There was a time when Ben Stiller might have starred in a movie like “Nutcrackers,” full of fart jokes and poop jokes and unruly kids. And there was a time when David Gordon Green might have directed a movie like this, back before he veered into three films in the rebooted “Halloween” franchise followed by “The Exorcist: Believer.”
But on opening night of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, that time came again for Stiller and Green in “Nutcrackers,” the movie that found both men in territory that had grown unfamiliar for them in recent years.
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be radical if you made a movie without viciousness or cynicism?’” Green told the audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre for the first of two opening-night screenings on Thursday.