Tea Party presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has an unlikely suitor in studio chief and liberal patron Harvey Weinstein, who issued a statement Tuesday night inviting the Minnesota congresswoman to her native Iowa for the U.S. premiere of his satire Butter.
Michael Winterbottom makes so many movies that some of them creep into festivals very quietly and, just as quietly, creep out, never to be seen again. That wasn't the case with The Trip, which played here last year, a woolly exploration of middle-aged angst that featured Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (as themselves) bickering and trading Sean Connery impersonations as they made their way through the English countryside. But two years before that, in 2008, Winterbottom brought a picture called Genova to the festival, a mildly engaging drama in which Colin Firth plays a father who moves his family to Italy after the death of their mother. The picture never got a U.S. release, fading like the worn face of a stone saint on a medieval church.
Jennifer Westfeldt's sort-of romantic comedy Friends with Kids is on to something, even if in the end it suffers from a failure of nerve. This is actor and screenwriter Westfeldt's directorial debut (she co-wrote and starred in the 2001 feature Kissing Jessica Stein), and it's polished to the point of shallow glossiness -- it could benefit from being a little rougher, a little messier.
A tribute to vibrators and the women who love them, Tanya Wexler's Hysteria is a jaunty little entertainment that's almost plowed under by its early-suffragette arguments for women's equality. But like the little motorized whatsit that is its subject, the movie's charms are ultimately irresistible.
Child actors all grown up, Oscar-winning directors popping their collars, stars going silly for the camera -- anything goes when you stick actors and filmmakers in the studio for some good, old-fashioned family-style portraits. See who came to town for the 2011 Toronto Film Festival and gave good face for the camera, uberdramatic, super goofy, and otherwise, in Movieline's TIFF 2011 Photo Booth.
Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt is kind of stupid and kind of amazing, a horror movie-fairytale hybrid with an inscrutable plot, some gorgeous images and two brief sections shot in 3-D. This isn't the great film Coppola's devotees have been waiting for him to make. But it's infused with more of Coppola's spirit, as we know it, than Youth Without Youth and Tetro, both of which were sluggish and self-serious. Twixt is a bit of a mess, but it's also joyful and wicked, with a great, roly-poly sense of humor about itself. In its imaginative WTF-ness, it reminds me of Bob Dylan's gloriously whacked-out Masked and Anonymous, just the sort of thing you'd expect a crackpot genius left to his own devices to make.
Occasionally, a movie is more interesting for where it doesn't go than for where it does. Oren Moverman's Rampart, starring Woody Harrelson as a disgraced (and obviously dirty) LAPD cop, is one of those pictures. It's more of a character study than a conventionally shaped drama -- I was taken aback when the end credits started rolling, momentarily left with that "Is that all there is?" feeling. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the movie ended in just the right place, taking us as far as we can go with this loose-cannon cop before he's left to face his own isolation. Once we, the audience, part ways with him, he's truly on his own.
Alexander Payne's The Descendants has just about everything you need for a male midlife-crisis movie, and more: A big plot of unspoiled family land about to be sold off to developers, sullen teenagers, a wife in a coma. Payne, in his first full-length feature since the 2004 Sideways, pulls out all the stops, including casting George Clooney, an actor who's aging beautifully but who nonetheless, thankfully, has allowed himself to look his age.
As presumed, word from the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival has Shame finding a distribution deal. But not quite as presumed, Steve McQueen's acclaimed drama is at Fox Searchlight -- which will almost certainly face an NC-17 rating for the movie's frank sexuality and graphic nudity.
The Toronto Film Festival is a world away from Venice, and the difference is especially acute when you hop from one to the other: Toronto is big and glossy, while Venice is intimate and glowing -- it's like the difference between lacquer and gold leaf. But each has its own appeal, and the scale of Toronto is appealing by itself. It's a little overwhelming but exhilarating, too.
Hurray! Today begins the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. We've already predicted the five films most likely to ignite a bidding war up north, but what about the titles that will really get the red carpet TIFF treatment this week? Ahead, Movieline briefs you on the nineteen films that will be spotlighted with special premiere events as well as addresses from the directors and cast.
It's that time again -- time for actors and filmmakers to cross their fingers, for studios and distributors to get out their checkbooks, for bleary-eyed audiences to get their running shoes on, and for all of them to meet up north for the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. As always, their confluence will yield a handful of big-screen surprises, some bitter disappointments, and the usual all-night wheeling and dealing for the best of the fall crop premiering in the week ahead.* Per annual TIFF custom, let's have a browse through the catalog (and a listen to the buzz) at five particular titles you should expect to hear about early and often.
A year after his 127 Hours ushered in the fall festival season's hottest fainting sensation, James Franco is plotting his return to Toronto along with rest of the latest group of invitees to the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. And it's quite a list, with the likes of Franco's partner (!) Gus Van Sant, Mr. Brainwash, Jennifer Hudson, Lynn Shelton, Rachel Weisz and (ahem) Joel Schumacher making the trip as well. Let's parse the top 10 highlights from TIFF's latest announcement.
The Toronto International Film Festival has further sweetened an already-savory crop of films for 2011, today announcing a slate of nonfiction premieres from the likes of Werner Herzog, Nick Broomfield, Jonathan Demme, Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Frederick Wiseman and a range of others. Subjects include death row, Paul Williams, ice-hockey brutality, Comic-Con, Hurricane Katrina, Siberian models and Sarah Palin. Yes, again. Check out the festival's full announcement below.
Toronto International Film Festival organizers took to Twitter early on Tuesday morning to announce the initial line-up for the 36th annual Toronto International Film Festival -- and what a lineup! Hot fall releases like Moneyball and The Descendants lead the way, while Davis Guggenheim's U2 documentary From the Sky Down will open the festivities. Click through for the list of impressive film titles.
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