Josh Bate

Regardless of sexual orientation, the film encourages viewers to live on their own terms and approach the experiences of others with greater empathy and sensitivity. The 155-minute journey may be sprawling, occasionally clunky, and in need of a sharper edit – but its final destination is so profoundly moving that it renders this new film one of the year’s best.

Hundreds of movies have premiered at TIFF this year. There’s a lot of buzz around a few titles, such as I Play Rocky and The Debut – Atonement deserves to be mentioned right alongside them. With a powerful script that is as emotional as it is compelling, Reed Van Dyk’s feature debut is incredibly impressive, and proves that this is just the start of the career for one of the industry’s most promising filmmakers.

Attempts to be like The Social Network also extend to the way in which Ink's story is told. There’s plenty of snappy dialogue, quick conversations, and montages that show The Sun growing in popularity. In that regard, it’s very similar to what Fincher’s film did, except he made all of these sequences count for something as the story moved towards its ultimate conclusion regarding Zuckerberg. Meanwhile, Ink’s conclusion falls completely flat – so much so that one wonders what Danny Boyle was truly going for when he made this film.

As a gritty detective story in the same vein as the other films, but set in a completely different part of the world, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo had so much potential. Tokyo is an especially fitting city for this, with its glowing neon lights and the presence of the Yakuza. But the film is more style than substance in this way, with a cool premise and impressive visuals that are brought down by a flat, convoluted story

The film is packed with jokes – the daughter of Annie’s friend pooping in an art museum and Aaron accidentally hitting a 14-year-old in the face, to name a few. But none of these gags actually land; many of them fall so flat that one could hear a pin drop in the theater. They’re all the same sort of jokes viewers have heard a million times before, often in other Seth Rogen movies, told and delivered much better than they are here.

God Bless You, Mr. Kopu fascinates by globalizing the American Dream, bringing it to New Zealand and plaguing its populace, including Mafu, with the seductive nature of capitalism. Liu's decision to make Marco an American salesman is particularly effective in driving this point home. Much like the United States itself, he is cool, sleek, and charming in a way. But underneath all of that is something far more insidious.

As the main character, Julianne Moore is in almost every scene of The Debut. Eisenberg has worked with her before, in his directional debut, and he manages to get an even better performance out of the actress in this new film. In fact, Moore gives one of the most defined, convincing turns in her already illustrious career, playing Mona (and, by extension, Mona's character Miss Danielle) with an authenticity that may not be matched this calendar year.

The film may feel all too familiar for some viewers, and it may work best for those completely unfamiliar with the original story. That doesn’t make the Evil Genius movie bad, necessarily, but it certainly dampens its impact.

For a filmmaker whose most fervent supporters have spent years insisting that there is always something fascinating to find in his movies, The Last Photograph is an unusually bleak counterargument. It is not merely Snyder at his most self-serious – it is Snyder at his least interesting.

To have a movie look like this in 2026 is certainly a risk, as some audiences may find themselves disconnected from the story because of the retro-filmmaking. But The Face of Horror avoids that problem entirely, simply because the execution of the stylization is so strong.