Five Films I Saw at the Toronto International Film Festival

With the festival closing out tonight, now's as good a time as any to bring up that I went to the Toronto International Film Festival! I'm not going to talk about every film I saw (if you want to know about all of them, my ranking is here and you should find reviews if you dig deep enough), but there's a few I definitely want to bring attention to.

The Boy and the Heron

That's right, I got to see Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, The Boy and the Heron! It was very good but I think your enjoyment of the film will depend on how many Miyazaki films you've seen. If you haven't seen many, then The Boy and the Heron will blow you away! But if you've seen most or all of them, then you'll like this movie but it'll be familiar territory for you. It's a bit overhyped but I do think you should all go watch it when you can. Just don't lose sleep over it is all.

The Contestant

The best movie I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival was The Contestant, a documentary on Nasubi, who was trapped in a room for over a year forced to enter sweepstakes to win prizes to keep him alive, all while this is being broadcast across Japan. The film digs into the story in every way you can imagine, while using visual effects to translate the show so that an English-speaking audience can understand the chaos of it all. Might be one of my favorite documentaries of all time, can't recommend it enough, I'll probably make a blog entry when it gets licensed for distribution.

Dream Scenario

This is a film that's destined to be a hit. Nicolas Cage plays a college professor who starts to suddenly appear in every person's dream in the world. It's a comedy that's edited like it's a horror movie. You won't be able to escape it.

Hit Man

The premise of Hit Man is that the main character is an undercover cop who poses as a hitman for people to contact with the desire to have him kill someone. He meets with them while wearing a wire, has them unintentionally confess to the intent to murder, and then after he leaves the police arrive to arrest them. The writing is so good, I hope it releases in theaters.

The Teachers' Lounge

Another great film I saw was The Teachers' Lounge, which is about a school investigating a thief going around, a teacher who finds the culprit, and the psychological warfare that ensues afterwards. This is a great movie because it starts off slow and unassuming but as it goes on it gets faster and faster and faster before it crescendos to a climactic end.

There are a lot more films that I saw, so click the link above if you want to read what I thought about them.