Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Have you been down to King st between Spadina and University lately? If not, get down there now, because, for the weekend it’s been transformed into Festival Street. The festival, of course, is TIFF, showing world premieres of some of the best movies out there. But there are also free screens, showing classics like Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige (who I interviewed on this show a while back), free outdoor concerts — including Nickelback, the band everyone loves to hate — and loads of celebrities and their fans, scrambling to see them up close. There’s also yummy food and drink samples for free, various red carpets, lots of booths and games and places to pose, with sponsors including the countries of Spain and Korea, promoting their burgeoning film industries. Everything is taking place around King St W, and in the nearby David Pecaut square.

So this week I’m going to talk about movies at TIFF: movies that I haven’t seen yet, but really want to see; and some movies I know more about, but promised to keep my capsule reviews short and sweet.

TIFF Movies I’m looking forward to

Here are a few movies which I haven’t seen yet but am very much looking forward to seeing.

Aggro Dr1ft is a movie I know very little about, except that it was entirely filmed using infrared light. Harmony Korine is one of the most brilliant experimental filmmakers out there, and I’ll watch anything he does. I’m especially pleased to hear of massive walkouts at the Venice Festival screening — all the more reason to watch it in Toronto.

Another one I can’t wait to see — and which probably won’t make it to commercial theatres anytime soon — is Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World, by Romanian director Radu Jude. If it’s as absurd and outrageous as his last one — Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn — I’m hopping to be as confused, shocked and surprised by this one.

I’m also looking forward to The New Boy about an indigenous kid in Australia who walks into a remote monastery to perform miracles. The director, Warwick Thornton, brought us the great Sweet Country in 2017, so eager to see what he’s up to next.

There are other categories too. Don’t miss out on some of the excellent documentaries at TIFF. There’s Silver Dollar Road about a black family in North Carolina fighting a land developer, from French director Raoul Peck;  The Pigeon Tunnel by Errol Morris looks really good: it’s about the spy and spy novelist John Le Carre; and on the lighter side, a doc about a camp for trans and non-binary kids in Alberta! It’s called Summer Qamp and it’s directed by Jen Markowitz.

Finally, although I never review short films — never enough space — there are some fantastic programs set up for the festival. I’ve only seen one so far, Casey Lum’s Bloom (about one woman’s strange relationship with a potted plant) but I’m sure there are lots more fascinating films where that one came from.

And, finally, can’t wait to see A Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest — and possibly last —  animated film. He did Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and so many others, and I’m sure this one will live up to Ghibli Studios very high standards.

Now, here are some capsule reviews of movies opening at TIFF:

The Nature of Love aka Simple Comme Sylvain, is Montreal’s Monia Chokri latest, about Sophia, a happily-married university prof (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) whose life changes when she meets Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) a small-town contractor they hired to repair their cottage. She falls for him, hook, line and sinker… and he seems to feel it, too. Can this be love? Or is the life of a sophisticated Montrealer just too different from a skidoo-riding handyman? The Nature of Love is a wonderfully campy and touching sex comedy from Chokri.

Anatomy of a Fall 

Dir: Justine Triet

Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a renowned German novelist who lives with her husband in the French Alps. But when their blind son finds his Dad lying dead in the snow just outside of their chalet, no one knows whether he fell, jumped out a window, or was pushed. The Anatomy of a Fall, is a gripping courtroom drama about Sandra’s trial for a murder that might not have actually happened. This won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and I can see why.

Dumb Money

Dir: Craig Gillespie

Keith Gill aka Roaring Bunny (Paul Dano) is a small town dad who talks about and posts his stock market each night online, to an ever increasing audience. But things really take off when he tries to stop short-sellers on Wall Street from driving a shopping mall chain Game Stop out of business. And when tens of thousands of regular people join him to drive up its undervalued stock, Wall Street fights back… but can ordinary folk ever beat the bigwigs? Dumb Money is a very enjoyable comedy based on events that happened just a couple years ago. 

The Nature of Love, Anatomy of a Fall, and Dumb Money — and many more — are playing at TIFF this week, and opening theatrically later this year.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.