TIFF ’17 is over (it’s been over for over a week, I’m just slow), so it’s time to take stock of the best and worst that the Festival offered. I saw 38 films (37 that I was conscious for at least most of), and 26 of them are mentioned here in one capacity or another. I missed some of the fest’s major titles (Molly’s Game, Battle of the Sexes, The Disaster Artist, The Current War, Call Me By Your Name, and I, Tonya), but saw several others, including four that have vaulted prominently into the Oscar conversation (Darkest Hour, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, and the People’s Choice Award winner, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). In other words, there’s still plenty to talk about. The first five entries on the list are the five best films I saw. After that, I dig deeper into the specifics of what really struck me about several films.
1. Foxtrot
Something no one
has ever accused me of is avoiding hyperbole. I love cinema, I always get
excited when I see great cinema, and my excitement has traditionally involved
throwing lots of excitable words around. In any given year, I usually see
between three and six films that I don’t hesitate to call masterpieces, and
I’ve been trying to get better about that. I realized I’ve become the moviegoer
equivalent of the guy that just says “I love you” to everyone that sleeps with
him. Are there really that many masterpieces? Can there even be that many? So I’ve been trying to get a little
more conservative with my praise, and so far in 2017, I had only said it about
one film (Get Out).
Well, here’s
number 2—Foxtrot is a masterpiece.
The simplest, non-spoiler-y way to describe Foxtrot
is that it’s about a tragedy in the Israeli military, and the film alternates
between revealing what might’ve happened, what didn’t happen, and what did
happen. Like Moonlight, it has three
distinctly separate acts. But unlike Moonlight,
each act has a different tone and style, and a very different role in revealing
what the hell kind of movie Foxtrot even
is. The first act is domestic tragedy—Manchester
by the Sea-like familial weight meets P.T. Anderson-styled long takes of devastating
close-up acting. Then the second act is Kubrick-ian satire. Both acts have a
dance scene. And the third act begins with an animated sequence involving
masturbation. None of it should work, but it does, beautifully so. It was
recently announced that Foxtrot is
Israel’s entry for the foreign language film Academy Award. I think it has a
great chance to win.
2. Jane
I won’t lie, I
wasn’t particularly excited to see Jane,
and really only did so because I had a writing gig to cover it. I liked several
of Brett Morgen’s previous films (Kurt
Cobain: Montage of Heck, The Kid
Stays in the Picture), but even still, I wasn’t sure how much I’d get into
a 90-minute film about the primatologist Jane Goodall, built almost solely out
of recently recovered footage from the 1960’s. But gods, what a gorgeous film.
This is pure cinema in the best way.
To start, the
footage from the 1960’s is all shot by Jane’s eventual husband, Hugh van
Lawick, who is widely regarded as the greatest wildlife photographer ever, and
the imagery is lovely. From that base, the film then overlays narration from
Jane Goodall herself (taken from ‘80s recordings of her reading her writing for
books on tape), and then overlays that with a stunning new Philip Glass score,
which, contrary to Glass’s general oeuvre, actually goes for a grand emotional
crescendo. Jane will be in art-house
theaters next month, and then will be broadcast on the National Geographic
channel next Spring. It’s definitely worth your time.
3. The
Shape of Water
At the TIFF
premiere, director Guillermo del Toro said that his Venice-winning film, The Shape of Water, is partially about
how, “Every morning, we can choose between fear and love. And love is the
answer. Silly as it may fucking sound, it’s the answer to everything.” The Shape of Water is a Beauty and the Beast–esque story of a
mute janitor at a top-secret science lab falling in love with the merman being
held prisoner there. It’s an unabashedly romantic film, in its sentiment, its
1962 setting, and especially its execution. It reminds me of La La Land in that it’s a movie where
you almost have to consciously decide you’re willing to let it sweep you away,
or it won’t. If you make even the slightest effort to be immune to the
goth-schmaltz it’s selling, then you probably will be. But if you can allow
yourself to be lost in the gorgeously stylized romantic grandeur, which I was,
then it’s a lovely viewing experience.
4. Faces
Places
What could
possibly make for a sweeter, more life-affirming documentary than a legendary
French filmmaker (89-year-old Agnès
Varda) and a world-renowned street artist (JR, famous for installing large black
& white photo images in public locations) teaming up to drive around France
and bring public art to the people and towns? The most wonderful thing about Faces Places is that the type of art
being created and displayed is hinged upon audience participation. The people
receiving these lovely images in their towns are the ones bringing their own
likenesses to its creation. As a result, the film ends up as a wonderful
meditation on the communal nature of art—why it matters to our public sphere,
how creating it brings us together, and how we are all the subject of something
beautiful.
5. Darkest
Hour
If you follow
film at all, you’ve probably heard by now that Gary Oldman virtually has the
Best Actor Oscar in the bag for his portrayal of Winston Churchill. But what
you might not have heard is that Darkest
Hour is also, actually, a great film. It’s important that this isn’t
thought of as a Churchill biopic, because it’s not. It’s a film about a historical
event. The whole thing takes place over about 18 days in May of 1940, and it’s
about Churchill convincing both the British Government and the Crown that they
can’t surrender to Germany while their troops are all stranded at Dunkirk. It’s
a brilliantly crafted film, particularly in the lighting and score. But it’s
also a great script. It’s a true return to form for Joe Wright (whose Atonement is one of my favorites of the
2000s), after last year’s disastrous Pan.
6. Greta Gerwig, Writer/Director
Greta Gerwig’s
debut as a solo writer/director, Lady
Bird, is a film that I really liked, but was one slight notch below loving.
In some ways, it’s about such a specific type of high school experience that it
might not perfectly resonate for anyone that didn’t come very close to living
it. But one thing that the film does make very clear is that Gerwig, as a
filmmaker, is the real deal. This isn’t just an actor deciding they can direct
now; this feels like the natural artistic progression of what has already been
a fascinating young career, full of life and creativity. Sometimes you can just
tell from a first film that it’s the beginning of a major voice in cinema. Lady Bird is one of those times.
7. The Sound Design of The Killing of a Sacred Deer
While I always
strongly advocate for the theatrical experience, when people ask me what films
they need to see in theaters, I’m
less likely to recommend films with big effects or strong visual components than
I am to push for films that most benefit from total immersion. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a movie
that needs that level of immersion from its viewers. This is a movie where you
need to be sitting in the dark, in total silence, and just listening to the bizarre,
unsettling noises and disjointed strings that are trying as hard as they
possibly can to make you queasy and uncomfortable. It’s a great horror movie,
but it only works if you let it completely envelop your sensory experience.
8. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The third film
by Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) was somewhat of a
surprise winner for TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, which is a pretty major
Oscar-predictor (eight of the previous nine winners have gone on to receive
Best Picture nominations). But perhaps the win shouldn’t have been that
surprising; one thing the Award has been an especially great predictor of in
recent years is the Best Actress Oscar. La
La Land, Room, and Silver Linings Playbook all won the TIFF
People’s Choice Award, and they all eventually vaulted their female lead onto
the Oscar acceptance stage. Given how wonderfully profane and deceptively
vulnerable Frances McDormand is in Three
Billboards, we may be looking at a continuation of that trend. And Sam
Rockwell, in a meaty and hilarious supporting role, has the goods to join her in
the Oscar hunt.
9. The Veep-Meets-Fascism
of The Death of Stalin
Armando
Iannucci, the creator of Veep (and a
screenplay Oscar nominee for his 2009 film, In
the Loop), has been a true expert at chronicling the hysterical inanities
of democratic systems. But with The Death
of Stalin (which takes place over the few days during and following that
titular event), Iannucci turns his focus to fascism. If you think the power
grabs in Veep were hilarious, where
everything is about maximizing voter optics, just wait ‘til you see how absurd
the power grabs look when they involve actual grabbing of actual power, and the
people in the way don’t merely lose elections.
10. Thinking About the implications of On Chesil Beach and I Love You, Daddy
With some films,
it’s not necessarily the quality or style of the artistry that stands out to
you, but the ideas presented in the film. This was especially the case with On Chesil Beach, an Ian McEwan
adaptation that I thought was only a decent film, but has stayed with me really
well despite being the first film I saw of the fest. It has two major takeaways
that I’ve been thinking a lot about—the perils of crafting narratives about
what sexual experiences are supposed to be like, and the ways in which people
in long-term relationships can almost feel like they’ve been victims of false
advertisement when they find out something new about their partner
I liked Louie
C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy a lot
better—it was one of my favorites of the fest—but even still, it’s the ideas in
the story that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s basically a commentary on how
we should react to Woody Allen as a filmmaker, knowing what we (probably) know
about him. Meanwhile, the movie looks and feels almost identical to Woody’s
1979 classic, Manhattan. So there’s a
lot to unpack there, and I can’t wait to see how people react to it when it’s
released next year.
11. The Sexy Feminism of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder Woman in 1941,
was quite an interesting figure. He was a Harvard-trained psychology professor,
he invented the lie detector test, and he was in a long-term, functional relationship
with two women. Even though Marston died young, in 1947, his two partners still
stayed together for the rest of their lives. The story of Marston’s relationship
with these two women—and their relationship with each other—and how they
inspired the creation of a feminist icon superhero, is a movie that achieves
the balance of being really sexy without ever feeling exploitative. Some of us
have always known that feminism is sexy, but for those that still don’t realize
it, this is the movie they need.
12. Vince Vaughn, Action Star
Sometimes one
starring role in a good action flick is all it takes to completely reframe
someone’s career. Once upon a time, no one had ever thought of Bruce Willis,
Nicholas Cage, or Liam Neeson as action stars. But then Die Hard, The Rock, and Taken came along, and none of their
careers have ever been the same since. To be fair, Brawl in Cell Block 99, the prison revenge epic that Vince Vaughn
brought to TIFF, has virtually no chance at lighting box offices on fire like
those three aforementioned films. But the people that cast action movies will see it, and they’re going to love
what they see. Vince Vaughn is about to be reinvented as an action star, and
he’s going to be pretty damn great at it.
13. The Final Shots of Hostiles and What Will People
Say
I’ve always been
fascinated by the way a great final shot can frame how we think about a film,
and two that I saw at TIFF displayed that perfectly. Hostiles, a bleak western by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) and starring Christian Bale, had a surprising final
image, deployed in slow motion, that was basically a reverse Searchers. What Will People Say—a powerful Norwegian drama about Pakistani
immigrants—ended on a stark set of two silent facial expressions, acknowledging
everything that the characters had experienced and learned about themselves
over the entire film. In both cases, the ways I’ve thought about these movies have
been predicated by the final images they left me with.
14. The Subtleties of Chappaquiddick
I didn’t know
what to expect of Chappaquiddick, a
film that arrived in Toronto with very little buzz and was by a director, John
Curran, whose films I’ve really liked (Tracks),
really hated (Stone), or been completely
indifferent to (The Painted Veil).
But Chappaquiddick—starring Jason
Clarke as Ted Kennedy, Kate Mara as the campaign worker that died in his car,
Ed Helms as his closest advisor, and Bruce Dern as his father—was a nice
surprise. What works so well about it is that it doesn’t go for sensationalism.
It’s about your entire life building and pressurizing a narrative of impending
greatness, and how you might react when you see it start to spiral away. If
there’s a major flaw, it’s that the film doesn’t care enough about a tragically
dead girl. But Chappaquiddick is
about the realities of America’s relationship to scandal and moral
compartmentalization, and it’s a film that keenly (and sadly) knows, America
never really cares about the dead girl.
15. The Norwegian Non-Horror Version of Carrie
With all content ideas being
constantly re-farmed into reboots or new mediums, Thelma (Norway’s official Oscar entry) is something I haven’t quite
seen yet—a film remade into a different genre. To be fair, Thelma isn’t actually a credited remake of Carrie, but like Carrie,
it’s also about an eponymous, sheltered young virgin discovering she has a
strange control over her surroundings. However, Thelma isn’t a horror movie; it’s a psychological drama with this
discovery treated as a powerful element of sexual awakening, rather than the
igniter of a killing spree.
16. Charlie Hunnam, Movie Star
In 1973, Steve McQueen and Dustin
Hoffman starred in a prison escape drama called Papillon, and it was a huge hit. I watched it recently and
struggled to get through it. It’s only watchable
because McQueen and Hoffman are so compulsively watchable. So when I saw the
new remake, starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek, I was dubious of whether
Hunnam could evoke the effortlessly cool masculinity of McQueen. As a movie,
the new Papillon is fine. Pretty
good, even. But what impressed me about it was Hunnam. He truly does pull off
being as much of a cool alpha male as Steve McQueen. I’m not sure yet what
movie will be the one that does it (doubtful it’s this one), but I’m now
confident that Charlie Hunnam will be a movie star. And deservedly so.
17. The Non-White-Savior-ness of Woman Walks Ahead
I was a little worried going into
Woman Walks Ahead, in which Jessica
Chastain plays a woman who travels west to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting
Bull and finds herself in the middle of a major conflict between the Sioux and
the U.S. Military. It seemed like an obvious and egregious White Savior trope
with a movie built around it. But I also trusted Chastain, who has great taste
and tact in choosing roles, so I was cautiously optimistic. Chastain chose
well. It’s a pretty good film, with beautiful landscapes and a moving story.
But what I was most impressed by is how defiantly it *isn’t* a White Savior
film. First of all, Chastain’s character is mostly on the sidelines for the
climactic scenes. Secondly—and more depressingly—she doesn’t succeed in saving
anyone. (I guess spoiler alert for those that don’t know their late-19th-century
American genocides.)
18. The Held Shots of Loveless
Russian filmmaker Andrey
Zvyagintsev’s previous film, Leviathan,
was a foreign language film Oscar nominee two years ago. Leviathan and his new film, Loveless, are both heavy, slow movies, but
they’re also incredibly powerful, and part of that power comes from the way
Zvyagintsev tends to hold his shots for a few seconds longer, or start them a
few seconds earlier (or both), than most directors would. It adds an almost
voyeuristic quality to the films where you feel like you’re watching real lives
unfold, and of course you see more of the dull moments of those lives than in
the tightly compacted Hollywood editing we’re used to. But the added realism is
palpable.
19. Spending Some Much-Needed Time With the
Obama State Department
The last film I saw at TIFF’17
was a documentary called The Final Year,
which is an inside look at John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and the
Obama State Department’s actions and goals throughout 2016. The doc covers the
entire year, which started with so much hope, and ended with so little. But
seeing these people try so hard and believe so strongly in the global message
of peace and tolerance they were advocating for proved especially inspiring, no
matter how distant that sentiment seems now.
20. The “Eight Kinds of Fucks” Americans Give
Downsizing was an interesting and pretty good movie, though
definitely not up to the standard of the rest of Alexander Payne’s work. But
there was one line, toward the end, that probably elicited the biggest laugh
from me of the entire 11-day festival, about the “eight kinds of fucks”
Americans give. And I won’t spoil the rest of it here.
…And 5 Things I Didn’t Love
1. Kings
Two years ago, Turkish
director Deniz Gamze Ergüven
received a foreign film Oscar nomination for her lovely and powerful film Mustang, about the rebellious sexual
awakenings of five young sisters in modern day Turkey. When I heard her English
language debut—about the 1992 L.A. Riots and starring Halle Berry and Daniel
Craig—would be at TIFF, it leapt to the top of my Must See List. But, sadly, Kings was my biggest disappointment of
the festival. The film is a disaster, and I try really hard to not use that
term lightly when discussing art that people spent years on. But here are the
opening two scenes of the film: in the first scene, a teenage black girl gets
fatally shot in the back while trying to buy orange juice; in the second scene,
a teenage boy is trying to masturbate while his younger siblings are banging on
the door yelling for breakfast. It’s just not possible to screw up tone more
than that.
2. The
Square
The Palme d’Or winner from the
2017 Cannes Film Festival, this Swedish film about the absurdities of the
modern art world (by the director of 2014’s excellent Force Majeure) is expected to be a contender for the foreign
language film Oscar. But after Force
Majeure was such a tight narrative about the moral fallout of one action, The Square is so all over the place that
it utterly forgets where it’s been and where it was going. Yes, there are some
great sequences. But for something partially about the seemingly inane
meaninglessness of contemporary art, the film kind of forgot to hone in on a
meaning of its own.
3. Unicorn
Store
Brie Larson’s directorial debut is
something I really wanted to love, but it’s kind of a mess. The best way I can
describe my disappointment is, I was wishfully thinking the title was a
metaphor. But nope, it’s not. I was happy to find out that Brie at least didn’t
write the script, because that would have made me feel much worse for her
creative future. As a director, she does show a decent knack for comic timing,
and the thematic motivation behind the project comes from a good place. But it
mostly just left me feeling like I’d been suckered into seeing a Lifetime movie
meant for pre-teen girls.
4. Eric
Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars
During TIFF I got the
chance to interview Brett Morgen, the director of Jane, and we talked for a while about his process in crafting his
films. One thing he mentioned was how little he cares for typical factoids like
when someone was born, and that he just wants to get inside them. Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars (which
will air soon on Showtime) is the exact kind of documentary that Morgen could
care less about. Over the course of 135 minutes (which feel like 200), it
painstakingly goes through every era of Clapton’s life, starting with his birth
and childhood pictures and interviews with his family, and it offers very
little that Clapton fans wouldn’t already be familiar with, in the way of
facts, interviews, or even music. This is as cookie-cutter as music docs get,
and is basically just a really long episode of Behind the Music.
5. TIFF’s New Ticket Scanning Issues
You
may have heard that lines were especially bad this year, and films consistently
started 15-30 minutes late at the large venues. Well, there’s an easy
explanation for that. This is the first year that tickets were kept (for most
people) on the TIFF phone app instead of printed physical copies. I thought
this would be great, because it meant forgoing the wonderful tradition of
standing in a three-hour line to pick up my tickets on Day One. (And yeah, it
was nice to skip that.) But here’s the downside—the ticket scanners used at the
theaters had a difficult time reading phone screens. This meant that the lines
of two and three thousand people that TIFF used to be able to shuffle into
theaters in 20 minutes now took double or triple the time, because each person
had to wait for the scanners to take seven tries to read the ticket, while we
were instructed to change our brightness levels, stand at different distances
to the scanner, and basically perform a rain dance just to get in. It was a
daily disaster that caused me to miss the premiere of Molly’s Game.
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