Toronto Film Festival Dailies

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PATRICIO GUZMAN, AMONG THE BEST OF TORONTO´S CRITICS SELECTION OF 40^th TIFF According to TIFF, prestigious critics, Bruce Kirkland`s , (“The Sun”)  Choice

Selection by: Leopoldo Soto

MASTERS:

• The Pearl Button (El Boton de Nacar):

Superb Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman (Nostalgia for the Light) returns with another film being hailed as a masterpiece. Still haunted by the disappeared people of the fascist Pinochet regime, Guzman explores the near-legendary history of the nomadic Kaweskar people, who once plied the coastal waters.

GALAS PRESENTATIONS:

• The Martian:

Famed British filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to space with a dramatic thriller about a U.S. astronaut who is left for dead and stranded on Mars. Forced to survive against incredible odds, he tries to hang on until a 140 million-mile rescue mission is launched. But will it? Matt Damon plays the hero at a critical time in his career, just before he returns to the Jason Bourne series. Damon’s rich, complex role in The Martian (which is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 best-seller) could remind Oscar voters of his pure and now mature acting skills before he Bourne’s us again.

• Legend:

Tom Hardy is generating accolades for his twin performances as both of Britain’s notorious Kray brothers. The gangsters are shown in their bloody excess in a rise-and-fall story told by American writer-director Brian Helgeland, an Oscar-winner for writing L.A. Confidential.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS:

• Where to Invade Next:

According to insiders, bombastic (and often brilliant) American documentarian returns to peak form with another provocative film. Cited as “very strong, very funny, very satirical and quite smart,” Moore’s doc is sure to amuse, anger and interest audiences, depending on their politics.

• The Danish Girl:

It would surprise no one if recent Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) is again nominated. British filmmaker Tom Hooper’s latest opus stars Redmayne as the title character in a remarkable (if somewhat fictionalized) story of a 1920s painter who becomes the world’s first surgically transgendered person.

• Son of Saul (Saul Fia):

This Hungarian-made, Holocaust drama set in Auschwitz-Birkenau was a Cannes cause celebre, winning the Grand Prix prize — which is all the more striking because Laszlo Nemes makes his feature debut as co-writer and director after apprenticing with master Bela Tarr.

• Room: Based on Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue’s novel, Lenny Abrahamson’s film tells the harrowing story of a young mother (Brie Larson) who plans an escape with her five-year-old son (Jacob Tremblay) after years of confinement. The film chronicles their introduction into a dizzying world beyond the one-room shed where they had spent their lives together since Larson was kidnapped as a 17-year-old girl.

• Black Mass:

Johnny Depp is overdo for a career resurgence and Scott Cooper’s crime drama could be just the vehicle. Physically as well as emotionally transformed, Depp plays the real-life Boston crime lord James “Whitey” Bulger. The excellent support cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton, Kevin Bacon and Dakota Johnson.

CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA:

• An:

Insiders are raving about Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase’s beautiful and deceptively simple, subtle and poignant film about a pancake maker and the elderly woman who harbours a secret recipe for the perfect “an”. This is the red bean paste which will give the pancakes their spiritual connection with nature.

• The Fear

(La Peur): Elegantly constructed as a fragmented series of memoirs that serve as a visual diary, French filmmaker Damien Odoul’s drama tells one man’s long journey through the mud, muck and disillusionment of WWI in France. The film gives viewers an impressionistic yet penetrating sense of being there.

TIFF KIDS:

• The Iron Giant: Signature Edition: Oh joy — and it is not just for children! — Brad Bird has re-mastered and enhanced his wonderful 1999 animation with two “lost” scenes. Set during the Cold War, the film tells the story of a boy and the 50-foot robot he befriends. 

DISCOVERY:

• Sleeping Giant:

Canadian filmmaker Andrew Cividino’s feature debut — an elaboration of an award-winning short — is getting raves. Cividino lets us spend a cottage country summer with rambunctious teens, and trouble is brewing.

• Beast:

Australians Tom and Sam McKeith make their feature debuts as co-directors of a tough-mined, unsparing boxing film with thriller twists. Set in Manila, this gritty moral fable concerns a young Filipino-American boxer, his father-manager, a boxing death and a gang of criminals.

TIFF DOCS:

• Al Purdy was Here:

Retired film critic Brian D. Johnson is not just on holidays. Known for his short films, Johnson makes his feature-length debut by examining the life and times of the iconic Canadian poet Al Purdy. The film takes the Purdy saga beyond “his public persona as the boisterous lover of booze, brawls and verse.”

• He Named Me Malala:

Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) delves into another profoundly inconvenient truth by profiling Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize-winning Pakistani teen. Yousafzai famously survived a 2012 assassination attempt by psychotic Islamic extremists who were angered by her enlightened advocacy for human rights and female education.

• Janis: Little Girl Blue:

Amy Berg visits the exuberant life and tragic death of 1960s rock star Janis Joplin. Never forgotten, Joplin lives again as a complex series of memories from those who knew her best, on-stage and off. The film is one of a clutch of music-themed TIFF docs that deal with Arcade Fire, Laurie Anderson, Yo-Yo Ma, Sharon Jones, Aretha Franklin, Keith Richards and even an Argentine tango couple.

PRIMETIME:

• Casual:

Executive produced by Jason Reitman and created by director Zander Lehmann, this TV series is one of the keystones for TIFF’s newest program — a collection of work that reminds us how the lines between cinema and television have blurred. The Reitman-Lehmann series is a family comedy “about sex in the modern age of detachment.” TIFF is screening the pilot and episode 2.

• The Returned (Les Revenants):

Not to be confused with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s lastest, a Leonardo DiCaprio film called The Revenant. This is French TV producer, writer and director Fabrice Gobert’s unsettling yet much-praised series about a mountain village where dead people suddenly reappear, not as zombies but in perfect health. TIFF is screening the first two episodes of season two.

CITY TO CITY: LONDON:

• Kill Your Friends:

London-born English filmmaker Owen Harris enlists Nicholas Hoult as the star of his mean-spirited yet viciously funny comedy set in the “shark tank” of the British music in the 1990s.

PLATFORM:

• Hurt:

Summoning up his usual sensitivity and wit, Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig re-examines the sorry life of the once-heroic cancer victim Steve Fonyo, who ran across Canada on one leg to raise money for cancer research. Unlike the late Terry Fox, Fonyo survived and slipped into a public purgatory because of his sorry behaviour.

VANGUARD:

• Love:

French filmmaker Gaspar Noe shocks once again with sexually explicit scenes (in 3D no less). But backers of the film argue its artistic merits and Jesse Wente’s program notes claim it “brings a rare honesty to its portrayal of love and sex.”

WAVELENGTHS:

• Arabian Nights:

The Restless One/The Desolate One/The Enchanted One: Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes is asking for a huge commitment. Taken together (although shown separately), the three parts of his “mutating modern-day folk tale” run more than six hours. In remarkably innovative ways, according to his admirers, Gomes deals with the chaotic zeitgeist of modern European society.

SHORT CUTS:

• It’s Not You: It seems appropriate that the 40th TIFF showcases a new short from longtime fest friend, Don McKellar. The new work probes the ephemeral nature of modern romantic entanglements.

TIFF CINEMATHEQUE:

• The Mask (Eyes of Hell): TIFF’s Jesse Wente gleefully oversaw the restoration of Julian Roffman’s 1961 Canadian cult classic, which happens to be the first Canadian horror feature and also the first feature shot, at least in part, in 3D. Most of the movie is in B&W, with the surreal 3D segments in lurid colour.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS:

• Hardcore: In a deliciously wicked program, this Russian-American co-production jumps out as a must-see. Horror-thriller fans will revel as filmmaker Ilya Naishuller follows the bloody exploits of a cybernetic super-soldier out to save his wife from a psychotic uber-villain.