Evil Does Not Exist (2023 | Japan | 106 minutes | Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)

Evil does not exist. Or does it? And is it glamping? Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s latest film is a mesmerizing interrogation of these questions that plays out like an enrapturing museum piece.

On the surface, the ecological parable is stirring meditation on the residents of a mountain village’s duty to community and the natural world … until it’s something else entirely. Much of the film’s first act revels in the quiet routines of rural life: a young girl marveling at swaying trees, friends collecting icy fresh water from a mountain stream to use in preparing the daily special at their restaurant, a man chopping wood with well-honed precision outside his mountain lodge. For long stretches, the camera takes a child’s wondrous perspective of the swaying of barren trees against a cold blue sky. As she and her father move throughout village life, the camera tells a story through placement and its curious attention to the people and landscapes who inhabit the town.

The village equilibrium is threatened when a talent agency arrives at a community meeting to pitch a pandemic-funded project to develop some of the undisturbed woodlands into a glamping resort for city-dwellers looking to get in touch with nature. The municipal proceedings are an exercise in politely-worded discourse, firm positions, and a duty to honor experiences that would do Frederick Wiseman proud. These discussions are both compelling and deeply moving in the degree of care expressed by long-term residents weary of the intrusion of tourists to their quiet village.

Just as we’ve come to match the rhythms of rural life the story shifts to nearby Tokyo where we meet the out-of-their-depth functionaries charged with hastily implementing the ill-conceived project before grant funding runs out. Rather than skewer them as fools, Hamaguchi grants them humanity and depth as they ponder the implications of what they’ve been hired to do. It’s an impressive film of quiet observation that brings the threads together in a surprising, dreamlike, and experimental third act as the mountain town casts a spell on the city slickers.

With parts originally intended as a visual accompaniment to Eiko Ishibashi’s stunning original score, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s camera is capable of telling a compelling story even without words. The cuts in soundtrack and camera position alone are stirring. I was enraptured for most of the film but was left deeply confused by its provocative final moments. As much as I appreciate leaving meaning to the viewer’s experience, I’d still love a translation of where it goes in the end.

North American premiere

Aggro Dr1ft (2023 | USA | 80 minutes | Harmony Korine)

Some of the dumbest most juvenile trash I’ve ever seen. Like a heavily abused Hypercolor t-shirt crawled out of a sewer and got tangled in a rat’s nest of videogame cables on its way toward achieving sentience.

Shot in an ever-shifting rainbow of infrared heatmaps and set to a pulsing electronic score by AraabMusic, we follow an assassin as he makes the rounds around post-apocalyptic Miami. It’s a stretch to say that Jordi Mollà “plays” the main character, who mumbles an array of self-contradictory platitudes about killing, solitude, and a love for his children and his attention-starved voluptuous wife. The philosophizing becomes mind-numbing as we watch him go about the grim business of self-aggrandizement and contract killing. Amid flashy cars, video-game overlays, and unrealistic kill sequences, we follow as he crosses paths with Travis Scott as a snake-tongued militia leader and lumbers his way toward a final boss who keeps women in cages, humps the air violently, and utters pronouncements like “there’s beauty in this brutality”.

Korine clearly intends these narcotized videogame vibes as less a film than a provocation to something beyond cinema. I can only hope there’s something yet beyond this stage in the evolution of storytelling, but why else would you call your new company EDGLRD if not to get a rise out of audiences?

North American Premiere

Dicks: the Musical! (2023 | USA | 86 minutes | Larry Charles)

Some of the dumbest most juvenile stuff I’ve ever seen. Like gay culture gained sentience while crawling from a sewer drain through a pile of cocaine and glitter. Unlike the previous review, I mean this as the highest compliment!

Adapted from their own Off-Broadway production, Fucking Identical Twins, Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp play a pair of big-dicked extremely heterosexual highly successful salesmen who were separated at birth. Reunited by a corporate merger (where Megan Thee Stallion is a badass boss), they hatch an infantile Parent Trap scheme to bring their long-estranged parents back together through the power of terrible wigs and flimsy deception.

Megan Mullally plays an ancient, wheelchair-bound, shut-in mom whose genitals and mental faculties have long since left the building. Nathan Lane swoons around his apartment in designer capes, as a gay dad whose life is devoted to a pair of caged “sewer boys”, ferocious ham-hungry monsters. Oh, and Bowen Yang plays God. The capers are ridiculous, the songs are hilarious, and all the performances are so winning that the parody just works.

This played as part of the midnight madness program, so it’s perfect for a zany punch-drunk late night energy. If they could ever bring it to Broadway, it would either make a billion dollars or be protested out of existence by small-minded tourists who couldn’t handle the truth of the big final number. It is easily the most, hardest, and loudly I’ve laughed (all at things meant to be funny) at all of TIFF this year. So brave!

World Premiere

Poolman (2023 | USA | 100 minutes | Chris Pine)

It took six days of searching and some formidable competition, but by the last screening of my time in Toronto I found the far and away dumbest movie at TIFF, and maybe at any film festival in recent memory. A complete misfire, watching this dopey take on Chinatown felt like spending a couple hours inside Chris Pine’s generously-financed head trauma.

World Premiere