The Choral

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Ralph Fiennes provides a very strong and energetic performance in an otherwise, cheesy and predictable period piece tale about WWII. The writing and direction pretty follows every single cheesy, predictable and basic structure for period piece movies in recent times. While it does offer some new insight about the time era and the characters purposes and setting, as a whole, the movie doesn't really offer much to add. Because many of the narrative choices and structure was predictable, cliche and uninteresting.

Throughout, the musical moments are pretty good as there are some heartfelt purposeful singing and musical scores. The production designs are good and the performances from Fiennes and the other are pretty good. However, character-wise, they all feel one noted. Their development is pretty lacking and are displayed like many cliched historical movies without substance or creativity.

Alongside with some bland camerawork and pacing issues, the movie does have some strange coloring effects that makes the movie at times, feel unnecessarily dull. Including with some pacing issues.

Overall, it has good intentions but the experience was pretty forgettable.