Happy September! We’ve arrived at one of the best times of the year for movies, and with the Toronto International Film Festival readying to premiere some of the more talked-about films of the remaining year, our movie-obsessed eyes now turn to them for all the juiciest news and reviews and interviews.
Fandango will once again be on location in Toronto this year, bringing you lots of great coverage. Here’s our Toronto International Film Festival primer to help get you up to speed.
5 Movies Everyone’s Talking About
There’s already lots of Oscar buzz around this one as it danced through both the Venice and Telluride film festivals on its way to Toronto. Billed as a contemporary musical, the film reunites Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (Crazy, Stupid, Love.) as two kids (he a jazz pianist, she an aspiring actress) who fall for each other in Los Angeles.
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La La Land was directed by Damien Chazelle, whose first feature, 2014's Whiplash, was a huge breakout hit on the film festival circuit. It received five Oscar nominations, winning three.
Watch the trailer:
Amy Adams plays a linguist whose skills are required by the government when an alien ship arrives, ominously hovering over an open field. She and a physicist (Jeremy Renner) attempt to make contact with the aliens before the situation becomes hostile.
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Arrival is directed by Denis Villeneuve, whose previous films, Prisoners and Sicario, also premiered in Toronto and featured outstanding performances. We expect good things from Adams and Renner in this one.
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With awards attention all over it (producer Harvey Weinstein has already said it could be nominated for eight or nine Oscars), Lion is certainly a movie many will be seeking out in Toronto this year. Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) stars as a man who got lost on a train when he was five, and then years later sets out on a quest to find his long-lost family. Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman also star.
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Lion, based on a real-life story, marks the first time Nicole Kidman has played the mother of an adopted child. In real life, Kidman is mother to two adopted children.
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One of two boxing movies on the way with the word “bleed” in the title (see also: The Bleeder, starring Liev Schreiber), Bleed for This tracks the real-life story of champion boxer Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller) and his battle back to the ring following a near-fatal car accident.
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Bleed for This was directed by Ben Younger, who hasn’t directed a feature film since 2005’s Prime, and before that, 2000’s Boiler Room. Sounds like a guy who’s due for a hit, plus last year’s excellent Creed has us craving more gritty boxing tales. Could this be Miles Teller’s Oscar moment?
Watch the trailer:
More a reinvention than a remake, The Magnificent Seven keeps its familiar premise – in which a ruthless gang tries to take a town away from its citizens, who then hire seven outlaws to protect them – except said outlaws are all newly created characters. And what an ensemble it is! Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Haley Bennett and more round out what’s definitely the fall season’s first great cast.
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Director Antoine Fuqua has teamed with Denzel Washington multiple times, including the more recent The Equalizer and Training Day, the latter of which also costarred Ethan Hawke.
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4 Under-the-Radar Titles Poised to Surprise
In theaters this Christmas, A Monster Calls boasts one of the year’s best trailers. It follows a young boy who, while coming to grips with his mother’s illness, befriends a monster that comes barging into his complicated life.
Watch the trailer:
Not much is known about Moonlight, save for the fact that it’s got a furiously compelling debut trailer. The new film from director Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy) stretches across a three-part narrative that follows one man’s life from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. We’ll let the trailer do the rest of the talking…
Watch the trailer below.
It doesn’t feel like the Toronto Film Festival without a gripping performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, and so here we have Nocturnal Animals, directed by Tom Ford (A Single Man). This time Gyllenhaal plays a man whose thriller novel haunts his first wife, played by Amy Adams, while her current husband (Armie Hammer) is away on business.
Free Fire
Director Ben Wheatley was in Toronto last year with the divisive High-Rise, and this year he’s back with what looks to be the more accessible Free Fire, starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Sharlto Copley and Armie Hammer.
The story is set in 1978 and centers on two gangs who meet in a deserted warehouse and end up in a crazy shootout. This will also be the first time we’ve seen Brie Larson on the big screen since she won her Best Actress Oscar for last year’s Room, which also premiered in Toronto.
3 Performances That Stand Out
Who: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Movie: Snowden
Why it stands out: Gordon-Levitt teams with director Oliver Stone for a sure-to-be conversation starter in which he portrays NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. With an Oscar-winning documentary on Snowden already released in 2014 (Citizenfour), it’ll be interesting to see how Gordon-Levitt delves deeper into Snowden’s past and personal relationships to expand our knowledge of the man in addition to his controversial actions.
Who: Lupita Nyong’o
Movie: Queen of Katwe
Why it stands out: Aside from a tiny role in the Liam Neeson film Non-Stop, we haven’t seen Lupita Nyong’o in a live action film since she won Best Supporting Actress for her big-screen debut in 2013's 12 Years a Slave, despite memorable motion-capture roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Jungle Book.
In this Disney film based on an inspiring real-life story, Nyong’o plays the mother of a girl from Uganda who trains to become a world champion chess player.
Who: Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga
Movie: Loving
In the film Loving, Edgerton and Negga play an interracial couple who are sentenced to prison in 1958 for getting married. We're excited about the film partly because it's written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Midnight Special, Mud), who always seems to get fantastic performances out of his stars, but also because both Edgerton and Negga are great performers who are right on the cusp of a major Oscar-caliber breakout. We think Loving might be that film for this duo.
2 Big Music Performances
Two films showing at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival also boast musical performances following each screening.
Movie: Sing
Who: Jennifer Hudson and Tori Kelly
Illumination Entertainment's (The Secret Life of Pets) latest animated film, Sing, will have its premiere at the festival followed by a performance from Jennifer Hudson and Tori Kelly, who we imagine are both on the soundtrack and featured in the film. Both singers once appeared on American Idol, a show many are comparing the film Sing to in that it also revolves around a singing competition.
Watch the trailer below. Sing is out this December 21.
Movie: Hidden Figures
Who: Pharrell Williams, Kim Burrell and Lalah Hathaway
As part of a screening of footage from the upcoming Hidden Figures, due out this Christmas, Pharrell Williams, Kim Burrell and Lalah Hathaway will stage a concert featuring songs from the film. Based on real-life events, Hidden Figures follows the story of three women, Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), who served as the brains behind NASA's operation to send astronaut John Glenn into space, a mission that effectively turned around the Space Race and changed the world.
Watch the trailer below.
1 Incredible Malick-ian Experience
Fans of visionary filmmaker Terrence Malick have been looking forward to watching his film, Voyage of Time, for...well, a long time. Malick has been working on the documentary for more than 40 years, and two different versions of it will arrive in theaters. A 90-minute version, narrated by Cate Blanchett, will debut internationally, and a 40-minute IMAX version narrated by Brad Pitt will debut in the U.S. this October. Eventually both versions will be available everywhere.
The film is said to be a look at the evolution of our universe, past, present and future. Here's a trailer to whet your appetite.
Fandango will be on the ground throughout the 2016 Toronto Film Festival. To keep up to speed on all we're doing, you can keep tabs on our Indie Movie Guide, as well as follow our coverage on social media here: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
