{"id":133317,"date":"2025-09-12T23:24:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T23:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/133317\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T23:24:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T23:24:04","slug":"tiff-2025-dust-bunny-the-furious-normal-festivals-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/133317\/","title":{"rendered":"TIFF 2025: Dust Bunny, The Furious, Normal | Festivals & Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

TIFF Midnight Madness has long been one of the most popular programs of any film festival, a launching pad for new talent as well as a pedestal for accomplished genre directors. Where else could you see both the Best Picture nominated \u201cThe Substance<\/a>\u201d and this year\u2019s \u201cF*ck My Son!\u201d? The breakout of 2025\u2019s MM section was undeniably Curry Barker\u2019s \u201cObsession<\/a>,\u201d which sold to Focus shortly after its premiere for a stunning $15 million. But there were at least three other films in the program that had people talking outside of the Royal Alexandra, where raucous audiences celebrate left-of-center cinema that can only premiere after midnight.<\/p>\n

My favorite of these three is the feature debut of TV legend Bryan Fuller, who brings the craft that fans of shows like \u201cPushing Daisies\u201d and \u201cHannibal\u201d to his playfully twisted \u201cDust Bunny,\u201d a movie inspired by Roald Dahl, Jim Henson, and Jeunet & Caro in equal measure. Some questionable CGI aside, this is one of those films that trusts kids to handle honestly scary themes in how it twists the classic tale of \u201cthe monster under the bed\u201d to something that should ring true for all generations. It really reminds me of a better time for family entertainment, a time in which people like Joe Dante and Jim Henson were allowed to legitimately frighten kids. Those are the movies that create future filmmakers, one who are inspired by works like \u201cGremlins\u201d or \u201cLabyrinth\u201d to make their own fantastical adventures. Let\u2019s hope it reaches them when it hits theaters this December.<\/p>\n

In a gloriously dialogue-free prologue of sorts, we meet Aurora (Sophie Sloan), a girl with a monster under her bed. Her foster parents don\u2019t believe her. Neither did the foster parents before them, the ones eaten by said dust bunny from Hell. After the new ones get gobbled up like carrots, Aurora goes to a neighbor in her apartment building\u2014a wonderfully designed setting that exists somewhere between fantasy and reality a la J&C works like \u201cDelicatessen\u201d and \u201cCity of Lost Children.\u201d The neighbor happens to be a hit man, and he happens to be played by Fuller\u2019s Lecter, the singular Mads Mikkelsen<\/a>. At first, he tries to talk Aurora out of her reality, convinced that whoever killed her foster parents were really after him or his handler (played by Sigourney Weaver<\/a>). The monster could just be how a little girl interprets actual human-based violence. But what if it\u2019s not?<\/p>\n

Fuller is having a blast with \u201cDust Bunny,\u201d never overplaying his themes, choosing to make pure entertainment, first and foremost. And it\u2019s certainly that. Mikkelsen is his wonderfully deadpan self, balanced out by entertaining performances from the striking David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, who end up sucked into Aurora\u2019s inexplicable predicament. Some of the monster CGI is questionable\u2014there are some obvious puppet shots, and one wishes the whole thing was animatronic instead\u2014but this is a movie that really builds momentum as you get on its playful, timeless wavelength. It\u2019s a fairy tale for kids who know fairies are monsters too.<\/p>\n

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One of the most buzzed films of TIFF 2025 from any program was Kenji Tanigaki\u2019s \u201cThe Furious,\u201d a truly bonkers showcase of incredible stunt and fight choreography that drew comparisons to \u201cThe Raid\u201d and \u201cNight Comes for Us.\u201d The dialogue is atrocious, the plotting is goofy, and no one will care because Tanigaki has conceived, choreographed, and executed some of the most impressive fight scenes in years. Employing the expertise of veterans from some of your favorite Asian action movies of all time, \u201cThe Furious\u201d should be an action hit for the studio smart enough to release it. Someone should get on that fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Furious\u201d is about two men who essentially take down a massive trafficking ring that they\u2019re drawn into for personal reasons. The mute Wang Wei\u2019s (Miao Xie) daughter is kidnapped by the cartel around the same time that Navin\u2019s (Joe Taslim) journalist wife goes missing while investigating them. They become a dynamic duo of carnage in this \u201cTaken Meets the Raid,\u201d punching, kicking, stabbing, and slicing their way through waves of bad guys to a remarkably bloody climax. Familiar genre faces like Yayan Ruhian (\u201cJohn Wick: Chapter 3 \u2013 Parabellum\u201d) and Brian Le (a stunt performer in everything from \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d to \u201cBullet Train\u201d) throw their entire bodies into sequences directed by the action designer behind films like \u201cTwilight of the Warriors: Walled In\u201d and \u201cRaging Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plotting of \u201cThe Furious\u201d is just silly, and the dialogue sounds so poorly delivered at times that I first presumed it was dubbed, but none of that matters when this movie is in action mode. And it\u2019s no exaggeration to say that roughly 3\/4s of the film\u2019s runtime consists of fighting. Not only is the action well-directed and choreographed\u2014reminding one how great it is to see long, unbroken shots of ace stunt work\u2014but the sound design deserves some flowers too. Every snap, crackle, and pop here sounds like it connects, often at the same time.<\/p>\n

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Finally, there\u2019s the relatively inferior, especially compared to the ingenuity of the other two films in this dispatch, \u201cNormal,\u201d the latest in the surprisingly growing \u201cBob Odenkirk<\/a> Kicks Ass\u201d genre. The \u201cNobody\u201d star is the best thing about this \u201cFargo Meets Hot Fuzz\u201d riff, but it feels like an afterthought for the prolific Ben Wheatley, a genre director who works so often that he has another movie premiering at another film festival this month. I joked that he made \u201cNormal\u201d in a week, but it might be true. It\u2019s basically a 45-minute set-up followed by a 45-minute action scene. Some of the latter is admittedly enjoyable and Odenkirk actually does differentiate this \u201cnormal guy turned killing machine\u201d from his other \u201cnormal guy turned killing machine,\u201d but it\u2019s a movie that\u2019s ultimately a tick too forgettable given the talent involved and even the relatively clever premise.<\/p>\n

Working from a script by Derek Kolstad (who also penned the \u201cNobody<\/a>\u201d movies), \u201cNormal\u201d stars Odenkirk as Ulysses, the interim sheriff of a snow-covered small town. The other sheriff died of a heart attack. Or did he? Ulysses starts to realize that there\u2019s something off about Normal from the slimy mayor (Henry Winkler) to the edgy woman (Lena Headey) he meets at a local watering hole. <\/p>\n

When a pair of drifters tries to rob the bank, it sets a motion a series of events that leads to mass carnage. It turns out there\u2019s something in the vault that no one in town wants stolen. And then the Yakuza get involved. <\/p>\n

There are a lot of booms and bangs in \u201cNormal,\u201d but it\u2019s all woefully underlit and much of it is poorly edited too. We know something explosive is happening, people die, rinse and repeat. Through it all, Odenkirk glides in his increasingly playful manner, an approach that conveys he knows this is all ridiculous, but he just wants you to have fun. You will for stretches of \u201cNormal,\u201d but not long enough to make it a town worth visiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TIFF Midnight Madness has long been one of the most popular programs of any film festival, a launching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-133317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}