The summer movie season has come and gone and, for me anyways, September always signals the start of the Toronto International Film Festival. This with be my eleventh year visiting the film festival, and each year is jam-packed with movies, many of which go on to win Oscars. In fact, most of the Best Picture contenders tend to emerge from the fest, and it’s very likely we’ll be seeing the eventual best picture winner over the next week and a half.
Here some of the movies we’ll be checking out!
JOKER certainly seems like the movie everyone's going to be talking about this fall. With early reviews out of Venice pegging it as a masterpiece (a sentiment shared by our own Paul Shirey), JOKER is most certainly the film to see at TIFF this year. Will Joaquin Phoenix be an Oscar contender, and will North American audiences warm to it the same way critics did in Venice? Stay tuned!
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No one could have ever anticipated the reaction STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI got from fans, with the minority (such as myself) loving it, while others hated it so much they seemed to harbor some personal resentment towards director Rian Johnson. At any rate, with KNIVES OUT he returns to a genre that's suited him well in the past, the whodunit, with BRICK remaining one of his most universally loved films. Indeed, he's pulled together a pretty incredible cast, including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Plummer and Don F'ing Johnson!
Taika Waititi tackles Nazi Germany in his off-kilter comedy-drama, JOJO RABBIT. Truth be told, were it anyone other than Waititi I'd say a satire of Nazi Germany where the director himself plays Hitler as a child's imaginary friend sounded unwatchable, but the guy's earned his clout. The trailers for this are great and this could be one of the big breakout movies at the fest this year.
James Mangold's FORD V FERARRI is a rare beast – a tentpole movie made for adults. Now, that's not to say there won't be any cross-over, but his take on the Le Mans race where Ford's Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) took on the drivers from Ferarri sounds like the kind of movie a guy like Steve McQueen would have made fifty years ago. It's an exciting throwback for my money, and I'm eager to see a grounded, human drama done on an epic scale.
I'll be the first to admit that I've given Adam Sandler a lot of shit in my reviews. However, I've always respected his talent, and with the right role and directors, he can perform extremely well. Thus, it's no surprise to me that he's getting raves for his part as a charasmatic, self-destructive jeweler looking for a big score in Josh and Benny Safdie's UNCUT GEMS. I loved GOOD TIME, so I'm very eager to see this.
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I'm thinking this might be the year Eddie Murphy makes a comeback. At any rate, DOLEMITE IS MY NAME, and R-rated biopic of Rudy Ray Moore, seems like a movie that uses his talents wisely, pairing him with great writers (Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski), a good director (Craig Brewer – of HUSTLE & FLOW) and perhaps most important – a hardcore R-rating! F**kin' A!
A lot of folks are coming out of Venice and Telluride saying this is a 21st century version of KRAMER VS KRAMER, with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson getting serious Oscar buzz for this deconstruction of a marriage gone sour. Many are also calling it Noah Baumbach's best work, which, considering his filmography, is pretty high praise.
Edward Norton's adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's novel, “Motherless Brooklyn” is a long-time passion project for the writer-director-actor. To that end, he's been attached to it for a good fifteen years now, and his performance is getting soild praise out of Telluride, even if early reviews say the film is perhaps a tad long. We shall see!
I'm a huge fan of Noah Hawley's “Fargo”, so I'm very curious to see how his first big screen feature shapes up. Natalie Portman stars as an astronaut who suffers a nervous breakdown after returning home from a mission, and sparks an illicit affair with a collegue, played by the great Jon Hamm. FIngers crossed this turns him into a major feature player, although show-runners turned directors are hit and miss.
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Remember when Steven Soderbergh retired? Yeah, me neither. Must have just been a bad dream. He hits TIFF with his second film for Netflix this year (following HIGH FLYING BIRD) with this a serio-comic exploration of the Panama Papers scandal. Certainly, the marquee cast, which includes Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas means this is high on everyone's radar.