Six movies to watch out for at TIFF 2016
With TIFF’s opening night just weeks away, I’m already sifting through the avalanche of titles announced so far to come up with a short list of the essential ones likely to become contenders in awards season.
I haven’t seen any of them yet, so what follows are hunches, hopes and questions, not reviews. The Secret Scripture Ireland’s Jim Sheridan is a filmmaker with a spectacular track record, so the world premiere of any movie directed by him is automatically a major occasion. This is the man who gave us such winners as My Left Foot (1989), In the Name of the Father (1993) and In America (2002). Discerning festival veterans are sure to have great expectations for Sheridan’s latest.
The Secret Scripture belongs to a specialized and intriguing category of film history. Among the memorable movies about psychiatric patients we’ve had in the past are The Three Faces of Eve (1957), with Joanne Woodward and Lee J. Cobb; Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck; and Equus (1977), with Richard Burton and Peter Firth.
This one stars Vanessa Redgrave, arguably the greatest actress of our era, in what sounds like a perfect role for her. Roseanne McNulty has spent most of her life in a mental institution. Indeed, she has been there longer than most of the people who work there. Her fascinating personal history is revealed when a new chief psychiatrist finds a hidden memoir she has written over decades. In flashbacks, the role of young Roseanne is played by Rooney Mara. Snowden The audience is likely to be divided between those who consider Edward Snowden a hero for leaking secret surveillance activities by the NSA and those who consider him a traitor. But it’s not hard to guess which side director Oliver Stone is on.
Either way, the subject matter is a natural for Stone, who won Oscars for directing two movies about U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam: Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Snowden is likely to be the last word in Stone’s career as Hollywood’s leading naysayer to his country’s tragic Vietnam folly. LBJ The Vietnam War and its impact on the U.S. loom again in Rob Reiner’s new movie.
Vietnam is the dark side of the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became U.S. president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
Woody Harrelson takes on the challenge of portraying one of the smartest, most complex and most controversial presidents in U.S. history. LBJ handily won the 1964 election and set about creating the Great Society at home. But his esca- lation of the war amid mounting protests led to his decision not to seek re-election in 1968.
Intriguing footnote: Harrelson knows a thing or two about assassination.
He is the son of a hired killer who was convicted of two assassinations. Charles Harrelson, who disap- peared from the family home when Woody was a child, died in jail in 2007 after winding up there in connection with the 1979 murder of a federal judge known for handing out long sentences. Manchester by the Sea Kenneth Lonergan, best known for You Can Count on Me (2000), works in theatre as well as movies. By all accounts, this is a movie about grief, pain and redemption with the emphasis on nuance and personal relationships rather than plot gimmicks.
Casey Affleck plays a guilt-ridden handyman who is obliged to take care of his teen nephew after the boy’s father dies. Along the way, he’s forced to confront a past tragedy.
At Sundance, Manchester was regarded as a must-see movie, earning rave reviews. Amazon bought the movie for $10 million (U.S.) after a bidding war and will partner with Roadside Attractions on its midNovember theatrical release. The Birth of a Nation Nate Parker emerges as a hero of independent film. Taking the title of D.W. Griffith’s breakthrough 1916 silent, Parker not only produced, directed and wrote the screenplay for this epic saga of the Virginia slave and preacher who led a bloody uprising three decades before the U.S. Civil War, Parker also plays the lead role. Made on a tight $10-million (U.S.) budget, the movie was picked up by Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million (U.S.) after its Sundance premiere. American Pastoral Philip Roth’s 1997 novel was the first of his American Trilogy, the crowning glory of his spectacular career. Ewan McGregor makes his directing debut and also plays the protagonist, Seymour, a successful athlete and businessman, married to an ex-beauty queen.
Seymour seems to have the perfect life — until he learns that his runaway daughter has become a revolutionary and terrorist. Can the movie reach the heights of the book, in which the American dream collides with a nightmare? mknelman@thestar.ca