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Frankenstein

Honorary ɫɫ��nian Guillermo del Toro doesn’t just love monsters, he adores them. They’re like his children. Which makes it entirely logical why the Mexican auteur would want to do his own version of Mary Shelley’s classic “Frankenstein” story, filming it in ɫɫ�� as he did his Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water.” As per Shelley’s prose, the stitched-together man of the misunderstood title, played here by Jacob Elordi, elicits more sympathy than his driven creator Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a brilliant but egotistical scientist. Victor arrogantly fashions a flesh-and-blood humanoid from assembled corpses, only to recoil at his own diabolical handiwork. The creature seeks love and understanding but is met with fear and rejection, leading to tragedy for both creator and created as their fates intertwine in a gothic tale of ambition, alienation and the search for belonging.

Hamnet

Heading to TIFF garlanded with critical hosannahs and buckets of tears from its emotional Telluride festival premiere, Chloé Zhao’s Shakespearean extrapolation looks to be an exquisitely rendered and heartfelt adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s celebrated novel. Paul Mescal reportedly brings a brooding intensity to William Shakespeare, while Jessie Buckley anchors the film’s emotional core as the Bard’s wife, Agnes. Zhao traces the couple’s courtship and the raw grief that follows the 1596 death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Art and anguish become inseparable in a film that suggests that Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” springs less from Danish legend and more from an English father’s unfathomable sorrow.

It Was Just an Accident

Only Jafar Panahi could turn a roadside collision into both a moral crucible and an act of political defiance. The brilliant Iranian filmmaker uses a minor mishap to spark searing debates on culpability, vengeance and the elusive human capacity for grace, as torture victims confront the man they accuse of tormenting them. The Palme d’Or-winning drama is bracing on its own, but what makes it unforgettable is the risk behind the camera. Panahi shot the film in secret while under house arrest, banned from filmmaking by a regime determined to silence him. Every frame carries the urgency of resistance, drawn from his own ordeals and smuggled to the screen with the courage of someone who refuses to stop speaking. It’s cinema not just as storytelling, but as survival.

Mile End Kicks

Chandler Levack follows her appealing 2022 directorial debut, “I Like Movies,” with further evidence of her knack for humanizing outsiders, square pegs and loners. The action shifts from Ontario to Quebec, specifically an artsy Montreal neighbourhood where lo-fi rock, poetry readings and unpaid rent are de rigueur. Barbie Ferreira (“Euphoria”) plays Grace, an ambitious but unsure 22-year-old music critic who arrives from ɫɫ�� with plans to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s confessional “Jagged Little Pill” album, which she’s convinced changed her life. Grace’s authorial aspirations are interrupted by the awkwardly competing attentions of the singer (Stanley Simons) and lead guitarist (Devon Bostick) of an indie band called Bone Patrol. Levack nails the look and feel of the place and the shared sensation of “feeling weird and awkward all the time,” as a character aptly puts it.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry”) and Jay McCarrol’s cult web series (and later TV show), about two doofus bandmates desperate to land a gig at ɫɫ��’s Rivoli club, becomes a time-travelling movie thriller about friendship, ambition and outrageous copyright violations. As amusing as the film is for the way it brazenly ɫɫ��-izes the plot of “Back to the Future” (plus a bit of “Hot Tub Time Machine”), it’s also a marvel for its clever mix of archival footage, new material and spontaneous onlooker involvement. They’re still trying to get into the Riv, but returning to the right decade — and maintaining their friendship — become more pressing concerns after a high-flying publicity stunt becomes a leap into the unknown.

No Other Choice

The latest from acclaimed South Korean director Park Chan-wook (“Old Boy”) follows a laid-off middle manager (Lee Byung-hun of “Squid Game”) desperate to survive an imploding job market at any cost. The black comedy/thriller finds grim laughs in the absurdities of late-stage capitalism and AI, for an unnervingly resonant satire replete with stylized violence. Son Ye-jin adds emotional heft as the axed worker’s conflicted wife. Coming straight from its premiere in Venice, where it drew universal acclaim and a nine-minute standing ovation, “No Other Choice” is sure to be one of the festival’s hottest tickets.

Sentimental Value

Renate Reinsve and Elle Fanning gleam like two sides of the same coin in Joachim Trier’s knotty family drama, with emotions running sharp and deep. Stellan Skarsgård plays a famed filmmaker hoping to bridge years of absence by casting his actress daughter (Reinsve) in a film that replays their shared past. She refuses, wary of wounds too raw to expose, and the part instead goes to an American star (Fanning), who steps into a role loaded with uncanny echoes. What follows is a charged confrontation of art and memory, buoyed by magnificent performances from Reinsve and Fanning and Trier’s typically sharp sense of intimacy. 

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Oliver Laxe jolted Cannes with a road movie that feels like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s thriller “The Wages of Fear” (and William Friedkin’s masterful remake “Sorcerer”) reimagined for the end of days. The combustible cargo here isn’t dynamite but grief, carried across the Moroccan desert by Sergi López as Luis, a father staggering through loss while clinging to hope of finding his missing daughter. He travels with his young son and a caravan of free-spirited hitchhikers, their existential poetry colliding with the film’s looming dread. López gives a performance of quiet magnetism, at once hardened and vulnerable, as Laxe steers the story into zones of apocalyptic energy, spiritual yearning and hair-raising narrative swerves. It’s a desert odyssey buzzing with tension, vision and the strange euphoria of despair.

Train Dreams

Clint Bentley, fresh off co-writing the Oscar-nominated “Sing Sing,” delivers a bold, ravishing take on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella. It opens as a classic Western before deepening into myth. The film breathes tragedy and awe, summoning the hard truths and aching beauty of Thomas Hardy. Joel Edgerton embodies the battered soul of an ordinary man, stalled between wilderness and encroaching civilization, his world shifting faster than he can grasp. Supporting characters played by Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy and Nathaniel Arcand add rich textures to this haunting survival saga of loss and the vanishing frontier.

Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)

Celestial beings appear in a puff of smoke, their intentions unclear. A seaweed-draped troll hides beneath the water’s edge, seeking victims. An evil shaman commits murder in a dream, setting in motion a battle with destiny. The Far North folklore is vivid and often terrifying in this new drama by Inuk auteur Zacharias Kunuk (“Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”), but the biggest jolt to the senses comes from the beating hearts of two humans, betrothed lovers Sapa (Haiden Angutimarik) and Kaujak (Theresia Kappianaq). Separated by fate and custom, they’ll have to fight many challenges — and other suitors — if they are to remain a couple. Kunuk’s wild storytelling is informed by tales he heard growing up, but he also wants to show how the people of the North go about their daily lives. It’s a window into another world, one blessed by nature and enriched by imagination.