TIFF Day 5 Crowns 2 Five-Star Films as McDonagh and Eisenberg Entries Split Reviewers
Updated
Updated · regionfree.net · Sep 15
TIFF Day 5 Crowns 2 Five-Star Films as McDonagh and Eisenberg Entries Split Reviewers
3 articles · Updated · regionfree.net · Sep 15
Summary
Day five at TIFF hit its halfway mark with two standout 5/5 reviews: Takeshi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo and Alex Liu’s debut God Bless You, Mr. Kopu.
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo was praised as Miike’s most refined work in years, driven by Shun Oguri’s lead turn and a surprisingly strong Lily James performance despite some mid-film sag.
God Bless You, Mr. Kopu emerged as a major surprise, with its 1990s New Zealand satire on racism and capitalism hailed as one of the strongest feature debuts in recent memory.
Wild Horse Nine landed at 3/5, with Martin McDonagh’s sharp dialogue and John Malkovich-Sam Rockwell chemistry undercut, the review said, by muddled politics around CIA characters.
The day’s other extremes reinforced the festival’s unpredictability: Tim Blake Nelson’s Wilson Shedd also earned 5/5, while Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut drew a more mixed 3/5.