Now we know why Constance Wu wanted to get off the boat last spring.

Remember in May when ABC renewed “Fresh off the Boat” and Wu, the female lead, Tweeted her disappointment that she was stuck on board for another season?

We thought it was because of her hit, “Crazy Rich Asians.” But now we know that Wu is a movie star thanks to Jennifer Lopez’s “Hustlers,” which debuted to raves on Saturday night in Toronto. JLo is great, and she’s the draw but Wu anchors the movie and does the real heavy lifting. She’s fun to watch, and can make a nice career on the big screen. Her “boat” character may go overboard sooner than later!

“Hustlers” comes from STX Entertainment, which has struggled to make its name. But now STX can breathe a sigh of relief. “Hustlers” is the movie every studio wants– a big, broad hit that’s also well made and smart. For STX “Hustlers” follows last winter’s “The Upside,” which took in $100 million and proved its naysayers wrong.

Lorene Scafaria has made the first movie about strippers that isn’t just an exploitative vision quest for guys. That’s not to say there aren’t beautiful women here, enough to bring in the male audience. But based on a magazine story, “Hustlers” actually conveys these women as shrewd business people who take control of their lives at the expense of the men who’ve used them for so long.

Scafaria uses a voice over narration and some editing that will remind you of Scorsese in “GoodFellas” but it’s not an imitation, but more an influence. In that sense “Hustlers” could be the sex workers’ version of “Wolf of Wall Street.” But the film also owes a lot to “9 to 5” and “Oceans 8,” among other all-female ensembles.

Lopez and Wu lead their group of former strippers on an adventure to make money by all means necessary. In the movie version, it’s pretty much sexless, with the ladies drugging Wall Street guys, and stealing from their credit card limits. Did they not have sex with them in real life I don’t know. But in Scafaria’s Hollywood dream, the women never get to the bedroom stage. They just take the money and run.

Lopez does the best work of her career, certainly miles beyond her many cheesy prior roles. She’s also part of an ensemble and isn’t required to carry the film. This helps enormously. She’s surrounded by a strong cast that includes Oscar and Tony winner Mercedes Ruehl and the excellent Julia Stiles as the journalist who writes the women’s story and lends gravitas to the proceedings.

Don’t worry– this isn’t a business lesson. There’s lots of pole work, with an especially good teaching scene given by Lopez’s Ramona. Maybe there’s a body double and very good editing, but JLo at 50 is pretty hot, and hats off to her. However Scafaria filmed those scenes, Lopez deserves kudos.

Awards? The Golden Globes should welcome “Hustlers” with open arms. But for now, watch the box office do its own lap dance when this movie gets to audiences.

Since the screening last night of Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit” at TIFF, I’ve seen some unusual responses to it on Twitter. For some reason, internet fans really wanted this Hitler satire to work. It doesn’t. “Jojo Rabbit” is actually borderline anti-Semitic, offensive on many levels, and not even funny.

The parallel here is not “Life is Beautiful,” the 1998 movie about a clown who entertained his child while they were in a concentration camp. That movie took the Holocaust seriously, and made no case for Hitler and his atrocities. It was clearly an indictment.

No, Waititi, who is half Jewish and comes from New Zealand, seems like he was aiming for “Springtime for Hitler” redux, a long riff on Mel Brooks’s centerpiece from “The Producers.” But “The Producers”– which was hilarious– didn’t denigrate Jews to make its point. Hitler and Nazis were always the target.

“Jojo Rabbit” is set in Germany during the late 40s. Jojo Rabbit, a 10 year old boy played very nicely by Roman Griffin Davis, is being raised by his mother (Scarlett Johansson) under Nazi rule. The kid is presented as a virulent Nazi wannabe, trying to emulate the soldiers in town. He talks incessant slurs against Jews to the point of distraction.

When we see the actual screenplay, this will be even more obvious. It’s not comical. It’s not funny, or humorous. Little Jojo hates Jews. Meantime he’s engaged with Nazis in a kids’ training camp led by Sam Rockwell, and again, it’s not funny. I know it’s supposed to be, but it ain’t. I don’t need an hour of Nazis making fun of Jews constantly. It’s overkill. And just seeing a Nazi office break a rabbit’s neck for fun doesn’t mitigate what’s going on.

Listen, the audience in the Princess of Wales theater laughed a lot during this section. I don’t know why. This was not a send up of Hitler, even though the director plays Hitler as Jojo’s imaginary friend. Waititi’s Hitler is sort of like the the one from the Broadway musical “Producers”– foppish, funny, self-involved. He really reminded me of the late Gary Beach, plucked from the proper context and plopped into the wrong one.  And even that makes no sense since Jojo idolizes Hitler, yet his imaginary friend is a comic send up.

Anyway, all of this changes when Jojo, home alone, discovers an Ann Frank-like Jewish girl hiding in his mother’s house. This girl, a teen named Ilsa (talented Thomasin McKenzie), who resembles Anne Frank and is meant to change Jojo’s feelings about Jews, you know, make him realize they’re not so bad. After all, his mother’s been hiding her in a secret cupboard all these years without telling him.

At this point, Johansson exits the movie, leaving the kids on their own to survive the American bombing and rescue of their town. By now, the anti-Jewish rhetoric has calmed down because Jojo is “in love” with Ilsa. But the damage has been done, and not just to the village but to our sensibilities. We’ve endured a lesson for hate mongers. Waititi seems to not know he’s played with hot potatoes.

Not many people will see “Jojo Rabbit” in theaters, I don’t think. The moviegoing audience should and will feel incredibly uncomfortable sitting through an hour of explanations of why Jews are monsters and animals and so on. I worry more about cable and streaming, where content spews forward without context.

Let’s say Waititi really felt he was satirizing Hitler and Nazis, that he’s not anti-Semitic. But this is what he’s disseminating. He’s handing ideas and language out uncritically to a new generation of kids, who will laugh like the people in the Toronto audience and applaud new ways of expressing hate.

So, yes, the acting is great, the kids are talented, and the last half hour of the movie gets sentimental. Jojo’s imaginary Hitler is conquered, and the two kids face a brave new post-Nazi world together like nothing ever happened. I don’t get it. I’m sure the Twitterverse I’ve read today will think I’m out of it. But I say, wait til this movie gets into theaters. Let the audience decide.

Horror film addicts never tired of being scared. You’d think the daily news cycle would be enough.

Yet, the success of “It: Chapter Two” suggests clowntime is not over. The sequel to “It,” the remake of Stephen King’s hit novel and movie, made $37 million in its debut Friday with $10 million from Thursday previews.

The movie is eying $103 million for the weekend. That’s quite an accomplishment  in what has been a sluggish box office year. Warner Bros. can relax. Mixed reviews- a 66 score on Rotten Tomatoes– didn’t deter the faithful.

Can there be more “It”? I suppose there can be more of anything, really. Stephen King is probably looking through his notebooks as we speak.

Meantime, Warner Bros. is on a roll. So is Sony. As we always discover, it’s all cyclical.

So much news about Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Just Mercy,” which played last night in Toronto to standing ovations and will be an Oscar nominee for Best Picture.

Warner Bros. has in its collection of films this season a film some have been calling the “Green Book” of this year. There is some but not a lot of accuracy there but “Just Mercy” concerns civil rights in a way that this past year’s Best Picture winner only glanced.

In  1986 a young Harvard trainer lawyer from Delaware named Bryan Stevenson went to Alabama to work with men unjustly placed on death row. One that stood out was Walter McMillan aka “Johnny Dee,” who’d been railroaded by the local police into a conviction for a murder he couldn’t have committed. Stevenson even managed to get the key witness, one Ralph Meyers, to recant his testimony and still could not get a new trial for McMillan. It was when he went to “60 Minutes” that light was shone on this debacle of justice. McMillan finally was set free.

Cretton’s film tells this seven year horror story so effectively that even though you can guess the ending you will nevertheless cry when Jamie Foxx’s journey as Johnny Dee comes to an end. The  journey is everything, as Michael B. Jordan, as the crusading Stevenson, holds fast to his ideals and integrity, never letting go until he reaches his destination. Jordan is lead, Foxx is supporting, and these two are like superheroes without capes. “Just Mercy” feels in many ways like “Rocky.”

There are also two supporting performances that won’t get awards, but should be rewarded and cited as memorable and indelible. In many ways, the whole movie rests on the work of Tim Blake Nelson, who sells us the redneck, horrid Meyers as the linchpin of Stevenson’s re-opening of McMillan’s case. Nelson brings a humanity to a grizzly little man with beauty and grace. The same can be said of Rob Morgan, who plays Herbert Richardson, another man on death row whom Stcvenson tries to help. Morgan, who made such an impression in “Mudbound,” and works on TV continually, lends the film a textured gravitas and a deeply devastating moment.

Now, Oscar winner Brie Larson is in this movie, in a secondary role as the  white woman in Alabama who assists Stevenson, takes him in, sets him up to run his office. It’s not a big role, but Larson is helping out Cretton, who gave her her big break in “Short Term 12,” the wonderful indie film that also launched Rami Malek. Larson makes the most of her job, and she’s always a delight to see on screen. If this movie had been made 10 or 20 years ago, her character would have been the point of view.

The real Stevenson, who’s only about 60 now, will become the focus of the  publicity for the movie. He remained in Alabama after this episode to continue fighting for the wrongly convicted and poorly represented. This is amazing, and he deserves all the praise he gets. (I don’t want to hear one word against during Oscar campaigning.)  His work reminds me of Tom Mesereau, famous for being Michael Jackson’s defense attorney, who has worked in Alabama for years doing the same thing pro bono.

What I don’t understand is why anyone of color still lives in Alabama. It is boiling pot of racism, violence, and hatred. There is no redeeming feature of this state. A hurricane might be the solution after all. During my lifetime the only stories that have emerged have been about redneck whites harassing or harming black people. Every new movie like this is so important to illumine our embarrassing history in the South.

We’ve reached the point in this miserable culture where everyone including the very smart actor Dev Patel hears the words “David Copperfield” and thinks it’s the Las Vegas magician. Patel, star of the wonderful new “Personal History of David Copperfield” said as much last night on stage at the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto after Armando Iannucci’s film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival.

Just about everyone in the audience and onstage felt that way, too.

Thank goodness for Iannucci, the creator of “Veep” and the director great satires like “In the Loop” and “The Death of Stalin,” knew better. He said he read Charles Dickens’ 900 page novel and immediately decided to make a film that emphasized, not cut out, the humor in the story of an orphaned lad from a classy background who is dumped into the real world and must make it on his own.

Iannucci’s version of “DC” is so splendid, fun, layered, and smart that I urge Fox Searchlight to issue it in time for the Oscars rather than waste it next winter. Iannucci’s movie is destined to be a masterpiece I think, it’s so fresh and unique, able to entertain on many levels at once. It’s actually a very subversive family film, perfect for the holidays.

There’s a little Monty Python and a lot of the Marx Brothers, even some Buster Keaton, as Iannucci and his team deconstruct David’s crusade to become something other than what people project on him. As he continually reminds everyone around him, “I am David Copperfield!” and not the myriad personas his various new friends assign him.

After his single mother is overtaken by a greedy, stupid husband (and his sister, played gloriously by Gwendolyn Christie), David is sent to work with other child laborers in a bottle factory in London. He’s taken in by a colorful, eccentric poor couple, the Micwabers (Iannucci regular Peter Capaldi, Bronagh  Gallagher) who kick off what you could call a super contest for Best Supporting actors.

Just about overtaking them in this spirit are Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie as David’s nutty rich aunt and her own daffy cousin, Mr Dick. again, how to choose who gets what award? They are all so deeply enjoyable and genuinely funny, it’s hard to say. Into this mix comes Ben Whishaw, playing the timeless villain Uriah Heep with such glee there’s mayhem in his eyes. These people must have had a dangerously good time on the set, and it’s all conveyed here.

“David Copperfield” is just a delight, and will pick up awards attention not just for the actors, the precisely constructed script, and directing, but all below the line categories as well. There are magical moments of production design, editing and cinematography that would make Las Vegas’s Copperfield jealous. And don’t discount Dev Patel, who started with us on “Slumdog Millionaire” more than a decade ago and has never let up being ingratiating and a pleasure to watch on screen. He makes it look easy. Bravo to him!

Everyone wants “The Irishman,” but now the people who go to the Hamptons Film Festival are getting it.

HIFF has just announced the Martin Scorsese film as their centerpiece showing on October 11th. That’s big news. They’re going to have add screenings all day and all night!

The HIFF screenings will follow the film’s debut at the New York Film Festival on September 27th. If you don’t know already, “The Irishman” from Netflix is three hours plus and stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, among others. It’s a maybe-true story about what might have happened to labor chief Jimmy Hoffa, still not found. He’s known in the Meadowlands as “the cornerstone of the organization.”

Other big films for HIFF this year include Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story,” Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” plus Jojo Rabbit, Two Popes, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Here’s the HIFF rundown:

A HIDDEN LIFE

Director: Terrence Malick

At the dawn of the second World War, the Edenic life of peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his family is disrupted by the intrusion of violence and hatred developing throughout their Austrian countryside village. As their town becomes further immersed in the Third Reich’s ideologies, Franz is called in for military training, where his refusal to swear allegiance to Hitler will force him into imprisonment and away from his family back home. Telling the true story of one of the many conscientious objectors who quietly pushed back against their countries’ advances toward extremism, filmmaker Terrence Malick (THE TREE OF LIFE, THE THIN RED LINE) returns to the vast canvas of his most celebrated work in this immensely powerful rumination on the call for a higher purpose in times of unimaginable turbulence.

JOJO RABBIT

Director: Taika Waititi

Growing up during the Second World War with his single mother (Scarlett Johansson), a young German boy spends his days idolizing his country’s tyrannical regime and taking comfort in the presence of his imaginary best-friend: Adolf Hitler (writer-director Taika Waititi). But the boy’s understanding of the world around him is rattled when he discovers a secret within his home. In Waititi’s outrageous “anti-hate satire,” the director weaponizes the irreverent, off-beat charms he previously lent to both independent comedies (WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS) and blockbuster superhero epics (THOR: RAGNAROK) in a wonderfully unexpected new direction. JOJO RABBIT is a deeply funny and surprisingly touching depiction of our capacity for both hate and love.

MARRIAGE STORY

Director: Noah Baumbach

MARRIAGE STORY is Academy Award nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together. The film stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta co-star.

THE TWO POPES

East Coast Premiere

Director: Fernando Meirelles

From Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of CITY OF GOD, and three-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, comes an intimate story of one of the most dramatic transitions of power in the last 2,000 years. Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins). Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Behind Vatican walls, a struggle commences between both tradition and progress, guilt and forgiveness, as these two very different men confront elements from their pasts in order to find common ground and forge a future for a billion followers around the world.

*Inspired by true events

WORLD CINEMA NARRATIVE

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

Director: Céline Sciamma

As the 18th century draws to a close, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a young painter, is sent to an isolated island off the coast of Brittany to paint the wedding portrait of Héloise (Adèle Haenel), a young woman counting her last days of freedom before her arranged marriage to a man she has never met. As Marianne portrays herself as a companion to Héloise during the day and secretly paints the portrait meant to secure Héloise’s marriage at night, the two women slowly begin to find the tenderness in each other that their society has denied them. Visually rich and intellectually provocative, director Céline Sciamma’s Cannes Best Screenplay winner is a delicate and beautifully realized period piece.

NARRATIVE COMPETITION

ATLANTICS

Director: Mati Diop

Along the shores of Dakar, Senegal, Ada (Mama Sané), soon to be forced into an arranged marriage with a wealthy man, falls in love with construction worker Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré). Looking for a better future and incapable of seeing a life with Ada, Souleiman boards a small vessel with his co-workers and attempts the perilous sail to Spain, where he soon disappears and is presumed dead. In her Cannes Grand Prix-winning debut feature, French-Senegalese actress and filmmaker Mati Diop translates the collective drama of sea departures into a dazzlingly beautiful ghost story of unfulfilled love and lives lost in the search for a better future.

THE BEST OF DORIEN B.

New York Premiere

Director: Anke Blonde

To almost everyone around her, the life of 37-year-old Dorien (Kim Snauwaert) seems to be picture perfect – with two children, a loving husband, and a thriving veterinary practice to her name. But just as the local press tell ominous news of a “black hole” on the horizon, Dorien’s life is hit with a series of devastating setbacks in the form of her own news of a recent affair, her parent’s breakup, and unexpected results from a trip to the hospital. A sympathetic portrait of a life in crisis, director Anke Blondé’s THE BEST OF DORIEN B. is a warmly funny and bittersweet look at one woman’s attempts to let go from the coping mechanisms that have defined her life for so long.

LARA

U.S. Premiere

Director: Jan Ole Gerster

Waking up on the morning of both the most important piano concert of her son’s career and her own 60th birthday, Lara (Corinna Harfouch) steps out of her living room window and contemplates jumping to her death. From this startling, unnerving beginning, director Jan-Ole Gerster creates a stunningly precise psychological portrait of a woman on the verge. As Lara prepares for her estranged son’s concert, she attempts to forge connections with a varied group of friends, family, and acquaintances from her past and present. Anchored by Harfouch’s masterful lead performance, Gerster’s second feature is a perfectly calibrated look at familial discord and attempts at redemption in contemporary Berlin.

THE VAST OF NIGHT

New York Premiere

Director: Andrew Patterson

With a summer night descending over 1950s New Mexico, the residents of a small town congregate for a high school basketball game. Amidst the action, the local radio DJ’s planned interviews with attendees are halted by the discovery of a strange frequency over the town’s airwaves by a local switchboard operator, leading the pair on an investigation deep into the darkness of their sleepy hometown. Paying loving homage to THE TWILIGHT ZONE and early Spielberg in equal parts, Andrew Patterson’s imaginative debut is a singular piece of original sci-fi, traveling through the unknown corners of our collective history.

A WHITE, WHITE DAY

U.S. Premiere

Director: Hlynur Pálmason

Retired from his job as a local policeman and grieving the recent death of his wife, Ingimundur (an excellent Ingvar E. Sigurðsson) channels his quietly brewing grief into the renovation of a secluded house in the remote Icelandic community they called home. But while going through a box of his wife’s old possessions, Ingimundur finds an unexpected memento that directs his detective instincts into increasingly unstable paranoia. With a tone perfectly matching its remote, isolated Icelandic setting, director Hlynur Pálmason’s remarkably confident second feature is a spellbinding, oft-kilter tale of the obsessive ends of unconditional love.

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

COLLECTIVE

U.S. Premiere

Director: Alexander Nanau

In the aftermath of a deadly fire in a Bucharest nightclub that left dozens dead, Romania’s government pledged that the over 100 citizens left injured would receive immediate and substantial treatment. But in the weeks and months that followed, what seemed like treatable injuries continued to lead to further unexplainable deaths, prompting an unlikely group of investigative journalists at the Sports Gazette to launch an investigation into what went wrong. Uncovering a scandal reaching into the highest levels of government, the team soon discovers that their story is larger than they ever imagined, leading to mass protests across Romania and the toppling of the Prime Minister. Following the investigation as it progresses, Alexandre Nanau’s revelatory documentary is a powerful indictment of governmental corruption and a tribute to those working tirelessly to uncover the truth.

CUNNINGHAM

Director: Alla Kovgan

In the past century of choreography, Merce Cunningham is perhaps the most iconic name of his medium, with an ever-evolving body of work that forever changed the world of contemporary dance. Bringing together the last generation of dancers trained under the choreographer at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to perform his most celebrated and ambitious pieces, filmmaker Alla Kovgan presents his work in stunning 3D photography, bringing the audience as close as possible to the movements and actions of the dancers on screen. For both viewers intimately aware and new to his work, CUNNINGHAM is a stunning profile of one of contemporary dance’s most important bodies of work.

OVERSEAS

New York Premiere

Director: Sung-a Yoon

In one of many training centers of its kind in the Philippines, a group of women gather to prepare themselves for the life awaiting them overseas as domestic workers in the West. Training under teachers who have returned from similar work abroad, the women learn to enact the cleaning and maidly duties their positions will require of them, while also learning to prepare for the likelihood of mistreatment and abuse that may await them. In her revealing look at the personal sacrifices and abandoned lives of a small group of Filipina workers, director Sung-a Yoon sheds necessary light on the struggle of those risking alienation, heartbreak, and abuse for the means through which to find a better life thousands of miles from home.

PAHOKEE

New York Premiere

Directors: Patrick Bresnan & Ivete Lucas

In their striking feature film debut, HIFF alums Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan immerse themselves in the rural town of Pahokee—a small, close-knit community nestled within the Florida Everglades—to observe four high-school students about to embark on their senior year. Finding themselves on the precipice of adulthood in a community where older generations have placed all of their hopes for opportunity on the youth, these students navigate the often celebratory, sometimes bittersweet rites-of-passage that accompany this hopeful and uncertain time of transition. Imbued with warmth and intimacy, PAHOKEE is a remarkable piece of verité filmmaking that captures both the joy and heartbreak of the teenage experience.

TALKING ABOUT TREES

U.S. Premiere

Director: Suhaib Gasmelbari

Reunited after years in exile, Ibrahim, Soliman, Manar, and Altayeb, the members of the “Sudanese Film Club,” come together with a single mission: to bring back the now decaying grand cinema in the center of their city. Each a filmmaker in their own right after receiving their film education abroad, the four members now tirelessly work to try to overcome the overwhelming persecution and oppression facing the country’s artists to return a culture of cinema, and art, to Sudan. Intimately exploring the history of Sudanese cinema alongside the Film Club’s struggle against the many blockades in their way, TALKING ABOUT TREES looks beyond the headlines of the country’s ongoing crisis to shed light on the struggle for personal expression within it.