The 49th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival boasts the fest’s best lineup in years as it returns to the relative normalcy of life without a pandemic or Hollywood strikes to contend with.
The selections are so strong for the show, which runs Thursday to Sept. 15, the task of assembling a top 10 list is harder than ever. Please forgive me for overlooking any masterpieces.
I could have filled my list with movies imported from the Cannes Film Festival, which also had a really good year in 2024.
(Besides “Anora,” “Bird” and “The Substance” below, also check out “The Shrouds,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Rumours,” “Universal Language,” “All We Imagine as Light,” “Caught by the Tides,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and, if you want to see what all the fuss is about, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”)
Listed alphabetically, the films on my must-watch list are a combination of seen-it recommendations and hunches based on reputation and word-of-mouth:
1. Anora
Mikey Madison’s stellar title firecracker, Ani for short, is of course the main draw for Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner from Cannes 2024. Madison plays a Brooklyn sex worker who impulsively marries Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled son of a disapproving Russian oligarch (Aleksey Serebryakov), with results both serious and screwball. Adding zest to the nyet are the oligarch’s hapless enforcers: Vanya’s godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) who just wants to arrange a quickie divorce (fat chance); and his stumbling stooges Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), who are refreshingly unlike Russian thugs of cinema stereotype. “Anora” hits like a vodka shot downed in one gulp.
2. Babygirl
Nicole Kidman has never been one to shy away from realistic scenes of sex, nudity and violence if the work merits it. Witness her no-holds-barred performances in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and TV’s “Big Little Lies.” Kidman goes to artistic extremes again in this erotic drama from Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”), in which she plays a top-level executive and married woman who falls into an intense sexual and role-playing relationship with an intern (Harris Dickinson from “Triangle of Sadness”). It’s a provocative flip of the usual C-suite gender dynamics. Antonio Banderas plays the cheated-upon spouse, upping the emotional and carnal ante.
3. Bird
Nykiya Adams astounds as 12-year-old Bailey, the centre of every social hurricane, in this brilliantly barmy dramedy from Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”). Living in a no-hope neighbourhood in England’s North Kent region, Bailey is the dispirited daughter of Barry Keoghan’s man-child Bug, who plans to make it big in the illegal drug biz by harvesting psychedelic slime from his pet toad. Bailey’s problems have her in need of a divine assist and it’s duly supplied when Franz Rogowski’s avian character Bird drops in, just like the guardian angel who helped a troubled George Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Heartfelt and harrowing by turns, the film is vintage Arnold.
4. The Brutalist
A 12-minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival and comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson’s dystopian capitalist epic “There Will Be Blood” have me pumped to engage with Brady Corbet’s latest provocation. Adrien Brody stars as a Jewish Hungarian architect seeking to build a new life — and satisfy a ruthless tycoon’s design challenges — in post-Second World War Philadelphia. This film is so ambitious, it was filmed in high-res VistaVision (screening in 70 mm at TIFF) and it has a 215-minute run time (with a built-in intermission). Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn and Alessandro Nivola join actor-director Corbet’s deep dive into the dark side of the American Dream.
5. Conclave
Arriving at TIFF with raves from Telluride, this Vatican thriller is also in line for potential Oscar blessings, among them best picture, director and actor (Ralph Fiennes). The film from Edward Berger (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) is based on the rigorously researched novel of the same name from Robert Harris, who specializes in backstage intrigue. There’s plenty of that in the struggles of the Fiennes character, Cardinal Lawrence, who must navigate warring progressive and conservative forces as he summons his scarlet-hatted brethren to replace a recently departed pope. Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Lucian Msamati help round out an awards-beckoning cast.
6. Nightbitch
Fans of Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed first novel, about a frustrated suburban mom who believes she’s turning into a dog, are wondering if this film by Marielle Heller (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl”), world premiering at TIFF, will have as much bite as the book. Is Heller brave to enough to go there with a certain fur-raising scene? (You’ll know it when you see it.) Amy Adams plays the eponymous cur and Scoot McNairy is her easily distracted husband. If Adams can pull off the physical and emotional demands of her title role, a seventh Oscar nomination will be hers to chew on. And if she can’t, well, life’s a bitch.
7. Paying for It
Based on Chester Brown’s graphic novel of the same name, and on the real-life uncoupling of Brown and filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee, this sexually charged dramedy explores the complicated aftermath of a relationship meltdown. Emily Lê (“Riceboy Sleeps”) portrays Sonny, a television VJ who wants to date other men, while Dan Beirne (“The Twentieth Century”) stars as her ex-lover Chester, an introverted cartoonist who opts to hire sex workers. Set near the end of the 1990s in Toronto’s Kensington Market, the film blends freewheeling love with documentary-style storytelling, asking what it means to be not only a couple but a family in the modern world. Bonus: a really cute pet dog named Mo.
8. Saturday Night
This could qualify as the most stealthy of Canadian stories at TIFF ’24, even though it’s an American movie. In telling the believe-it-or-not tale of the wild Oct. 11, 1975 launch of groundbreaking TV comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” Montreal-born Jason Reitman (“Juno”) focuses on the perspective of Toronto-born Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and producer. Michaels, natch, is played by a Canadian, the Vancouver-born Gabriel LaBelle. The film won huzzahs at its Telluride premiere, for these canny Canucks and for the rest of a very funny cast that also includes Finn Wolfhard, Willem Dafoe, Ella Hunt, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris and J.K. Simmons.
9. The Substance
This year’s Midnight Madness opener also doubles as a potential Oscars contender, with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley both in line for golden attention as two sides of a contentious body. In Coralie Fargeat’s chilling tale for the Ozempic era, Moore plays an aging star battling corporate chauvinism — Dennis Quaid supplies the oinks — who uses a mysterious new drug to birth a younger clone (Qualley). The two women must adhere to a strict body-sharing regimen, leading to unforeseen — and extreme — complications as each vies for corporeal control. A screenplay winner at Cannes ’24, the film tramples boundaries while making a grotesque commentary on Hollywood’s youth obsession.
10. The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal
The Tragically Hip are truly Canada’s band. Who else could rock so hard to songs about Tom Thomson, Millhaven Penitentiary escapees and hockey heroes? If not for a last-minute name change, music legends Gord Downie, Rob Baker, Gord Sinclair, Johnny Fay and Paul Langlois might have collectively debuted in their Kingston, Ont., hometown under the name the Bedspring Symphony Orchestra. That’s one of many revelations in this affectionate four-part doc by Mike Downie, brother of late frontman Gord, who tracks the group’s evolution from childhood pals to national institution. Gord’s tragic 2017 passing anchors the series, but the mood is otherwise celebratory, with first-person testimonials from Hip members past and present, and from ardent fans ranging from Dan Aykroyd to Justin Trudeau.
