TIFF 2011: Wrap up and Recos

So TIFF ends for another year. The red carpets have been rolled up, awards have been handed out and I really don't want to see any of the RBC/Bell/Lightbox/Cadillac/Princess Grace exhibit ads again.

For those of you wondering what you should be adding to your lists of things see over the next year in theatres or on your couch, here's how I'd categorize the 18 movies I saw at TIFF this year.

My Favourite Film of the Festival

• Friends With Kids. Putting aside the fact that I am enamoured with Mr. Hamm and much of the cast of the film, I'm confident I would have loved it anyway. It's funny and real and well acted. Can "I want you to fuck the shit out of me" be the new "You had me at Hello"?? I would like to think I live in a world where that is possible.

Great Movies (I would absolutely recommend them)

• Ides of March. Fantastic political thriller with wonderful performances all around. No matter what your political leanings (the best comment I've heard is that Democrats will like the first half of the movie and Republicans the second) the story will grab you and take you along for the ride.


• Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope. Rock out with your Spock out. Even if you can't embrace your inner geek, the stories are heartfelt and well told.


• First Postition. You will fall in love with these kids. And possibly want to put on your own dancing shoes.


• Drive. Ryan Gosling is great as the Driver and Carey Mulligan is as lovely as ever. It's a stylistic, violent and fast paced 90 minutes.


• Hysteria. Go to see it for the unlikely premise (it's about the invention of the vibrator). Stay for the performances and chemistry between Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy.


• The Oranges. The age old story of a man taking up with a woman half his age is complicated by the fact that she's his best friend's daughter and their families share a neighbourhood and a lot of history.


• Undefeated. Yes it was a real life version of Friday Night Lights.


• Butter. A black comedy ostensibly about a butter carving competition, but really about politics, and a chance to see Hugh Jackman in a cowboy hat for the ladies and Olivia Wilde in fishnets for the guys.

Good Movies (perfect for an afternoon on the movie network or a flight selection)

• The Decendants. Hovers on the border of Good and Great. It's George Clooney, and he's always watchable and the story was good, dialogue well written and supporting cast delivers. Just underwelmed me a bit and ended up first on the Good list.


• Damsels in Distress. Whimsical and entertaining. Greta Gerwig is fantastic, and you have to enjoy a movie that includes elaborate dance numbers.


• Page Eight. Pretty straightforward spy thriller elevated by a great cast and it's coming to TV later this fall.


• Ten Year. A huge cast of characters reconnect for their 10 year high school reunion. People get drunk, feelings get hurt and secrets come out by the end of the night.


• Restless. Mia Wasikowska's great and the story of a dying girl and a guy obsessed with death is simply and well told.


• Union Square. Mira Sorvino gives a fabulous performance as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown invading the life of her much more pulled together sister.


• Violet & Daisy. Two teenage assasins get involved with a hit that ends up being more than they expected.

Don't Bother (I wouldn't waste your time unless you really have nothing to do)

• Sleeping Beauty. Disturbing and disjointed. A brave performance by Emily Browning and some moments that really worked surrounded by a lot that didn't for me.


• Sarah Palin - You Betcha!. Nothing new to learn here about the former Governer of Alaska.

Overall I was fairly pleased with my film slate and happy with my selections. I ended up getting a Q&A for 14 of my 18 films, which is my favourite part of the festival experience, and got to see a bunch of stars on stages and red carpets.

What was interesting to me this year was that there seemed to be very little momentum built behind any of the films, as TIFF has become somewhat known as the kickoff to the Oscar season. The people's choice winner (an award that has been won by The King's Speech, Precious and Slumdog Millionaire over the past three years) was Where do We Go Now, a lebanese film that I hadn't heard anything about in line all week. There seemed to by more discussion about award worthy performances than the films themselves. I have a feeling that it's likely because there seems to be a lot of award season bait that hasn't really been seen by anyone yet and didn't come to TIFF this year (The Iron Lady, J. Edgar, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to name a few) and people are reserving their judgement a little bit. I guess we'll see over the next few months as we finish out the year!

TIFF 2011: Final Weekend! The Descendants, Hysteria and Page Eight

I had three films Saturday and Sunday to finish up TIFF for 2011.

Saturday morning was The Descendants, the latest from director Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) which stars George Clooney as the patriarch of a large extended family in Hawaii. He's the family trustee and the final decision maker on what to do with 25 acres of land which is being sought by developers. He's also dealing with the fact that his wife has been in an accident and lies comatose in the hospital and is trying to navigate through the tragedy as well as his relationship with his two young daughters, 17 year old Alex (Shailene Woodley) and 10 year old Scottie (Amara Miller).

Maybe my expectations were too high for this movie, as I'd heard wonderful things about Clooney's performance and the film has been popping up on the list of Oscar contenders, but I was a bit underwhelmed. The movie is very good and the performances are indeed wonderful (the biggest pleasant surprise for me was Woodley) but it didn't blow me away. If it were anyone other than George Clooney playing the role I don't know that it would be getting this level of attention (though I guess that should go without saying).


Saturday evening was Hysteria, the indie romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator in 1880's England from director Tanya Wexler. The credits of the film kick off with the standard -this film is based on true events- claim only to be followed by -really- immediately afterwards. Yes, apparently women back in the day were often medically diagnosed with hysteria, the most common treatment of which was "pelvic massage" in order to induce "paroxysm". Not to get off on a feminist tangent (and an orgasm is probably good for all that ails you) but it is laughable looking back and seeing how men basically figured out a way to make any undesirable thoughts or behaviors from the women in their lives a medical issue.

The film stars Hugh Dancy as Mortimer Granville, a physician taken as an assistant into the women's treatment practice of Dr. Dalrymple (Jonathan Price). Dr. Dalrymple has two daughters who are as different as night and day. Emily (Felicity Jones) is the perfect, poised, piano playing, demure future potential wife and Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the progressive, outspoken, independent woman who argues with her father about the medical necessity of his practice and spends her time trying to teach and care for other women and children in an unfunded shelter. Which woman do you think is the right one for him?? Yes, we all know where the movie is going but it is a very entertaining trip nonetheless. The invention of the vibrator comes out of necessity (the poor man's hand is about to fall off) and accident through a discussion with his cheeky technology obsessed friend (Rupert Everett and dear god man, what the hell did you do to your formerly attractive face?!?).

I quite liked the movie. The performances were all good, particularly Gyllenhaal who was playing a character I liked, was compellingly watchable on screen and had a great accent (to my non-native ears anyway...but then my last example of an American playing an Englishwoman was Anne Hathaway in One Day so Maggie may be better off for the comparison).



This morning I lined up at Ryerson for the last time until next year for my final movie of the festival. Page Eight is a spy thriller from writer/director David Hare that was developed for and aired on the BBC this summer and is set to air here across the pond on PBS in November. Hare is best known as a playwright, though he has also written some major screenplays (The Hours, The Reader) and this is the first time he's directed a film since 1989.

The movie stars Bill Nighy as as Johnny Worriker, an old school MI5 agent. His boss Benedict (Michael Gambon) is also his best friend and confidant and when he dies suddenly after discussing a top secret file with Johnny and his coworker Jill (Judy Davis) he is reasonably suspicious. Over the same time period he has a far to coincidental (for his tastes) run in with his neighbour Nancy (Rachel Weisz) who has ties to the middle east and is trying to find out what really caused the death of her brother and is trying to hold together a relationship with his artist daughter (Felicity Jones) who has stuff going on in her own life.

It's a quite good, straightforward thriller made better by the amazing cast pulled together for the TV project. According to Nighy that is all based on the fact that everyone is willing to do whatever they need to do in order to work with Hare. Yes, did I mention that both David Hare and Bill Nighy attended the screening on the last day of the festival to do an intro and a Q&A? They were lovely and classy and made the movie better for being there. They discussed their long history of collaboration (this is their 7th project together), the political climate in the UK and the potential issues with US release and reaction, the differences working on stage, film and for television and the possibility of the character continuing into a second or third film. A fully satisfying end to TIFF for the year.

TIFF 2011: Violet & Daisy

Heading into the TIFF homestretch and the final weekend of screenings.


Last night's movie was Violet & Daisy, the directorial debut of Geoffrey Fletcher (previously an Oscar winning screenwriter for Precious) and starring Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan as the titular characters. Violet (Bledel) and Daisy (Ronan) are assassins, the numbers 8 and 9 quirkily sewn on to every piece of clothing they wear. They are also teenage girls who jump on beds, chew bubble gum and are obsessed Barbie Sunday, some sort of Britney Spearsish pop star. The movie opens with them dressed as nuns, carrying pizza boxes and telling each other lame jokes (meant to highlight Daisy's naiveté) before entering an apartment building and opening fire on a group of gunmen. Afterwards, after agreeing to their next job (and getting the details from Danny Trejo), they break into the apartment of their target, Michael (James Gandolfini), and promptly fall asleep on the couch waiting for him to return home. The job, of course, isn't as straightforward as they'd like and the girls and Michael fall into talking, eating oatmeal cookies and fending off the attack of another set of thugs also arriving to take Michael out. There are flashbacks and fantasy sequences and discussions, and in the end no real clear resolution or future direction for the characters.

The movie premiered on Thursday night and Fletcher hung around to introduce the film and do a Q&A following the screening. He took a lot of questions from the crowd but didn't provide a lot of really clear answers to them. Every response was just a bit vague, whether the question was about his influences as a director or the meaning or symbolism of elements of some of the sequences in the film.


Overall, I'd say the movie was fine (yeah, I realize how tepid that sounds as I write it but I don't have anything stronger to say). It was interesting to see a new side of Bledel who has always played pretty goody-goody roles. Some of the scenes were interestingly shot and the soundtrack was quite good. Between this and Damsels in Distress, I'm wondering if there was some memo that went out to Hollywood about naming female characters after flowers (a Rose shows up in the mix as well).

TIFF 2011: Union Square

Last night's movie was the world premiere of Union Square, the latest from writer/director Nancy Savoca (Dogfight, If These Walls Could Talk).


It stars Mira Sorvino and Tammy Blanchard as Lucy and Jenny, sisters who have been estranged for more than three years, and takes place over about 48 hours. Lucy, who we meet first as she is erratically shopping and making phone calls, drops in on her sister's apartment (she lives in Union Square) unannounced and sets up camp on the couch. She's a bit of a whirlwind, clearly has some issues and is very emotional. Jenny is sedate, almost repressed, and has clearly not told her fiancé Bill (Mike Doyle) much about her family and most of what she has told him is a lie. What follows is a lot of talking, some confrontations, lies, resolutions and one drama-filled night out for the pair. It ends as a very interesting character study, without a clear tied up resolution.

I thought the movie was quite good. One of the great things about it is how the truths seem to unravel, almost like peeling back layers of an onion. Each time we discover something new I expected that issue to be the main crux of the relationship or problem to be resolved, but the movie continued to surprise me until the very end. Sorvino and Blanchard are also very well cast and give terrific performances in very different roles, playing off each other beautifully and completely believable as siblings.

Writer/Director Savoca, co-writer Mary Tobler, producer Neda Armian and actors Sorvino and Doyle attended the film and held a Q&A afterwards. Some of the interesting things we learned included the fact that the whole story seemed to come from a dare from Armian to Savoca to make a movie in her apartment (and that is indeed what they ended up doing) and that they filmed the entire movie in sequence, which is very uncommon. Sorvino talked about the character's motivations (you can tell she has great affection for Lucy) and about some of the improvisation in the film. Savoca discussed a bit about women in filmmaking (it was an estrogen heavy production), the casting and filming process and gave us a bit of a perspective on what would have happened to the characters after the final scene.

The movie doesn't have a distribution deal yet and I hope that it ends up finding it's way to an audience.

TIFF 2011: Damsels in Distress, Butter and Sleeping Beauty

I took another day off yesterday (why isn't the three day work week sustainable?) and saw three movies.
This morning's movie was Damsels in Distress, a return to directing after a thirteen year absence for Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco).

The movie stars Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie MacLemore as Violet, Rose and Heather respectively. The three schoolmates at a fictional east coast university take transfer student Lily (Analeigh Tipton) under their wing, introducing her to their attempts to revolutionize the student body through good hygiene, suicide prevention and dance numbers. The story is divided into chapters and they kind of seemed that way to me, almost presented like little vignettes instead of one plotline. The girls major issues of course come from the men in their lives, the exotic older man Xavier (Hugo Becker), the frat boys they are trying to 'improve' Frank and Thor (Ryan Metcalf and Billy Magnussen) and Charlie (Adam Brody) the lying charmer who threatens to come between them.

I think this one will end up solidly in the middle of the pack for me. It was entertaining, amusing, and very whimsical but didn't really grab my attention.

Stillman popped in after the film to do a Q&A, and I don't know if it was unplanned but the programmer hadn't announced that there would be one so a good chunk of the theater had filed out during the credits which is too bad. He discussed the development and casting process, working with a young cast and didn't really give a solid answer as to why he hadn't directed anything in 13 years and why this was the story he decided to start with.

After a lovely lunch with a friend including several glasses of prosecco it was back in line for the next round.


Butter is a story about the competitive world of butter carving. It's also a story about racism, infidelity, politics and prostitution. The movie was directed by Jim Field Smith (She's Out of My League) and stars a whole bunch of well known actors.

Jennifer Garner plays Laura Pickler, a conservative wife of 15 time butter carving champion Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell). When he is encouraged to hang up his tools to give an opportunity for someone else to win, Laura (with the intensity of a grown up Tracy Flick) decides she is not having it and enters the competition herself. Her chief competition is Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a young, black orphan recently taken in by yuppie couple the Emmets (Alicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry) who shows an unlikely talent in the butter carving arts. She's also up against a superfan of Bob's (Kristin Schaal) and a stripper/prostitute named Brooke (Olivia Wilde...in like her 5th movie of the year) who's out for revenge on Laura due to an unfortunate incident in a parking lot. Her backup includes a former boyfriend Boyd (Hugh Jackman) who will do pretty much anything to help Laura get what she wants.

It's possible the prosecco at lunch had me in a good mood to start off but I really liked the movie. It's very funny and the performances were good all around (particulary Wilde for me who stole every scene she was in). The film doesn't have a release date yet but was acquired by The Weinstein company and Harvey is already doing his best to drum up publicity for it, so I'd expect you'll see it in theatres fairly soon.

Last up for the day was Sleeping Beauty, the directorial debut of Julia Leigh which premiered at Cannes earlier this year and is being 'presented' by Jane Campion.

Emily Browning stars as Lucy, a student who seems to be working about 4 part time jobs, one of them as an amateur prostitute of sorts. She answers an ad and takes a job as a 'sleeping beauty', a prostitute who is drugged unconscious and left in a room with a man to be used as he wishes (short of actual penetration). We of course see what happens to her while she's unconscious but she starts to have a hard time not knowing and tries to figure out a way to see for herself. She's also got a job in some sort of medical trial, works as a waitress and has a relationship with a man she calls Birdman that isn't really explained. There are lots of fade outs from one scene to another and a rather abrupt ending.

Maybe it was the fact that the movie started more than half an hour late and it had been a rather long day but I didn't really get it. It was a bit too disturbing, arty and disjointed for my taste. The director attended and held a Q&A after the film and many of the questions and comments from the audience were very complimentary so it may be just me.

TIFF 2011: The Oranges and Undefeated

Day off work today and I had two movies to see.

First on the schedule was The Oranges, from director Julian Farino, who's best known work to date has been as a director on TV series such as Entourage, The Office and Big Love. The movie takes place in a friendly New Jersey suburb (known as The Oranges) and centers around the relationships and entanglements between members of two families, the Wallings and the Ostroffs.

David and Paige Walling (Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener) have a beautiful home, long marriage, two grown children in Toby (Adam Brody) and Vanessa (Alia Skawkat) and very little happiness in their lives. Terry and Carol Ostroff (Oliver Platt and Allison Janney) live across the street and have a grown daughter of their own, Nina (Leighton Meester), who hasn't been home to visit in years. Nina's return for the holiday season throws just about everything into turmoil. There's the friendship that she and Vanessa used to share when they were pre-teens that disintegrated in high school, her pushy mother hoping that she and Toby would get together and then most disastrously, the relationship that springs up between her and her father's best friend.

I really liked the movie. Now, I'm admittedly a pretty big Hugh Laurie fan (and frankly could totally see why a 24 year old would hop into bed with him) so I didn't have as much of an issue with the central relationship as people might. And really, while the David/Nina relationship is the pivot point of the movie, there is also so much else going on with the people around them. Alia Shawkat stole every scene as the daughter dealing with her former friend's betrayal, her anger and disillusionment with her father and her ambivalence as to her own future as she continues to live at home and put off starting her own life. Allison Janney and Catherine Keener were similarly wonderful as women dealing with disappointments and anger in their own ways.

Director Farino showed up to introduce the film and to do a Q&A following the screening. He talked quite a bit about the delicate balance he felt he had to maintain in the movie so as not to make the relationship seem predatory. He was asked if Meester was cast because she had previously played a somewhat similar role with Laurie on an arc of House and he said that while that wasn't why she was cast he thought it helped them with establishing the necessary chemistry between the actors. He was also very complimentary about the city of Toronto and the festival and how film-literate people seem to be (he's not the first or last filmmaker to pander to us...but we still appreciate it). The film doesn't have a distribution deal at this point but I'd imagine you'll see it in theatres some time next year.



Up this evening was the documentary Undefeated, which follows the 2009 season of the inner city Memphis Manassas Tigers who are attempting to have a winning season after years of losses with the goal of winning the first ever playoff game in the school's 100+ year history.

I had selected this movie because in reading the description I basically felt like it sounded like the real life version of a season of Friday Night Lights (and that show rocks). And really, it kind of was...with a little bit of The Blind Side thrown in for good measure.

The film follows the team's season highlighting the leadership of Coach Bill Courtney and the stories of three of the team members, O.C. Brown, the big, fast, talented player who is struggling academically and hoping to get to play football in college, Montrail "Money" Brown, the studious team leader, too small to play football beyond high school and hoping academics are the way out and Chavis Daniels who is fresh out of a 15 month stint in a junior penitentiary and is struggling with anger issues and how to be a member of a team.

The film is very well done and you find yourself getting swept along in the story as if it were a scripted sports film. The stories of the players and the town and the Coach and his family are all very moving. Are they successful and do they win their playoff game in the end? I'm not going to tell you and you shouldn't check before you see it because it's a much better experience to go in without knowing. The movie premiered at the South by Southwest festival earlier this year and was picked up by The Weinstein Company so I'm sure you'll get an opportunity to see it in a theatre or on the movie network at some point in the next year.

Filmmakers Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin along with Coach Bill Courtney himself were there and held a Q&A after the screening. Coach was given a standing ovation from the crowd as he was introduced. The season shown here was the last year he coached the team at Manassas (he was there as a volunteer coach for 6 years and worked with many of these players all the way through) and he's now coaching at the high school where his two oldest daughters are students and his sons will be attending and playing in the next couple of years. We got updated on where the players are today and how they are doing. Lindsay and Martin talked about how they decided to make this film and how they dealt with some unexpected events during the process.

TIFF 2011: Ten Year

Last night's movie was the world premiere of Ten Year, the directorial debut of Jamie Linden (previous credits include the screenplays for We Are Marshall and Dear John) and tells the story of a group of former classmates coming together for their 10 year high school reunion.

It's a really large ensemble cast, including Channing Tatum and wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum as a couple (it's his reunion, she's along for the ride), his high school love played by Rosario Dawson who shows up with husband Ron Livingston in tow, married couples Chris Pratt & Ari Graynor and Brian Geraghty & Aubrey Plaza, Oscar Isaac as the guy who went away and got famous and spends the night catching up with Kate Mara, Scott Porter (Jason Street!) back from Japan along with his girlfriend and Anthony Mackie, Lynn Collins, Justin Long and Max Mingella as fellow classmates who's lives aren't quite where they wanted them to be 10 years after high school.

The movie was fine, probably about a 6 out of 10 if I had to rate it. The stories are interweaved nicely and while I wasn't surprised by any of the plot elements they were all well executed. It was fun to see Ari Graynor play the straight, sober counterpoint to Chris Pratt (who was hilarious as the drunken former high school douche) after her wonderful turn on the other side of that equation in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The song written and performed by Oscar Isaac was great and Aubrey Plaza was very fun to watch every time she showed up on screen. The chemistry among the cast was completely believable as people who had known each other for a long time.

A vast chunk of the cast were there, and I'm sure a bunch of other people involved with the film based on the rowdiness of the crowd at the Ryerson last night. Notable absenses were Chris Pratt who had been in town all weekend to support Moneyball and left Linden a message to read to the crowd (because he'd promised on his mother's life to do so), Rosario Dawson, Anthony Mackie and Ron Livingston. After the screening Linden brought them all up on stage for a Q&A session. They talked about the inspiration for the movie, the challenges of filming with such a large cast with so many stories to tell, how well some of them had known each other before filming the movie and how much better (or worse) this portrayal was compared to their own high school reunion experiences.

All in all, just another good night at TIFF.