Toronto Review: Mark Mylod’s Psychological Thriller ‘The Menu’

After two-plus decades of marriage, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have never stopped having the hots for each other — and they want the world to know!

Jenna Dewan is getting steamy in a new film, executive produced by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. In Lifetime’s upcoming movie,, Dewan plays a fitness instructor who moves into a small town to open a pole dancing business -- which doubles as a prostitution ring.  When it comes to working with the beloved Hollywood couple, Dewan couldn’t enjoy it more. “I’m obsessed with them,” she told ET’s Deidre Behar at the Variety Power of Women event in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Connie Nielsen is set to star in the psychological thriller “Follow Me” from Catalyst Studios. The “Gladiator” and “Wonder Woman” star will play the lead role in the film, directed by auteur Siri Rødnes (“A Gambler’s Guide to Dying”). Sam Hunt (“Chicago PD,” ”Empire”) and Stef Dawson (The Hunger Games trilogy, “The Dust Walker”), will co-star opposite Nielsen. Principal photography will begin in Belgrade, Serbia, on Sept. 25. The film is being produced by Devin DiGonno for Catalyst Studios. Holly Levow, Mark Pennell and Paul Kampf are executive producing.

As the Toronto International Film Festival comes to its official Closing Night we say goodbye to the re-energized fest for another year, but not before we say ‘hello Dali’ or actually the final World Premiere of the festival, Daliland  which picks up the celebrated artists’ life in its later years focusing on the odd relationship between his and his controlling wife. If only this film stuck to that idea and didn’t take a detour into a misbegotten coming of age plotline about the young assistant both Dalis take a shine to in their own way.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you’re someone who considers themself a foodie (and I totally am), chances are there was a moment in the last few years when you had The Awakening. It may have been when the waiter was describing the veal marrow with beat foam served with baby lettuces from New Zealand. It may have been when you were eating the red snapper that was cooked halfway through, like a rare steak, and you thought, “I love sushi, I love cooked fish, but I’m not sure this is really the best of both worlds.” It may have been when you saw the bill. Whatever the trigger, that was the moment you looked up from your plate and realized that high-end foodie culture has become a serious annoyance. It’s gotten too fussy, too pricey, too full of itself, too not filling (of yourself), too avant-garde and conceptual, too tied to The Salvation of the Planet, too much of an ordeal. Did I mention too pricey? It used to be that if you wanted to ridicule culinary mania, you mocked someone like Guy Fieri. But he has risen from the ashes of infamy to a kind of born-again respectability (and yes, “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” was always a great show). Now, if you want to ridicule culinary mania, the most natural targets are restaurants like The French Laundry in Napa Valley or Bros’ in Southern Italy, places where the 12-course “tasting menu” can inspire you to think, as one blogger put it, that “there was nothing even close to an actual meal served.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The ongoing overhaul of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios is getting traction thanks to booming demand from international productions just as the number of sound stages increase, prompting realistic prospects of turning a profit by end of 2022, which is a year earlier than planned. Cinecittà has been undergoing a radical revamp devised by managing director Nicola Maccanico since June 2021, when European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Italian premier Mario Draghi (pictured above at Cinecittà) jointly visited the iconic studio lot and held a press conference in its vast Studio 5 — known as the late, great filmmaker Federico Fellini’s second home — to announce a €300 million ($300 million) investment to meet the growing international demand for studio space,

Kelly Ripa thought she and Mark Consuelos were going to have a pandemic baby. The host is releasing her upcoming book “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories,” and ahead of its release, she’s sharing some of the things you can expect.

Watching Peter Farrelly’s new film, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, and knowing little about it going in, I kept thinking this would be a totally absurd, beyond belief story if it isn’t one that really happened. By the end I saw it is indeed 100% true, proving life can sometimes be stranger than fiction.  As such it turns out to be one of the more memorable, and certainly heartfelt movies this year, as well as a Vietnam War movie that couldn’t be further from The Deer Hunter, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now,  but a character-driven drama that defies logic but makes you believe once again in the power of the human spirit. This is the rare Vietnam film seen from the POV of a civilian, a key reason it works as well as it does.

The mix of musical genres in the title of this Toronto Film Festival Gala Presentation reflects the wildly uneven tone of this rare drama from Tyler Perry Studios, a lush romantic musical telling the story of a Southern lynching with echoes of the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi 1955. An imminent bow on Netflix is probably the best strategy for it; Perry may have his following, but it’s hard to imagine a crossover audience for A Jazzman’s Blues.

Haute cuisine — the worst, right? Minuscule portions, inscrutable foams, and spheres scattered across gigantic plates festooned with equally baffling smears and powders, prices not to be looked upon by those with documented cardiac conditions. Worst of all is the pomposity, the highfalutin puffing-up of dinner from a source of sustenance and joy into a dense text meant to be pondered, analyzed, and described more than savored.

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 classic, All Quiet On The Western Front was based on the 1928 novel by Erich Maria Remarque and became the first adaptation of a book to win the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the first Best Picture Oscar winner to also take Best Director. It has hardly been touched by filmmakers since then save for a TV Movie remake by director Delbert Mann in 1979 that starred Richard Thomas. Now that has changed, and in a significant way , as the book has finally been taken on by Germany with director Edward Berger’s (Patrick Melrose, Your Honor) adaptation (co-written with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) that finally shows us the perspective from the German side. It has already been selected as the German entry for the 95th Academy Awards Best International Film race, and just had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today.

“The Menu,” a dark, bloody satire of the one percent and the restaurants that cater to them. The film stars Ralph Fiennes as the pretentious, craft-obsessed head chef at an exclusive restaurant on a remote island.

Ralph Fiennes and Judith Light are stepping out for the premiere of their new movie.

really glad we came to Toronto!” said Spielberg, who’s been making movies for more than 50 years but said he’d never before brought a film to the festival.The lack of social distancing and the paucity of masks may have repercussions down the road, but it gave the festival’s first few days an exuberance that was sorely missed in 2021, when a scaled-down TIFF was a little depressing except when you were able to lose yourself in the films. (The previous year, the festival had been all-virtual, apart from some special screenings for locals only.)People came to this year’s festival badly wanting to celebrate, and so far the fest seems programmed to let them do just that, with an unexpectedly large number of mainstream crowd-pleasers screening in prime slots over the first four days.

Chevalier is a biopic about violin virtuoso Joseph Bolonge Chevalier de Saint George directed by Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson.

For questionable reasons, some very talented people got it into their heads that it would be a great idea to redress Georges Bizet’s classic 1875 musical Carmen for the big screen by throwing out everything—the setting, the era and, most of all, the music—and replacing it with a misguided attempt at relevance by setting it on the contemporary U.S. and Mexican border.

Lena Dunham directs the Medieval comedic drama Catherine Called Birdy. The film is an adaptation of the book by the same name by Karen Kushman and stars Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper.

A group of wealthy people arrive on a mysterious island and receive the meal of a lifetime in Mark Maylod’s psychological thriller The Menu. Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, the film stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor Joy. 

William Earl One of the biggest crowdpleasers of the Toronto International Film Festival has arrived. “The Menu,” a high-class horror comedy written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy and directed by Mark Mylod, held its rollicking world premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre on Saturday. Mylod, the in-demand TV director who has helmed key episodes of “Game of Thrones,” “Shameless” and “Succession,” leaned on the satirical world of the latter series in this black comedy lampooning fine dining, foodie culture and the ultra-rich. Anya Taylor-Joy continues her scene-stealing career as Margot, a cuisine novice who agrees to join obnoxious Tyler (Nicholas Hoult, as infuriating and pathetic as he is on “The Great”) at a hyper-expensive, once-in-a-lifetime meal prepared by the intimidating and legendary Chef Slowik (a devilish Ralph Fiennes) at his private island restaurant. Although the menu is rumored to be legendary, there is, of course, more in store for the diners than meets the eye.