TIFF 2022 Film Review: Festival Dispatch

CAPSULE REVIEWS FROM THIS YEAR’S TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that deserve attention. Here are the capsule reviews for 2022’s TIFF: Devotion, The Whale, Sick, and My Policeman. Minor spoilers ahead…

Devotion

A stiff, languid wartime drama carried by the charisma and latent tenderness of its two mega-watt stars, J.D. Dillard’s Devotion will likely see many ill-conceived comparisons to this year’s other fighter pilot actioner, Top Gun: Maverick. But where Maverick is a popcorn-guzzling adrenaline machine, Devotion reveals the true story of a war hero from a forgotten war. Centered around the Navy’s first Black pilot Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) and his friendship with wingman Tom Hudner (Glen Powell), the film is an affecting portraiture of male camaraderie, and even sidesteps the many troublesome tropes when it comes to depicting racism and allyship on the big screen. It’s too bad that everything else is such a listless affair: from its fits-and-starts pacing to its weak thrills, Devotion is never really given the chance to leave its hangar. C+

The Whale

A dark, jagged chamber piece assembled through a near-gawking lens, The Whale just might be Darren Aronofksy’s most literal-minded narrative. Adapted from Samuel D. Hunter’s stageplay of the same name, the film recounts the final throes in the life of a morbidly obese man (Brendan Fraser) as he reconnects with the daughter he abandoned years ago (Sadie Sink). Its themes of guilt, shame, and self-flagellation are conveyed through blatant manipulation and artificial, inorganic pop psychology, but the rays of hope emitted by the barn burner triumvirate of Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, and Sadie Sink are undeniable. Fraser, in particular, mines authentic pain and genuine warmth from a performance every bit deserving of his laurels. B-

Sick

Not even its sack-of-rocks COVID satire can stop John Hyams (Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning) and Kevin Williamson’s (Scream) lean, mean, butchering machine. Chases, guts, and slasher camerawork for the ages, Sick was a blast with the TIFF’s Midnight Madness audience. As a taut exercise in brutality revolving around self-isolating roommates (Gideon Adlon and Bethlehem Million) besieged by a masked killer, many might find the film’s pandemic roots stale or even in bad taste, but Sick’s nasty slasher nuts-and-bolts are so strong that it hardly matters. Clocking in under 90 minutes, Sick makes the most of its runtime to deliver a gauntlet of suspense with sleek tension and a breathlessly entertaining heap of splatter. B+

My Policeman

Michael Grandage’s My Policeman, about a man bristling against the social mores of his time with a forbidden romance, is the type of film that lives or dies by the strength of its lead performance. In this case, it’s Harry Styles, who seems hellbent on arriving on the scene as a fully-formed leading man without earning the title; Emma Corin as his beleaguered beard and David Dawson as the sensitive sophisticate who captures his heart do much of the heavy lifting, but Styles is not up to task with a script that leafs through every conceivable gay cinema trope. Flat and uninspired, My Policeman is a movie with shockingly few surprises, and even less conviction. C