Toronto Film Festival Preview – Part 2
Hopefully, you’ve already checked out Part 1 of our preview of the 40th Toronto International Film Festival and now here’s 25 more movies we think are worth checking out if you happen to be in Toronto between September 10 and 20.
We’ll probably have our first semi-daily diary of what we saw sometime on Friday and then things go absolutely nuts over the weekend with interviews and such, many of which you’ll be able to watch/read over the next few weeks.
Let us know what you’re interested in seeing either at TIFF or when they’re released, which in some cases will be very soon.
TIFF40 Preview in Pictures 2
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Maggie's Plan
Director: Rebecca Miller
Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore and Ethan Hawke star in the fifth film from the daughter of acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller with Gerwig playing a woman who wants to have a baby and does so by infiltrating into the marriage of the other two.
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Man Down
Director: Dito Montiel
Shia LaBeouf reteams with his A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints director for a post-apocalyptic thriller about a former Marine trying to find his wife (Kate Mara) and child along with a fellow soldier (Jai Courtney). It also stars Gary Oldman.
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The Man Who Knew Infinity
Director: Matthew Brown
Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons star in this biopic about Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who revolutionalized the field in the early 20th Century, going from his modest roots in India to Cambridge where he started working with his mentor G.H. Hardy (Irons).
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The Martian
Director: Ridley Scott
This outer space thriller starring Matt Damon as a NASA astronaut stranded on Mars is Ridley Scott's first movie to premiere at TIFF since 2006's A Good Year, although this one has a lot more anticipation as it delves into the world of science fiction Scott is best known for but handled in a far more realistic way. The amazing cast includes Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Mara and many more.
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The Meddler
Director: Lorene Scafaria
Susan Sarandon stars in Scafaria's follow-up to Seeking a Friend at the End of the World, playing a widow who goes to California for an unannounced visit to her daughter (Rose Byrne), where she ends up connecting with a local police officer (J.K. Simmons).
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Men & Chickens
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen appears in his fourth movie directed by Jensen, one of Denmark's mainstay filmmakers, for this wacky comedy about two brothers who go to a remote island to meet their biological father and their eccentric siblings.
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Miss You Already
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
The director of the original Twilight returns with this dramedy starring Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette as long-time childhood friends whose friendship is put to the test when one gets cancer and the other gets pregnant.
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Mr. Right
Director: Paco Cabezas
This year's Closing Night Gala is a black romantic comedy starring Sam Rockwell as a hitman named Francis and Anna Kendrick as the woman who falls for him, while Tim Roth plays the FBI agent caught in the middle of the whole thing.
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Mustang
Director: Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Another film from Cannes, actually the winner of Directors' Fortnight, is this directorial debut about five young sisters living in a coastal Turkish village who must deal with overly strict guardians who worry the girls are getting out of control.
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Northern Soul
Director: Elaine Constantine
The reknowned British photorapher makes her directorial debut about the '70s British music revolution and how it affected a group of young people in Lancashire. Steve Coogan, who played a starring role in another movie about the Northern England music scene of the '80s, 24 Hour Party People, has a cameo.
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Office
Director: Johnnie To
One of China's most prolific genre filmmakers, Johnnie To (Election) returns to TIFF with a musical starring Chow Yun Fat and Sylvia Chang (who wrote the play on which this is based) about the relationship between a corporate CEO and her mentor.
This will open in China mere days before its TIFF premiere.
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Our Brand is Crisis
Director: David Gordon Green
Probably one of the more anticipated films at this year's TIFF is this dramatization of Rachel Boynton's acclaimed doc about campaign strategists affecting South American elections with Sandra Bullock playing spinmeister "Calamity" Jane Bodine who takes on her rival Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) as they each try to put their candidate into power. It's David Gordon Green's return to studio movies for the first time since The Sitter with Warner Bros. releasing this on October 30.
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The Program
Director: Stephen Frears
Ben Foster portrays Lance Armstrong in this biopic about the champion cyclist's fight with cancer and the doping scandal that led to his inevitable downfall.
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Remember
Director: Atom Egoyan
It wouldn't be a TIFF without Atom Egoyan--and in fact, last year's omission of The Captive made us think there might have been some friction in the long-standing relationship--but Egoyan is back, teaming with Christopher Plummer for a Hitchcockian thriller about an elderly man in a nursing home who wants to get revenge on the man who murdered his family during the Holocaust.
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Room
Director: Lenny Abramson
Based on Emma Donoghue's book about a young woman, played by Brie Larson, who was kidnapped at the age of 17 and locked up in a shed by a man. Years later, she has a five-year old son, played by Jacob Tremblay, and they've finally managed to escape their confinement as they try to adjust to a world outside the only environment the boy has known. The film will open on October 16 after getting raves out of the Telluride Film Festival over the weekend.
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Sicario
Director: Denis Villeneuve
While the latest from Quebec's finest filmmaker already played at Cannes earlier in the year, it's playing at TIFF as a victory lap of sorts after the success of his previous film, Prisoners. This one stars Emily Blunt as an FBI agent who is drafted into an anti-drug task force by Josh Brolin, putting into questionable circumstances, most of them involving Benicio del Toro as a Colombian hitman. It opens in select cities on September 18 before going wide a week later.
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Sky
Director: Fabienne Barthaud
Part of the first inaugural "Platform" competition, this stars Diane Kruger as a French woman vacationing in California with her husband (Gilles Lellouche) who uses that as a chance to escape on a road trip that allows her to meet all sorts of characters along the way (including ones played by Joshua Jackson, Norman Reedus and Lena Dunham).
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SPL 2 - A Time for Consequences
Director: Soi Cheang
Another movie in the "Midnight Madness" section is this sequel to the Donnie Yen action film that was released in this country as Killzone. Yen is nowhere to be found and neither is original director Wilson Yip but this one teams Furious 7's Tony Jaa with Wu Jing offering more police martial arts action within a Thai prison setting.
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Spotlight
Director: Thomas McCarthy
The director of The Station Agent and Win Win returns to TIFF with his latest film about a group of Boston Globe reporters who uncover a child abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. It stars Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton and it will be released by Open Road on November 6.
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Stonewall
Director: Roland Emmerich
The master of the modern disaster movie changes gears for this drama about the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village which helped pave the way for the LGBTQ rights movement in North America.
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The Wave
Director: Roar Uthaug
Recently announced as Norway's selection for the Oscars, this true story disaster thriller about when a geologist that a mountain that's a popular tourist attraction is in danger of collapsing into the ocean. Sounds more like something Roland Emmerich might direct, huh?
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The White Knights
Director: Joachim Lafosse
This Belgian film stars acclaimed French actor Vincent Lindon as the head of the NGO who is trying to rescue 300 children from the Civil War in Chad.
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Trumbo
Director: Jay Roach
Bryan Cranston stars as Dalton Trumbo, one of Hollywood's top screenwriters in the '50s, who was blacklisted for being named as a Communist in this biopic that co-stars Helen Mirren, Elle Fanning, John Goodman and Diane Lane. It has its World Premiere at TIFF before being released by Bleecker Street on November 6.
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Truth
Director: James Vanderbilt
The writer of Zodiac and White House Down makes his directorial debut with this drama based on the memoir of 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes (played by Cate Blanchett) about the controversial "Rathergate" that got Dan Rather (played by Robert Redford) fired from CBS.
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Where to Invade Next
Director: Michael Moore
When you realize this is the new movie from Michael Moore and read that title, you pretty much know what you're in for as he goes to other countries to find out their opinion of America in his first doc in six years.
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Yakuza Apocalypse
Director: Takashi Miike
Japan's most eccentric (and prolific) filmmakers returns to TIFF with his latest "Midnight Madness" offering, which combines Yakuza with gunslingers, vampires, and martial arts. The movie will open in the States on Oct. 9 following its TIFF premiere.
