Lots of biopics, lots of LGBT visibility, and double helpings of Tom Hardy and Tom Hiddleston — these and more are among the promising highlights of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, which starts Sept. 10.
About Ray
Starring: Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, Susan Sarandon, and Tate Donovan
Directed by: Gaby Dellal
One of two high-profile movies at TIFF about transgender people — the other being The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne — About Ray is set in contemporary New York City. As teenaged Ray (Fanning) seeks to physically transition, he faces the struggles his divorced mother (Watts) and lesbian grandmother (Sarandon) have with his gender identity. Compounding the drama, Ray has to seek permission from his absent father (Donovan) in order to get the medical care he needs. Both About Ray and The Danish Girl have already become the subjects of some controversy, as the practice of cisgender actors playing trans roles becomes more fraught. General audiences will be able to see About Ray soon enough: It opens on Sept. 18. —Kate Aurthur
Courtesy of TIFF
Anomalisa
Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Noonan
Directed by: Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman
It's been seven long years since we've gotten to see anything new from Kaufman, the virtuosic writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There's been nothing, not since his 2008 directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, after which Kaufman attempted to return to television with a pilot FX passed on. So anticipation's riding very high with Anomalisa, on which Kaufman has teamed up with co-director Johnson for his first animated venture. Anomalisa's been described as a romance between a motivational speaker (voiced by Thewlis) and a woman (voiced by Leigh) he meets on tour. But given Kaufman's involvement, as well as that of Johnson, who did the stop-motion Christmas episode of Community, there's sure to be at least a streak of surrealism and meta-comedy. —Alison Willmore
Courtesy of TIFF
Beasts of No Nation
Starring: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, and Ama K. Abebrese
Directed by: Cary Fukunaga
Netflix is ready for its Academy Awards moment. That's the unspoken message in every aspect of Beasts of No Nation, the streaming giant's first original feature. It's directed by True Detective Season 1's Fukunaga and stars Elba as the commander of a group of mercenaries in West Africa — hot filmmaker on the rise, actor ready for a big moment, weighty subject matter, go! But from all appearances, the movie isn't glossy Oscar fare but a very dark drama focusing on how a young boy (newcomer Attah) becomes a child soldier under the sway of Elba's charismatic, frightening warlord. —A.W.
Beeba Boys
Starring: Randeep Hooda, Sarah Allen, Gulshan Grover, and Waris Ahluwalia
Directed by: Deepa Mehta
Mehta is best known for her critically acclaimed "elements" trilogy, a trio of films exploring social issues in India, from homosexuality to the 1947 partition to a rural tradition of widows being expected to spend their lives in seclusion after the deaths of their husbands. But her new movie is an Indian-Canadian gangster thriller that just looks like delirious fun. Hooda stars as a ruthless criminal (and observant Sikh) who teams up with other ambitious young men (including designer and Wes Anderson regular Ahluwalia) to establish and defend territory against rival gangs. —A.W.
Courtesy of TIFF
No comments:
Post a Comment