TIFF Days 3-6 Roundup: WAKE UP DEAD MAN, THE SMASHING MACHINE, and More

by Joel Edmiston

Hello again. I’m not going to write a big intro. Just a little context in case you haven’t read myfirst roundup. I’m in Toronto. I mean, I am there all of the time (I live here), but right now there’s a film festival and I’m watching so many movies. My brain is just movies and pizza slices. Here are the ones I’ve watched the past few days and some words about them.

Carolina Caroline
(dir. Adam Carter Reihmeier)

Here we have the new feature from the director of Dinner in America and Snack Shack. This movie continues his track record of making movies I don’t love, but that have at least one memorable element that shines through. Samara Weaving plays Caroline, a lonely gas station worker in small-town Texas, who gets swept away by a rugged con-man, played by Kyle Gallner, who teaches her increasingly risky ways to rip people off. Eventually they’re on the run from the law, and if you think you can predict where it goes from here, you’re probably not far off. This is your standard lovers-on-the-run flick, but what makes it stand out for me is how vigorously into each other the two leads are. I mean, yeah of course they’re into each other –- like, look at them. I’ll come out and say it: I think Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner are two extremely attractive people. I don’t want this to be one of those reviews where the reviewer won’t admit how horny the movie made them, so here I am acknowledging that it’s a very steamy romance and, yes, let’s say, I bought it.

Knowing Adam Carter Reihmeier’s other features, I walked into this one expecting more comedy, which there isn’t much of here. I’m not complaining; the type of jokes that are in those ones wouldn’t really fit here, but I hope he’ll circle back to comedy in the future. He did, after all, give us fucker-mode Gabriel LaBelle (Snack Shack) and I still think about him stomping his friend in the neck with a shit-eating grin on.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
(dir. Rian Johnson)

When people would ask me before this week what my most anticipated movie of the festival was, I would often refrain from telling the truth, but I’ll admit now it was this. I’ll briefly explain why I lied. I suppose since there are so many movies of varying budgets from so many genres and countries, I felt a little lame being so excited for a third film in a popular franchise. But I will say proudly that I love the Knives Out franchise. We are so lucky to have a mystery franchise with so much care put into the writing, design, and characters, with great actors and beautiful settings. I wish we could have one of these every year. It would never get old for me, especially if they continued the quality like they’ve done with the first three.

In Wake Up Dead Man, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is brought to a church where a seemingly unsolvable murder has happened and, well, he’s gotta solve it. Rian Johnson has been calling this one a "locked door” mystery, which is when someone walks into a room with no one else inside and is somehow murdered –- or something like that. There are a few literary examples that are even cited in the movie, but Rian Johnson, of course, brings extra layers and intricacies to the puzzle box. This man is so fucking clever and I gotta admit, I am in awe of how the fuck he writes this shit (I am such a sophisticated writer). Nothing gets me going quite like this level of cleverness in not just the murder itself, but in how he introduces new details, how things are revealed to the audience, to the characters, and how things are resolved neatly and entertainingly.

I’ve appreciated how in the present day these movies have been set, but I felt Glass Onion was a little too online for my liking. This one sheds a lot of that. There’s some, but it’s more interested in the church than it is in Twitter. As a guy who unfortunately went to Catholic school, I was quite captivated by the ideas put forth here. Two Joshes -- O’Connor and Brolin -- play Catholic priests who could not be more different in their approach to their job and their congregation, but are somehow serving the same God. Then there’s Blanc, who doesn’t believe any of it, which makes way for even more intriguing conversations between mystery-solving. Between the intricacies of these ideas and the overlapping layers of the complicated (but totally coherent by the way) mystery, the ensemble, which includes Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, and Cailee Spaeney, does sometimes get sidelined. I was surprised by this, because the ensembles were such large parts of the last two. This is why I’ve been saying to people that this one’s really for the mystery crowd, rather than the folks who come to these for the starriness. There are a few scenes where they’re all bouncing off each other, but the movie really concentrates on scenes with just two people. O’Connor and Craig are fantastic with each other.

All that to say that Rian Johnson has done it again. I’m a murder mystery guy. I’m glad to have everything it gives me, but I personally wouldn’t need anything except this fantastic mystery plot to give this as big of a rave as I’ve given it. I’ve watched a lot of shitty murder mysteries with worse resolutions that I still thought were clever enough to like.

Sacrifice
(dir. Romain Gavras)

This movie is dumb, boring and, worst of all, very impressed with itself. Chris Evans plays a famous actor (going through a totally overwritten mental breakdown) who is taken hostage by eco-terrorists hijacking a climate fundraiser near a volcano in Greece. It seems to be trying to satirize performative, rich activists whose intentions are ultimately empty, but itself is totally devoid of anything to say and is full of a bunch of rich celebrities (Anya Taylor Joy, Vincent Cassell, John Malkovich, Salma Hayek) who don’t seem to care all that much that they’re in it. I would have otherwise never thought about this movie again, but I’ve forced myself to so I could write this blurb and it’s made me realize how much it pissed me off. Worst of the fest so far.

Dead Man’s Wire
(dir. Gus Van Sant)

I really wish I hadn’t seen Sacrifice for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is I wish I watched this and Wake Up Dead Man back-to-back so I could save some space on my chronological list of movies I’ve watched and just write “Wake Up Dead Man’s Wire.”

Movies of a certain period will often be in dialogue with each other. Seems a lot of filmmakers this year are pissed off about capitalism, or else have sensed it in society (no shit) and are echoing it. In Gus Van Sant’s jazzy, '70s-set, based-on-real-events thriller, Bill Skarsgård plays a lowly business man who very publicly kidnaps the adult son of the CEO who fucked him over, and in doing so becomes a sort of folk hero. So that’s two movies in a row where a rich person is kidnapped. It’s the second movie I’ve seen this week where a regular guy is pushed to violence by the establishment (No Other Choice). But it’s the only movie I’ve seen where Coleman Domingo is sitting on a couch, wearing a robe, while holding a landline phone with his ring finger and thumb and a cigarette with his index and middle fingers.

Dead Man’s Wire is compelling, funny, and angry, with some great performances and some fun little guys doing some fun little voices, but I couldn’t help wondering if it could have gone to more exciting places had it not been confined by its true story. It's certainly an odd thing that happened but for so much of it, they’re stuck in an apartment where Skaarsgard’s character keeps his captive. It’s not the most dynamic setting. The best part of the true story is the beginning. I don’t want to be rewriting the movie, but with all the gears working as well as they are in this movie, I can see something better if they’d just used some true story elements as a jumping off point and let the crime thriller escalate from there rather than get stuck. This may be a dumb complaint. It’s just that the movie ultimately elicits an “ah OK that was kinda neat” reaction, doesn’t really leave me with much more than a Netflix documentary version of this would.

Hedda
(dir. Nia DaCosta)

So I will preface this review by saying I was desperately trying to exchange my ticket for it for something else. I had seen too many dramas and wanted to watch an action or horror movie. There’s this movie called The Furious that everyone keeps talking about as this insanely well-choreographed action spectacle and it was playing at the exact same time as this, but this is what my ticket was for. I can’t explain why I picked this movie a week and a half ago when I picked my 10 allotted regular-screening tickets. I suppose I just didn’t have The Furious on my radar. Very often, movies will get traction during the festival and I’ll have no time to slot it in and I’ll feel like such a jackass failure for not seeing it, even though it’s likely just the hype machine getting carried away, but also it could be a masterpiece.

Anyway, I didn’t watch The Furious, and I likely won’t be able to (I’m sorry I’ve let you all down). I watched Hedda, Nia DaCosta’s adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, which I read in theatre school but remember very little of. Tessa Thompson plays the titular Hedda, recently married to George (Tom Bateman), who fears she has eyes for everyone but him and he’s probably right. All this comes to head (a…) when George and Hedda throw a big party at their new home and a few unexpected guests come to dance, swim, and read excerpts from their unpublished manuscripts. There’s some fun, sexy moments, but it never made me stop wishing I was watching The Furious. I can only imagine how frustrating this review would be for someone who liked the film or, god forbid, worked on it. I am sorry. I’m dumb! Also, I don’t like costume dramas very much. I thought maybe I could handle this one because it had poised itself as a twist on the genre, but it really is not far beyond what I’ve seen of Bridgerton (which is admittedly not a lot, but I’ve seen a bit – I used to have a girlfriend – I don’t anymore, because of how dumb I am, you see?).

Normal
(dir. Ben Wheatley)

Some would say squeezing in an 8:30AM screening of a violent action-comedy on a Monday before work is not the behaviour of someone acting in the best interest of their own mental health. But what if I told you that man had watched too many drama movies in the past couple days and knew he was seeing The Smashing Machine later that night and desperately needed a palate cleanser between the drama movies? What would you say to that?

This was the best decision I’ve made all week. I don’t even love Normal all that much, but sometimes you need to watch Bob Odenkirk shoot a gun (crazy that this is a genre now, but it really is -- we’re there now). Odenkirk plays the new Sheriff in Normal, Minnesota, a small town that might not be as quaint as its name might suggest. Could the locals be hiding a violent secret? Could the Yakuza somehow be involved? Did I keep expecting a grey tabby to turn a corner revealing that I was right to think this was a Garfield spin-off movie? All very interesting questions. You can see the elevator pitch for this one pretty clearly: Assault on Precinct 13 in Fargo. There’s even a character called Gunderson. Things like this may rub people the wrong way, but I wasn’t thinking too hard. I hadn’t eaten breakfast at this point.

This is Ben Wheatley's best movie in a while after being in the weeds for a bit (seaweeds – he directed The Meg 2). I think this is a good mode for him. It’s OK that he’s not the best director in the world. I am OK with him giving us something like this every couple of years that is funnier and more violent than your typical John Cena Amazon Prime action-comedy. Of course it doesn’t reach the heights of the Coens, Carpenter, or Hot Fuzz, and no, Nermal is not in it! Neither is Odie! But I need stuff like this sometimes – we all do – glad to have it. I will likely revisit.

The Smashing Machine
(dir. Benny Safdie)

I was seated for this movie in the balcony at The Princess of Wales Theatre in row F, seat 9. Yes I was seated in F9. The only Fast &/or Furious that The Rock wasn’t in since he joined the franchise. This was interesting to me and I wanted to talk to somebody about this, but the people on either side of me were late. The lights were going down when they arrived, and while anyone would enjoy this anecdote, I would not have liked to have been shushed by one of The Rock’s many diehard fans that came out the premiere of The Smashing Machine.

For months, I’ve been very curious about The Smashing Machine, which has been hyped as Dwayne Johnson’s foray into drama, working with Benny Safdie in an A24 movie. I was skeptical. I’ve been very allergic to Johnson’s brand lately, especially his public persona, his brand, and how blatantly it’s been seeping into his performances of late. I wasn’t looking forward to how he would frame this on his Insta, talking to his legions of fans.

“This movie shows a side of me, The Rock, that you’ve never seen before. The hierarchy of power in indie, auteur-driven filmmaking is about to change, ” he says as he lifts a tire over his head. Something I wasn’t expecting was that Safdie would put the fakeness that I’ve grown so tired of on display and explore the darkness behind the facade. It reminds me of how great filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Noah Baumbach have mined drama out of the schtick of comedic actors like Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller. Johnson is certainly compelling in The Smashing Machine, a biopic of UFC fighter Mark Kerr, but I wondered if more credit is due to Safdie, who does seem most interested in diving into what’s going on underneath the eyes of his lead character than he is with the man he’s portraying.

I wonder if this is more of a launchpad, a first step toward a larger dramatic career for The Rock. This movie ultimately feels kind of slight, and I can see us looking back at this as an interesting first collaboration between the two of them. I think we as a society need to be careful not to overpraise here. Yes, his head is big enough as it is, but also I wonder if we give him all the flowers now, he’ll go back to making Red Notices and Jungle Cruises instead of exploring this side of him (I’m thinking about how RDJ is already back to the MCU after getting all that accolade for Oppenheimer -- maybe if we were only like “oh yeah that was pretty good buddy,”  he’d still be chasing good movies and performances). Something to think about.
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Stay tuned! I’m back at work and have slowed down with the amount of movies I’m seeing, but I’ll be seeing a handful more and I’ll have my rankings out soon!