10 Not-at-TIFF Movies to Watch

This is normally the moment in the blogging calendar when Cinema Romantico proffers an alternate festival program to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the epicenter of the film festival circuit. TIFF is still happening, if an altered format, and we still want to provide our loyal frustrated followers with 10 Not at TIFF movies to see. However, while our Not-at-TIFF slate is typically festive, eclectic, irreverent, this, of course, is 2020. And here in America, where COVID-19 is either just going to magically go away at some indeterminate point in the future, not that bad despite nearly 190,000 dead so stop wearing a mask and go sit indoors, you pansy, or a hoax perpetrated by The Media, the Radical Left Democrats, ANTIFA, and some new group of violent agitators that just emerged from the shadows of the alley behind a furniture outlet store that the President, King Big Brain I, only just learned about but is looking at very strongly, things are on an express elevator to hell, going down. And we want to honor that bleakness in our Not-at-TIFF slate. It wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t. We do not apologize. Ask His Imbecility for an apology (ha!) instead.

10 Not-at-TIFF Movies to Watch

The Towering Inferno (1974). Not a great movie, not even a good movie, but Not-at-TIFF 2020 is a theoretical program. And a movie about cost-cutting and magical thinking yielding disaster feels like the perfect curtain-raiser.

Last Night (1998). This is 2020. Enough with those End of the World movies where the world doesn’t actually end, okay?

Light Sleeper (1992). I have never really had trouble sleeping but in 2020...I’m having all kinds of trouble. In fact, it was the preeminent political pundit Sebastian Bach, who in talking with Esquire about His Imbecility’s imbecilic moniker for his challenger, said “And then he says Sleepy Joe. I can’t think of something I’d rather do more than get a good night’s fucking sleep. If Joe Biden will bring us a good night’s sleep after four fucking years, who won’t vote for that? Bring on the sleep, man.”

He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (2002). My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife has spent most of 2020’s Never Ending Quarantine Because America Can Do Anything Except Get Its Shit Together When People Ask Them To Wear Masks curating a rom com film festival. And I get it. Rom coms go down easy. But this is Not-at-TIFF 2020. Our vibe is different. And Audrey Tatou’s ’02 rom com only begins as a rom com before pulling the rug out from under us.

The Stepford Wives (1975). You’re frightened the Radical Left is going to abolish the suburbs through decree by way of waving a leftist magic wand? This is why they should abolish the suburbs, you bunch of cowering country club freedom fries.

Rollerball (1975). That phrase you keep using, that one about how sports are a distraction that we need right now, might not, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, mean what you think it means.

Saturday Night Fever (1977). Eventually every kid who’s been taught by the oblivious brainwashed masses that Disco Sucks! and thinks “Saturday Night Fever” is some So Bad It’s Good slice of processed cheese finally watches it and is forced to confront the fact that it’s dark and depressing and all about how dreams don’t come true and that disco, beautiful disco, was the only escape.



Some Girls: Live In Texas ’78. Live music does not appear to be coming back any time soon. So let’s watch The Rolling Stones at the height of their powers. Because I don’t want sunshine or spirit; I want the Stones at their sleaziest.

Night Train to Paris (1964). Sorry, pal, but this isn’t the festival for wacky Leslie Nielsen comedies; this is the festival for early, serious Leslie Nielsen movies you didn’t even know existed.

Mars Attacks! Don’t worry, if you think Not-at-TIFF 2020 has been too much of a downer, we’ll end here, with the US Capitol burnt to a crisp, yes, but a mariachi band playing The Star Spangled Banner, All Time Top 5 President Taffy Dale (Natalie Portman) and Tom Jones, heroically emerging into the light, a renewal, a rebirth. I can’t wait.