‘Frankenstein,’ ‘Hamnet,’ and ‘The Christophers’ Are Highlights in Toronto

Guillermo del Toro got a hero’s welcome at the Toronto International Film Festival when he unveiled the international premiere of his long-awaited $120 million Frankenstein — a film mostly shot and produced in Ontario’s capital. “Canadians are modest,” del Toro said to a roaring crowd in the Princess of Wales Theater. “So it takes a Mexican to tell you it’s a great fucking city.”

It’s a pretty great festival, too, and has been for fifty years, dutifully programming the best of the best from all the year’s other festivals. This 50^th edition of TIFF is no exception, culling freshly-debuted movies from the overlapping competition at Venice and Telluride, as well as spotlighting the cream of the crop from Cannes and Berlin. TIFF’s main role is as a clarifier of the awards season, solidifying which buzzy movies look like non-starters, also-rans and real contenders.

Heading the list is Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, a devastating meditation on familial grief that explores how William Shakespeare’s own personal tragedy inspired Hamlet. Think Shakespeare in Love, but transcendently sad. (Call this Shakespeare in Loss.) The period drama, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning and bestselling book of the same name, nabbed the coveted People’s Choice Award, which at times has been a bellwether for Oscar glory — witness 2018’s Green Book, which won that prize en route to its dark-horse Best Picture victory.

First runner-up went to Frankenstein, del Toro’s sumptuous but overlong adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel, while the second runner-up prize went to Rian Johnson’s twisty crowd-pleasing whodunnit Wake Up Dead Man. Netflix will be thrilled with those last two, since it produced both.

Not surprisingly, the hot-ticket No Other Choice nabbed the International People’s Choice Award. Park Chan-Wook’s stylish satire had such a mobbed press & industry unveiling that the festival added an additional screening. Joachim Trier’s deeply affecting Sentimental Value came in second, which bodes well for the bittersweet Norwegian melodrama about a peripatetic filmmaker father (Stellan Skarsgaard) estranged from his actress daughter (Renate Reinsve). Trier’s latest triumph also came in second at Cannes in May, which speaks to this year’s stiff competition.

Coming up empty-handed was The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie’s moody but muted biopic about the rise and fall of MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The film, which won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, boasts a career-best work from popcorn-picture stalwart Dwayne Johnson, whose physical transformation into Kerr is not nearly as impressive as how his emotional performance modulates from simmering to seismic. His acting is controlled chaos, showing the kind of career evolution that will sustain a healthy ride on the awards circuit this fall.

Jacob Elordi might give Johnson a run for his money, with his surprisingly soulful turn as the creature that Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) brings to unholy life in Frankenstein. Del Toro’s passion project exudes a romantic urgency, as it tweaks the creator/monster mythos into a father-son dynamic where both men are tortured by a need to connect that’s tainted with resentment and yearning.

Fittingly alongside Hamnet and Frankenstein, TIFF offered a few world premieres that developed the relationships between parents and children in ways that resonated satisfyingly off each other. Pablo Trapero’s uneven & Sons was a fitfully entertaining look at a horrible dad (Bill Nighy) whose fame as a bestselling novelist has led to alienated kids, a broken marriage, and accusations of infidelity. He fathered a boy outside of wedlock — who, in a sci-fi twist, isn’t exactly the love child everyone else suspects. A wobbly premise punches above its weight due to the strong cast, which also includes a tremendously affecting Imelda Staunton as the jilted ex and Noah Jupe as the mysterious offspring.

Much more masterful was Two Pianos, from stalwart auteur Arnaud Desplechin, whose beguilingly convincing narratives, full of unlikely plot twists and incredulous character connections, make him the French hetero Almodóvar. This latest melodrama focuses on a former concert piano prodigy (François Civil) whose erratic behavior gets even worse when he comes back to Lyon at the request of his celebrated mentor (Charlotte Rampling) and confronts the consequences of his amorous past. It’s another father-son story, one rich with regrets, tenderness, and an aching need for absolution.

But by far the best of the fest was The Christophers, astoundingly yet another Steven Soderbergh film in 2025 (after January’s release of Presence and the March movie Black Bag). Shifting gears away from genre, the wildly prolific filmmaker opts for a ruminative, delightful drama about an old painter (Ian McKellen), formerly an enfant terrible on the British art scene and now a near-death artist sapped of inspiration.

His long-ago and locked-away series of unfinished portraits called “The Christophers” could fetch millions, and his hapless adult children (James Corden and Jessica Gunning) hire an art forger (Michaela Coel) to finish them up. What results is a fascinating two-hander between McKellan and Coel, a formidable pair of performers with completely different acting methods. Even better is Ed Solomon’s sparkling script, which offers one unexpected twist after another in an almost novelistic study of regret and redemption that fully satisfies. It’s a briskly polished production, even modest in its scope, professionally assembled, expertly crafted, containing thematic multitudes — which is also a pretty apt way to describe this year’s TIFF.