Time to take TIFF’s Oscar pulse
Awards season buzz is in the air, so here are my best bets for glory from fest’s hot-ticket contenders
The hoopla enlivening Toronto’s downtown streets isn’t just for the Toronto International Film Festival.
It also signals the start of Oscar season, a monthslong campaign of air kisses and advance kudos by aspirants who are obliged to feign humility, but who are really hoping to be nominated come Jan. 14.
There will be up to 10 nominees for Best Picture and five each in other categories for the Feb. 28 Academy Awards.
But some suspects are more likely than others. Herewith, my best bets for Oscar glory from contenders emerging at TIFF 2015: Best Picture Ridley Scott’s space adventure The Martian could easily convert TIFF premiere cheers into Oscar attention, with its heart-stopping, eye-popping and utterly believable saga of a stranded Mars astronaut requiring an “impossible” rescue.
Back on Earth with an equally engrossing story is Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, a journalistic procedural that plays like the best of thrillers.
Michael Keaton leads an ensemble cast of stars recreating the Boston Globe investigators who doggedly unmasked pedophile priests in a Vatican-shaking series of exposés beginning in 2002.
Another Oscar-worthy journalism tale, Truth, has Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford getting the facts straight on the “Memogate” 60 Minutes debacle of 2004 that humbled CBS News and anchorman Dan Rather.
More intimate tales round out my TIFF Best Picture picks: Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, a transgender pioneer drama starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander; and John Crowley’s Brooklyn, an impeccable 1950s-set immigrant drama starring Saoirse Ronan.
Best Director Oscar frequently matches film with director for nominations, if not always awards, so expect to see Ridley Scott ( The Martian), Tom McCarthy ( Spotlight) and Tom Hooper ( The Danish Girl) in the golden spotlight the morning of Jan. 14.
In Scott’s case, it would be the British journeyman’s first outer space movie seeking Best Director gold, after earlier noms for three terrestrial ones: Black Hawk Down (2001), Gladiator (2000) and Thelma & Louise (1991). McCarthy has been nominated once for an Oscar, as one of the screenwriters for the Pixar animated hit Up ( 2009), so the New Jersey-born filmmaker would realize a life dream by landing a Best Director nod.
Britain’s Hooper has already been in the winner’s circle, for The King’s Speech (2011), which also took that year’s Best Picture prize. He hit the bull’s-eye with his first Oscar nomination and definitely has a shot at success with his sophomore one, if the stars align and the Oscar gods decree.
Best Actor It’s a great TIFF for chameleon actors who can make any face their own.
Eddie Redmayne took the most recent Best Actor trophy playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, which premiered at TIFF 2014. He’s a cinch for a repeat nomination as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe, one of the first people to surgically transition from male to female.
Johnny Depp has been Oscarnominated three times, for Sweeny Todd (2007), Finding Neverland (2004) and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (2003). He can play anybody, but he really transforms himself as ferocious ganglord Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger of Black Mass, who ruled South Boston by bullets and blood in the 1970s. Tom Hardy doubles down on his Oscar chances as both twin brothers of LEGEND, Reggie and Ronnie Kray, crime siblings who swaggered through London in the 1960s. This would be his richly deserved first Oscar nom.
Best Actress The redoubtable Cate Blanchett could end up competing against herself in this category. Her TIFF triumph as fierce 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes in Truth follows her earlier Cannes sensation for Carol, in which she and Rooney Mara pursue a lesbian romance in repressive 1950s New York. Blanchett has been nominated six times previously for Oscars, winning twice: Best Actress for Blue Jasmine (2013) and Best Supporting Actress The Aviator (2004).
She’s a sure bet and a formidable opponent, but a likely first-time nominee could change the game: Brie Larson of Room, the harrowing drama and heartfelt maternal love story of a kidnapped woman and her son born in captivity, who must together cope with strange worlds both large and small.
Coming up through the middle is Brooklyn’s superb Saoirse Ronan, whose Best Supporting Actress nomination for Atonement (2007) at age 13 made her one of the youngest people ever to receive Oscar attention.
Best Supporting Actor Spotlight’s Michael Keaton is set to follow last year’s first-time Oscar nomination for Birdman with a category change from lead to supporting — but maybe even better luck. He’s the beating heart of Spotlight, as the Boston Globe editor leading the team of reporters who must fight Vatican obstructions and community reluctance to unmask a Roman Catholic Church sex scandal.
He gets strong competition from Idris Elba of Beasts of No Nation, playing the messianic and possibly insane leader of child warriors forced to spill blood in a brutal African civil war. This would be a first Oscar nom for Elba.
Both actors face the charge of Sicario’s Benicio Del Toro, who won this category in 2000 for Traffic, a film of similar U.S.-Mexico conflict but vastly different circumstances. Canada’s Denis Villeneuve has directed Del Toro to a career-best performance as a figure of shadow and stealth.
Best Supporting Actress Jessica Chastain is still a relative newcomer, exploding onto the scene in the majestic The Tree of Life (2011), but she’s already earned two Oscar noms: Best Actress for Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Best Supporting Actress for The Help (2011).
As mission commander in The Martian, determined to save a stranded astronaut, she reunites with her Interstellar co-star Matt Damon and makes a thrilling bid to be third time lucky at the Oscars.
She’ll have to get past fast-rising star Alicia Vikander, whose impassioned portrayal of a wife torn between loyalty and desire in The Danish Girl is the picture’s standout performance. This would be Vikander’s first Oscar nomination, but surely not her last.
And nobody should count out Jane Fonda, a seven-time Oscar nominee and two-time Best Actress winner — for Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978) — whose few bracing minutes in Youth as a vengeful Hollywood screen siren enhance an already golden legend. phowell@thestar.ca