I would never, ever come within 100 feet of a guy like Wiseau. Who in their right mind would? So you have to wonder about Dave Franco‘s character…where could he possibly be coming from? How many brain cells is he bringing to the table? I missed The Disaster Artist screenings here in Toronto. A24 is distributing, opening on 12.1…no invites in the inbox.

From Guy Lodge’s Variety review of Our Souls At Night, posted from Venice Film Festival on 9.1.17: “Fonda and Redford play this potentially sleepy material with spry, generous adroitness, genuinely listening and subtly playing off each other’s reactions and body language. This is hardly the most testing work of their careers, but even when Our Souls doesn’t require them to dig especially deep, their enjoyment of each other’s onscreen company is warmly palpable, and thus infectious: We share their pleasure in hanging out together, and duly miss them when they miss each other.”

I didn’t attend this morning’s 8:45 am screening of Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife, but The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw did, and his review goes nuts for Glenn Close‘s performance as a “charming, enigmatically discreet and supportive wife” of a world-famous author and New York literary lion (played by Jonathan Pryce.

Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce in Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife.

Close’s performance as Joan Castleman “may be [her] career-best,” Bradshaw says, and “a portrayal to put alongside Close’s appearances in Dangerous Liaisons and Fatal Attraction.” He describes her character as “unnervingly subtle, unreadably calm, simmering with self-control…a study in marital pain, deceit and the sexual politics of prestige.”

That sounds like something strong enough to launch Close into the Best Actress derby, but we’ll need to hear from a few more critics before going down that path. No Rotten Tomatoes entries as we speak.

Hollywood Elsewhere is going to try to attend a 6:30 pm screening of The Wife on Thursday evening at Roy Thomson Hall. So dar I can’t find a publicist who’s repping the film. If anyone knows anything and could lend a hand, please get in touch.

Close and Pryce aside, The Wife costars Christian Slater, Annie Starke, Max Irons, Elizabeth McGovern and Harry Lloyd.

If you count the Telluride adventure (and I do) Hollywood Elsewhere has been doing heavy-travelling and film-festival hours for nearly two weeks straight. Like it or not, I’m feeling exhausted by the pace and the demands (14-hour work days, the usual column demand of four or five stories daily), and so I decided today to back off for the next three days and maybe see one or two Toronto Film Festival flicks per day…no more hard-charging between now and Friday, which is when I fly back to Los Angeles. I might squeeze in a dinner with Jordan Ruimy but no more parties or running around and getting five hours a night, if that.

Plus I felt so destroyed and depressed by I, Tonya today and particularly by the fact that everyone loves it and I’m the only one who’s sane enough to hate it, and so I just trudged back to the pad at 2 pm and flopped on the bed. I slept for four hours. Go away, leave me alone.

About getting into I, Tonya this morning: I arrived at the Scotiabank plex 25 minutes before the start of the 10:45 am I, Tonya press screening, and the line was like “you’re fucking kidding me.” All the way down Richmond and then all the way down John and around the corner to Adelaide. I walked back to the front to speak to Wilson Morales, and as we were chatting the line began to move and — what the hell — I kind of slipped in next to Wilson. Just before entering the theatre a TIFF volunteer was asking for little paper stubs that had been handed out to the legit line-waiters, and I just said “uhm, I think I was using a bathroom when they handed them out” and the guy let me slide.

So I was able to see I, Tonya….yaaaay! But wouldn’t you know it made me feel really bad and alienated and out of sorts. If I never see another movie like I, Tonya ever again it’ll be too soon.

Abuse begets more abuse, and abused victims sometimes (often?) seek out fresh replacement abusers. And so Tonya Harding‘s bitter, chain-smoking mom, Lavona, beat and belittled her daughter from age of 7 onward, and as teenaged and then 20-something Tonya ascended in the figure-skating realm she became a ferociously angry abuser herself with a huge chip on her shoulder…what else?

Tonya married and then separated from an abusive, moustache-wearing asshole, Jeff Gillooly, who conspired to have Harding’s skating rival Nancy Kerrigan temporarily disabled with a police-baton blow to the knee, and with many presuming, fairly or unfairly, that Harding was aware of Gillooly’s plan and was more or less down with it.

Most of us are up to speed on Harding‘s sad life and the pathetic tabloid calamity of the Kerrigan conspiracy.

Craig Gillespie‘s I, Tonya, an exaggerated, pugilistic black farce that some are calling grimly comedic, is all about the Harding catastrophe, and it’s definitely the Toronto Film Festival movie to see and get walloped by right now.

I, Tonya press-screened this morning at 10:45 am. Well, actually 11:05 am because it took so long to get everyone in. I was there and dealt with the long, horrible, hope-crushing line that stretched east along Richmond and south down John Street. I saw it and I ate it, suffering the blows and bruises and the eye-popping realization that I, Tonya currently has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

The cool kidz love it, but I’m telling you that unless you have a strange liking for the company of losers, abusers and total dipshits, you’ll definitely want to steer clear of this cesspool exercise. It lasts 119 minutes, and it feels, trust me, like 139 or 149.

When it ended I turned to the guy next to me and said, “How long was that?” “Two hours,” he said. “Good God,” I replied.

Am I the only honest, straight-shooting journo-critic in Toronto right now? I, Tonya is cinematic abuse, pure and simple. It’s an ugly pill from hell — a violent, vulgar, relentlessly profane assembly of lower-middle-class white-trash types beating on each other and smoking and swearing and losing their tempers and causing cuts and swellings. It’s a tacky portrait of American self-loathers, brawlers, grotesques, hungry-for-famers, human garbage, etc.

I tweeted the following just after 1 pm today: “I, Tonya is an ugly, abusive, lower-class tale about a demimonde of ugly, abusive, lower-class people. A movie full of rage and resentment. A toilet-bowl downswirl of wretched, lower-middle-class misery.