TIFF 2024 Report, Part 2

Eleven more thumbnail reviews from the fall movie season's bellwether film festival. "Megalopolis," "The Brutalist," a new Almodovar and Guadagnino, and more.

“The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – The best under-the-radar movie I saw at TIFF – hell, it was a bogey flying in so close to the ground that most of my critical colleagues didn’t know it existed. Directed by The Agbajowo Collective, a coalition of Nigerian slum activist-residents with a bit of outside filmmaking help, this live-action fable lands in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” territory, with Temi-Ami Williams playing a single mother whose waterfront community is bulldozed by corrupt bureaucrats to build a casino. How she becomes the “queen” of the title is phantasmagoric and inspiring, and the entire film is a tribute to the power of cinema as a social weapon. Five of the collective members were present at the screening; their thrill at telling their story and having it seen did this jaded festivalgoer’s heart good. (Seeking distribution.)

“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – Confession: I'm a fair-weather Bruce fan who thinks “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Nebraska” are masterpieces, didn’t listen to much after “Born in the USA,” and has never seen The Boss in concert. (I know, what’s wrong with me?) That said, this backstage documentary commemorating Springsteen’s most recent tour and his band’s 50-year history is wholly engrossing as a portrait of old friends wrangling with the conundrum of playing into their dotage. The old Pete Townshend question made manifest. The concert sequences kick ass, the archival stuff is wonderful, and the sense that the end of the road is hoving into sight at last is palpable. The man himself looks like the world’s sexiest pipe fitter at this point, but when he speaks, it’s with a wistful authority that never loses sight of the masters of the music he loves. (Also, I was sitting seven rows behind Bruce and got to look at the back of his neck throughout the screening, so that was cool.) (Streaming on Hulu starting October 25.)

 “Bring Them Down” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – A grim Irish story of feuding and revenge – no, it’s not “The Banshees of Inisherin II.” Screenwriter-turned-writer/director Christopher Andrews sets his story in a rural modern-day Ireland that feels a half-step removed from the Viking era, among sheep farmers who nurse grudges until they become medieval epics of retribution. Starring Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, the latter as an inverse of his foul-mouthed holy innocent in “Banshees.” Brutal, dynamic, raw, with intimations of Shakespearean tragedy that Andrews keeps on a leash. Warning: No animals were harmed during the making of this film, but you could have fooled me. (Theatrical release TBA.)

“The Room Next Door” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – Pedro Almodovar continues a remarkable autumnal career streak with his first English-language feature, a duet between Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as a writer and her terminally ill war-journalist friend, the latter imploring the former to help her in ending her life. It’s a lot of talk, but the emotions are so distilled, the performances so precisely felt and the filmmaking so hair-raisingly assured that I found myself forgetting to breathe for long spells. If “Pain and Glory” was Almodovar’s meditation on aging and the struggle to create, “The Room Next Door” is the 74-year-old filmmaker contemplating death through the filters and feeling of his art. With a penultimate shot I’ll be carrying to my own grave. (In theaters December 20.)

“I’m Still Here” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – A tough, heartbreaking drama of the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s, about the disappearance of politician and civil engineer Rubens Pavia (Selton Mello) and the desperate attempts by his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and children to find him. Because of the warmth of its family scenes, its portrait of a middle-class Brazilian clan in the Tropicália era, and a filmmaker’s personal connection – director Walter Salles (“Central Station”) was a close friend of the Paiva family as a teenager – many in TIFF are making comparisons to Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 “Roma.” The two are separate animals, obviously, and “I’m Still Here” is most notable as a portrayal of a wife and mother coming into her own as a political force. It’s ultimately Torres’ movie, in other words, and she is magnificent. (Theatrical release TBA.)

“Megalopolis” (⭐ ⭐) – Oh, how I wanted to love Francis Ford Coppola’s grand folly, a wine-financed epic of ancient Rome in the modern age and a New York story lorded over by a Caesar (Adam Driver) who’s half Robert Moses and half Archangel Gabriel. How I marveled at the cast of thousands, the glittering CGI backdrops, the Pynchonesque character names (Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum! Jon Voight as Hamilton Crassus III! Grace VanderWaal as a virginal Taylor-Swift-alike singer named Vesta Sweetwater!) – the sheer, nutty chutzpah of the thing. But it’s a mess – an impressive mess, but a mess. Coppola knows how to make a movie but he's forgotten how to structure a scene, and too much of “Megalopolis” consists of talented actors spritzing improvisationally at each other on gargantuan sets, milling about and bumping into things. It’s a packed subway car of a movie, reminiscent of another of the director’s fiascos of love, “One From the Heart” (1981), but with that film’s glories dimmed and its problems cubed. I’m delighted that Coppola made the movie he wanted, but, sadly, it’s not the one we need. (In theaters September 27.)

“Emilia Pérez” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – Just your basic Mexican transexual drug cartel musical.

Oh, you need more? It’s directed by France’s Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet”), stars America’s Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, Spain’s Karla Sofía Gascón, and Mexico’s Adriana Paz – all of whom shared the best actress prize at Cannes – and has a plot I can’t and don’t want to spoil. And, yes, the characters burst into song and dance in courtrooms, barrios, Swiss mansions, and desert fortresses, in musical numbers written by French singer Camille. It’s nuts, it works, it’s a Barbara Stanwyck melodrama reworked as a Busby Berkeley telenovela, and at the end of the day I don’t think it signifies as much as it may want to. But it’s an audacious tale well told, and you’ll probably have a nice argument about it. (In theaters November 1, on demand November 13.)

“Queer” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – Daniel Craig is quite fantastic as “Bill Lee,” a.k.a. William S. Burroughs, in this adaptation of the Burroughs novel – written early in the author’s life and published late – about a gay expatriate heroin addict in Mexico coming undone as he journeys into the South American jungle seeking a rare drug. The Mexico City half of Luca Guadagnino’s film is very watchable but familiar if you know your tales of pale males wasting away in equatorial countries. (There’s a reason “Under the Volcano” can be glimpsed on a bed here.) Once Lee and his ambiguously gay young friend (Drew Starkey) embark on their travels, though, “Queer” becomes progressively and excellently unhinged, culminating in an appearance by a demented lady ethnobotanist who I realized with a jolt was Lesley Manville under the greasy hair and rotting teeth. This also features one of the more startling and emotionally moving trip sequences I’ve ever seen. (Theatrical release TBA.)

“SATURDAY NIGHT” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – It’s 10 p.m. on October 11, 1975, and in 90 minutes a show called “Saturday Night” is going on the air that everyone except its young producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle, the kid from “The Fabelmans”) thinks is going to land on its ass. Jason Reitman (son of Ivan) directs a fast, frenzied real-time tick-tocker that wraps up a lot of urban legends about that evening with an entertaining bow. Of the not-ready-for-prime-time cast playing the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Cory Michael Smith stands out as an arrogant putz of a Chevy Chase, Lamorne Morris does more with the part of Garrett Morris (no relation) than Garrett Morris was ever able to do on the show, and Rachel Sennott is the movie’s secret weapon as writer Rosie Shuster. Nicholas Braun – Cousin Greg on “Succession” – plays Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. The movie coasts more than it should on a viewer’s fondness for and familiarity with the original show – there are no grand statements being made here and probably none wanted. (In theaters October 4.)

“The Brutalist” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet (“Vox Lux”) goes for broke with a three-and-a-half hour American epic about a visionary architect, a Hungarian refugee in post-WWII America, who tries to build a rich man’s dream and make it his own. Adrien Brody plays the architect as the flinty, obsessive opposite of his cork on the tide of history in “The Pianist” and Guy Pearce has one of his most ambiguous roles as the architect’s backer. I went in expecting a slog and was surprised at how steadily engrossing the movie is, rich in incident and atmosphere, and how the theme of a country that offers newcomers opportunity while denying them acceptance is developed with subtle force. As a director, Corbet lacks the poetry of a Malick or the purposeful idiosyncrasy of a Paul Thomas Anderson; he’s something else entirely, and I may need to see the film again to figure out just what. Daniel Blumburg’s score, rapturous and sharp, is one of the year’s best. (Theatrical release TBA.)

“All We Imagine as Light” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – A poetic, almost novelistic drama, slow but sure, about two Mumbai nurses, roommates in the city’s crushing bustle, who clash and then deepen their bond during a visit to the countryside. One (Kani Kusruti) is cautious and pragmatic, the other (Divya Prabha) young and impetuous, with a Muslim boyfriend (Hridhu Haroon) no one can know about. Writer-director Payal Kapadia, making her first feature, keeps the pace almost daringly slow, attuned to the women’s inner lives while capturing the sounds and colors of the outer world with ecstatic wonder. It’s a movie alive with birdsong and a feminine luminescence Virginia Woolf might recognize. This was my final movie of TIFF 2024, and it sent me out on a quiet, happy high. (In theaters November 15.)

Feel free to leave a comment or add to someone else's.

Please forward this to friends! And if you’re not a paying subscriber and would like to sign up for additional postings and to join the discussions — or just help underwrite this enterprise, for which the author would be very grateful — here’s how.