Spotlight, Martian draw buzz in Toronto
TORONTO — The Toronto International Film Festival celebrates its 40th edition this week with a heck of a guest list: Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, Sandra Bullock, Helen Mirren and Keith Richards are just a few of the stars set to walk the red carpet for this milestone year.
Buzzy films already generating chatter include the star-packed muckraking thriller Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo as part of a team of reporters investigating sexabuse allegations involving the Catholic Church; Scott Cooper’s gangster flick Black Mass, with a bald Depp portraying ruthless wise guy James (Whitey) Bulger; and Ridley Scott’s outerspace thriller The Martian, with Damon playing an astronaut abandoned on the red planet.
Then there’s the IrishCanadian Room, about a five-year-old’s account of growing up with his mother locked in a shed, which he believes is the whole world; he’s unaware they are captives.
“I think there’s a lot of films that deal with the notion of traumatic events changing your life and what it does to you,” TIFF CEO Piers Handling said of trends at this year’s festival.
“There’s such uncertainty in people’s personal lives as well as politically, socially. . . . I think it’s a more anxious world, it’s a more connected world, so it’s a world that is a bit afraid of events that it cannot control.”
This year’s opening film comes from Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée, the C.R.A.Z.Y. auteur who this time helms the studiobacked English-language drama Demolition. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an investment banker who responds to the sudden death of his wife with random acts of destruction.
Canadian titles this year include a new outing from Deepa Mehta, who switches gears with an action-packed gangster tale, Beeba Boys; Remember from festival veteran Atom Egoyan, who enlisted Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau for the Nazi revenge thriller; the war saga Hyena Road from actor/director Paul Gross; and The Forbidden Room from the assuredly strange Guy Maddin.
Celeb stalkers will undoubtedly be on the lookout for legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards — dare say we, ambling about town with his pirate brother Depp? — as he premières his Netflix documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence, from Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville ( Twenty Feet from Stardom).
The doc screens as part of TIFF’s new TV section, Primetime, which promises to feature the best in global television — but on the big screen.
The program’s six titles include the Hulu comedy Casual, executive produced by Jason Reitman, and the second season première of France’s supernatural drama The Returned.
But the focus for many cinephiles at TIFF, of course, is on finding the upcoming awards-season contenders. Traditionally seen as a launching pad for Oscar hopefuls, TIFF has a proven track record for launching the next Slumdog
Millionaire or The King’s Speech.
At the very least, several flicks seem certain to provoke: Michael Moore unleases his new documen- tary Where to Invade Next; Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne plays a transgender painter in Tom Hooper’s
The Danish Girl; Charlie Kaufman experiments with stop-motion animation in
Anomalisa; Netflix enters the conversation with its child soldier saga Beasts of
No Nation; and Argentine auteur Pablo Trapero documents a spate of real-life brutal kidnappings in The
Clan.