The 12 buzziest films of the 2022 Toronto Film Festival
Your TL;DR predictions of the TIFF titles that figure to be major awards players this fall
Film News Films
Empire Of Light (Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures), The Whale (Courtesy of A24), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (John Wilson/Netflix © 2022) Graphic: The A.V. Club
There are few better predictors of both a) buzziest fall films and b) obvious Oscar bait than the Toronto International Film Festival. Cannes, Venice, and Telluride will have a mainstream hit here or artsy contender there, but it’s still TIFF that rules the festival roost. Whether you’re a casual moviegoer wondering what’s on the radar for the coming months or a hardcore Oscar prognosticator (or an industry member on a plane to Toronto at this very moment), you need a cheat sheet. From early Academy Award hopefuls Brendan Fraser and Frances McDormand to expected blockbusters like Harry Styles’ My Policeman or the Knives Out sequel, here are the films poised to make a big splash in Canada between September 8 and 18.
21 Comments
as a kick-ass general of the all-female Agojie warriors of 19th century West AfricaSlavers. They were slavers. They subjugated people and sold them as chattels. No amount of Hollywood ra-ra “YOU GO, GRRRRL! YASSSS, KWEEN!” marketing erases that.
It worked for Hamilton.
You have the Oyo Empire to thank for that. They demanded slaves as tribute, and had a tendency to massacre those who disobeyed.
According to Wiki, they also “had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor… captured children, women, and men during wars and raids against
neighboring societies, and sold them into the Atlantic slave trade in
exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol.
Other remaining captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on
royal plantations and were routinely mass executed in large-scale human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey.”Also: “In the 1840s, Dahomey began to face decline with British pressure to abolish the slave trade, which included the British Royal Navy imposing a naval blockade against the kingdom and enforcing anti-slavery patrols near its coast. During this time period, Dahomey was also weakened by military defeat from Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded as a safe haven for refugees escaping slave raids from Dahomey.”Granted, this might all be missing some important details. But I think it’s safe to say that if you’ve made the British Empire look like the good guys, you’ve fucked up somewhere.
As the first colonial power to abolish slavery within its territories, the British Empire were the good guys in that situation.Doing a rah-rah get ‘em grrrl movie about a culture built on slavery (and who, incidentally, would often execute the slaves they couldn’t sell) on the backdrop of years of BLM marches, and the 1619 project winning a Pulitzer seems like the kind of thing you’d do if your aim was to make money off the culture warriors by outsourcing your marketing budget to them. This movie, and the inevitable “conversion” around it are both going to suck hard.
a Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown collab called BiosphereFinally the Bio-dome remake we’ve all been waiting for
I thought the “fatsuit Oscar bait” was a bad thing now?
I am super duper down for Triangle of Sadness
Remember the last time distributor Neon championed a non-English-language film? That was Parasite
Weird that AVC is making that comparison since Woody Harrelson is in the trailer, speaking English. English is the only language listed for the film on its wikipedia page. The Bong Joon-ho movie it thus should be compared to is Snowpiercer.
It seems AVC saw an umlaut and declared it non-English as a result.
I’m guessing the germane thing was that Ruben Östlund’s previous movies were not English – not so much that the foreign language director is now making an English language film – although I agree it’s a confusingly made observation.
If that’s the case, Yorgos Lanthimos and The Lobster might have been a better comparison.
I’m sure it’s a fantastic movie.As someone with emetophobia I really really hate its marketing.
I’m attending the first five days of the festival and have tickets for the premieres of Empire of Light and The Son on the 12th, as well as the second Glass Onion screening on the 11th.The Whale and The Fabelmans are the two films I shortlisted that I wasn’t able to get into; for the latter I had the opportunity to attend the second screening, but it conflicted with Glass Onion and I chose the latter because it is a mystery film and I thought it made sense to prioritize avoiding spoilers.
I was lucky enough to get Empire of Light, Banshees and Women Talking. Couldnt get Glass Onion. There’s also a little Canadian film called ‘I Like Movies’. 3 screenings and they sold out right away!
I’m most excited for Women Talking. Sarah Polley is a visionary director and has made exceptional movies. Really excited to see how this cast works together. I also have tickets for The Wonder – starring Florence Pugh and directed by Sebastián Lelio (director of A Fantastic Woman) which I am also excited for but surprised it has less buzz in the leadup to TIFF.
That trailer for Menu looks awesome. Like a fine dining-themed Ready or Not.
I didn’t watch the trailer because I don’t want to know too much but I am VERY intrigued by this description.
_Dench_ and Saunders, hmm? That’s going to take some getting used to.
It’s among my favorite episodes of that show.
Colin Farrell is great at playing idiots.