More is more! That was the vibe at the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival, which was lousy with movie stars and had a cheery air of abundance (it concludes on Sunday). There were just so many interesting movies to see… and rarely have so many outperformed expectations. (Colleagues at Vogue teased me for liking seemingly everything.)
I’d managed to screen a few of the marquee films ahead of the festival, so I focused on smaller movies seeking distribution. This proved a good strategy. Maybe it was my curatorial prowess or just dumb luck but I caught nary a dud sprinting around the festival. Here are the ones that I am particularly excited about, three coming out this fall and the rest still seeking distribution (an especially rich category this year). If you keep a must-see movie list, put these on it.
Roofman
The charms of Channing Tatum have never been lost on anyone, but Roofman, a true crime romance co-starring Kirsten Dunst and set in a brilliantly realized 1990s North Carolina suburban landscape, is a winning reminder. Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, a veteran tangled haplessly up in good intentions and a life of petty crime. Director Derek Cianfrance is known for hard-hitting indies (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond The Pines) but he’s up to something gentler here: a story of a naif who fumbles his desire to do good. Amusing and well paced, the movie never descends into sentiment, thanks to the careful rhythms of Cianfrance’s storytelling and the precisely grounded performances of its two mega-appealing leads.
Opens in theaters on October 10.
Blue Moon
The filmmaker Richard Linklater, never less than prolific, had two films at TIFF: Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon. I was spellbound by the latter: a witty, piercing study of creative decline, focused on the Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) holding court at Sardi’s on the opening night of Oklahoma!—a musical he did not write. That would be the triumph of his erstwhile songwriting partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and a new rival: Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Hawke has never been better—electric with jealousy and witty pride—as he blusters, drinks, and flirts with Yale student Elizabeth Weiland, played by Margaret Qualley. He’s a genius with his light going out.
Opens in theaters on October 17.
Hamnet
Chloe Zhao’s adaptation of the celebrated Maggie O’Farrell novel stoked anticipatory rapture after it debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, and for good reason. Jessie Buckley is staggeringly good as Agnes Hathaway, wed to a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal). She loses their son as her husband pursues his playwriting career. Painful, patient, and cathartic, Hamnet’s finale will overwhelm you with the faith in art as a salve for grief.
Opens in theaters on Thanksgiving.
The Testament of Ann Lee
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This marvel of a historical epic, about the 18th-century Shaker religious sect—a film full of music and ecstatic movement—stars Amanda Seyfried as the titular charismatic leader. It comes to us from Mona Fastvold, the creative (and real-life) partner of fellow filmmaker Brady Corbet. The pair wrote this and last year’s triumphant The Brutalist–and what an incredible double bill both movies would be. They are gorgeous stories of journeys, inspiration, and fervor—though Ann Lee is wilder and weirder than The Brutalist (delightfully so). Mother Ann, as Seyfried’s character is called by her followers, believes herself a messenger of Christ, and leaves Manchester, England, with a small band of adherents to forge a utopian life in New York and Massachusetts. The painterly sequences of religious rapture are ones you’ll want to see on a big screen, where the music (by the composer Daniel Blumberg) can also have its full stirring effect.
Seeking distribution.
The Christophers
Steven Soderbergh has been putting out movies at a steady clip of late, but lest you think his returns are diminishing, look out for The Christophers, a twisty, entertaining story of Julian Sklar a dying art-world lion, played to the bohemian hilt by Ian McKellen, who is confronted by a millennial assistant, Lori (Michaela Coel)—secretly an adept art forger. Working from a smart script by Ed Solomon, Soderbergh has a brisk, no-nonsense style that suits these intelligent goings-on. The Christophers is fleet of foot, a heist movie of a sort, and has hilarious supporting work from Jessica Gunning and James Corden as Sklar’s greedy grown children.
Seeking distribution.
Bad Apples
I’m of the opinion that Saoirse Ronan doesn’t make bad films, and so I charged into this dark comedy-thriller about a UK school teacher named Maria who deals through extreme means with a 10-year-old troublemaker disrupting her classroom. Bad Apples is rollicking, mischievous, and uneasy-making—a chronicle of ludicrously bad decisions. It’s also not a movie to spoil. Ronan seems to understand exactly what kind of project she’s found herself in: a black-hearted diversion about the cracks in civilized behavior, and good-hearted people gone bad. Bad Apples’ 90-odd minutes absolutely zip by.
Seeking distribution.
Wasteman
This brutally tense UK prison drama, a debut feature from Cal McMau, stars two exciting young actors: Tom Blyth and David Jonsson. The latter plays Taylor, an inmate on good behavior and on his way to getting released. Then, he’s matched with a charismatic new cellmate, Dee (Blyth), who aims to run the prison and causes trouble for Taylor along the way. This is a propulsive, lean and lethal movie, punctuated by inmate mobile phone videos (such real-life footage, found online, was an inspiration for McMau): a tight-quarters thriller with no fat on the bone.
Seeking distribution.
Poetic License
I didn’t expect to be quite so charmed by Maude Apatow’s directorial debut, but I should have known better. Poetic License, a hypermodern and end-to-end amusing campus comedy, stars the incomparable Leslie Mann (Apatow’s real-life mother) as Liz, plus on-the-up younger stars Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman as Sam and Ari, a pair of undergraduate friends who find themselves, delightfully, fighting for Liz’s affection. Nico Parker, another find, plays Mann’s daughter, Dora. Poetic License has things to say about midlife, about marriage and parenting, about being young, and it’s gentle and hilarious and sweet.
Seeking distribution.
Couture
Another surprise. Few movies have gotten the stress and clamor of the fashion industry exactly right but Anna Winocour’s Paris Fashion Week-set drama, starring Angelina Jolie as an in-demand filmmaker Maxine commissioned by a French house to create a short to open their runway show, is strikingly authentic. Winocour has braided her film with two other womens’ stories—that of a South Sudanese model Ada (Anyier Anei) and a makeup artist played by Ella Rumpf—but it is Jolie who holds this moving and vividly French film together. When Maxine receives a cancer diagnosis, the shock on her face is profoundly human.
Seeking distribution.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
Baz Luhrmann electrified Toronto with the premiere of this Elvis Presley documentary, a feat of editing and archive work and a kind of companion to his blockbuster 2022 biopic Elvis. More is typically more in Luhrmann’s work, but here he’s dialed his maximalism down and largely stays out of Presley’s charismatic way. The result is a burst of concert-film adrenaline.
Seeking distribution.
