"How long were you out of the country?"
When I went through customs in Toronto on the way back to Los Angeles, I actually had to think about that question for a minute. For the first time since 2019, I did the fall festival double-shot of Venice and Toronto, which I very much enjoyed. Nonetheless, when it was all over, I could feel that I'd been away from home for quite some time. While I'd been gone, I'd ridden water buses and suffered through some pretty bad humidity. Then I got to Toronto and battled rain and chilly evenings. At some point along the way, I may have pulled a leg muscle. You never know what festivals are going to throw at you, but that's the fun -- you're just grateful to be part of the experience.
All told, I was gone about 17 days, seeing a ton of movies at both Venice and Toronto. Not that you can catch everything, of course: Conflicting screenings and other logistics kept me from April, Diciannove, Hard Truths, The Life of Chuck, Vermiglio and others. (Plus: Nickel Boys only screened in Telluride.) But I'll get to them all in due time. What matters is the amount I did catch, and the memories I now have of seeing so many of these films at their first screenings. That communal spirit -- that shared moment of discovery -- is incredibly special. I missed Susan, and I'm glad to be home, but those memories keep replaying in my head.
The below rankings are a list of everything I've seen that played at the three festivals, either over the last few weeks or at some point earlier this year. (You'll recognize several Cannes titles, not to mention a few Sundance films.) Links lead to individual reviews...
53. Megalopolis
52. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
51. William Tell
50. Nutcrackers
49. Joker: Folie à Deux
48. King Ivory
47. The Assessment
46. Eden
45. Oh, Canada
44. Emilia Perez
43. Heretic
42. Rumours
41. Babygirl
40. We Live in Time
39. The Shrouds
38. The Outrun
37. Will & Harper
36. Bring Them Down
35. Nightbitch
34. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
33. Misericordia
32. I, the Executioner
31. Conclave
30. The Substance
29. Sudan, Remember Us
28. Chain Reactions
27. The Girl With the Needle
26. Paul & Paulette Take A Bath
25. The Order
24. Better Man
23. Sharp Corner
22. Separated
21. Wolfs
20. Bird
19. September 5
18. Presence
17. I’m Still Here
16. Queer
15. Maria
14. The Wild Robot
13. Flow
12. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
11. Homegrown
10. Pavements
9. All We Imagine as Light
8. The Room Next Door
7. The End
6. Anora
5. Grand Tour
4. Caught by the Tides
3. The Brutalist
2. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
1. A Real Pain
I imagine some folks will look at my rankings and exclaim, "Really? Megalopolis is really the worst movie you saw?" I'm looking forward to revisiting the Francis Ford Coppola film, and I've told anyone in earshot that they really do owe it to themselves to see it, just so they can make up their own mind about this ambitious swing. But, yes, I do find it a crushing disappointment. Likewise, I am working on gut instinct when I say that Jesse Eisenberg's beautifully intimate character study A Real Pain is slightly greater than the far more imposing works by Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) and Brady Corbet (The Brutalist). They all demand a rewatch, so we'll see how the end-of-the-year list-making shakes out.
But for now, I'll say that Venice and Toronto provided me with some excellent movies and a few cases where I'm very much out of the consensus. I know many who loathe The End, whereas plenty think I'm wrong for being lukewarm on Babygirl. But these are my rankings. Consider this post a preview of coming attractions of the movies worth putting on your radar, even if you end up liking some of them more or less than I do.
