Courtesy of TIFF
Please note this will be our last dispatch from the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.
RELAY
Courtesy of TIFF
Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie is back in the saddle for a low-fi thriller that’s main form of communication is a relay service while finding itself in the same camp as similar paranoia/political thrillers: Blow Out, Enemy of the State, or The Conservation. It stars Riz Ahmed as Ash, a fixer who finds unique ways of helping whistleblowers trying to re-establish their life and turn over damning documents. He gets hired by Sarah (Lily James) who has evidence of major malpractice from a prior employer in the food industry.
Sarah has decided to return the documents in fear of her life, requiring Ash to act diligently and quickly as a trio of goons (among them Sam Worthington, and Strange Darling breakout Willa Fitzegerald) are trying to track her down. Along the way, Mackenzie has a blast employing the telephone relay system, a service primarily used for people who are deaf or hard of hearing that involves one person speaking to an operator, who then reads out typed replies on the other end, as a driving narrative force. These services are beholden to strict secrecy laws, so it allows Ash to move through the shadows undetected.
It makes for a nifty thriller whose ambitions actually get in its own way down the final stretch, where a last second twist produces more eye rolls than satisfaction. As does a sequence inside a Broadway concerto that doesn’t crackle with the boilerplate tension Mackenzie is known for. All of this is to say, Relay is your standard, 3-star action picture made to be seen once and never thought of again.
Grade: B-
RELAY world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is currently seeking distribution.
K-POPS!
Courtesy of TIFF
Pop star and 8-time Grammy Award winner Anderson .Paak is making his directorial debut at the Toronto Film Festival with his sweet, but underwhelming K-Pops! .Paak, who co-wrote the film with Khalia Amazan, has its heart in the right place and it’s inspired by his son’s obsession with K-Pop music, which if you don’t know is short for Korean pop music. .Paak stars in the movie as a struggling Los Angeles based musician named BJ who had a fling 12 years ago with a woman named Yeki (Jee Young Han).
Not much has changed since he last saw Yeki (he’s still playing the dive bar scene), but opportunity knocks when he is offered a gig to play drums on an American Idol adjacent K-Pop reality singing competition show dubbed Wildcard. Once there, he finds himself taken with a young contestant (played by .Paak’s real life son, Soul Rasheed) and, of course, it turns out to be BJ’s actual son (shocker!) and he gets reunited with Yeki in the process.
From there, K-Pops! follows a string of familiar beats about background and culture (.Paak himself is Black and Korean) that might have resonated with a more assured director behind the camera. That’s not to say .Paak doesn’t have the energetic prowess in front of it, on the contrary, he’s jubilant and helps subside the movie’s clunky pacing.
The TIFF audience ate it up (and the constant running gag of people mistaking BJ for other popular artists like Childish Gambino or Andre 3000). To its credit, the movie isn’t mean or condescending on the world of pop music (in fact, the movie thrives when it focus on BJ teaching his son about the power of different musical genres), but it’s too broad and choppy to be anything other than a below-average father/son comedy.
Grade: C
K-POPS! World premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is currently seeking distribution.
FRIENDSHIP
Courtesy of TIFF
Premiering to a rapturous response in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival, Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship explores the lengths those are willing to go in order to preserve a relationship, for better or worse. It stars Tim Robinson (in his first feature role) as Craig Waterman, a fairly standard suburban dad eager to see the next “Marvel” movie because everyone is talking about it. He doesn’t have any friends, of course, and instead spends most of his free time at home with his wife, Rami (Kate Mara) and son, Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer).
But that all changes when Craig is mistakenly given a package for his new neighbor, Brian (Paul Rudd - having tons of fun), and he returns it only to become enamored with him. To Criag, Brian is probably the coolest person on planet earth. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung, who has mostly dabbled in television fare ala Our Flag Means Death and Pen 15, has created his own cult version of another Rudd comedy I Love You Man, mixed in with all the sensibilities and off-beat humor fans of Robinson’s Netflix sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave, and that’s meant as a compliment, however, if you’re not in that camp, I’m not sure who Friendship is for.
But I was firmly in the bag for this silly, irreverent comedy that puts an extreme twist on the basic human instinct of wanting to be accepted by your peers. I laughed harder and louder at this quirky little comedy than just about anything at TIFF.
Grade: B+
FRIENDSHIP world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.
EMILIA PEREZ
Courtesy of TIFF/Netflix
A strange, messy, but engrossing film from visionary filmmaker Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez, is an unforgettable journey that’s equal parts cartel thriller, show stopping musical, and a celebration of identity and love. You’ve never seen anything quite like it. It follows Rita (Zoe Saldana in an award worthy performance), a defense lawyer living in Mexico City whose life takes an unexpected turn when she’s taken to meet cartel leader, Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon) and is stunned to learn of his request: he wants her to find a doctor capable of performing gender affirming surgery.
Rita agrees (and takes a large sum of cash for her troubles) and makes arrangements for Manitas wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children. Cut to four years later, and Rita’s life is turned upside down again by the arrival of Emila Pérez, a woman living the life she always dreamed and desperate to reconnect with Jessi and their children.
It may sound like a simplistic story, but Audiard infuses the movie with several, eye-popping and slick musical numbers that propel the narrative forward, seldomly dragging despite a messy third act and wildly varying tones that often clash with the musical interludes. But sometimes the most unconventional movies (even if they aren’t masterpieces) are the ones that stand-out the most and Emilia Pérez is one I’m going to be sitting with for a long time.
Grade: B+
EMILIA PÉREZ played at the Toronto Film Festival. Netflix will release it later this year.
-Nate Adams