With Toronto International Film Festival 2024 starting next week, we thought we would give you Kurt's Top 5 Most-Anticipated Films this year at the festival.
#TIFF24 starts Thursday, Sept 5, and runs till Sunday, September 15th!
Visit tiff.net/films?schedule to view the full schedule and tiff.net/films to see the full list of films.
Featuring startling performances from Jude Law (Vox Lux, TIFF ʼ18; Dom Hemingway, TIFF ʼ13) , Tye Sheridan (The Forger, TIFF ’14), and Nicholas Hoult (TIFF ’22’s The Menu), this riveting historical thriller from director Justin Kurzel (Nitram) and screenwriter Zach Baylin (King Richard) recreates one of the largest manhunts in FBI history. Based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction bestseller The Silent Brotherhood, The Order depicts a domestic terrorist group determined to promote their racist ideology — and the lawmen who will go to any lengths to stop them.
The year is 1983. A series of bank robberies and car heists plague the Pacific Northwest. Believing these crimes to be connected to a white supremacist organization, FBI Agent Huss (Law) undertakes an investigation with the aid of an eager young small-town deputy (Sheridan). Their search leads them to Robert Jay Mathews (Hoult), a charismatic cult leader recruiting a small army to raise funds for an armed revolution. As their paths bring them into ever-closer proximity, Huss and Mathews’ powerful convictions will ensure only one of them will emerge from their inevitable confrontation.
Distinguished by gorgeous pastoral landscapes and a brooding score, The Order cultivates an atmosphere of dread and intrigue. But the film’s greatest asset lies in its main character, a veteran agent whose obsessiveness is fuelled by alcohol and estrangement from his family. Law (also at the Festival with Eden) has never been more unnervingly compelling. At the heart of his performance lies a fascination with a persistent darkness hiding in our culture — one that threatens to consume those dedicated to dragging it out of the shadows.
It looks like a sports movie, but this intensely visceral drama from director Sean Ellis (Metro Manila; Cashback, TIFF ’06) digs deep into the ways we punish the body to relieve a soul in torment. Featuring powerful performances from Orlando Bloom, John Turturro, and Caitríona Balfe (TIFF ’21 People’s Choice Award winner for Belfast), The Cut follows a retired fighter obsessed with getting back in the ring, even if it costs him his life.
The protagonist (Bloom) is known only as The Boxer. And boxing is virtually all he lives for. Ten years ago, a nasty cut took The Boxer out of commission. Ever since, he and his wife and trainer Caitlin (Balfe) have run a successful gym. It should be enough, but when another boxer unexpectedly dies before a title fight, The Boxer puts himself forward as a replacement and the event’s shady promotor decides to make him the new contender — everyone loves a comeback. The only problem is that, to qualify, The Boxer needs to drop a precipitous number of pounds in just six days. Enter Boz (Turturro), a brash trainer infamous for using every possible technique, legal or not.
Many scenes are brutal, yet you cannot look away. Written by Justin Bull and Mark Lane, The Cut is about wounds that will not heal. The harder The Boxer trains, the more painful childhood memories come surging back to haunt him. At the centre of the maelstrom is Bloom, whose dedication to embodying his character’s desperate, ultimately hallucinatory campaign is simply staggering.
Sean Baker’s latest casts Mikey Madison as a sex worker named Anora, or Ani as she prefers to be called. She may live in a shabby Brooklyn apartment above the rattle of the subway, but every night, Ani glams up and puts on a flirty smile for the men at a local club.
Between myriad lap dances, Ani finds herself talking to Vanya, a young Russian boy who joyfully throws around his parents’ money. His innocence charms Ani, and the two fall into a comfortable rhythm. She shows him a good time, and he opens the door to a charmed life she could only have imagined. They begin a whirlwind romance that’s soon threatened by Vanya's powerful family. Ani finds herself gripping onto a fantasy by her long pink fingernails.
From quick-cut montages to anxious extended sequences, Anora showcases a filmmaker in brilliant command of his craft, expertly upholding a tragicomical tone for a story that keeps us on the edge of our seat.
Painting the air blue with her profanity, Madison is unflinching, delivering an unforgettably charismatic performance. It’s another stalwart actor-director partnership for Baker, who builds on his work in Tangerine, The Florida Project (TIFF ’17), and Red Rocket for his most propulsive film yet, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Steven Soderbergh approaches every category of movie with playful rigour and an encyclopedic knowledge of film, but the prolific Academy Award–winning director’s take on horror may be his most wondrous feat of genre reinvention yet. Written by superstar screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park), Presence shakes the ghost story to life by embracing death. Told from the point of view of a housebound spirit, the film makes a spectre of the spectator, granting us singular access to a family passing through troubled times.
Following a hypnotic prologue in which the camera glides weightlessly through an unfurnished house, we are introduced to a realtor (Julia Fox) showing the premises to married couple Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their kids, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). The family moves in, but their occupancy fails to infuse the home with warmth. Rather, a litany of problems are revealed: Rebekah is in trouble at work, Chloe is grieving a friend who recently died of an overdose, and Tyler’s buddy Ryan (West Mulholland) becomes a fixture in the household, though his influence on Chloe proves fraught. All the while, the ghost bears witness and strategizes methods of hair-raising intervention, prompting Chris to summon a spiritualist.
An air of melancholy permeates Presence, while its innovative narrative style generates a steady thrum of anxiety and tension. With its floating, voyeuristic viewpoint recalling such classics as Robert Wise’s The Haunting, the film pivots between the familiar and the startlingly new, mirroring the feeling of living in the present while the past comes back to haunt you.
Life pushes some to seek security, others to surrender to chance. This gorgeous adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel from director Daniel Minahan and screenwriter Bryce Kass extends sympathy to both sensibilities, even when the former can be stifling and the latter can break your heart.
It’s the 1950s. Newlyweds Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Will Poulter) leave their Kansas home for a new life in San Diego, with steady jobs and a house they can start a family in. Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi, also at the Festival in Oh, Canada), meanwhile, returns from the Korean War without any long-term plans. A deft hand at poker, he winds up in Las Vegas, where he does pit surveillance at a casino and befriends Henry (Diego Calva, TIFF ’15’s Te prometo anarquía), a handsome Chicano who, like Julius, loves a good gamble. All this time, Muriel and Julius correspond, though neither realize how much they have in common. Bored with waiting tables, Muriel secretly begins playing the horses — and winning. What’s more, Muriel and Julius find themselves on parallel journeys involving clandestine transgressions that could place them in greater danger than either bargained for.
Shot by Canadian maestro Luc Montpellier (TIFF ’22’s Women Talking), On Swift Horses finds rapturous beauty in the décor and accoutrements of the era. Yet what lingers most is the power of its characters’ yearnings, whether secret or boldly declared. This is a story about risking everything for love, only to gain self-knowledge along the way.
(Poster/Photo/Video credit: TIFF 2024)
Comments