The Toronto International Film Festival can offer plenty to watch without offering an equally persuasive reason to watch everything. That tension sits at the center of The New York Times’ characterization of the festival as abundant but uneven. For readers deciding which films deserve their attention, the useful question is what to carry forward from that assessment: which qualities distinguish an intriguing discovery from a movie whose appeal depends on the excitement surrounding it?
Our view is that a festival’s overall reputation provides a starting point, while the decisive evidence belongs inside individual films. Look for characters whose choices matter, images that reveal something dialogue cannot, and endings that change how earlier scenes feel. Those standards make room for difficult, imperfect work without confusing ambition with achievement.
This is spoiler-free festival commentary, rather than a firsthand review of a particular screening.
What an uneven festival verdict actually tells you
A broad assessment of TIFF combines two different judgments: the experience of encountering a program and the quality of the films encountered. An abundance of options can make the first experience stimulating even when the second is inconsistent. Conversely, several exceptional discoveries can make an uneven selection feel worthwhile. Neither response establishes how every other viewer will experience the same program.
For readers, the distinction matters because a festival verdict is inevitably compressed. It cannot tell you whether a particular disappointment came from thin characterization, repetitive storytelling, an unsuccessful formal experiment, or simply a mismatch between a film’s interests and a critic’s tastes. Those explanations have different implications for your own viewing.
A criticism of predictable plotting might deter someone seeking suspense while barely troubling a viewer interested in performance. A complaint about emotional distance could identify a genuine weakness—or describe precisely the restraint another viewer values. The most useful film reviews explain the mechanism behind a response, giving readers something more actionable than enthusiasm or dismissal.
Start with what the characters can actually change
Character analysis offers one way through that uncertainty. A premise tells us what situation a person occupies. Drama develops through what that person does within it. When reading about a TIFF selection, look for an account of desire, resistance, and consequence: what someone wants, what makes pursuing it difficult, and what changes because they try.
This does not require a forceful protagonist or a neatly stated goal. Hesitation, accommodation, and refusal can all carry dramatic weight. A person’s silence may protect a relationship, preserve a lie, or surrender an opportunity. What matters is whether the movie makes that silence specific enough for us to understand its pressure.
Supporting characters deserve the same attention. Can they interrupt the protagonist’s understanding of the world? Do they have needs that complicate the central story? A film grows more convincing when other people possess lives beyond their usefulness to its lead. Our character-focused guide to nine TIFF films offers a related route into choosing what to follow.
Ask whether the filmmaking changes your understanding
A character’s perspective reaches us through more than the script. Framing can make a person look secure in one scene and isolated in another. Editing can connect a confident declaration with a contradictory action. Sound can draw attention to a presence outside the frame, making an apparently private moment feel exposed.
These are useful things to seek in festival criticism because they distinguish an account of a movie from a summary of its subject. Calling a film compassionate, tense, or unsettling names an effect. Explaining how it directs our attention begins to show whether that effect is sustained and earned.
Dialogue deserves similar scrutiny. A memorable line can condense a character’s predicament, but its meaning depends on who speaks, who listens, and what follows. A declaration of love carries different weight if it invites an answer, ends an argument, or prevents someone from leaving. Strong criticism preserves that relationship between words and behavior instead of treating a quotable sentence as proof of depth.
Give imperfect films a precise kind of credit
An uneven festival should encourage discrimination without encouraging timidity. Some films may fail at one ambition while succeeding at another. A strained final act does not erase a perceptive performance; an arresting visual approach does not automatically repair an underdeveloped relationship. Both judgments can remain true.
The productive question is whether the achievement interests you enough to accept the limitation. Someone fascinated by performance may reasonably prioritize a film that another viewer finds structurally awkward. Someone seeking a tightly controlled thriller may make a different choice. Personal taste becomes more useful when it can identify the tradeoff.
There is also a difference between an unresolved ending and an unfinished argument. An unresolved ending can leave characters facing a recognizable moral or emotional difficulty. An unfinished argument may merely stop before the movie has tested its own ideas. Reviews that describe what remains unsettled help readers distinguish deliberate openness from missing development.
Build a watchlist around evidence, curiosity, and contrast
For viewers following Toronto from a distance, a small, varied watchlist is easier to use than a collection of every title attracting attention. Give each potential choice a concrete reason to remain on the list.
- Choose one film for a clearly described strength. Look for discussion of a performance, relationship, or formal approach that connects with what you enjoy.
- Choose one film that divides opinion for an interesting reason. Disagreement about tone or structure can be more revealing than a vague claim that a movie is controversial.
- Choose one film outside your usual preferences. Let curiosity have a place without requiring every viewing decision to be an experiment.
Keep expectations equally specific. Wanting to see how a film handles social pressure is more useful than expecting it to justify an entire festival’s reputation. Our discussion of the relationship questions raised by Babies illustrates how a focused dramatic question can guide that interest.
The lasting value of TIFF’s abundance
Our interpretation of an abundant, uneven TIFF is that its value should be measured through the encounters it makes possible. Variety matters when it brings different experiences, forms, and sensibilities within reach. It becomes less useful when the sheer availability of movies substitutes for a considered explanation of why particular ones deserve attention.
The films worth carrying beyond Toronto will earn that attention individually. Perhaps a character’s choice will become harder to judge with time. Perhaps an apparently minor gesture will reveal the emotional center of a story. Perhaps a difficult ending will keep reorganizing what came before it. Those are the experiences a festival watchlist should leave room to discover: specific, personal, and substantial enough to survive the departure from the theater.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: September 19, 2026 at 15:47:23 PDT (Los Angeles time)
