In Praise of Amy Adams
Movies: Toronto International Film Festival
A veteran movie critic spends the day with Amy Adams and concludes she's Oscar bait, as well as a reminder of what Nicole Kidman used to look like before Botox
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Let us now praise Amy Adams, and all who sail on her. I recently spent a morning with the actress — she was on screen in two movies at the Toronto International Film Festival and I was in the audience, but still — and I concluded that a) she reminds me of what Nicole Kidman would look like if she had more common sense, and b) she might be in line for a couple of Oscar nominations this fall for roles in which she plays troubled women in unhappy second marriages with doomed daughters but, nonetheless, beautiful houses with large windows overlooking vastly photogenic scenery. Both movies — Nocturnal Animals and Arrival — have all that in them, but Adams herself couldn’t be more different and you have to remind yourself that she was also, among ...
Toronto festival buzz or bust?
Movies: TIFF 16 - First Looks
Jay Stone checks out a handful of the early buzz-makers at the Toronto International Film Festival, and keeps it real and offers this tip "longer is not always better"
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Two things about a film festival are buzz (what is everyone talking about?) and more importantly, time (how long to I have to spend so that I can talk about it too?) After all, if life were eternal, you wouldn’t worry about it. Indeed, if life were eternal, you could afford to go to see a German movie called Toni Erdmann. But more about that later. First the buzz. Well, actually, first the fact that the escalator at the downtown theatre where Toronto International Film Festival screenings are held for the press was broken on opening day. Thus, you walk up 105 stairs (by my count) before you can even join the crowds. In film-going — as in film directing, they tell me — the knees go first. We’re here to sample three movies on our first day, all of ...
Roger Frappier Records another win
News: Canadian Media Producers Association Awards
The man who can claim responsibility for the Decline of the American Empire and picks up Canadian producers' award, Hany Ouichou wins inaugural emerging talent prize
By The Ex-Press TORONTO — Roger Frappier, the man who enabled the crucifixion of Jesus of Montreal and had a central role in the Decline of the American Empire, was named Producer of the Year at the Canadian Media Producers Association’s annual schmooze Thursday. Over 100 industry types packed into the CBC Glenn Gould Studio for the event that also inaugurated The Emerging Producer Award, which was handed to Hany Ouichou for “his creative vision and impressive talents as an independent producer with a promising career ahead.” Ouichou produced two features, Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n'ont fait que se creuser un tombeau and Prank, both of which are part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Frappier won the award ...
Jay Stone picks his TIFF16 ponies
Movies: #TIFF16
The Toronto International Film Festival offers 400 film titles, two Ryan Gosling movies, a Denis Villeneuve Arrival and if you're lucky, free chips
By Jay Stone
There are many things to look forward to at the Toronto International Film Festival, including that party they have every year to celebrate Canadian cinema where they hand out bags of potato chips and chocolate bars, although this year I hear they’re not having the chocolate bars. But we soldier on. Getting through a film festival requires a certain amount of self-sacrifice. And oh yes: the films. There are about 400 of them here, and if you play your cards right, you can see a couple of dozen and still have time to pick up enough bags of complimentary potato chips to get you through to lunch, although some chocolate bars would have been a nice addition. You know. For dessert. Where was I? Right: the films. Here, in no particular order, are some that I’m looking forward to.
Arrival
A sci-fi film ...
Truth is stranger than TIFF
Real-life dramas make their appearance at the Toronto film festival, but sometimes in the movies, facts get in the way of a good story
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Truth occasionally makes an appearance at a Toronto International Film Festival, although usually not in the presence of a movie star (“You were great, Kevin!”) It pops up in a few movies, more or less; not just in documentaries, its natural home, but in the Hollywood versions of real-life stories, usually twisted ever so slightly to make it more interesting, or cinematic, or sellable. Sure, truth is stranger than fiction, but the challenge is to make it more lucrative. The biggest “true” story at TIFF is Spotlight, the Tom McCarthy version of the real-life expose by the Boston Globe of the scandal of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests (the Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer prize for the story.) Spotlight — the name of the four-person investigative team at the Globe that ...
#TIFF15 – LEGEND measures Hardy's range
Tom Hardy sinks his incisors into the dual role of duelling siblings Reggie and Ronnie Kray in Brian Helgeland's stylish gangster drama that takes on classical and classist themes, then pummels them to pulp
LEGEND Directed by Brian Helgeland. Starring: Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Chazz Palminteri, Tara Fitzgerald, Taron Egerton. Thirty years ago, Tom Cruise made a fantasy movie with Tim Curry, a herd of unicorns and director Ridley Scott called Legend. This is not that movie. If there’s any connection to be made, Brian Helgeland’s LEGEND shares DNA with The Krays, Peter Medak’s 1990 movie about Reggie and Ronnie Kray, twin brothers who ruled the London underworld in the 1960s. Violent, cocky, but entirely self-created criminal kingpins, Reggie and Ronnie Kray became guttersnipe folk heroes: Kids from the wrong side of London who cracked the upper crust with fists and a shiv. Their story really is the stuff of ...
Is Tom Hardy the best actor in the world?
The star of the new gangster drama Legend is a versatile actor whose roles range from the indomitable Mad Max the villainous Bane. Is there nothing he can't do?
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — Tom Hardy might be the best actor of his generation. He can do anything. He was the scary buff gangster in Bronson and then he was the scary but doomed hit man Ricki Tarr in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. Next thing you know, he’s Bane, the gigantic muscled villain in The Dark Knight Rises, growling through a leather mask. Hard to believe it was the same guy in Locke, a solo film about a man who’s responsible for the concrete in a British construction project, called away because a woman he once slept with is about to give birth to their child. Now he’s Bob, the compliant bartender in the gangster drama The Drop who turns out to be a guy you don’t want to screw around with. Then he’s the indomitable (but vulnerable!) hero in the post-apocalyptic desert in Mad Max: Fury ...
#TIFF15: Demolition deconstructs grief with heart
The Toronto International Film Festival opened with Jean-Marc Vallée's off-beat drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts
Demolition Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis. Jean-Marc Vallée’s opening night movie befuddled some critics here in Toronto, but I fell in love with this movie about an investment banker who unravels in the wake of a personal tragedy — if only because I had no idea how it would end. Anyone who reads the synopsis of Brian Sipe’s screenplay knows how it begins: Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in the car with his wife arguing over a leaky refrigerator when the random force of fate T-bones their vehicle. His wife is killed, but Davis escapes without so much as a scratch. On the surface he is whole, but beneath the shiny exterior, he is shattered — and it’s this dissonance that powers the whole off-beat drama. How could an external reality and an internal truth be ...
TIFF report: So far, so exciting
It’s easy to find things to love at the Toronto film festival, especially if you let Alfred Hitchcock be your guide through the movie magic, writes Jay Stone
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — On the sidewalk of John Street, just around the corner from the theatre where most of the Toronto International Film Festival movies are screened, someone has stenciled the instruction, “Find out what you love and let it kill you.” It’s a line from Charles Bukowski — who found out that he loved alcohol, then died of it, thus proving the authenticity of his advice, if not the wisdom — and it’s an ideal motto for TIFF, where, if you’re not done in by the pace of the films or the parties, you’re also tempted by the unlimited free doughnuts in the hospitality suite of EOne, the distributor that runs a must-visit salon on a high floor of the nearby Intercontinental Hotel. Mmmm. Doughnuts. I mean, Movies. It’s also ...
Can TIFF ride to box-office rescue?
With 2015 shaping up to be one of the worst box-office years on record, film industry types are desperately hoping this year's Toronto International Film Festival manifests a movie messiah. The Ex-Press takes a look at the top contenders.
By Katherine Monk
September 10, 2015 TORONTO — The truth fades quickly in the pop and hiss of paparazzi flashes, but it sits here nonetheless, a little lump lying under the red carpet: 2015 could turn out to be the worst year at the box-office in adjusted dollar-history. Sure, J.J. Abrams will awaken the force, James Bond will rise with Spectre and the ever-hungry Katniss Everdeen will no doubt slaughter as the calendar year draws to a close, but as the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off today with the gala world premiere of Jean-Marc Vallée’s eerily titled Demolition, the big question is: Can TIFF ride to the rescue and resuscitate the public’s interest in “cinema” — movies that don’t have ...
