TIFF 2019: The Films

Once again it's time for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Susan and I bought a Flex Package of 30 tickets, and last week I went through the program book to read all the film summaries. Over the weekend we came up with a ranked list of about 40 films we are interested in seeing, and this evening was our selection window on the TIFF web site.

One film we wanted to see (Knives Out) was sold out. It only had one screening available apart from the Gala screening, and that was gone by the time I got in to pick our films. We did get our top 14 other choices, and then added one more to complete our picks. While there was only one shut-out, there were many films on our list whose screenings conflicted with other films we had already picked, so we ended up with our 26th overall choice as the last pick.

Here are the films we saw, in the order we saw them. Films in bold are highly recommended; pass on the one in italics!:

• Dads
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Tammy's Always Dying
• The Goldfinch
• The Rest of Us
• Ordinary Love
• The Obituary of Tunde Johnson
• Motherless Brooklyn
• Lyrebird
• Blackbird
• Bad Education
• *Just Mercy*
• Harriet
• Red Penguins
• There's Something in the Water

Overall we had a great TIFF this year. We may not have seen as many breathtakingly great films as in some years, but we saw a bunch of really, really good ones, and the only stinker wasn't all that terrible (I call it the best worst film I have ever seen at TIFF!). Looking back, 8 of the 15 films were either documentaries, or based on true stories. That was not planned.

We are already looking forward to next year!