Roshan Sethi has a résumé that could make the most accomplished among us feel like underachievers. His three previous features include the thoroughly charming 2024 rom-com A Nice Indian Boy. Two months ago his novel, The Simp, a funny Hollywood satire, was published. He was the co-creator of the Fox series The Resident. And as if that’s not enough, for a couple of months a year he still works as a radiation oncologist at a Boston hospital.

He puts all those experiences to good use in The Surgeon, a genre-bending swirl that is part The Pitt (but gorier), part tense crime thriller, part action movie and part midnight movie, all infused with witty touches. It is wildly entertaining.

As clever as Sethi’s screenplay is, the film’s greatest asset is Michelle Yeoh as Eliza Lim, a recently retired surgeon who is kidnapped by criminals and forced at gunpoint to operate on one of their colleagues. No one else could have brought the same serene presence, quiet intelligence and flair for action, a combination that is ideally suited to the character. Sethi’s film is perfectly in sync with Yeoh’s strengths.

The film swiftly establishes Dr. Lim’s character in a few brief scenes that chart her single-minded dedication to her job and the boring, empty retirement she has reluctantly entered. The Surgeon isn’t a character study, but we instantly know who that character is.

Out of nowhere, it seems — but actually for reasons revealed much later — she is abducted and finds herself in an abandoned hospital, surrounded by men with guns. An operating room is ready for her, and the patient’s face is covered. The operating scenes are not for the squeamish, but it’s worth covering your eyes to get to the real action. Lim realizes the kidnappers have no reason to keep her alive after the surgery, so she has to outwit them using her mind, medical knowledge and a few hidden scalpels.

Sethi often holds the camera on Yeoh’s face, expressive even at its most passive. Lim speaks softly as she proves the thugs are no match for her. “You can stop pointing that gun at me,” she tells one of her minders after the surgery. “I’m an old woman, half your age, half your weight. There’s nothing I can do to you.” Part of the fun of watching is that we can guess that line is a ruse, but we don’t know what she’s planning.  

Yeoh, of course, started out in martial arts films, but that is not the kind of action displayed here. Lim knows just where on the body to attack her kidnappers and goes for their most vulnerable spots with swift jabs and great precision. As in the best action films, we never lose sight of how the hero’s personality drives it. “You’ll never shoot a gun again,” she calmly tells one of her captors after severing some cartilage in his wrists. “That’s not snot, that’s your brain fluid dripping out,” she says to another after ramming an instrument up his nose. One of the weirdest, wittiest touches is that whenever she attacks, we see the body beneath the skin, viewing the bones she’s breaking or tendons she’s cutting as if a medical textbook had come to life.

Sethi loads the film with noir tropes, including a ticking clock that counts down how much time the patient has to live after Lim threatens to kill him. What has she got to lose? But even at its most noirish, visually the film is filled with light and color. A major action scene takes place in the former hospital’s chapel, full of bright stained glass. And she lives in a spacious, light-filled house with a large garden, which we see before and after the kidnapping. The Surgeon is taut and suspenseful, but never claustrophobic. The editing smoothly keeps the momentum going and the genre touches blend easily.

Martin Freeman enters the film fairly late in a supporting role as the crime boss who masterminded the scheme. As always, he is expert at looking meek while sounding deadly. And Joseph Mydell adds a welcome, sweet touch as a man who brings warmth and emotion to Lim’s life.

With a nod to genre conventions, the final shot leaves room for a sequel. But wherever Sethi’s varied career takes him, he has already established himself as one of the most exciting filmmakers around.

Anthony Ippolito, who stars as a young Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky, opened up about speaking with the action star in preparation for the biopic. 

The Purple Hearts actor told The Hollywood Reporter at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday that talking with Stallone about his life, early career, and the development of Rocky was an “overwhelming” experience. Ippolito plays Stallone in Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, which follows the tumultuous production of the 1976 boxing film that won three Oscars, including best picture. 

“ I got to speak to Stallone prior to making the movie. It was a lot to take in because I’d spent over a year, by that point, studying him,” Ippolito said at THR‘s Studio at 1 Hotel during TIFF, presented by sponsor Canada Goose. “It was very overwhelming and daunting. There’s a lot going on in my head, but I was really just trying to listen as much as possible and hear his perspective. Obviously, Rocky’s an underdog story and he’s an underdog in the movie, but Stallone in a lot of ways was an underdog in his actual life.” 

Ippolito revealed that he and Stallone chatted about Stallone’s early childhood and many of the difficulties he had to overcome, including paralysis of the lower left side of his face after doctors accidentally severed a nerve during childbirth. The complication gave Stallone his signature voice and look, which became famous when Rocky hit theaters in the ‘70s. 

“Since he was born, he had this facial paralysis that kind of made everything difficult,” Ippolito shared. “[The paralysis] obviously made trying to become an actor really difficult. And so, hearing his firsthand account of what that is like; he really just endured a lot and went through a lot. It’s a miracle that this film came to be and that people still celebrate it 50 years later.” 

Filmmaker Farrelly expanded on the challenges Stallone faced bringing Rocky to the big screen, adding that the studio at the time put up roadblocks in hopes that they could recast and find another actor to play Rocky Balboa. Stallone wrote the screenplay for the film and insisted he played the lead character.   

Distributed by United Artists and later MGM, Rocky became one of the most financially successful sports film franchises of all time, grossing over $1.7 billion globally. 

“ I think a lot of people know bits of [the story], but I didn’t know the big picture,” Farrelly said. “All the twists and turns; there are millions. … There’s so many things, like the way the studio — not only were they fighting him, but then once he got on board, they were — I don’t want to say they were sabotaging him — but they were making it hard for him so that if he got behind schedule, they could replace him with somebody else.”

Ultimately, Stallone’s opinion of I Play Rocky is one the cast and crew care most about, Farrelly said. The Rambo star has seen the movie and given his seal of approval, the director added. 

“[Stallone] loved it. It’s such a relief. I was afraid because he watched it alone, for one thing, and this plays really well with a crowd,” Farrelly said. “I was nervous — him sitting there alone — and for many other reasons. There’s a lot of stuff in there, especially the beginning when he’s down and out. It’s rough to watch.” 

I Play Rocky will open nationwide in theaters Nov. 20 following a limited release on Nov. 13.

The devastating documentary NAZA, an investigation into Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, was shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, in part to avoid potential Israeli eavesdropping, presumably, and to facilitate shielding the identities of participants.

Those participants are 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers who reveal, in almost matter-of-fact tones, chilling details of a program that has caused catastrophic destruction of residential areas in Gaza, and massive loss of life among Palestinian civilians, including women and children. The sources – ‘whistleblowers’ seems an appropriate term – come forward on condition of anonymity; they are filmed in silhouette, and their voices, as noted at the beginning of the film, have been digitally altered to conceal their identities.

One of the participants says that if he doesn’t hide his identity, “Israel will put me in jail for what I expose.”

NAZA, a late addition to the competition lineup in Venice, on Saturday night won the festival’s Special Jury Prize. The film is directed by Israeli Jews Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. Abraham appears on camera, interviewing his subjects on the rooftop; they explain that “NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym used by the Israel Defense Forces to signify collateral damage (נזק אגבי or Nezek Agavi, per an interview included in press notes), in other words, an acceptable loss of civilian life incurred while trying to kill suspected Hamas militants. The film suggests the number of “NAZA” considered acceptable in each attack was elastic. In some cases, it would be under a dozen, but in others it could be 200 or even 500 people deemed permissible collateral damage, according to Israeli military personnel interviewed in the film.

Interviewees speak to an attitude they say was prevalent among IDF soldiers that allowed them to view Palestinian civilians as expendable: “We need to erase Gaza… They deserve it,” one source describes as a common refrain among soldiers. Another reports soldiers commonly said, “There are no innocent people in Gaza.”

According to interviewees in the film, Israeli military intelligence officials made the deliberate choice to attack residential targets in Gaza at night, after concluding it was more likely they could hit a suspected Hamas target while he was at home with his family. Multiple whistleblowers describe vast Israeli surveillance capabilities achieved by tracking cell phones which emit a periodic ping that signals its location.

“We can activate every sensor on the phone,” claims one interviewee. Says another, “I heard the final moments of someone’s life.”

Perhaps most alarming of all, the whistleblowers claim Israeli intelligence used AI to determine human targets. The existence of the Lavender program, as it was called, was first reported by +972 Magazine and Local Call, with additional reporting by The Guardian (The Guardian is one of the producers of NAZA). Up to 70,000 human targets were determined by the Lavender AI system, according to sources interviewed in the documentary.

An IDF spokesperson has responded to the film by saying, “The IDF categorically rejects these allegations… Regarding the allegations concerning the use of artificial intelligence – decisions regarding the selection and approval of strikes in the IDF are made by human personnel only, in accordance with IDF guidelines, and not by artificial intelligence.”

The IDF spokesperson indicates he or she has not seen the film but cites unspecified “publications” which have reported on the content of the documentary.

“According to the publications,” the IDF spokesperson writes, “the film relies on anonymous testimonies from individuals whose identity cannot be verified, including whether they served in the IDF, in what capacity, or whether they were involved in the matters about which the allegations are being made.”

The IDF response continues, “The excerpts cited include claims regarding national and military strategy that are clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers. There are references to situations in which IDF Intelligence Directorate soldiers, who were allegedly interviewed for the film, by definition would not have been involved.”

The Israel Defense Forces statement goes on to say, “The IDF operates in the Gaza Strip in order to protect Israeli civilians and directs its military activity against terrorist organizations, foremost among them Hamas, in accordance with international law and the laws of armed conflict. As part of this, the IDF strikes military targets and makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians.”

That statement notwithstanding, the Gaza Ministry of Health reports the IDF has killed over 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 173,000 since Israel launched its military retaliation after the Hamas terror attack on Israel of October 7, 2023.

According to some of the Israeli military personnel interviewed in NAZA, Israeli snipers deliberately fired on hungry Palestinians trying to reach food distribution sites. Another says he saw, through drone cameras, dogs eating the corpses of Palestinian victims of Israel military attacks as the bodies lay in the streets. Another whistleblower alleges a political unit of Israeli military intelligence spied on Palestinian victims of war crimes because “they were considered a security threat,” and collected kompromat to be used as needed to impeach the integrity of anyone who went public with allegations against the IDF.

“We called it peace thwarting,” says one source.

Some interviewees hint at feeling remorse, others point to merely completing a “mission” as assigned. One exclaims, “It’s so insanely fun to carry out a mission.”

The perspective of filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and executive producer Jonathan Glazer on the mass killing of Palestinian civilians can be readily imagined. But moments interwoven among the interviews gesture towards a more astringent critique. One scene shows vehicles stopped in traffic as Israel pauses nationwide to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day. And there’s a shot of Israeli television airing a tribute to Claude Lanzmann, the director of the towering Holocaust film Shoah, which probed how ordinary Germans, Poles and others could look away while atrocities were committed all around them against Jews during World War II.

Abraham and Szor write in a directors’ statement, “The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.”

Title: NAZA

Festival: Venice (In Competition)

Directors: Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

Production companies: The Guardian, JW Films, Placeholder Films, Unseen Hand

Sales agent: mk2

Running time: 1 hr. 20 minutes