography Max Lakner’s shooting style is facetious, often employing crash zooms into the faces of characters when they’re mid-line delivery, which gives it a sitcom effect. At first, it read histrionic (and at times, inappropriate given the severity of the issue being explored), but I found myself viewing them as Early’s invitation for us to behold and cherish his characters in all their foibles and virtues, and to be that cloud of witnesses when Maddie herself is unable to.

It’s refreshing to see Early explore the topic of eating disorders, body image, and self-worth so nakedly on-screen. There’s nothing quite as lonely or terrifying as not feeling proud or at home in your own body, and “Maddie’s Secret” isn’t afraid to show the destructive consequences of someone who can’t accept the love of people around them. It’s moving the way that the film reframes self-love, not as an insular, feel-good mentality, but as an act of almost holy defiance. In a world where there’s often a direct correlation between how good you look and how well you’re treated, “Maddie’s Secret” challenges us that we don’t have to follow the world’s recipe for success; we’re capable and beloved well enough that we can freestyle on our own and still be whole.

The gap between a galvanizing question like “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and the monotony of one like “What do you do for work?” is a bridge we all have to cross from youth to adulthood. Thankfully, director Maude Apatow (last seen in front of the camera in “One of Them Days”) has made a film to help us walk across that divide in “Poetic License,” which reaffirms that it’s never too late for reinvention. It may be a tad overlong (few, if any of her father, Judd’s, films have been shorter than two hours, so perhaps fittingly, Maude is only following in her father’s footsteps), but it is heartwarmingly sincere and radiates with an enlivening warmth.

Quite simply, “Poetic License” celebrates the miracle of human connection; it revels in the way that three disparate people, with their own pursuits, dreams, and questions, can somehow find a way to form friendship across differences in age and disposition. The trio in question is Ari (Cooper Hoffman), Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman), and Liz (Leslie Mann). Best friends Ari and Sam are in a poetry class that Liz is auditing, and while they strike up a friendship, Ari and Sam, in their own ways, fall for Liz.

If the table sounds like it’s set for a raunchy, age gap sex comedy, that misdirect may very well be intentional. Apatow’s film is much more concerned about the ways we give up too easily on our dreams, how society, after a certain point in time, forces us onto our prescribed path, and the harrowing alienation of realizing that there’s no escape from living the wrong life. Liz recently moved to Ari and Sam’s college town due to her husband’s (Cliff Smith) acceptance of a teaching position; while Liz mourns the loss of home, her melancholy is doubled as she mentally prepares to part with her daughter (Nico Parker), who’s preparing to go to college. She’s recently lost her job as a therapist but hasn’t been able to tell her family; her blossoming desire for stability amidst the novelty rises to meet Ari and Sam’s feelings of anticipation for graduation.

This is also a film that’s steeped in the coziness of Autumn: Apatow and Cinematographer Jeffrey Waldron take special care to highlight the colorful sweaters, crunchy leaves, and the airy, transient headspace that often accompanies the fall months. It garners plenty of laughs from its trio and the situational misunderstanding that befalls them, yet I’ll remember it most for its moments of quiet triumph and humanity: the ways Liz delivers a poem that she and the boys co-wrote, the vociferous belly laughs the trio share, or even the awkward yet hard conversations they have when Liz catches on that Ari and Sam are interested in her. Maude Apatow has crafted a film for those who feel like life has crushed their ability to dream but who desire to recapture their wanderlust.

This year’s TIFF saw three star-studded films that wear their inspirations on their sleeves, grasping at something often just out of reach from their screenwriter’s favorite movies. One’s teacher vs. student cynicism echoes “Election”; another feels of a piece with Ruben Ostlund’s social satires like “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness”; while a third film could be called “Defending Your Spotless Mind.” All three will have their defenders. I’m a little more mixed on at least two of them.

The best of the bunch is Jonatan Etzler’s “Bad Apples,” a dark comedy that will have PTA groups howling in relatable laughter for whatever studio picks it up. The always-good-and-often-great Saoirse Ronan plays Maria, a single teacher at a fancy private school who has a child in her class that is making life intolerable. You know the kind. The little jerk is named Danny (Eddie Waller), and he lashes out literally all the time, whether he’s drawing on his desk or throwing a sneaker into the machine at a cider mill. Of course, Maria is restrained by red tape as to what she can possibly do about it, basically just asked to deal with it and keep teaching. Etzler’s most interesting idea is to reflect how much a kid like Danny sucks up all the oxygen in the room. He takes all of her attention, which means the kids who need an actual teacher don’t have one because she’s forced to play babysitter and warden instead.

One day, Maria catches Danny smashing cars with a crowbar in the parking lot, grabbing him and wrestling him to the ground. He gets injured, threatening to tell everyone that Maria attacked him. If she takes him to the hospital or home, she’ll probably lose her job. People always believe the kids, even the bad one. So what does she do? She shackles him to her basement floor. Her class thrives. Even Danny seems to accept his fate, being home-schooled by Maria. But when another kid proves to be just as (and maybe more) unsettling, Maria learns that not all apples look the same.

Ronan is expectedly wonderful here, playing the immediacy of Maria’s rash decisions with the amount of realism needed to ground this crazy story. And it’s not hard to see some social commentary here about how the loudest minority opinions drown out any actual conversation and growth. How far would you go to create a better society? What should we do with the true bad apples of this world, the ones who are allowing the good ones to go rotten from lack of care?

These are complex questions that Etzler flirts with more than commits to in the end. It’s obviously a script that kind of writes itself into a corner and Etzler seems to be afraid to get truly dark with the potential of his kidnapping concept. Still, this is a consistently engaging, funny film, one that should provoke conversations not just about the systemic problems in education but how they reflect everything around them. In a sense, we’re all still in elementary school, hoping our own Danny will just shut up.

David Freyne’s much-buzzed A24 title “Eternity” will remind people of “Defending Your Life” and “The Good Place” in how it cleverly imagines the afterlife (and there’s more than a bit of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” influence in how Freyne uses memories to chart the course of a relationship). Despite a strong start, and one excellent performance, “Eternity” too often seems reticent to really explore its ideas about love, gliding the surface of ideas instead of diving deep into some potentially rich romantic waters. Far too long (113 minutes), it’s also content to repeat too many of its best jokes instead of telling new ones. It’s not a horrible rom-com by any stretch, but the truth is that Charlie Kaufman, Albert Brooks, and Michael Schur are tough role models to emulate.

We meet Joan and Larry in old age on their way to a Gender Reveal party, noting that they’ve been together for 65 years. We also learn that Larry wasn’t Joan’s first love—that was Luke, who died in the Korean War. When Larry chokes on a pretzel, he ends up in a version of the afterlife that hasn’t appeared in any of our religious texts, followed by his cancer-stricken life partner a week later. Met by Afterlife Coordinators played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, he discovers that he’s at a sort of train station to eternity. It’s the stop where the recently deceased, who look like they did at their happiest—so Joan is now played by Elizabeth Olsen (easily the film’s MVP) and Larry by Miles Teller—choose where to spend forever. Want to go Mountain World and frolic on ski slopes and in log cabins? How about Beach World, which is pretty self-explanatory? Maybe No Men World appeals to you? It appeals to a lot of people.

Before Joan and Larry can make their choice, they discover that Luke (Callum Turner) has been waiting at this way station for 67 years for the love of his life. It’s an existential love triangle that asks if youthful passion or lifelong commitment matters more. Teller and Olsen imbue their characters with a bit of the old age cadence of their corporeal forms—some of the best bits involve just how excited Larry is to be able to do things like squat again—while Turner playfully embodies a guy who never really got to grow up. Would you go with the one that got away or the one that stuck around?

“Eternity” has a clever conceit, but that’s where too much of its ambition ends. There’s a secondary high concept—archives in which people can watch key moments from their life—that I found significantly more moving than the love triangle material, asking myself what memories would be acted out in those halls in my own afterlife. But, in the end, Freyne pulls back from too many of his best ideas, choosing playfulness over the messy philosophy that could have emerged from a true consideration of what we mean when we say we’d spend eternity with someone.

Another film that starts with promise but lets the air slowly leak out of its tires is the deeply frustrating “Sacrifice,” from “Athena” director Romain Gavras. Obviously inspired by Eat the Rich films like those of Ruben Ostlund, “Sacrifice” pokes fun at the hollow, performative behavior of celebrities who find a way to remind you they’re the center of the universe as they preach saving the planet. It’s a movie with a great cast and intriguing set-up that can’t figure at all what to do after its chaotic inciting incidents. It’s also a cynically shallow film that seems to suggest nothing matters, or maybe everything matters, or who cares? A film that pokes fun at shallow clickbait behavior needs to work harder than this one to not be shallow itself.

Chris Evans plays Mike Tyler, a movie star who lost his shit on the red carpet recently, going on a rant that ended with a flamethrower incident. He has finally emerged from the shadows to attend an A-list climate change event in Greece, hoping the moment can shake off the bad press, but he’s also the kind of guy whose ego remains deeply fragile. He’s worried more about his hair than anything else and decides to use the gathering for one of those obnoxious celebrity speeches that use a lot of words to say nothing, just annoying everyone in earshot.

The party also introduces us to a Musk-esque figure (we’re gonna see SO many of those in satires for years to come) named Braken (a sly Vincent Cassel) and his wife (Salma Hayek Pinault). Braken is developing a technology to mine energy from mollusks. Save the planet by wrecking the oceans. Seems plausible. The party also includes singer/dancers known as Mother Nature (Charli xcx) and Daughter Nature (Ambika Mod), doing a routine that feels like it may never end. Into this Met Gala-esque event drops a group of eco-terrorists led by Anya Taylor Joy. “Green Isis” takes Mike, Daughter Nature, and Braken hostage, planning to throw them into a bubbling volcano to really save the planet from destruction.

The first act of “Sacrifice” isn’t bad, setting the table for a full meal of celebrity satire that is simply never served. The movie meanders its way to a disappointing ending that seems to be the product of a writer who never figured out what he wanted to say about the environment or how shallowly its used by influencers and celebrities, only that it is.

Saturday nights on King Street are a big deal for the Toronto International Film Festival. That’s where and when the biggest premieres of the festival usually drop, and there was no bigger release this year than Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man,” the third film in the “Knives Out” series. If 2022’s “Glass Onion” was a big-energy lark, this one is its opposite, a thematically dense piece that discards Agatha Christie for Edgar Allen Poe and John Dickson Carr. It is a film so rich in ideas that it’s the rare whodunit that seems likely to play even better the second time when following the mystery can take a back seat to considering how Johnson has crafted one of his best screenplays. It’s a movie about faith vs. logic, the fake news era, and even the importance of storytelling. And in a deeply cynical time, it’s a flick that argues for hugs instead of fists, forgiveness instead of division, and it does so by embedding these rich ideas into a swirling mystery for the singular Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).

Don’t worry, there will be no spoilers here as how a “Knives Out” film unfolds is what brings its fans so much joy. I won’t even tell you who dies. But I will tell you who steals the movie. That’s the great Josh O’Connor as Reverend Jud Duplenticy, who calls himself in one of the film’s many hysterical lines, “Young, dumb, and full of Christ.” A fighter with a dark past, Jud is basically punished by the church after he punches a deacon, sent to a remote parish run by the aggressively righteous Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Wicks takes an angry approach to the pulpit, sadistically pushing his flock to such a degree that he strives to get at least one walkout for each sermon. Jud believes in acceptance; Jefferson believes in obeisance.

He gets that from a small group of people whom he has essentially brainwashed into submitting to his beliefs. There’s Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), who has been a key figure in the church for generations. There’s Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), an alcoholic doctor whose wife left him. There’s Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and her brother Cy (Daryl McCormack), who films everything for his political future, turning every experience into political capital. There’s the disabled cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), who has given Wicks a fortune for the promise of an impossible cure. Finally, there’s Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), a former hit sci-fi author who has become a paranoid nut. Thomas Haden Church plays the groundskeeper and Mila Kunis the investigating police chief.

Of course, Daniel Craig plays Benoit Blanc, who drops into the film with an intellectual approach to balance Jud’s faithful investigation. O’Connor and Craig make such a phenomenal pair, playfully moving through the mid-section of this film as they banter about faith vs. reason, and how the stories we tell each other and ourselves shape our reality, and not just the ones about Jesus. “Wake Up Dead Man” isn’t just a great mystery—in fact, the resolution of the whodunit might be the weakest of the three—but it’s a conversation starter about the power of mythology, and how certain parts of society use that for evil. Storytellers matter because stories are powerful. They can save lives. They can destroy lives.

More will be written about “Wake Up Dead Man” when it comes out around Thanksgiving, but a final quick note on Johnson’s excellent grip on craft here too. Steve Yedlin’s cinematography is sure to be underrated, turning the grounds of this church into a character by how he glides his camera around it, using a darker visual language than the sun-dappled last film. And Bob Ducsay’s editing gives the film essential momentum (even if it sometimes feels a tick too long at 140 minutes).

Rian Johnson pointed out in his introduction that he loves the mystery genre because of its pliability. He made a cozy mystery in the first film and a vacation one in the second. This time, he wants to take you to church. Amen.

Hikari’s “Rental Family” was the other big Saturday night premiere I hit in Toronto, and this Hirokazu Kore-eda fan (a clear inspiration here) was actively fighting this melodrama for most of the first half. It is a film that is unapologetically manipulative, using a dying old man and a fatherless child as its main emotional weapons. And yet the movie wore me down. Thinking about it more, I actually think its blatant sentimentality is thematically in tune with the plot. It’s a film about people who play emotional roles in the lives of others to produce some kind of catharsis. Based on a real business in Japan (also captured in Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC”), the rental family workers pretend to be things like a mourner at a funeral for a stranger or even a groom at a fake wedding. And you don’t do that half-heartedly. You do that with all the emotion you can muster, even if it’s fake.

Phillip Vandarploeug (Brendan Fraser) is a commercial actor living in Tokyo. He gets an assignment that brings him into the circle of a rental family company run by Shinji (Takehiro Hira), quickly becoming their token white guy. He gets two important gigs. In one, he plays the biological father of a girl named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), whose mother needs him for her daughter to get into an elite private school. Mia doesn’t know that Phillip isn’t really her dad. It’s an unsettling lie to tell a child, and Hikari and co-writer Stephen Blahut don’t really edge into the darkness of it, choosing instead to push us to like Phillip as much as possible. (And Fraser, as usual, is immensely likable.) Phillip also gets a job pretending to be a journalist for an old actor named Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), allowing him to be both a father figure and a son figure, dealing with his own repressed emotions while he helps others.

Despite how much I suspect people will love Fraser’s work here, I found “Rental Family” richer as it got away from its central character into the supporting players impacted by this entire affair. Mari Yamamoto is excellent as Aiko, someone embittered by the roles she’s had to play, especially when husbands hire her to play the other woman after getting caught (instead of revealing the actual mistress). Emoto takes a part that could have just been emotional damage and gives Kikuo grace and history. Hira is very good as a man who seems to ignore some of the darker aspects of his profession. His part hints at a more ambitious version of this story that really digs into how we can’t ask people to pretend to be someone else without bringing some of themselves into it too.

“Rental Family” may not be Kore-eda or even Herzog, but it wears its heart on its sleeve in a way that’s ultimately endearing. Sometimes even the most emotionally manipulative material can produce a response, bringing you through something fake to find what feels real to you.

Interesting leading men and women dominate this unusual dispatch, one that gathers films that have almost nothing in common on paper, itself a testament to the variety of styles one can find at a festival as broad-reaching as TIFF.

The best of the three is the intense, unforgiving “Wasteman,” another evidence exhibit in the case that David Jonsson is one of the most remarkable actors of his generation. From “Industry” to “Rye Lane” to “Alien: Romulus” to this searing performance, he’s become someone who you don’t want to miss, no matter the project. The film around him sometimes falters by telling a relatively simple tale, but that simplicity allows both Jonsson and co-star Tom Blyth to do a lot of character work within the confined space of this intense prison drama.

Director Cal McMau, working from a script by Hunter Andrews & Eoin Doran, opens his film with a tone-setting bit of violence as we see a prison beatdown through what looks like a phone recording from a fellow inmate. The guys who run the UK prison that this film will never leave don’t take kindly to being double-crossed and they brutally beat a man, ending the attack by slamming a TV on his head. This means Taylor (Jonsson) is going to need a new cellmate, who comes in the form of Dee (Blyth, having a hell of a year with “Plainclothes” from Sundance and Claire Denis’ “The Fence,” also at TIFF). Taylor has survived this lawless place by disappearing, quietly doing favors for the power players as he numbs himself with drugs. Dee threatens that reality at the precise wrong time as Taylor learns that he may get early parole, possibly even reconnecting with the son he’s never known. For the first time in years, maybe ever, Taylor allows himself to hope, and Jonsson is simply phenomenal at conveying the arc of a man who sees a glimmer of light after living for so long in darkness.

Blyth knows to play the extrovert to Jonsson’s introvert, going broad with his sociopathic character. Even as Dee befriends Taylor, even helping him connect with his son, Blyth sells the kind of guy who has no allies that he won’t sell out to further his interests. That “Wasteman” arrives at a place wherein Taylor’s new ally becomes his greatest hurdle to a normal life again is a bit predictable, but there’s a spark that the film gains from these two young performers that’s never extinguished.

Speaking of great performers, we don’t talk enough about how Lesley Manville is one of the best working actresses. Sure, she got an Oscar nomination for “Phantom Thread,” but she’s one of those performers that’s quite literally never bad, and quite often great, even in a small part such as in last year’s Apple TV+ drama “Disclaimer.” She is simply spectacular in Kasia Adamik’s “Winter of the Crow,” dragging us along on this Kafka-esque journey into the dark heart of a country in violent turmoil. This is an unusual film that’s sometimes frustrating in its storytelling—it really sags at the hour mark—but Manville holds it together until the stunning final shot, one that’s among my favorites of the year.

Manville plays Dr. Joan Andrews, a clinical psychologist who has been asked to present her controversial research to a group of students at the University of Warsaw in December 1981. Historians will know what a tumultuous time this was in the Eastern European country, and Andrews becomes caught up in a wave of martial law designed to quell the Solidarity movement. Before she knows it, and without her luggage, she’s stranded in a completely dark, freezing, isolated Warsaw. She finds herself allied with an activist named Alina (a very good Zofia Wichłacz) and a witness to a murder, one that she documents with her handy Polaroid camera. Suddenly, Dr. Andrews isn’t just on the run, she’s got something that could shape world history.

Working loosely from a short story by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Adamik has made a Polish noir, a film that recalls Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock in its telling of international intrigue and how an intrepid foreigner falls into it. Tomasz Naumiuk’s cinematography is so dark that it sometimes looks shot through gauze, but the approach works. You feel the cold in a place in which turning on a light could alert the authorities to your existence. I liked most of what “Winter of the Crow” was doing, despite that aforementioned lag, and then the wonderful Tom Burke (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) showed up for a truly memorable scene as a British ambassador and I was hooked for good.

I was never hooked on the frustratingly facile “Charlie Harper,” a movie that recalls last year’s TIFF premiere “We Live in Time” in its chronological gamesmanship in a genre (romantic drama) that doesn’t usually entertain it. While I felt that movie rose above its structure through the sheer power of its performers, I spoke to a number of people who hated the very construct of the film. Now I know how they feel. Although I’m not sure “Charlie Harper” would have worked any better told traditionally, either in structure or in non-fluctuating aspect ratios.

“I know how it started. I know how it ends. When I think about the middle, everything is scrambled,” says Harper (Emilia Jones, much better in HBO’s current “Task”). It’s only one of many lines in “Charlie Harper” that draws attention to itself in how it describes what you’re watching. There’s another about the power of nostalgia that gets said twice, just in case you missed it. Charlie (Nick Robinson) and Harper had a five-year relationship that included a move to New Orleans, her ascendance as a chef there, and his bout with alcoholism. All of it is superficial, manufactured highs and lows that highlight the strings of the screenwriter using these two performers as melodramatic puppets. It gets so drenched in pretension that the shifting aspect ratios for the different jumbled eras of their relationship just add to that overwritten and overdirected air.

Favorite songs, nights reading poetry, every conversation drenched in self-importance—too little of “Charlie Harper” actually feels as messy as human memory. The concept of a how capable we are of jumbling memories in the formative relationships of our lives—especially in our immature twenties—is a smart one, but the writing needed to work from character not from cliché, and even Jones, who’s always solid, gets lost in the cogs of this plot machine. She’ll move on and the debut filmmakers will certainly do so as well—there’s ambition here that I’m curious to see in a follow-up project—and everyone will look back on this film the way that Charlie and Harper do their relationship: a learning experience.

Cameron Bailey, the CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival (“TIFF”), announced that at its 50th edition, TIFF will present acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro with this year’s Ebert Director Award, as part of their TIFF Tribute Awards gala.

Del Toro, the Academy Award-winning director of films like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Nightmare Alley,” “Hellboy,” “Crimson Peak,” “The Devil’s Backbone,” and “The Shape of Water,” will be presented with the award (which recognizes filmmakers who have exemplified greatness) at the TIFF Tribute Awards gala, in Toronto, Sunday, September 7th at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.

The director will also premiere his latest film, “Frankenstein,” at the festival.

Chaz Ebert, Publisher of RogerEbert.com, said: “I am absolutely thrilled that Guillermo Del Toro will receive the Ebert Director Award at TIFF in acknowledgement of his excellence as a filmmaker. In his conversations with Roger, he confirmed that his films often explored the depths of the psyche, both of his own and of our collective fears and desires. His attention to cinematic detail is exemplary.”

Alongside del Toro, other Tribute Award recipients this year include Jodie Foster, who will receive the Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award for her pioneering work as a female filmmaker; Japanese writer-director Mitsuyo Miyazaki (aka Hikari) will receive the Emerging Talent Award, and South Korean star Lee Byung-hun (“Squid Game, “this year’s upcoming “No Other Choice”) will receive the Special Tribute Award. Brendan Fraser is returning as the Chair of the event.

Previous Ebert Director Award recipients include Martin Scorsese, Ava DuVernay, Agnes Varda, Wim Wenders, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh, Claire Denis, Taika Waititi, Chloé Zhao, Denis Villeneuve, and Sam Mendes.

TIFF will take place September 4th to September 14th, with its opening night film being the documentary “John Candy: I Like Me,” about the late comic actor.

Watch the teaser for the TIFF Tribute Awards below.