The week of October 12:
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Premise: Elizabeth is Queen Of England and all is going well, except for a Catholic rival who wants her throne, a Spanish king who wants her dead, and a love life that's summed up in her nickname: The Virgin Queen. What's a girl to do?
Pedigree: This sequel to 1998's Elizabeth re-teams director Shekhar Kapur and star Cate Blanchett. Also on board: Thinking person's dreamboat Clive Owen and Samantha Morton (as Mary, Queen Of Scots).
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 4. It's just too shallow, and it features a rare weak performance from Blanchett. Still, Oscar has been fooled by worse films.
The view from TIFF: Elizabeth may have grown into her role of queen over time, but the years have made Kapur an even more facile director, trafficking in images with little depth in spite of the meaty historical material.
Also in multiplexes: Writer-director Greg McLean follows up his cult shocker Wolf Creek with Rogue, a horror film involving a killer crocodile. And Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? finds the prolific one-man industry exploring marriage and the ever-present temptations of infidelity without his beloved/reviled "Madea" character.
The week of October 19
Gone Baby Gone
Premise: Based on the Dennis Lehane novel, this somber procedural follows a pair of private investigators (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) hired to do "neighborhood work" in a high-profile child-abduction case.
Pedigree: Debuting director Ben Affleck won an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting, and this is his first script since. The previous Lehane adaptation, Mystic River, collected numerous nominations and wins for Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Supporting Actor (Tim Robbins).
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. The relentlessly downbeat nature of the story, which often leaves characters choosing between bad and worse, doesn't really work in the film's favor. But the Academy loves to vote for actor-directors, and with this thoughtful, serious effort, Affleck's time in the creative wilderness may be coming to an end.
The advance word: Much like The Departed—and Good Will Hunting, to a lesser extent—the film has an authentic feel for the mood and vernacular of working-class Boston, and unsurprisingly, Affleck coaxes strong performances from his fellow actors. His direction is more workmanlike than inspired, but he follows Lehane closely, step by dread-soaked step.
Rendition
Premise: The hot-button issue of extrajudicial detentions and torture gets mashed with this Syriana/Traffic-like drama about an American citizen jailed for suspected terrorist activities.
Pedigree: Director Gavin Hood won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last year for Tsotsi, and Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor for Little Miss Sunshine. Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress the year before with Walk The Line. What could possibly go wrong?
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 3. Here's a serious, "important," well-intentioned Iraq drama that features an all-star cast, is topical without ruffling too many feathers, and will no doubt leave Academy members feeling like they're voting their conscience. So why isn't this a lock for every category not featuring the effects guy from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy?
The view from TIFF: Because it isn't very good. Hood offers up a dozen major characters, but their first impression is the same as their last, which reduces them all to pieces in a politically contrived puzzle. Only Peter Sarsgaard, as a senator's aide who helps Witherspoon find her "missing" husband, exhibits anything like nuance.
Reservation Road
Premise: Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo play strangers brought together by a fatal car accident, which shatters their formerly happy upper-middle-class families.
Pedigree: The high-powered cast also includes Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino, all guided by Hotel Rwanda helmer Terry George.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 4. Award-winning actors confronting tragedy is usually a sure-fire way to get the Academy's attention, but…
The view from TIFF: … no one was doing cartwheels over Reservation Road when it screened in Toronto. After In The Bedroom, Little Children, We Don't Live Here Anymore, Ordinary People, and The Crossing Guard, this kind of extreme domestic melodrama may seem a little overfamiliar.
Also in multiplexes: A comic book getting turned into a movie? It sounds crazy, but that's just what happened with 30 Days Of Night, a Halloween horror flick about a town plagued by a month of darkness. And also vampires. But mainly darkness. After years of fine supporting work, David Koechner finally snags a starring role in The Comebacks, a ramshackle spoof of plucky underdog-sports movies co-starring Carl Weathers. Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro go gunning for that elusive second Oscar in Things We Lost In The Fire, a somber drama about a widow and a reformed junkie united in grief. It's mournful-tastic!
The week of October 26
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Premise: Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman play financially strapped brothers who decide to rob their parents' suburban strip-mall jewelry store, and deal with the repercussions when the heist goes awry.
Pedigree: Director Sidney Lumet knows his way around subtle, realistic crime dramas, and how to guide top-flight actors like Hoffman, Albert Finney, and Marisa Tomei to peak performances.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 5. Because Lumet has already won a lifetime achievement award, the Academy might not be inclined to recognize his fine work here, and the piece might be too low-key and genre-bound to rouse much interest in the actors, terrific though they are. But Kelly Masterson's purposefully twisty script should get a serious look.
The view from TIFF: It's tempting to overrate this nifty, at times nasty little caper movie because it's such a pleasure to watch, and full of well-observed, human-scaled moments. It's a fine, fine film—yet pretty far from a masterpiece.
Also in multiplexes: The astonishingly generic posters for the romantic dramedy Dan In Real Life could just as well consist of the words "Steve Carell is in a movie" in a nice font. Then again, the plot, starring Carell as a nice-guy single parent in love with his brother's girlfriend, sounds astonishingly generic too. Warning: Dane Cook. Run Fat Boy Run has Hot Fuzz's Simon Pegg instead of Cook, but also features an unpromising romantic-comedy plot, about a pudgy guy running a marathon to win back the pregnant fiancée he dumped. Warning: David Schwimmer's feature-film directorial debut. Then there's Saw IV. Warning: Yet another Saw movie.
The week of November 2
The Kite Runner
Premise: Khaled Hosseini's beloved historical novel about boyhood friendship and betrayal in Afghanistan comes to the big screen, epic sweep intact.
Pedigree: Director Marc Foster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction) has so far shown only promise, not greatness, yet screenwriter David Benioff (The 25th Hour, Troy) has a shown a remarkable flair for dialogue and structure. Still, the last time these two guys collaborated, the result was the pretty lousy Stay.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. A story that spans a long stretch of time, set in a political hot spot, based on a bestseller, featuring kite-flying contests and rape? Foster and Benioff are going to have to work pretty hard to screw this up.
The advance word: Some controversy has already risen over the treatment of the child actors in the film; they were reportedly paid little, and are now afraid that their fellow Afghanis will confuse them with their characters and torment them. Dreamworks and Paramount Vantage should pay these kids' way out of Kabul unless they want some ugly pre-awards-season buzz.
Also in multiplexes: Ridley Scott's latest, American Gangster, features Denzel Washington playing '70s drug kingpin Frank Lucas, and Russell Crowe as the detective out to bring him down. It also features Scott's usual love of sharp visuals filled with snow, rain, dust, and other flying particles. Bee Movie continues a trend that didn't need continuing: CGI kids' movies about wacky animals voiced by celebrities. In this case, Jerry Seinfeld as a bee unhappy about hive life, in what really seems like an Antz retread. Another trend that didn't need continuing—films about precocious, special children who change lives—gets another outing with Martian Child, starring John Cusack, doing the About A Boy thing with an alienated kid who insists he's from Mars. At least the grave, super-sincere trailers suggest it won't be The Game Plan redux.
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