Yashy was unable to attend the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival as she was travelling so her friend Charmaine shared some of the best family friendly movies shown during the film festival in 2024.
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The Toronto International Film Festival graced the city once again with topnotch movies and actors, highlighting what is often the most wonderful time of the year for movie buffs and celebrity spectators. This year brought some heavy-hitters and standouts so while I usually attend more parties than films, this year was all about the movies for me and thankfully so. From big budget Hollywood flicks to international stories featuring first-time actors and directors, I was moved, inspired and warmed by some of this year’s offerings.
Read on to learn about some of the movies that had audiences talking!
Can I Get a Witness?
I chose this film as a Sandra Oh fan, but I was also curious about its premise: in a not-so-distant future, in order to save the planet, when someone turns 50, they must sacrifice their life to save the planet by minimizing the amount of resources being consumed. And, for some reason, teens need to witness their deaths and document it.
We follow Kiah (Keira Jang) and her co-worker, Daniel (Joel Oulette) as they perform the last rites. But in true Sandra Oh style, she steals the show in her performance in the film’s last scene. Oh perfectly captures that tension between having a daughter who is her world, and wanting to hold empathy for the burdensome vocation that’s been assigned by the government.
An interesting touch in this film is the use of animated sequences whenever Kiah documents a moment. In multiple sequences, the drawings she writes literally fly off the page and take on lives of their own.
While the premise is intriguing the film falls a bit flat with drawn out scenes at times and a kind of dialogue that’s always meant to provide some backstory about how the world got to the way it is, leaving viewers unable to witness a normal conversation or build connection or empathy for those in the film.
Read about Yashy’s TIFF picks last year.
The Mountain
Sam (Elizabeth Atkinson), faces a mountain of a challenge as she recovers from cancer in beautiful New Zealand. As part of this challenge, she decides she wants to climb Mount Taranaki (Taranaki Maunga), which happens to be the second highest mountain on the North Island.
The determined 11-year-old, who learns that her absent father is Māori, hopes that climbing Taranaki Maunga will heal her and set her on a path to uncover who she truly is. She encounters fellow 11-year-olds Mallory (Reuben Francis), and Bronco (Terence Daniel), all of whom feel isolated and alone. They all join in Sam’s mission, which ends up bringing them together in a beautifully supportive way. In a similar vein to the coming-of-age tale a la Stand By Me, this story is a story about friendship in the times of need, but also about finding strength within.
The complexity of the film is rather surprising given that it centres around its child actors, all of whom deliver a solid, stirring performance. However, it handles this complexity with such grace by treating these young actors with the emotional honesty they deserve. I was moved several times during this beautifully told human story that touches on respect for pacha mama, each other, culture and quite honestly, humanity. This was one of my fave films this season,
unsuspectedly!
SATURDAY NIGHT
Live from Toronto, it’s the premiere of SATURDAY NIGHT, which takes us back to the first-ever episode of the hugely popular skit show in 1975, and the chaos that preceded it, told almost in real time. Jim Balushi hasn’t signed his contract yet, the lighting crashes the set, actors are having meltdowns and producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is trying to convince broadcast execs that this show is worth showing, that it’ll be revolutionary…if only it would all
come together.
After a frenzied, harried throw together of near 90 minutes of scenes of fast-paced talking, filming and running through the set of the show, just down to the wire, the show finally screens to an audience of instant fans
This time period was the hey-day of the show, which has taken to feeling trite and rather, well, unfunny in the last decade or more. Director Jason Reitman enlisted some strong actors: Licorice Pizza’s Cooper Hoffman as the exec Dick Ebersol; Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Rachel Sennott as the writer and Lorne’s wife, Rosie Shuster; Lamorne Morris as the stage star and cast member Garrett Morris; and Todd Haynes regular Cory Michael Smith as the egotist Chevy
Chase; and Succession’s Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. Almost all of the characters are given just flashes of scenes without depth. And also, where was the solid screen time for the strong women who made the show back in its heyday such as Gilda Radner, whose character in this film gets but a passing role?
It’s an enjoyable watch because it’s fast-paced and moves along quickly, however, the frenetic pace makes you feel, well, frenzied and being in the middle of the chaos is not quite enough for a solid movie of strong substance. The film feels more like the director and producer knew the show, at least back in the day, had a massive following so die-hard fans would head to see anything that depicts the show’s origins. However, this feels a bit more like a parody of the real
launch broadcast of the show.
About the Author
Journalist and wanderluster Charmaine Noronha has traversed the world of journalism like she has the globe, exploring varied roles and publications. She’s a former reporter with The Associated Press and most recently was a Senior editor at HuffPost Canada. She’s also a travel writer with a penchant for adventure, social justice, culture and aalllll the dark chocolate she can get!
