Notes from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival
Reviews on Sacrifice, A Useful Ghost, and Project Y
My preference at film festivals is always for the obscure, the non-English, the experimental. It may feel novel or cool to see the big titles with the biggest stars before their release, but I know I will have another opportunity to catch titles like Hamnet, The Testament of Ann Lee, and Eleanor the Great on the big screen. I’d much rather spend my time seeing films that I may never have a chance to see on a big screen (or even a small one!) again.
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I saw 24 films at TIFF 2025 in 16 different languages over the final seven days of the festival. My multi-outlet coverage of the 50th anniversary of the festival can be found (along with the rest of my writing) on my website.
Read my full report at Beam from the Booth.
Sacrifice
Romain Gavras, finding new levels of fame after the sensation of Athena and his (former) romance with Dua Lipa, tries to follow in the footsteps of his father, Costa-Gavras, with commercially appealing anti-status filmmaking only this time he has the advantage of working with a cast of bigger names and bigger bags of cash.
Read my review at Beam from the Booth.
A Useful Ghost
A Useful Ghost from Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke was fully unknown to me. I went to my screening not even knowing its title, that the director would be present, or anything about its genre. Turns out that A Useful Ghost is about lost souls inhabiting factory machinery and consumer products to tie unresolved threads of love, grief, and revenge. One spirit, Nat (Davika Hoorne), possesses a vacuum cleaner to look after her widower, an affable and self-described “academic ladyboy” March (Witsarut Himmarat). The ghost visual effects couldn’t be simpler, instilling the film with an affectionate arts-and-crafts personality. Those left behind sometimes perceive the ghosts as people and these people, in a clever design choice, always have funky and unnatural hair colors.
Read my review at Beam from the Booth.
Project Y
A Thelma & Louise story set in Seoul’s Gangnam district, Project Y is the best new Korean film I’ve seen so far this year.
Real-life friends Han So-hee (Gyeongseong Creature) and Jeon Jong-seo (Burning) play two sisters down on their luck and left with no other means than robbing a really bad man out of really dirty money. Their chemistry comes naturally and so does their action. Neither Mi-sun (Han) nor Do-kyung (Jeon) spend much more time getting beaten up than they do beating people up.
Read my review at Beam from the Booth.