The Boy and the Heron (2023 | Japan | 124 minutes | Hayao Miyazaki)

Miyazaki takes an autobiographical bow with an enchanting story of a boy confronting the tragedies of war, death, loss of youth, and so many asshole birds. After the horrific loss of a beloved mother to a hospital fire, a father and son (Mahito) retreat from Tokyo to a country estate near a warplane factory where dad is an executive. It’s also home to the boy’s soon-to-be-mother (an aunt who’s already expecting), a cast of big-faced wrinkly elderly residents, and an incredibly pesky grey heron who takes an unnatural interest in the visiting youth.

The elegant bird, albeit with wild eyes and a suspiciously toothy grin, lures him to an abandoned tower in the forest. Later, after some troubles in school, a head injury, and the disappearance of his aunt, like many Miyazaki protagonists before him, he finds something magical out there in the woods in the form of an alien trans-dimensional tower. His descent into this parallel reality brings surprising revelations about his guide, the nature of life and death, and an enchanted kingdom out of balance. After a glut of soulless mainstream computer animation, each episode in Mahito’s journey brings the deep endearing pleasure of a master at work, using deceptively simple illustrations to bring imagination to life. The character designs are whimsical, occasionally unsettling, and often very funny (if you’ve ever distrusted parakeets, this movie will confirm your suspicions) and the environments they encounter are stirring and mystical.

The film’s debut came with an announcement of Miyazaki’s planned retirement. In what was meant to be his final work, he weaves memories of his own childhood with threads from Genzaburo Yoshino’s novel How Do You Live?, his most beloved novel. It is the work of a supreme storyteller reflecting on his own life and contemplating a world beyond his existence. Whether he’s lured back into more moviemaking, the film stands proudly among his best. It’s a surreal, masterfully animated journey of the biggest questions and no easy answers. After a slow start to the festival, it’s the first fully great movie I’ve seen at TIFF.

The Boy and the Heron had it’s international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Quiz Lady (2023 | USA | 99 minutes | Jessica Yu)

Akwafina and Sandra Oh are a hilarious pair of complete opposite sisters who reunite after their mother escapes from her retirement home and leaves them with a big pile of debt. The former, Anne is a nerdy accountant forced to take responsibility from a young age. The latter, her decade-older sibling Jenny is a flamboyant dreamer who’s drifted through a string of wild schemes and outsized ambitions that never come to fruition.

The one constant in their tumultuous lives has been a Jeopardy!-like game show, every weeknight at seven, hosted by a genial Trebekian character played by Will Farrell. Well, the show and an ancient pug who watches every night on the couch alongside trivia savant homebody Anne. When the dog disappears, Jenny’s would-be life coach instincts kick in and she hatches a scheme to get her sister in front of the cameras to put her encyclopediac knowledge to the task of making a bunch of quick money. The plot is convoluted and ridiculous, but Jessia Yu keeps it so light and consistently funny that it’s easy to roll with it. Outlandish hijinks and some truly wonderful cameos — including a smarmy quiz champion played by Jason Schwartzman, Holland Taylor as a grumpy nihilistic neighbor, Tony Hale as a Benjamin Franklin impersonating innkeeper, and one more that’s best left a surprise. Awkwafina and Yu have terrific prickly chemistry. It’s a big crowdpleaser that’s bound for Hulu, where it’s certainly make a good at home hang.

Quiz Lady had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; it will appear on Hulu later this year.

Lee (2023 | UK | 116 minutes | Ellen Kuras)

In the title role of Lee Miller, Kate Winslet embodies the humanity of a pioneering photographer who was driven to bravely document the front lines of World War II. When the film opens, it’s 1938 and she’s a former model and bon vivant in the South of France spending her days with a coterie of likeminded artists. She falls in love with a gallerist (Alexander Skarsgård) whom she follows back to London as the war closes in on France and the Blitz befalls England. It’s back there, in the thick of the war that she turns her role at Vogue (where she works with an advocate/editor played by Andrea Riseborough) into an assignment covering the ongoing war, first relegated to gruesome medical bases and later into the heart of combat.

The story is framed as an interview between a young man (Josh O’Connor) an older recalcitrant Lee, still drinking and smoking into her retirement. Much of the first half plays as a straight-ahead biopic of an admittedly fascinating subject whose work went largely unseen or appreciated in her own time. It’s toward the back half, though, that Winslet really gets to cook and flex her acting chops. Along with a surprisingly terrific Andy Samberg as a friend and fellow photographer from Life magazine, they’re among the first journalists to photograph the gruesome aftermath of the war in Europe. First in the liberation of Paris, where they reunite with friends who stayed behind (Marion Cotillard and Noémie Merlant) and later to the gruesome untold horrors of the concentration camps behind enemy lines.

Director Ellen Kuras portrays the challenges of a woman in dangerous territory as well as the subtle ways that her unique perspective and gender informed her work. It’s a sober historical recollection, enlivened by powerful performances that convey the tenacity of reporters and the deep emotional toll taken by those who bear witness to atrocities.

Lee had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

The Beast (2023 | France, Canada | 2023 | 145 minutes | Bertrand Bonello)

Bertrand Bonello’s century-spanning tryptic is nothing if not inventive, but it’s sometimes hard to find the emotion in the high aesthetics. But maybe the chilly gulf and the impossibility of deep simultaneous connections is exactly the point.

Spanning turn-of-the-century Paris, the recent present, and a post-AI catastrophe future, the consistent link is a recurring duo played by Lea Seydoux, George McKay (who learned French to take over a role originally intended for Gaspard Uilliel before his untimely death). The first of the intertwined timelines adapts from a Henry James novella, with Seydoux in an unsatisfying marriage yet paralyzed by a long-lingering sense of foreboding doom. Another jarringly lifts directly from the look and self-filmed monologues of incel serial killer Elliot Rodger as McKay’s chillingly realized character intersects with a struggling actress in contemporary Los Angeles who worries that she’s aging into domestic roles. Finally, decades later, we find Seydoux again in a rapidly approaching timeline where science can dull the pains of past traumas, androids act as nurse/therapists, and themed nightclubs are as isolating as always.

The imagery is outstanding throughout. The high society salons and surreal floods of Paris are richly realized. Sleek present day Hollywood real estate as a stage for loneliness. The future looks like a museum and therapy is a bed of black goop. Despite the timeframe, creepy dolls, psychics, and ominous pigeons make recurring appearances as unconsummated, never quite synchronized connections echo across eras. Sometimes hypnotic, often alluring, and frequently frustrating, Bonello conveys the universal thirtysomething dread of certain imminent doom with an ambitious film that’s not easy to shake.

The Beast had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival