During the Toronto Film Festival I was told to steer clear of Matthew Weiner‘s You Are Here, a kind of mixed-bag relationship dramedy with Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler and Laura Ramsey. Part of me didn’t want to see this anyway because I can’t stand Galifianakis so I passed. As it turned out most of the reviews were negative. But a complaint voiced by Hitfix‘s Gregory Ellwood in a recent TIFF sum-up piece rubs me the wrong way.

“Weiner’s passion project about two buddies getting their lives back on track couldn’t decide what it wanted to be,” Ellwood writes. “A drama? A comedy? A farce?” My immediate reaction was “why does a movie have to decide what it precisely is in terms of tone and approach? Why can’t it be a blend? Why can’t a film accomodate differing attitudes and moods simultaneously or at least shift between them? Isn’t that what life is like sometimes?

How many scripts would be out the window if there was suddenly a worldwide ban on all plots driven or influenced by alchoholism, drug addiction, economic desperation caused by drugs or booze, low-rent assholery and obesity (i.e., traits largely owned by the lower-middle-classes and underclass)? A third? More? I for one would be ecstatic if this rule were to be implemented. I realize that Hollywood perversely needs the primitive-appetites class because they lead to bad situations and thereby provide lots of raw material. But the less these tendencies are part of your own life (or the lives of your friends and family members) the more boring they seem. If I never see another movie about an alcoholic (unless it’s something exceptional like Leaving Las Vegas) or drug addict (unless it’s something exceptional like The Basketball Diaries) it’ll be too soon. What if the MPAA could rate films ALMCL (“about lower middle-class losers”) in addition to moralistic ratings concerning sex and violence?

Jason Statham programmers are almost always about lowbrow grunt-rage, but I was half into the idea of seeing this thing because of the presence of James Franco and Kate Bosworth (too slim and pretty to be living in Yeehawville?) in adverserial roles. But Gary Fleder directing and Sylvester Stallone producing and co-writing probably means exactly what you think it means.

It might be premature to predict that 12 Years A Slave will win the Best Picture Oscar and that its director, star and female costar — Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o — could take the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress trophies. But having seen Slave I can say without question that it’s not crazy or unreasonable to imagine this. At all. And if you throw in those other spitball noms for The Butler‘s Forrest Whitaker (Best Actor) and Oprah Winfrey (Best Supporting Actress) and Fruitvale Station‘s Ryan Coogler (Best Director) and Michael Jordan (Best Actor) you’re talking about the strongest Afro-centric presence at the Oscars in Hollywood history.

It’s obvious what Grudge Match (Warner Bros., 12.25) will be — leave it there. But what about the Sylvester Stallone-as-Edgar Allen Poe film that was never made and which we’ll probably never see? That would be a new kind of hip comedy. I can do a pretty good imitation of Stallone muttering “once upon a midnight duhweerhy…”

The 70% Rotten Tomatoes consensus is that Christian Vincent‘s Haute Cuisine (Weinstein Co., 9.30), which will have an invitational screening in Manhattan on Monday night, is a pleasant enough, true-life diversion for foodies. Synopsis: “Renowned Perigord chef Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) is appointed personal chef for French president Francois Mitterand (Jean d’Ormesson)…despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, the authenticity of her cooking seduces the President, but the corridors of power are littered with traps.” The Real McCoy’s name was/is Daniele Delpeuch — for some legal reason they changed her name for the film. The trailer’s use of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” scares me to death.

Three or four days ago I was grappling with a screening conflict — John Ridley‘s All Is By My Side (a.k.a., the year in the life of Jimi Hendrix film with Andre Benjamin/Andre 3000 as the late groundbreaking musician) or Daniel Schecter‘s Life of Crime, the period kidnapping drama based on Elmore Leonard‘s The Switch. I compromised by deciding to catch the first 40% of All Is By My Side before Life of Crime began, but two or three minutes after settling into the Hendrix I was having doubts about this strategy because of Benjamin’s dead-on performance. It was obvious he’d captured Hendrix’s manner, vibe, voice…that gentleness, that ambivalent but spiritually directed mood-trip thing. Plus I was feeling a certain comfort with Ridley’s script and direction. I wasn’t knocked flat but I was saying to myself, “This kind of works…yeah.”

(l.) Musical-cosmic revolutionary Jimi Hendrix; ((r.) Andre Benjamin (a.k.a. Andre 3000) as Hendrix in John Ridley‘s All Is By My Side.

My final Toronto Film Festival viewing was Simon and Zeke Hawkins‘ We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, and I must say it was nice to finish up with a little pulp-noir action and smart-director pizazz. A crafty small-town crime drama with a romantic triangle undercurrent and written by Dutch Southern (now there’s a name of a surly, swaggering, whiskey-sipping, Gauloises-inhaling, doobie-toking writer who drives a muscle car and wears motorcycle boots!), Place is technically an original tale but not really. For the main order of business (or so it seems) is paying tribute to the legendary hardboiled stylings of crime-fiction writer Jim Thompson, who is discussed in the opening chit-chat scene between lead protagonists Bobby (Jeremy Allen White, who eyeballs and mood-trips like a cross between Sean Penn and James Dean) and Sue (the pretty, antelope-like Mackenzie Davis). It’s like sitting in a film-school class with the teacher clapping his hands and barking “okay, get out your notepads, people…they’re making it easy for you!”

John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo is a gentle, Brooklyn-based, light-touch, indie-romantic fable. It’s a lot quieter and tenderer and less schticky than the trailer indicates. It’s appealing in a burnished, old-fashioned way, and it happens in a realm entirely (and in some ways charmingly) of Turturro’s imagining and making. The atmosphere is one of reverence, nostalgia, dignity, reserve, romance, class, kindness, caring, tradition. Eroticism, trust me, barely pokes through. The big standout element is gap-toothed Vanessa Paradis making her English-language debut. But this American Beauty-influenced poster makes no sense for a movie this discreet. I would go so far as to call it blatantly dishonest.