The week of November 9
Lion For Lambs
Premise: The fate of two idealistic students-turned-soldiers in Afghanistan rests on the revelations a Democratic senator (Tom Cruise) offers to a TV journalist (Meryl Streep).
Pedigree: Director Robert Redford stole the Picture and Director Oscars from Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull in 1980. Streep has been nominated 14 times and won twice, though not since Sophie's Choice in 1983. Cruise has been a Best Actor bridesmaid three times. Streep and Redford appeared together in Out Of Africa, which also won Best Picture, inexplicably.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 5. Much is at stake for Cruise, who needs a classy title to launch his revitalized UA label and put the shine back on his tarnished image. Redford was the safest possible choice to direct, given the movies about rehabilitation he's directed, like A River Runs Through It and The Legend Of Bagger Vance. (Will Smith doesn't carry Cruise's golf bag, however.) But didn't A Few Good Men cover this territory already?
The advance word: Conspicuously quiet. Cruise and UA chose to bypass a Toronto unveiling for a bow at the much more modest Los Angeles Film Festival, barely a week before opening day. Is this damage control, or is Redford busy polishing a diamond?
No Country For Old Men
Premise: Sociopathic killer-for-hire Javier Bardem tracks a suitcase full of money across Texas, intersecting with laconic hunter Josh Brolin, slick mercenary Woody Harrelson, and exhausted sheriff Tommy Lee Jones.
Pedigree: Based on a popular novel by Cormac McCarthy, one of America's greatest living writers, and adapted for the screen by Joel and Ethan Coen, who broke out of the cult-movie ghetto long ago.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. The success of The Departed last year—and the fact that the Coens were nominated for Fargo—shows that the Academy isn't always turned off by violent crime sagas, but No Country For Old Men is really violent, and both chilling and elusive in its meaning.
The view from TIFF: After diddling about with two frothy comedies they didn't originate, the Coens reach a new peak on their first real literary adaptation. No Country For Old Men is assured, exact, suspenseful, funny, and haunting—synthesizing the best of the brothers' past work into a new, mature aesthetic.
Also in multiplexes: No, Fred Claus isn't yet another Santa Clause sequel, but it should tide over the people who can't make it through a holiday season without one. The lame goofery involving Santa's troublemaking older brother Vince Vaughn sure looks mighty Tim Allen friendly…
The week of November 16
Love In The Time Of Cholera
Premise: Javier Bardem and Giovanna Mezzogiorno play childhood sweethearts who reunite in their old age, after spending a lifetime avoiding and missing each other in ways both desperate and mundane.
Pedigree: Gabriel Garcia Márquez's novel is one of the few late-20th-century books that has both sold well and garnered a strong literary reputation.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 6. A story this floridly melodramatic, with a cast of non-WASPs, could break either way with the Academy, though director Mike Newell and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have been involved with a few Oscar-nominated films in the past.
The advance word: Magical realism had a good run in the movies after the success of Like Water For Chocolate, but by the mid-'90s, everyone was sick of it. Is it time for a revival? And are a pair of middling British filmmakers the right men to make it happen?
Margot At The Wedding
Premise: In Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid And The Whale, bride-to-be Jennifer Jason Leigh plays an emotionally unstable woman who invites estranged, judgmental Manhattanite sister Nicole Kidman to her Long Island home. Not surprisingly, Kidman doesn't approve of Leigh's goofy fiancé, played by Jack Black.
Pedigree: The Squid And The Whale fetched an Original Screenplay nomination after becoming the year's biggest indie sleeper. Kidman has long been one of Hollywood's most glamorous and talented stars, and she was rewarded an Oscar for her nose-job in The Hours.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 1. Squid may have established Baumbach as Woody Allen's heir apparent, but here, he spends all that currency on a prickly, discomfiting family drama with no sympathetic characters, no clean resolution, and no obvious "message."
The view from TIFF: Fortunately, the same qualities that make it repellent as awards fodder are what make it special, too. Margot doesn't coddle its audience, and its uncompromising nature leads to some devastating (and devastatingly funny) observations about its screwed-up characters.
Also in multiplexes: Stardust pretty well tanked in theaters; it'll be interesting to see whether filmgoers are author-savvy enough to notice that writer Neil Gaiman was also behind the similarly large and mythic classic fable Beowulf. More likely, though, they'll flock to Robert Zemeckis' latest because the visuals make it look like 300 II: More Muscley Near-Naked Dudes Posing In Awesome Computer Environments. Meanwhile, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium closely resembles a misbegotten mating between Toys and Tim Burton's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Dustin Hoffman is rapidly becoming the new Robin Williams, the man who puts the "Oh God, PLEASE NO" in a preview trailer.
The week of November 23
I'm Not There
Premise: Six periods in the life of the mercurial Bob Dylan get interpreted by six different actors—including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett—in a radical re-imagination of the biopic.
Pedigree: Writer-director Todd Haynes has built his reputation on offbeat movies that toy with pop's deeper meanings, from the impact of a Barbie-doll mentality (Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) to the subtext of '50s Douglas Sirk melodramas (Far From Heaven).
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 2. Outside of Blanchett's riveting turn as the mid-'60s "electric" Dylan, this isn't really a movie pitched at the Academy's frequency.
The view from TIFF: When pop-culture historians look back at 2007, I'm Not There is going to be one of those movies they cite to prove this was a landmark year. For all its muddled purpose and awkward experimentation, this film represents the kind of chance-taking and rich vision that our top auteurs should be attempting more often.
Also in multiplexes: Robin Williams lends his oppressive twinkle to August Rush, a precious-sounding music-filled drama about a pair of photogenic young musicians (Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and the son (Freddie Highmore) who got away. Old-school fairy tales get yet another contemporary spin in Disney's Enchanted, a live action/animation hybrid about a magical princess (Amy Adams) exiled to New York city by evil queen Susan Sarandon. Moviegoers' love affair with video-game adaptations continues with Hitman, an action-thriller based on the popular Hitman: Code Name 47. Quirky character actor Timothy Olyphant takes on a rare lead role. Will the world ever tire of Stephen King adaptations? The makers of Stephen King's Mist—a Frank Darabont-directed shocker about a sinister mist containing terrifying beasties—sure hope not.
The week of November 30
Cassandra's Dream
Premise: Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play working-class brothers who agree to do a criminal favor for their rich uncle Tom Wilkinson in order to pay off some gambling debts.
Pedigree: It's Woody Allen, still in UK tourist mode, kicking out another deliberate crime drama à la Match Point.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 2. The word on this when it played the Venice film festival was pretty toxic, with critics calling it a preposterous potboiler that verges on self-parody. Then again…
The view from TIFF: …the critics who saw it in Toronto were far more forgiving, with some saying that had Cassandra's Dream been released first, it would have been hailed as fresh and invigorating, and Match Point would be considered the pale retread.
- Comments