EVEREST: THE OTHER SIDE (Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)
Canadian Premiere

Too often, glossy adventure documentaries allow us to imagine the protagonists live charmed lives, lulling audiences into complacency about the superhuman feats on screen. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s pulse-pounding account of an insane North Face ascent and unprecedented descent, however, foregrounds the tragic fragility of these expeditions and the community nature of their achievements. Years in the making, the account of ski-mountaineering couple Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison’s quest to summit and ski down the rarely conquered face of Mount Everest is utterly devastating, especially as presented here at TIFF in all its stunning IMAX glory.

The scenery of soaring peaks is of course every bit as breathtaking as we’ve come to expect from this directing duo and their incredibly accomplished team of cinematographers (who also make appearances on screen as participants in the adventure). As we witness tragedies of protagonists and the grueling efforts of the support teams (refreshingly the Sherpas are given a much-deserved spotlight), viewers, participants, and filmmakers alike are forced to make their own judgements about whether these extreme experiences are worth the correspondingly extreme risk. At one point, you can feel the balance between filmmakers shifting (or a gulf emerging) when Vasarhelyi asks Chin to count the number of fellow adventurers who’ve sat at their dinner table and since died. They lose track before finishing the list. Alternately immersive and encompassing, it’s the union of human and mountain-scale footage from body-worn, handheld, telephoto, and drone cameras that combine to almost convey the unbelievable highs — and ghosts — that these people are chasing into the perilously thin air.

I’m not sure if I feel glad that they went through with it, have any sense of truly understanding, or even feel complicit in watching, but their wearily triumphant documentary is the first fully great movie of my very rocky TIFF. I was confounded, emotionally wrecked, and utterly astounded over and over.

TENDER LOVING CARE (Mike Leigh)
Canadian Premiere

It’s all right there in the title of Mike Leigh’s wondrously kind film about the essential role of hot tea and white wine in binding the British social fabric. With remarkable performances from Kate O’Flynn and Alice Bailey Johnson as heroic social workers who maintain a sense of lightness amid dedication to service and Paul Jesson and Marion Bailey as a sweet couple in the twilight of a long marriage, the film feels like a corollary to Hard Truths. Gently exploring networks of support among friends, family, and the general public alike, the film hits like a warm dollop of honey.

Still, as much as people celebrate the refreshing and rare realism of Leigh’s work, he never lets you forget that the angels on Earth depicted here are also extraordinary and hardly universal or guaranteed. If this is indeed his last, he’s ending his run extremely strong.

MISTY GREEN (Chris Rock)
World Premiere

A self-sabotaging actress gets a rude awakening when she’s given seven days to get out of her long-dead ex-lover’s posh Santa Monica apartment. High on talent, but low on funds, the ultimatum sets up a narratively friendly countdown structure by which she’s got to score a role or secure the bag. Amid a splashy cast Rosalind Eleazar’s almost too good in Chris Rock’s unevenly executed fable of the trials and capitulations of Hollywood insiders. 

Adam Driver slithers in as a mephistophelean fuck-buddy with an indecent proposal; Topher Grace phones in more reasonable offers as an overextended agent; Daniel Kaluuya is in an entirely different film. Amid keen observations about racist tropes in the entertainment industry and monologues that would fit into a stand-up special, Rock gives his own failing film director character a line about he’s so bad at it that he’s not allowed to be involved in casting choices, and it really makes you wonder if it’s self-deprecation or awareness.

(As Anna Kendrick’s actress convincing herself to settle for a trust fund husband might ask: Can’t it be both?)