TIFF 2026 (Part 2)

So the first movie is a little film called Ink by Danny Boyle.

This I'm going to read you the actual description from the TIFF website because it leads into what I want to say about it.

So it's director Danny Boyle's latest thrillingly charts the meteoric rise of Rupert Murdoch's fledgling but instantly notorious The Sun newspaper as he and editor Larry Lamb create a blueprint for UK tabloid culture.

Now, this is not an incorrect description, but the big, I think, misconception that everyone intentionally wanted to make around ink going in is that this would be a story about the Murdochs, about the Murdoch empire, and be connecting it as like the architect of the ills of our society today, right? The architect of our division.

This is not that movie.

Rupert Murdoch is like Dr. Frankenstein in this movie in that he like set something in motion and then mostly kind of hangs back and regrets the thing he created.

This is really the story of Larry Lamb, the editor of the Sun tabloid played by Jack O'Connell.

And it's kind of like if you took the first half of The Wolf of Wall Street and just made it like all crescendo, crescendo, crescendo, and then John Mulaney style at the very end realized like you didn't finish telling the story and crammed the rest of the happy birthday.

You know, the moral reckoning is kind of like squeezed at the end.

I'm combining what it's about and how I felt about it because I feel like this movie...

It wanted to be an interesting look at this underdog crew who created the tabloid culture and how they got corrupted and how that ultimately led to our social evils today, where we're afraid of the other and no one has any time to pay attention to things and there's fake news, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But I think Danny Boyle is so... obsessed with the style or maybe so afraid that there's no way to make people editing a newspaper seem interesting that he just kind of made it be like a mixtape of party, make a newspaper, throw another party, make another newspaper, have a punk needle drop.

And it just builds and builds and builds.

And then at the end, it kind of like I don't know.

I think this movie was entertaining to watch.

Danny Boyle is always interesting.

But I really thought him teaming up with Guy Pearce as a millionaire after The Brutalist and Jack O'Connell as this evil, amoral person, as we've seen him in 28 Years Later.

I thought it was going to be such an interesting takedown or at least have something to say.

And instead, I kind of felt like... by the time the movie squeezes a moral, no one is a human being anymore.

They're all just like impossibly evil or fucked up.

It's like he forgot to make a whole movie.

I don't know.

I felt disappointed in this, even though I think stylistically it is a lot of fun.

How did you feel about Ink?

Yeah, I mean, I was confused with this film from the get-go because on the page...