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TIFF2017, the absolutely worst TIFF festival in its history

Mitch Wolfe Gives Four Thumbs Down to TIFF 2017!



This was the absolutely worst Toronto International Film Festival in terms of movie selections in its 41 years history.* I have been attending and following TIFF since its inception in the fall of 1976 in Toronto, as the Festival of Festivals, co-founded by wild+ crazy film geniuses, Bill Marshall and Dusty Cohl.
Without qualification, TIFF2017 hit rock bottom this year in terms of the quality of the films presented. The whole senior management from Cameron Bailey on right down, should be thrown out. Their credit cards cancelled. Their desks cleaned out. Completely new management and film programmers should be brought in. What were these overpaid, clearly no talent, no taste, TIFF executives thinking? Perhaps the TIFF board of directors should worry less about identity politics and hiring TIFF executives based on “diversity and inclusion and gender neutrality” and instead hire executives based on merit, originality, film knowledge/experience and artistic quality. Clearly, the theme of this horrible TIFF2017 was to bring in fading, dated, aging, well past their prime, Hollywood liberal star power to provide PR fire power in order to publicize the international greatness of TIFF. In the process, these TIFF idiots ignored the whole raison d’etre for this festival. The quality of the films! The actual quality of the films associated with and attached to these intellectually shallow liberal writers/directors losers- was beyond the pale. Beyond fixing. These lousy liberal Hollywood films should never have seen the light of the day. They should never have been in TIFF 2017.

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Here is my list of the worst films of TIFF that literally stunk up the screen and polluted the whole TIFF atmosphere. Talk about man-made Hollywood carbon gases and pollution. Ontario Premier Wynne, in my opinion, would be justified, in carbon taxing the you know what out of these horribly gaseous films.

George Clooney’s horribly bad “Suburbicon”

George Clooney’s horribly bad “Suburbicon”, based on a 1985 screenplay by the Coen Brothers who knew that its theme of white suburbanites doing bad stuff to each other was second-rate and Fargo-derivative and should not have been filmed. But that did not stop Uber Liberal Clooney, from taking a poor unfilmable script and making it much much worse by overlaying it with the subplot of an unnamed black family who comes to this lily-white suburb and is racially harassed in the 1950s. Clooney tried to make the obvious but stupid point that white Americans in 2017 under Trump are similarly harassing Muslims and Latinos in white America. The ideas are intellectually shallow and weak. The writing is less than mediocre, the direction pathetic and the acting by Matt Damon and Julianne Moore totally wasted. This was the Yuugest bomb of the festival. But not the only one.

Downsizing is an ecological mess of a film

Downsizing by Alexander Payne is an ecological mess of a film.It stars poorly cast unfunny Kristen Wiig+ Matt Damon, again. Did Damon go Bourne on us and forget he used to be a good actor who chose decent scripts? This film is supposed to be satirical, scientific, ecologically wise and funny. Instead it is humorless, boring and interminable. I thought I was living in hell, with No Exit. ( Sartre reference-intended).The film seemed to last for days and days and days, with no end is sight. The theme is that life would be easier if humans were reduced in size to 5 inches and in turn lived in a miniature world. It is one of those how do we save the world, climate change fantasies- best left unfilmed. Payne has done great quirky films like Sideways, Descendants and Nebraska. This is his worst film. For an ecological film, it was totally toxic.

Molly’s Game, a messy, unfocused, overly wordy Sorkin-esque mess

Molly’s Game, by Aaron Sorkin, in his first directorial gig, is a messy, unfocused, overly wordy Sorkin-esque mess. Molly is a former skier, who runs a seemingly successful underground poker empire, first in Hollywood with wealthy actors and LA players and then on Wall Street. Oh yes, some Mafia are thrown in. Jessica Chastain, survives this Sorkin verbal diarrhea storm, with her rep barely intact. Sorkin jump cuts too much. There is too much Sorkin narration. The film does not hold together especially when Molly is under FBI investigation and must face saving herself or exposing her clients. Boring. So predictable. Sorkin’s liberal politics gets in the way. He clearly loved Hillary Clinton. He had emotionally invested in Hillary. He suffered when Trump won. Chastain is Sorkin’s Hillary substitute, but more likeable and with supposedly more integrity.


The film and Sorkin just muddle through by the end. It fades and becomes incomprehensible in the second half, much like Hillary’s election campaign. Sorkin should stick to writing and let someone else direct his overly loquacious work. This is another epic fail.

Roman J. Israel, stars Denzel Washington in one of his worst roles ever

The oddly-sounding film, Roman J. Israel, stars Denzel Washington in one of his worst roles ever. This film is written and directed by Dan Gilroy of the tremendous Nightcrawler. This film is garbage. It is about a socially awkward idealistic civil rights lawyer, Washington, best left in the backrooms. Away from clients. All of a sudden he is thrown into the real world of life and the reality and brutality of law. Once again this film fails due to muddled liberal thinking. A characteristic of all these flawed wrong-headed liberal-oriented so-called message films. It also fails because the great Denzel Washington is just not believable as the naive, weak, socially awkward idealistic lawyer. The underlying theme is liberal idealism runs up against powerful unethical bosses. Colin Farrel as Denzel’s new boss, has a certain sleazy Trumpian quality to him, at least according to this liberal writer director Gilroy who loses control of the material and badly uses Washington. This film is another epic fail and freaking mess of wrong-headed liberal politics infecting the film and the whole TIFF 2017 experience. The best film of the TIFF2017 is Dunkirk which is currently being shown commercially in film screens all over the world. That says it all about TIFF2017, the absolutely worst TIFF festival in its history. * This article has been updated to correct the inception date of TIFF.

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Mitch Wolfe -- Bio and Archives

Mitch Wolfe, a graduate of Harvard University, is the author of “Trump: How He Captured The Trump White House”, which he wrote and had published prior to the election. (available on Amazon.com)


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