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Our Hollywood Roundup Of The Toronto International Film Festival
Five films that had everyone talking at TIFF 2015.
We’ve covered the South Asian entries, now here’s ANOKHI’s look back at some of the most buzz-worthy Hollywood flicks that electrified audiences at this year’s festival.
Legend
Photo Credit: TIFF
Among the more high-profile arrivals at this year’s fest was this fact-based tale of twin gangsters Ronald and Reggie Kray (Tom Hardy, pulling double-duty), who made their mark knocking heads in 1960s London before an inevitably ugly downfall. Hardy is arguably the closest thing that modern-day Hollywood has to the raw, brutish charisma of Marlon Brando, and the hulking Brit is electric as ever here, crafting two equally enthralling, yet distinct leads — one the suave man with the plan, the other the schizophrenic, hammer-wielding muscle. Unfortunately, director Brian Helgeland’s (42) film is, on the whole, a muddled, meandering affair — unable to provide the kind of tense, engaging, or even coherent story that its star deserves. What we're left with is only a handful of rousing scenes sprinkled throughout a lengthy 130-minte runtime — but seeing as those scenes tend to involve, for instance, Hardy getting into a fistfight with himself, it’s almost worth the price of admission.
The Martian
Photo Credit: TIFF
Matt Damon teams up with Alien/Blade Runner/Gladiator director Ridley Scott for what is, arguably, the best film either of them has made in years. Based on the popular novel by Andy Weir, The Martian tells the tale of an astronaut (Damon) left behind on the world’s first mission to red planet, after his team (led by Zero Dark Thirty's Jessica Chastain) believes he’s been killed in a dust storm. Waking up alone, he spends the next 400-plus days fighting to survive on an unforgiving landscape not designed to sustain human life — fortunately, he’s got a state-of-the-art base camp, extensive scientific know-how and an infectious sense of humour about his predicament to keep him going until his crew and the NASA team back on Earth can figure out a rescue plan. It's a visually dazzling and heart-pumping trip to the stars, but what’s liable to turn The Martian into a cinematic classic when it hits theatres later this week is how warm, human and surprisingly funny it is. Much of the story is told via video logs that Damon — one of the film industry’s most endearing everymen — makes chronicling his efforts to grow crops, fix communications arrays and lament the laptop full of disco music his commanding officer left behind. It makes for an uncommonly intimate, affecting outer space adventure — an infectious celebration of human intelligence and spirit. Oh, and it also doesn't hurt that the cast is filled out by an embarrassment of acting riches, including Chastain, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels and Donald Glover.
Demolition
Photo Credit: TIFF
Two years ago, French Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée came to TIFF with a movie called Dallas Buyers Club, which ultimately went on to net star Matthew McConaughey his first Oscar. Could he do the same for another Hollywood A-lister who's been knocking on the Academy's door of late? Demolition stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a young Wall Street type who, in the film’s opening moments, loses his wife in a car crash — a loss that he goes on to process in, shall we say, unconventional ways, ranging from meticulously dismantling home appliances to impromptu public dancing to gunplay to confessing a dark secret about his marriage in a letter to a vending machine customer service rep (Naomi Watts). Gyllenhaal has shown a penchant for these types of off-kilter roles in dark dramas like Nightcrawler and Enemy; this may be his most intriguing effort yet — an enthrallingly unpredictable character who surprises at every turn in a film that expertly, breathlessly treads the line between dramedy and thriller.
Sicario
Photo Credit: TIFF
Another French Canadian helmer, Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners), came to TIFF with one of the most anticipated dramas of the year in Sicario — a dark, pulse-pounding trip into the darkest corners of the drug world. Emily Blunt stars as an FBI agent enlisted by a mysterious inter-departmental task force (led by a menacingly witty Josh Brolin and intriguingly enigmatic Benicio Del Toro) that aims to ditch the nickel-and-dime drugs busts and strike at the heart of the Mexican cartels who are flooding the streets with poison and bodies. The more she learns about her new colleagues, however, the clearer it becomes that their methods (and indeed, their true goal) might be more unsavoury than any decent human being can live with. A tense, intelligent thriller sporting a powerfully realized message on the inherent ugliness and futility of the war on drugs, anchored by a searing performance from a never-better Blunt.
Room
Photo Credit: TIFF
The unexpected winner of TIFF's vaunted People’s Choice Award, Room stars up-and-comer Brie Larson (Trainwreck, Short Term 12) as a 20-something woman whose been held captive in a shed since the age of 17, raising the five-year-old son (Canadian newcomer Jacob Tremblay) she had after being raped by her abductor. Believing that the world begins and ends at the walls of his tiny prison, the boy spends his days blissfully unaware of their predicament, playing with toys and reading storybooks with his mom — until mom finally decides they need to find a way out into the unexplored reaches of the real world. The latest from director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank) is an alternately harrowing, hopeful, exhilarating and joyful trip to the cinema — the core of which is a mother-son bond that’s as unique and powerful as any ever committed to screen.
Main image photo credit: www.TIFF.net
Matthew Currie
Author
A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...
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