The Toronto Film Festival kicked off September 5 with a multi-move opening night that included David Gordon Green’s family comedy Nutcrackers starring Ben Stiller. It kicked off a slate of world premieres and buzzy movies across 11 days for the 49th edition of one of North America’s biggest film festivals.
Other key titles making their debuts in Toronto included The Luckiest Man in America starring Paul Walter Hauser, the Amy Adams-starring Nightbitch, theater guru Marianne Elliott’s The Salt Path, DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot and Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, which won the coveted People’s Choice Award.
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Documentaries that made a splash included Elton John: Never Too Late and Paul Anka: His Way.
Watch on Deadline
Click below to read Deadline’s reviews from the ground in Toronto, where the festival wrappred September 15.
The Assessment
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Fleur Fortune
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel, Minnie Driver, Indira Varria, Nicholas Pinnock, Charlotte Richie, Leah Harvey
Deadline’s takeaway: The Assessment is dramatically compelling, especially since in our f*cked-up world today the implausible is suddenly becoming the plausible, and with government interference involving what women can — and can’t — do with their own bodies becoming the law in many states, who is to say a frightening future administration just might take us all down this rabbit hole?
Bonjour Tristesse
Section: Discovery
Director: Durga Chew Bose
Cast: Chloe Sevigny, Claes Bang, Lily McInerny, Nailia Harzoune, Aliocha Schneider, Nathalie Richard
Deadline’s takeaway: This in debuting Montreal-based director and screenwriter Durga Chew Bose‘s hands feels more true to Françoise Sagan’s novel and becomes a more complex tale of the nature of female relationships, the mysteries within and their winding paths.
The Deb
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Rebel Wilson:
Cast: Natalie Abbott, Charlotte MacInnes, Stevie Jean, Tara Morice, Costa D’Angelo, Shane Jacobson, Brianna Bishop, Karis Oka, Hal Cumpston, Steph Tisdell, Julian McMahon, Sophia Pennington, Rebel Wilson
Deadline’s takeaway: In a season full of movies using the musical genre in all sorts of twisted ways, this one finds much success as simply a traditional Grease-style Aussie barn burner where you might actually leave humming the tunes.
Hard Truths
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone
Deadline’s takeaway: Jean-Baptiste carries the film on her shoulders and she is magnificent. If you want to watch acting of the highest order look no further, but if you want to invest in a character worth spending 97 minutes with, look somewhere else.
Heretic
Section: Special Presentations
Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Deadline’s takeaway: A handsomely devilish Hugh Grant scares up a storm as Mr. Reed in super-smart horror film. The subtle thrill of this deceptively intelligent thrill ride is that, after listening to all of the character’s beautifully cogent arguments, by the end of the movie, it could well be you.
The Last Showgirl
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Gia Coppola
Cast: Pamela Anderson, Dave Bautista, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, Billie Lourd, Jason Schwartzman
Deadline’s takeaway: This look at the lives of the infamous Vegas showgirls is smart, touching, funny, honest and wise. It’s Pamela Anderson’s moment to shine and, boy does she ever shine — right up to an ending that leaves us hopeful.
The Life of Chuck
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Matthew Lillard, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill, Heather Langenkamp
Deadline’s takeaway: The film might be a test of patience for the less imaginative, but it all builds up to an impressively upbeat payoff. The Life of Chuck‘s darkness might be an obstacle to immediate commercial success, but its underlying warmth and poignancy could well be its secret weapon on the way to cult longevity.
The Luckiest Man in America
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Samir Oliveros
Cast: Paul Walter Hauser, Walton Goggins, Shamier Anderson, David Strathairn, Maisie Williams, Patti Harrison, Johnny Knoxville, Haley Bennett, Shaunette Renee Wilson, Brian Geraghty, Lilli Kay, James Wolk
Deadline’s takeaway: With Hauser in charge, this whole scenario keeps us engaged thanks to the actor’s ability to breathe some humanity into these oddball characters. You can see why he couldn’t resist this one.
Nutcrackers
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Ben Stiller, Linda Cardellini, Tim Heidecker, Edi Patterson, Toby Huss, Homer Janson, Ulysses Janson, Atlas Janson, Arlo Janson
Deadline’s takeaway: This is the kind of movie Hollywood used to deliver all the time but has clearly forgotten how to make — until now. Among the inspirations for director David Gordon Green were The Bad News Bears, Six Pack, Uncle Buck and Overboard. You might expect John Hughes was back from the dead, along with this genre.
Riff Raff
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Dito Montiel
Cast: Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Gabrielle Union, Lewis Pullman, Miles J. Harvey, Emanuela Postacchini, Michael Angelo Covino, Pete Davidson, Bill Murray, Brooke Dillman, P.J. Byrne
Deadline’s takeaway: With an outstanding, perfectly chosen cast, this hilarious crime comedy hits all the right marks, a combination of No Country For Old Men and Grosse Point Blank, throw in a touch of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, season it with a bit of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and you have the recipe for a swell time at the movies.
The Salt Path
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Marianne Elliott
Cast: Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, James Lance, Hermione Norris, Megan Placito
Deadline’s takeaway: With their kids off at school, a couple takes a 630-mile walking journey. Nothing hugely life-threatening happens along the way — none of the usual movie tropes — it’s just a love story of two people making the most of where life has brought them. To make this work, you need actors of the extraordinary grace and talent of Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, and both are excellent.
Superboys of Malegaon
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Reema Kagti
Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Shashank Arora, Vineet Kumar Singh, Anuj SIngh Duhan, Jagdish Rajurohit, Muskaan Jaferi, Saqib Ayub, Pallav Singgh, Riddhi Kumar, Manjiri Pupala
Deadline’s takeaway: Each actor has a distinct personality right down to the smallest parts, adding immensely to the feeling of a special time and place in this corner of the world that will always stay in the memory of those who lived it, and now in the memory of those who see it.
Unstoppable
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: William Goldenberg
Cast: Jharrel Jerome, Jennifer Lopez, Bobby Cannavale, Don Cheadle, Michael Peña
Deadline’s takeaway: You really can’t compare Unstoppable to any inspiring sports drama that has come before, either in terms of what the main subject has achieved in athletics or the obstacles he had to overcome at home. Its fate rests on the ability of star Jharrel Jerome, in making us root for him and to believe.
We Live in Time
Section: Special Presentations
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, Heather Cranney, Matt Kennard, Sam Kennard, Laura Guest
Deadline’s takeaway: Through it all in Nick Payne’s sharply written screenplay we add up the individual pieces we are being presented and get a strong picture of Pugh’s and Garfield’s characters, something that wouldn’t be possible in a more linear structure. If we didn’t believe these two were destined for each other, the whole soufflé would fall. It doesn’t, but the fact Crowley is in charge should guarantee it won’t.
The Wild Robot
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Chris Sanders
Voice cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara
Deadline’s takeaway: If Spielberg’s E.T. had been an animated film instead it might resemble what writer-director Chris Sanders has created here: beautiful animation and a smart script that has equal humor, action, heart and lessons to be learned for any age.
William Tell
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Nick Hamm
Cast: Claes Bang, Connor Swinndells, Goldhifteh Farahani, Jonah Hauer-King, Ellie Bamber, Rafe Spall, Emily Beecham, Jonathan Pryce, Ben Kingsley
Deadline’s takeaway: Some epic stories like this one can get bogged down in details and exposition, but Nick Hamm directs like he’s marching into battle himself, with a key intensity and purpose to make this thing soar with never a dull moment. And Claes Bang really shows his action movie star bona fides.
Without Blood
Section: Special Presentations
Director: Angelina Jolie
Cast: Salma Hayek Pinault, Demián Bichir, Juan Minujin
Deadline’s takeaway: It’s a strange film, culminating in an ending that rejects the objective, binary expectations that one might have: will she kill him or spare him? It’s by no means an easy alternative to buy, but it does perhaps explain why Jolie was drawn to the material; it’s an attempt, at least, to find ways to break the cycles of violence that keep otherwise civilized societies fighting.