I’ve read a draft of the Bryan Sipe script that Jean Marc Vallee‘s Demolition (Fox Searchlight, 4.8.16) is based upon. The film looks and sounds somewhat more appealing than the movie I was seeing in my head as I read the script, but it’s odd that the trailer pays a helluva lot more attention to Heather Lind, who plays Jake Gyllenhaal‘s late wife and mostly appears in flashbacks, than Naomi Watts, whose character (a customer service rep for a vending machine company) is very alive and central to the story. (Watts is seen/heard saying a single line in the trailer — “Do you miss her?”) This in itself feels like a weird call.

Demolition costar Judah Lewis.

You know who’s got the heat in this thing besides Gyllenhaal? Judah Lewis, who plays Watt’s teenaged son. You can tell right away. He tested for the latest Spider-Man reboot, costars in the forthcoming Point Break remake.

The Toronto International Film Festival (starting in two days) will open with a screening of Demolition, even though Fox Searchlight decided late last July to remove it from award-season consideration by giving it a release date of 4.8.16. Vallee’s Dallas Buyer’s Club and Wild were in the Oscar derby in 2013 and ’14, but not this time. At the very least the opening-night Toronto booking has people scratching their heads and going ‘what the…?’

When was the last time, by the way, that a trailer surfaced for a film that will play for the cognoscenti within 72 hours but which Average Joes won’t be able to see for another eight months? In other words, FS has put the trailer out to arouse the interest of Toronto-attending press as well as locals who’ve managed to score tickets to the opening-night screening…and that’s all.

One of HE’s biggest pet peeves over the years has been drivers in movies who pay way too much attention to the front-seat passenger they’re speaking with and not enough attention to the road. 98% or 99% of drivers in the real world keep their eyes on the road all the time and look at their passengers only when the car is sitting at stop lights or in front of stop signs. It’s very rare that a character pays the price for this, but Lind’s wife of Gyllenhaal apparently does in the trailer.