r/movies is covering the Toronto International Film Festival this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the fest. Included in our coverage will be AMAs/Q&As, junkets, mod reviews/summaries, and community reviews. This post will cover the first of the fest. For information about TIFF, please visit tiff.net.

TIFF AMAs/Q&As:

• Tuesday 9/2 – Curry Barker, Director of Obsession
• Wednesday 9/3 – Sean Ellis, Director of The Cut
• Thursday 9/4 – Chandler Levack, Director of Mile End Kicks

Upcoming Coverage:

• Wednesday 9/10 – In-Person Junket Interview with Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, LaKeith Stanfield, and Derek Cianfrance of Roofman
• Wednesday 9/14 – Shasha Nakhai, Rich Williamson, Co-Directors of Bots & Scarborough
• Tuesday 9/30 – Nadia Latif, Director of The Man In My Basement

Mod Reviews/Summaries:

• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

  An anxious fever dream of motherhood stress. Watch Rose Byrne lose it in real time as the camera focuses almost solely on her face and incredible performance. Conan O’Brian and A$AP Rocky fill out this cast of oddballs, but they feel right at home in this surreal and experiential film.

• Nouvelle Vague

  Richard Linklater gives credit to the birth of the French New Wave in this biopic about Jean Luc-Godard making the timeless classic Breathless. Not at all a brooding biopic, this feels more like a heist film as Godard and his ragtag crew, including a magnetic performance from Zoey Dutch as Jean Seberg, attempt to reinvent the rules of cinema in twenty days of shooting. You can see how this story inspires Linklater to do his thing and feel his love for this moment in cinema bursting off the screen.

• Eleanor the Great

  Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut sees June Squibb as a woman mourning the death of her lifelong friend and roommate and looking to start fresh in Manhattan at the age of 94 after she moves in with her daughter. This is an emotions-on-the-sleeve movie and the plot will leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, but the end goal is to encourage us all to talk about grief more openly.

• Mile End Kicks

  An extremely Canadian autobiographical film the director, Chandler Levack, wrote about her time writing as a music critic in her early 20’s. Barbie Fereirra stars in a boy crazy summer, a book deadline, and the many mistakes you will make on the way to finding out what you really want, this movie has all those feelings and more in a movie that falls somewhere between Almost Famous and Superbad.

• Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie

  If you’re not familiar with this web series/show then don’t fear, it just means you have the amount of context I did going on. And rest assured, this is still a hilarious and surprisingly well-executed journey through time and friendship. This is a reality movie, much like Borat, but there are concepts and filmmaking techniques in play that will legitimately make you scratch your head and wonder how the hell they pulled this off.

• No Other Choice

  Park Chan-Wook’s new masterpiece comes in the form of a Donald E. Westlake novel adaptation about a man forced to take extremely darkly comical steps to ensure his future in his dying industry. With classic Park wit and violence, this movie is never predictable and will put a cynical smirk on your face.

• Sentimental Value

  One of the hottest tickets of the week, Sentimental Value is the new film from Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier. It’s a steady but fascinating film about an absent father/famous Norwegian director, played by Stellan Skarsgaard, attempting to reconnect with his actress daughter, Renate Renseive, by writing a film for her and casting her in the main role. When she refuses, he sparks a friendship with a young American actress played by Elle Fanning and casts her in the role instead. This movie has an endless mirror quality to it with plenty of meta to go around as you watch Stellan try and form someone else into the daughter he so badly wants to make amends with, and as you watch her get jealous of the olive branch she denied going to someone else.

• The Lost Bus

  Paul Greengrass is back with the true story of Kevin McLeod, a California bus driver who drove towards the Camp Wildfire of 2018 in order to save a classroom of children. Matthew McConaughey and America Farerra star in this thrilling disaster film.

• Christy

  Sydney Sweeney takes on the role of famous women’s boxer Christy Martin who spent years married to her manager/trainer denying her queer identity and being mentally and physically abused. Sweeney impresses and Ben Foster is unrecognizable in this disturbing but freeing sports biopic.

• Bad Apples

  Saorsie Ronan stars as a middle school teacher in a small community in Ireland who is at her wits end with a troubled boy in her class. As he continues to disrupt other students ability to learn and lashes out violently during school she accidentally does something extremely illegal to put a stop to it. This is a cynical film that was getting a lot of dark laughs from our crowd and is sold on some great performances from Saorsie and the kids at the center.

• Roofman

  The wild true story of Jeffrey Manchester, played by Channing Tatum, who robbed 40+ McDonald’s restaurants in the early 2000s by breaking in through the roof and holding up the opening workers. The movie takes place after his escape from prison when he spends several months hiding out in a Toys ‘R’ Us and falling for a local woman played by Kirsten Dunst. This has a great ensemble cast and Derek Cianfrance has no problem finding the human side of this bizarre true crime story.

• 100 Sunset

  In a Tibetan apartment building where everyone knows everyone, a teenager with a penchant for stealing befriends the young trophy wife of a new and mysterious resident. Half found footage film, half Sofia Coppola teen longing, all indie filmmaking.

• Dead Man’s Wire

  Gus Van Sant tackles the true story of a kidnapping that took place in Indianapolis in 1977 in which a men rigged a shotgun around the neck of a corporate executive at his mortgage lending company and took him home in a days-long standoff with the police. Played incredibly with humor and gravity by Bill Skarsgaard, he speaks through a local radio DJ played by Colman Domingo and becomes a voice for all the people who have been taken advantage of by rich money-lenders.

• Sound of Falling

  German arthouse at its most intriguing, Sound of Falling tells the story of four generations of daughters and mothers living on the same farm in Germany. Somewhere between Tarkovsky’s Mirror and Nickel Boys, this movie weaves in and out of timelines and between characters as if the camera is a ghost out of time who sees the rhyming nature of all these lives but is privy to little context.

• Hedda

  A new film from Candyman director Nia DaCosta, Hedda is a reimagining of the classic stage play Hedda Gerbler about a woman scheming and manipulating her way into continued riches even if it keeps her trapped in a society marriage. Tessa Thompson plays this Hedda with heavy tones of queerness and sexual charge as well as a wily unpredictability and Nia feels right at home directing a project that is truly hers.

Community Reviews:

• I really enjoyed Eleanor the Great. I laughed and then cried. It was very moving and great performances, especially by June. The audience gave it a standing ovation tonight. – u/Wonderful__
• Dead Man’s Wire – just brilliant, the tension was there throughout while still managing to have so much humour. bill skarsgard is amazing in this role (a little bummed that he couldn’t be there for the premiere), might be my favourite film from the festival so far!! – u/residentofhell
• No Other Choice – 9.5/10. My top film of the festival so far. Its critique of capitalism isn’t groundbreaking, but the film is much more than that. What it has to say about individual moral choices people make in such a system is where it shines. Wonderful characters. Expert use of symbolism. As expected with Park, visually stunning. – u/BenefitIndependent88
• The Last Viking: No expectations going in and it’s a MUST SEEEEE. I laughed. I cried. Fantastic and lovable characters. This deserves the people’s choice awarddd. 4.5/5 – u/Maester_Hodor
• Blue Moon – Small and intimate character study. The script is a standout with its remarkably smooth flow and witty, but not excessive, jokes. I did not however enjoy the color grading looking like a whiskey commercial and the cold open scene, which I found jarring compared to the rest of the film. – /u/cleric_of_deneir
• Hey, ah, where can I find the Sirāt support group? Because Jesus Christ. – /u/johnlukegoddard
• Roofman – 4/5, just a fun ride all around. Blends a mix of action, comedy, and drama. Channing Tatum is charismatic, as always, but this is the most serious role I’ve seen him in! Also appreciated that the director came to introduce this for the regular screening. – /u/CinemaBud
• Only five star film I have seen so far is THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB and it’s not because of my political leaning, it is a smartly made recreation that locks you in and emotionally devastates you. After that I probably enjoyed DEAD MAN’s WIRE the most, Van Sant doing his riff on Fargo. 4/5. – /u/MikeRotzzz
• Eternity – probably around an 8/10. I really liked this one a lot. It's been my favourite so far. It was really funny, I love the kind of humour the dialogue had and it was a fun environment to be in. Gets you thinking about death and what you would do if there was an afterlife. My friend and I were discussing after what kind of eternity we would choose. Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early were fantastic together. They were so hilarious. We had Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner (man, he is so handsome), John Early, and director David Freyne for the intro and then John, Elizabeth, and the director for a Q&A, which was a nice surprise. I guess Miles and Callum couldn't stay. I'm pretty sure this is going to be near the top of my festival rankings when I'm done and will probably be on favourites of the year list. – /u/mistakes_were_made24
• Hamnet: 5/5 (actually 10/5): I knew the reviews were good going into this but I was not expecting this good a film. Poignant and heartbreaking in equal amounts, this has to be a front runner for the Oscar’s at this point. Especially for Best Actress, cause holy shit, Jessie Buckley’s performance. – /u/BreadfruitWorth
• Sacrifice – 2/10. Has a couple funny moments and themes perhaps provide something to chew on. But satire is hard these days and this didn’t get over that hurdle for me. Characters aren’t grounded in reality and the filmmaking seems like it was done by someone who mostly makes music videos. Maybe this just wasn’t for me, but it really really wasn’t for me. – /u/BenefitIndependent88
• The Furious: – 9/10 – OMG an action film has never left me breathless. To be clear, there is very little story. A mute father goes to save his daughter after she’s abducted on the streets of “somewhere in SE asia”. But honestly who cares. Wall to wall dances of insane fight scenes that are hard to believe anyone could pull off. A+ midnight madness programming. – /u/Lolakery
• Frankenstein- 4/5 stars. Solid film; you'll be guaranteed to be entertained at the cinema, though it's not the type of film that sticks with your soul after you leave. There's quite a few changes from the novel but I thought it captures the spirit of the story well, and I think they were necessary to keep the film under 5 hours lol- it already feels quite bloated as it is (the first half especially drags a bit). As expected, the vibes are immaculate- set, costumes, shots are all beautiful and it really manages to capture the gothic vibes of the story. Oscar Issac & and Jacob elordi were terrific, but I found Mia Goth distracting during her scenes because she kept doing this head nodding thing whenever she had a line. All in all it's a good movie. – /u/evil-poatotes