So I won’t be attending the Telluride or Venice film festivals (as usual) but I’ll be doing Toronto and New York. The latter will be mostly about catching Roman Polanski‘s Carnage, possibly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, that 2.76 to 1 Ben-Hur screening at Alice Tully Hall, My Week With Marilyn and possibly Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Wait…did I read something about Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar possibly preeming there?
And now it’s time to prune down the 2011 Toronto offerings to a manageable slate of 20 or 25, which is all I ever manage to see when I’m there. I’ve listed them in order of the most exciting and essential and on down. I’m ignoring a lot of well-made films, I’m sure. Please advise if I’ve tossed anything truly substantial:
1. The Descendants (d: Alexander Payne)
2. The Ides of March (d: George Clooney)
3. A Dangerous Method (d: David Cronenberg)
4. Moneyball (d: Bennett Miller)
5. Albert Nobbs (d: Rodrigo Garcia)
6. Shame (d: Steve McQueen)
7. Butter (d: Jim Field Smith)
8. The Oranges (d: Julian Farino)
9. Pearl Jam Twenty (d: Cameron Crowe);
10. Take this Waltz (d: Sarah Polley)
11. 50/50 (d: Jonathan Levine)
12. 360 (d: Fernando Meirelles)
13. Anonymous (d: Roland Emmerich)
14. Friends With Kids (d: Jennifer Westfeldt)
15. Machine Gun Preacher (d: Marc Forster);
16. Rampart (d: Oren Moverman)
17. Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (d: Bruce Beresford)
18. W.E. (d: Madonna)
19. The Hunter (d: Daniel Nettheim)
20. Jeff, Who Lives at Home (d: Jay & Mark Duplass)
21. Killer Joe (d: William Friedkin)
22. Trishna (d: Michael Winterbottom)
23. Woman in the Fifth (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)
24. Hick (d: Derick Martini)
25. Coriolanus (d: Ralph Fiennes)
26. Dark Horse (d: Todd Solondz)
Oh, God, I forgot the documentaries. Okay, here’s a list of preferences:
1. Wim Wenders‘ Pina
2. Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb‘s This Is Not A Film
3. Morgan Spurlock‘s Comic-Con: Episode IV — A Fan’s Hope
4. Rithy Panh‘s Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell
5. Jonathan Demme‘s I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful.
6. Werner Herzog‘s Into The Abyss
7. Stephen Kessler‘s Paul Williams Still Alive
8. Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill‘s Sarah Palin — You Betcha
9. Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin‘s Undefeated.
