TIFF 2026: the latest movie reviews from Toronto

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother will make you forget all about Marvel’s Blade disaster

Marvel’s mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio’s biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother .

That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous reports here and here ), and it was one of those days that drives home why events like TIFF can be so special. Each film I saw was drastically different from the last — there was everything from a drama about drifting cars to a throwback horror flick based on a famous Japanese ghost story — which was a great reminder that there are still plenty of new ideas left in the world of film.

Laika’s stop-motion fantasy Wildwood looks so smooth

Due to a scheduling mishap, I was only able to check out two movies on my second day at the Toronto International Film Festival — but I did manage to get an early look at and some fascinating details on one of my most anticipated films this year.

Even if you don’t know the name Laika, you probably know the studio’s work; it’s the animation house behind stop-motion hits like ParaNorman , The Boxtrolls , and Kubo and the Two Strings . Over the years Laika’s films have steadily gotten more impressive on both a technical and artistic level. Which brings us to the incredible-looking Wildwood , hitting theaters next month. If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a look:

New York City’s last pickpocket doesn’t need a smartphone

Hello once again from Toronto, where for a week every year I watch far too many movies and tell you all about them. The festival, better known as TIFF, is always a great preview of the months ahead in film, with a nice mix of mainstream fare, awards contenders, indie surprises, and genre flicks destined to be cult classics. The streamers also love to make their presence felt here, previewing some of their most anticipated projects. Last year, for instance, Netflix showed off both Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein as well as the third Knives Out movie , and I was also able to watch everything from the terrifying video game adaptation Exit 8 to Park-Chan wook’s dark satire No Other Choice .

This year looks similarly promising. There are new films from directors like Takashi Miike, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and Werner Herzog, and very intriguing features including a four-hour-long documentary on Elon Musk. There are also previews of a surprising number of Halloween-adjacent streaming series in the form of Netflix’s Below , Peacock’s Crystal Lake , and Amazon’s Carrie . I’m aiming to see just shy of 30 films and series over the next week or so, and, just like last year , I’ll be writing daily dispatches covering every single thing I see with a brief review.