The 10 best movies our critic saw at TIFF, featuring Mahershala Ali, Julianne Moore and Chris Rock - Toronto Star
Jordan Firstman wrote, directed and stars in “Club Kid.”
My Top 10 favourites at the Toronto International Film Festival make for a rogue’s gallery of unique characters, from bantering CIA agents to double-talking sisters to a car-leaping Canuck. Rather than repeat faves from previous fests — including “Fjord,” “Minotaur” and “The Dreamed Adventure” from Cannes and “Josephine” from Sundance — I’ve limited my picks here to films I discovered at TIFF ’26.
I’ve also included speculation on their awards chances, for Oscars and/or Canadian Screen Awards. Expect most of these films to open in theatres (and later on streaming) before the end of the year.
Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as squabbling CIA agents.
Laugh while you gasp. A South American revolution, the JFK assassination and assorted CIA skulduggery hardly sound like the makings of a riotous buddy comedy. But Martin McDonagh has built a glorious career wringing chortles from the darkest circumstances and most combative of male pairings, from “In Bruges” to “The Banshees of Inisherin.” It is 1973. A bloody Chilean military coup is brewing, and squabbling CIA agents Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), longtime pals and habitual agents of mayhem, head to Rapa Nui to see “the giant heads,” a bucket-list wish for Chris. The trip has urgency: Chris is terminally ill and showing signs of cognitive decline. Worse, he has become a gleeful blabbermouth about his part in some of history’s most notorious atrocities, including JFK’s assassination a decade earlier. His plans for a tell-all memoir have put the CIA’s South American chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi), on high alert. It’s top-of-game work from everyone involved, especially Malkovich as the irrepressible Chris, casually voicing the sort of things the rest of us only have nightmares about.
Oscars potential: best picture, director, original screenplay, casting, actor (Malkovich), supporting actor (Rockwell).
Julianne Moore stars in the Jesse Eisenberg comedy “The Debut.”
Julianne Moore makes acting look like a matter of life and death, onstage and off, in Jesse Eisenberg’s terrific new comedy. She gives an awards-worthy performance as Mona, a mousy suburbanite who, for reasons known only to herself, auditions for a small part in a corny community-theatre musical about life in a New York apartment building. Under the imperious eye of director Jerry (Paul Giamatti, never better), Mona goes from barely a squeak to the mouse that roared, with increasingly alarming Norma Desmond flashes along the way. Her “rent is due” showdown with Jerry is an audience-rousing scene for the ages. One of the most laugh-out-loud films at TIFF ’26 and a leading contender for the Audience Award.
Oscars potential: best picture, director, original screenplay, casting, actress (Moore), supporting actor (Giamatti).
South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong (“Burning”), an auteur of buried truths and slowly unfolding secrets, returns after eight years with a coldly funny, increasingly caustic drama of class anxiety and unlikely friendship. Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), a blue-collar couple reeling from Ho-seok’s factory layoff, become close to the affluent Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, “Parasite”) and Sang-woo (Zo In-sung, “Hope”). Ye-ji, a documentarian making a film about workers facing layoffs and automation, insists that she is sincere: “I’m trying to love these people.” But cynical businessman Sang-woo congratulates her on her “great Method acting,” while Mi-ok cautions her against wearing expensive clothes around people struggling to make their mortgage payments. As Ho-seok’s depression deepens, Mi-ok finds herself drawn to Sang-woo. Loosely inspired by “Thou Shalt Not Covet,” an episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Dekalog,” Lee’s exacting, increasingly uncomfortable film won three prizes at Venice, including the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.
Oscars potential: best international feature, original screenplay, casting.
Movies about contract hit men who live solitary lives and kill without conscience are legion. What makes Bassam Tariq’s film special, beyond Mahershala Ali’s superb lead performance, is the centrality of family and faith. The two-time Oscar winner is a stoic bundle of contradictions as Latif, a lethal Texas bladesman and recently widowed, observant Muslim father of three — including a newborn who urgently needs breast milk. His efforts to feed his baby while keeping his children safe leads Latif into increasingly strange and dangerous territory, including confrontations with an Iraq War veteran (John Cho) who now commands a trigger-happy band of radical Christians. We can never quite predict where the story is headed, but watching it unfold is consistently thrilling.
Oscars potential: best actor (Ali), supporting actress (Adia).
Cast members spontaneously sing the torch ballad “The Great Pretender,” but there’s nothing the least bit false about Mike Leigh’s latest and possibly last film (or so he says). His compassionate eye and blue-collar instincts zero in on London social workers/BFFs Amy (Kate O’Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), who are struggling to stay positive while coping with difficult clients and useless boyfriends. Amy’s aging parents, Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), are sympathetic and helpful, but Geoff’s health has taken a turn for the worse. The plot is lean but the acting is true and the epiphanies, albeit small, are completely earned. Leigh has been making films for decades, yet this one feels fresh enough to be his first; he’s never lost his fascination with the quotidian cares of the world.
Oscars potential: best picture, director, casting, original screenplay.
Jay Baruchel stars as Canadian daredevil Ken Carter in “The Stunt Driver.”
Michael Dowse’s spirited and fact-based account of Canuck daredevil Ken Carter’s 1976 St. Lawrence River jump quest makes a cracking good yarn all by itself. But it takes on added resonance in these times when a bellicose southern bully keeps trying to tell us what Canadians can’t do. Jay Baruchel embodies Carter’s irrepressible optimism about leaping into danger, reminding me of Troy Hurtubise’s bear-rassling scheme in “Project Grizzly.” Ed Helms is the MVP supporting star as Dick Keller, the concerned but committed designer of the rocket-powered Lincoln Continental customized to make a jump that daunts even legendary U.S. risktaker Evel Knievel (Ben Foster). The film is a hilarious and harrowing reminder that the sky really is the limit when Canadians are put to the test.
Canadian Screen Awards potential: best picture, director, actor (Baruchel).
Marine Atla’s “La Gradiva” is one of TIFF’s standouts, writes Peter Howell.
The past informs the present in this coming-of-age stunner. A group of French students travelling to Italy with their teacher (Antonia Buresi, “A Private Life”) set out to learn about the people of Pompeii vapourized by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Some 2,000 years later, they feel their own lives lack substance — especially the rebellious Toni (Colas Quignard). The film also follows cocky James (Mitia Capellier-Audat) and bookish Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), as the students’ encounters with history begin to deepen their sense of themselves. A naturalistic, quietly transporting gem by Marine Atlan.
Oscars potential: best international feature.
Is there a movie cliché more cloying than prodigal adult and life-redeeming kid? Have no fear, because Jordan Firstman is here and he’s not interested in making your heart go pitty-pat — not at first, at any rate. The web-video maker and “I Love LA” TV star writes, directs and stars as Peter, a pretty vacant NYC party promoter who discovers 10 years after a coked-up heterosexual encounter he’s the gobsmacked gay dad of a precocious son named Arlo (Reggie Absolom, aces). Firstman takes a few narrative liberties — fatherhood comes all too easily to Peter — but he doesn’t sand off the rough edges of this accidental dad story.
Oscars potential: best original screenplay.
Werner Herzog’s wild follow-your-dreams tale stars Kate and Rooney Mara as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, Irish sisters who dress alike, speak in unison, and become equally obsessed with their neighbour Gareth (Orlando Bloom). When he marries another woman and casts them aside, their response is violent enough to bring them before a judge, where they explain: “We did it for love.” But Herzog is only getting started. The sisters rescue a fox they name Cupid and try to dig a tunnel by hand through an Irish mountain, certain “there must be a better world out there.” The film has divided festival audiences, but I fell for its strange magic.
Oscars potential: best original screenplay.
Rosalind Eleazar stars in Chris Rock’s Hollywood satire, “Misty Green.”
Rosalind Eleazar mesmerizes as the title star of Chris Rock’s Hollywood skewering, his first film as writer-director in a dozen years. “Slow Horses” breakout Eleazar plays Misty as a showbiz survivor, who has won an Emmy (and earned a Cosmopolitan cover) for her role in a hit TV series. Pushing 40, she’s squandered her fame and money on booze, coke and sex, yet somehow still looks glamorous and still has the goods as an actor and singer. She also has a rep as a troublemaker, she’s considered too old and “too black” by some casting agents, and she surrounds herself with dodgy people: a violently bipolar brother (Daniel Kaluuya), a scuzzy sex-and-drugs buddy (Adam Driver) who wants to pimp her out in Dubai for fast cash, a screwed-up BFF (Anna Kendrick) and Rock himself as Misty’s wisecracking ex-director, who might give her a career-reviving role in a reboot of “Dreamgirls.” The whole thing plays more like the pilot to a really interesting TV series rather than a stand-alone film, but Eleazar proves she’s got what it takes to be a genuine Hollywood presence.
Oscars potential: best actress (Eleazar).
Peter Howell is a Toronto-based movie critic and a freelance contributor to the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm.
