TIFF has begun on Thursday. I will be heading out this Thursday to see UK’s Glenrothlan directed by Succession‘s Brian Cox, and then also Paul Dano starring in The Wizard of the Kremlin. I am going in cold to these movies, with little to no background at all. My life experience with TIFF has been that this is the best way to see the movies being shown. The less I know the better. I did look to try and see Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, but it will be released on Netflix in the next few weeks after a short theatrical release. I am noting that tickets are expensive and will take away from the number of movies that I attend.

Small Things Like These: Cillian Murphy stars in the smaller film set in Ireland in 1985 (which appears more like 1955 save the music on the radio) adapts the book by Claire Keegan (unread by me). It is on Crave. I was curious to see how Oscar winner Murphy follwed up his Oppenheimer success. The story told is a small town in Ireland where a father, Bill Furlong played by Murphy, has a wife and four girls. He is a simple quiet man who sells househeating coal for a living. One of his customers is the local Catholic church. He begins noticing some strange occurences with some young women at the church.

Like many churches, they take in young women who are pregnant, and this has been the case for decades in the UK. The movie Philomena from 2013 starring Dame Judi Dench. Some of the same ground is covered, although here there is a community around the church who is anxious for Bill to forget what he had noticed. Bill has some trauma from his younger days which we see in flashback. It can impact him in present day at strange times, and Murphy is so expressive on his face that we see how he is affected. With very few words, but looks and gestures, Bill keeps his feelings and emotions to himself all the while struggling with opposing forces. At the church Emily Watson, once again like in her role in Dune Prophesy, plays an authoritative Mother Superior, wielding her power with surgical precision. Guilt and peer pressure are powerful tools, and some well offered monetary gifts in tough times. Although this was a slower pace, I think that this was well acted and showed the dilemma that a father has when thinking that he risks plenty for doing the right thing, rather than choosing to stay quiet and look the other way. I am glad that I saw this.

Blazing Saddles: Director and actor in a few roles Mel Brooks just celebrated his 100th birthday. I then noted on TV that they were showing this 1974 film without edits and commercials on Saturday night. I chose to watch. I remember having seen this back in the theatres. Like Mel Brooks films it is completely politically incorrect and offensive, certainly to 2025 sensibilities. It is meant to offend, but through humour. It stars Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. The premise is a small town is likely to benefit from a new railroad being brought into its boundaries. Scoundrel Harvey Korman, playing Hedley Lamarr (yes they make fun of his name), wants to terrorize the town and scoop up the town from its currents owners. He starts by trying to bring in a sherriff who the townspeople would hate. The answer was black man Bart, who was destined to be hanged but caught a break. As he arrives into town the multiple uses of the n-word is uncomfortable to 2025 ears. It was offensive in 1974 too but now is certainly more grating. The sherriff befriends a drunken quick-draw cowboy, played by Wilder, and together they begin to solve the towns problems. Moving on from that failed idea, he wants to bring in “Mongo” to kill the sherriff and then follows up with hiring Kahn as a seductive singer from Germany to distract and break the heart of the sherriff.

There are visual gags, some plays on words, and of course the classic campfire scene with the cowboys eating beans and then flatulating one after another. It’s a moronic joke, but still makes me laugh. There were a couple of laughs. For the most part, the jokes don’t translate that well to a 2025 audience, but it was still good to see Gene Wilder again. Brooks plays multplie roles including a cross-eyed governor with a busty assistant, and the indigenous leader allowing Bart as a youngster to pass with his black family into their territory. This was fun to re-visit, but isn’t really a film for today’s audiences other than to show the things that passed for comedy back 50 years ago.