Muscles from Brussels throws down in Hogtown

If your father is an eastern European immigrant who hasn’t stayed awake through an entire movie since 1991’s Stone Cold (also known to its publicists as the greatest action movie of all time), name-dropping celebrities he’ll recognize can be pretty difficult. When we bragged at the dinner table about who is coming to the festival, the reaction was essentially, “Brad Pitt who?” Thankfully, Jean-Claude Van Damme returns from obscurity to save the day.

“Van Damme?” Our dad’s ears perked up when we said the action star will be in town. “Wow.”

Van Damme stars as himself in JCVD—premiering at TIFF and directed by Mabrouk El Mechri—which is being described as “Being John Malkovich with violence.”

But for our father’s sake, we hope the film turns down the meta-references to consciousness and, for everyone’s sake, stays focused on the martial arts, splits and smoky bar fights.—Melita Kuburas