There are press & industry screenings Thursday afternoon at the Scotiabank plex — 45 Years (which I couldn’t get around to at Telluride), Jawar Panahi‘s Taxi, the uncut German bank robbery flick Victoria, etc. And then comes the opening-night double-header at the Princes of Wales — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition and Michael Moore‘s Where To Invade Next. The only thing happening tonight is a Toronto Star-sponsored journalist soiree at some Mexican joint. The party has a name — “Critical Drinking.” Thanks to Peter Howell for the invite.
HE’s Porter Air flight touched down in Toronto around 3:25 pm. I ran into the formidable but always friendly and laid-back Darren Aronofsky in baggage claim — he’s being interviewed tomorrow night at Koerner Hall about the relationship between movies and music. Picked up the press pass at Bell Lightbox around 4:15 or so. The staffers and volunteers are helpful and gracious, as always, but the press “lounge” in the BL’s third floor is the size of a large bathroom, and there aren’t enough electrical outlets. And the festival has no app, which is fairly shameful as Cannes, Berlin and Telluride have them. At least there’s a TIFF people’s app — 2015.tiffr.com. (Thanks to Awards Daily‘s Jordan Ruimy for the tip.)

A-training to Penn Station at 11 am, and then on to Newark airport. I’ll be strolling Toronto streets by 3:30 or thereabouts. The Martian, Trumbo, Truth, Our Brand Is Crisis, Freeheld, Stonewall, Black Mass, Spotlight, The Danish Girl, Beasts of No Nation, Brooklyn, Son of Saul — it all starts tomorrow. My latest speculative Best Picture top-ten rundown for Gold Derby, influenced by Telluride, not-yet-seen titles in boldface: (1) The Revenant (2) Spotlight, (3) Joy, (4) Suffragette, (5) Carol, (6) Son of Saul, (7) Beasts of No Nation, (8) Brooklyn, (9) Steve Jobs and (10) The Danish Girl. Here’s how the Gold Derby gang is spitballing things.



“Irish director Lenny Abrahamson clearly has a penchant for confining his actors to tight spaces — Michael Fassbender within a large fake head in Frank, and now Brie Larson and her little son to a 10×10 shed in Room (A24, 11.6). The result is rather better this time around, as this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s celebrated 2010 novel, with a script by the author herself, is involving and moderately heartwarming here and there, even if doesn’t reach the higher levels of psychological insight and emotional profundity to which it aspires. Strong performances by Larson and young Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son held captive for years, as well as the book’s reputation, will provide a certain art house draw, more among female viewers than with men. But the claustrophobic and upsetting nature of the material will be a disincentive to many.” — from Todd McCarthy’s 9.4 Telluride review. And yet Rotten Tomatoes is assessing the Room reviews thus far (including McCarthy’s) as indicative of 100% rapture,
As noted, Fox Searchlight has two spring ’16 releases — Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition and Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash — debuting as we speak at the Toronto and Venice film festivals, respectively. But without any crossover. A Bigger Splash (which has fared relatively well in Venice reviews) won’t play Toronto and Demolition‘s exposure is strictly confined to Toronto. This kind of either-or separatism has happened before, but rarely.

Atom Egoyan‘s Remember screens tomorrow (9.10) at the Venice Film Festival. No disrespect but I stopped trusting Egoyan a long time ago. I had a particularly difficult time with The Captive, which I saw at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. So I’m taking a rave review of Remember (from an industry-involved guy called “Marlowe”) with a grain of salt.
For one thing it’s a Holocaust-related Nazi-hunt thing, and the calendar has pretty much shut that genre down, certainly in a present-day context. Everyone from that period is either dead or in their 90s and therefore less than ambulatory, and probably too weak or disoriented to accomplish anything. Marathon Man was 39 years ago. Give it a rest.
“It’s a small film that ultimately packs a powerful punch,” Marlowe contends. “Christopher Plummer plays a Holocaust survivor living in a retirement home with his dying wife along with Martin Landau, a weak, wheelchair-bound friend. Landau has persuaded Plummer that after his wife passes he has to track down the surviving Nazi who tortured him and Landau 70-odd years ago. The fact that Plummer has advanced Alzheimer’s compromises his likely effectiveness in this regard, but he has a handwritten letter from Landau that instructs him exactly how to proceed.

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I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...