Every year, the Toronto International Film Festival offers a fairly clear picture of the upcoming awards season, as Hollywood unveils many of the serious, self-important, and occasionally half-decent films that it hopes will be considered Oscar-worthy. But in a world where Crash can slip away with Best Picture like a thief in the night, what does that term even mean? Is there much correlation between the movies that win Oscars and the movies worth caring about?
To sort through the glut of prestige pictures, The A.V. Club presents its handy Oscar-O-Meter™ rating, set on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "Bring a dish to share at your neighbor's Oscar-watching party" and 10 being "Remember to thank your agent in your acceptance speech." The Oscar-O-Meter rating is based on a number of tried-and-true criteria, including but not limited to: Is it a literary adaptation? Is it topical without being too controversial? Risky without actually being provocative? Does it feature a star who lost weight, gained weight, or made some sort of radical Method transformation? Does it have a middlebrow sense of grandeur? Will Academy members feel good about themselves voting for it?
Armed with firsthand knowledge from the Toronto Film Festival, second-hand knowledge from other sources, and a few cases of wild speculation, we present an inside look at the high-toned films of fall.
Now playing:
Across The Universe
Premise: A cross-section of young Americans (plus one Liverpudlian) experience the turbulence of the late '60s—from dropping out to turning on—while singing the music of The Beatles in a sometimes-alarmingly modern style.
Pedigree: Director Julie Taymor, a Tony-winning innovator in American theater, has become a cult favorite for the dazzling spectacle of her two films to date, Titus and Frida.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 4. A simplistic story and borderline campy nostalgia probably won't impress the Academy—not even the Boomers—but dazzling spectacle does have its place on Oscar night, and that place is the Art Direction, Makeup, and Costume categories.
The view from TIFF: A schematic, '60-themed, Beatles-scored movie musical might've resonated with modern audiences, but in spite of some spirited performances by fresh-faced young actors, Across The Universe is frustratingly flat, with mostly mediocre musical numbers that rarely excuse the copious inane chatter surrounding them. Less talk, more rock, Taymor.
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Premise: Near the end of his run as a legendary outlaw, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) was forced to recruit a lot of shady characters to his gang, including Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), the peculiar young superfan who eventually shot him in the back.
Pedigree: Up-and-coming writer-director Andrew Dominik (Chopper). Brad Pitt, nominated for Twelve Monkeys in 1995, won Best Actor at Venice for the role. Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins (Fargo).
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 2. No clear heroes or villains. A narrative that drifts along like tumbleweed. A studio so despondent over poor test scores that it held the film back for a year. These aren't exactly the cornerstones of a successful Oscar campaign. However…
The view from TIFF: …McCabe And Mrs. Miller and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid probably wouldn't have gone over well with the yahoos at some California mall, either, and they've stood the test of time just fine. Dominik's gorgeous, moody anti-Western may not be a commercial juggernaut, but it's one of the most flavorful films of its kind to come along since the Wild West of '70s Hollywood.
In The Valley Of Elah
Premise: Tommy Lee Jones plays an ex-soldier investigating the disappearance of a son who just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. As he and put-upon single mom/police detective Charlize Theron dig deeper into the case, they discover some hard truths about how an ill-defined military mission can crush a man's soul.
Pedigree: Writer-director Paul Haggis is on a prestige-picture roll, following his screenplays for three consecutive acclaimed Clint Eastwood movies (Million Dollar Baby, Flags Of Our Fathers, and Letters From Iwo Jima, the latter of which he co-wrote) and his own Oscar-winning Crash.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. Haggis is an Academy favorite, and even if the movie itself doesn't have enough juice to crack the Best Picture race, the Haggis screenplay (co-written with Mark Boal) has a decent shot. Plus Jones would seem to be a shoo-in nominee, unless his superior turn in the trickier No Country For Old Men takes precedence.
The view from TIFF: Haggis has made a solid procedural here, fraught with tantalizingly ambiguous mysteries, but it all seems a little betwixt and between—too high-minded to be an entertaining genre piece, and too tasteful to say anything earthshaking.
Into The Wild
Premise: Frustrated by a culture of materialism, recent college graduate Emile Hirsch sheds his identity and his possessions and sets out on a cross-country adventure, culminating in a dangerous solo trek through the Alaskan wilderness.
Pedigree: It's based on a beloved, bestselling nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer, adapted for the screen and directed by Sean Penn—whose work behind the camera has lately been more compelling than his work in front of it.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 8. The Academy loves Penn and loves actors-turned-directors in general, and though this true story goes to some dark places, Penn softens the edges for once in his career, creating a warmly humane film with themes that will resonate with a lot of fuzzy-hearted Hollywood types. And if cinematographer Eric Gautier doesn't get a nomination, that branch should be shut down.
The view from TIFF: Penn possibly imposes too much of his own concerns on the story, making it all about the importance of family and natural preservation instead of one man's maddening egocentrism, but he still tells the story superbly, crafting one of the most fluid, intimate mainstream movies in recent memory.
Lust, Caution
Premise: In a Chinese twist on Black Book's sleeping-with-the-enemy World War II espionage tale, Ang Lee's drama follows a revolutionary (Tang Wei) who seduces a powerful leader (Tony Leung) in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.
Pedigree: Director Ang Lee was nominated for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and won the directing Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, but lost Best Picture to Crash. His longtime screenwriting collaborator, James Schamus, is also a two-time Oscar nominee.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 4. This classy production, beautifully staged by the reliably intelligent Lee, won the Golden Lion at Venice and has the exotic period sheen of Oscar winners like The Last Emperor. But if the NC-17 rating doesn't kill it, the torpid sex scenes will.
The view from TIFF: Judging from The Ice Storm and Brokeback, Lee is a master at depicting sexual repression, but he's never been much of a sensualist; for all the acrobatic NC-17 eroticism in Lust, Caution, it lacks real passion. And compared to the sexy spy heroics in Black Book, it's a cold fish.
The week of October 5:
Grace Is Gone
Premise: When John Cusack's career-soldier wife dies while serving in Iraq, Cusack takes their two young daughters on the road and tries to figure out how to break the news.
Pedigree: Perhaps Sundance's best hope, the film won the Audience Award and the Screenwriting Award at this year's festival. The Weinsteins paid a princely sum for it with the intention of pushing Cusack—who's never been nominated for an Oscar, let alone won—during awards season.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 5. With Rendition, Redacted, No End In Sight, and In The Valley Of Elah all in play, there's no shortage of Iraq films out there, though Grace goes for the softer, less political Coming Home approach. It also isn't Must Love Dogs, which seems to be about as good a role as Cusack can get lately.
The advance word: Reviews were mixed out of Sundance, with some complaining about the film's conventionality and lack of visual panache. But audiences clearly responded to it, and Harvey Weinstein will personally break the thumbs of Academy voters who don't.
Michael Clayton
Premise: In a plot that feels like it was pilfered from a John Grisham bestseller, George Clooney stars as a once-idealistic lawyer reduced to cleaning up the messes left by his high-powered law firm. When Clooney's manic-depressive mentor (Tom Wilkinson) goes loco, the slumbering conscience of the sexiest man in the world begins to stir.
Pedigree: In spite of the airport-paperback trappings, this one has pedigree up the wazoo, from first-time director Tony Gilroy (best known as the scribe behind the Bourne movies) to a cast top-lined by Clooney, Wilkinson, and arthouse diva Tilda Swinton.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 6. Clooney is an Oscar favorite, but the real contender is Wilkinson, whose incendiary performance echoes Peter Finch's legendary mad-as-hell Oscar turn in Network.
The view from TIFF: Believe the hype. This downbeat, melancholy drama does for the legal thriller what Gilroy's Bourne movies did for big-budget action thrillers; it imbues a sturdy commercial genre with refreshing moral ambiguity and infinite shades of grey.
Also in multiplexes: The Farrelly brothers' remake of The Heartbreak Kid looks primed to transform Elaine May's poisonously brilliant anti-romantic comedy about a young newlywed with a serious case of buyer's remorse into standard-issue Ben Stiller slapstick. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising adapts Susan Cooper's bestselling novel about a young man who learns he's the last of a band of warriors destined to fight evil.
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