All the best movies at Toronto Film Festival, ranked (including 'The Substance')

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TORONTO – O, Canada, our home for the next week of excellent movies and Oscar-hopeful fare, including a Donald Trump biopic, a Hugh Grant horror flick and a drama where Amy Adams thinks she’s turning into a dog.

The Toronto International Film Festival, which runs through Sept. 15, for years has been a major launching pad for best picture winners like “Parasite,” “Nomadland” and “Spotlight.” And while not all of the 2024 lineup is probably headed for Academy Awards glory – yes, it would be nice to see a Stephen King adaptation such as “The Life of Chuck” make the Big Show one day – the TIFF slate is pretty stacked with high-profile projects from notable personalities (Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson and Jennifer Lopez), legendary artists (Bruce Springsteen and Elton John) and iconic directors (Francis Ford Coppola and Ron Howard).

We’re keeping a running tally on the movies we watch at Toronto, and here’s the best of the fest so far, ranked:

5. ‘The Luckiest Man in America’

From “I, Tonya” to “Richard Jewell,” Paul Walter Hauser has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood deftly playing awkward sorts who tumble into trouble, and his take on a real-life game-show disruptor finds him playing to win. (No Whammies here.) The drama, which also features David Strathairn and the always-fab Walton Goggins, revisits a 1980s scandal, when a mercurial contestant (Hauser) steals another’s spot on “Press Your Luck” and goes on an epic run gaming the system that gives TV producers fits, though there’s real emotional depth to his competitive fire.

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4. ‘The Cut’

Orlando Bloom stars as an Irish boxer once known as the “Wolf of Dublin” who missed his chance at superstardom. A decade later, he and his love interest/trainer (Caitriona Balfe) are given a second chance against the current champ, if the pugilist can make weight – in his case, lose 25 pounds in a week. What starts as a dull series of sports-movie clichés shifts to a solid movie with some psychological horror, discussion of mental health and eating disorders, a fantastic supporting turn from John Turturro (as the no-nonsense guy who comes in to help burn serious poundage) and one haymaker of a climax.

3. ‘Bird’

English director Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama tells a hardscrabble story with a whiff of dark fantasy, of a 12-year-old girl who’s had to grow up too fast. Bailey (Nykiya Adams) is irked when her unpredictable and chaotic dad Bug (Barry Keoghan) is getting married to a woman he hardly knows, and her mom lives under the thumb of a cruel boyfriend. Bailey finds escape in nature, where she meets a enigmatic sort named Bird (Franz Rogowski). He needs help finding his parents, but they ultimately look out for each other out in a thoughtful narrative about adolescence and family bonds.

2. ‘The Apprentice’

While it has nothing to do with Donald Trump’s reality TV show, it does have all to do with how a person – in this case, Trump himself – treats another in the name of fame, wealth and power. Set during his rise in New York in the 1970s and ‘80s, the engaging drama stars Sebastian Stan as a young Trump working for his father’s real estate business who comes under the tutelage of lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), infamous for his ruthlessness and lack of empathy. In that regard, the narrative follows the student becoming the master, with Stan and Strong both pulling off stellar character arcs.

1. ‘The Substance’

Every so often at a film fest, you see something that makes you go, “Well, that’s new.” And here that honor goes to this gloriously demented body horror, with Demi Moore just pulling out all the bonkers stops. She plays a TV fitness celebrity who signs up for a process promising to make her beautiful and perfect again. Margaret Qualley plays her younger self born as a result in a movie that gleefully goes off the tracks and keeps on going. Sure, it’s full of thought-provoking metaphors on beauty, vanity and self-worth, but you’ll also love that the it's a disturbing, hilarious and jaw-dropping hoot.