A festival Sunday is a press release with better lighting

Sunday at TIFF is the part of the week where the industry starts talking as if the year has already been decided. Jesse Eisenberg has a Julianne Moore picture on a downtown screen. The Zellner brothers have an alien gang with Léa Seydoux and Lily-Rose Depp after dark. Zack Snyder sneaks in a surprise. Amanda Seyfried walks a carpet for a title most people will meet as a streaming tile in March. None of that is a verdict. It is a schedule.

I like festivals as weather and I dislike them as commandments. A premiere tells you a movie exists and that a studio wants a clip of people clapping. It does not tell you if the thing holds for two hours in a multiplex in Fairfax in October. The honest use of a Sunday dispatch is logistical: here is what screened, here is what already has a theatrical date, here is what is being sold as a personality. Steal three names. Leave the rest in the hotel.

If you are not in Toronto, you are not late. You are the audience the festival is supposedly for. Two and a half Reese's for the week as a map. The pictures get their own cups when they actually open.

Watch the titles that already have a date after the festival. Treat the hallway as weather.