The week of December 7
Atonement
Premise: Based on Ian McEwan's novel, this period piece looks at the devastating consequences a single lie has on two would-be lovers, played by Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.
Pedigree: McEwan is one of an elite handful of novelists who's both highly regarded and widely read. Formidable playwright Christopher Hampton wrote the adaptation. Knightley and director Joe Wright last collaborated on 2005's lively, stylish version of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 9. A gorgeously appointed period piece, a classy literary adaptation, and a sweeping war romance all at once? In case The English Patient didn't immediately spring to mind, its director (Anthony Minghella) actually turns in a cameo appearance here. Only its cerebral nature is holding it back.
The view from TIFF: Though it initially looks like another frilly Merchant-Ivory romance, Atonement pulls the rug away and becomes another kind of movie, one that deals with uglier human impulses like jealousy, self-interest, and possibly unforgivable lies. It's beautifully orchestrated, though curiously unaffecting.
Leatherheads
Premise: George Clooney co-writes, directs, and stars as a football-team player-owner who suffers a crisis of conscience when comely reporter Renée Zellweger questions the war-hero past of star player John Krasinski. It's a little like Bull Durham, but with football. And set in the '20s.
Pedigree: The last time Clooney stepped behind the camera, he made the very respectable Good Night, And Good Luck.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 4. Clooney's award chances this year are most likely pinned to his performance in Michael Clayton, because…
The advance word: …this is reportedly a rough-and-tumble throwback romantic comedy, equal parts Coen brothers and Howard Hawks. As The Good German proved last year, self-indulgent stylistic exercises rarely play outside the director's private screening room.
Also in multiplexes: Is there a studio out there right now that isn't hoping to lay hands on some of that sweet, sweet post-Lord Of The Rings fantasy-fan dough? Certainly not the makers of The Golden Compass, a big-budget, epic-scale fantasy starring Nicole Kidman, and based on the terrific first book of a Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy that started going pretty sharply downhill as of the second installment.
The week of December 14
Juno
Premise: When 16-year-old wiseacre Ellen Page gets knocked up, she finds a squeaky-clean yuppie couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) that's excited about adoption, but their lives soon become uncomfortably intertwined.
Pedigree: Director Jason Reitman, son of comedy mainstay Ivan, won a lot of good will with his snarky debut comedy, Thank You For Smoking. Stripper-turned-ad-copywriter-turned-debut-screenwriter Diablo Cody has a colorful backstory to match her talent. Page, so electric in the disturbing psychodrama Hard Candy, looks ready to establish herself as an up-and-coming star.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 7. With its precious, winsome story of eccentric alternative families, Juno seems primed to be this year's Little Miss Sunshine, and it has the same distributor (Fox Searchlight) to boot. As a tale of unplanned pregnancy, it has Knocked Up's sweet irreverence, but none of the crudity.
The view from TIFF: Explosive applause at the public première, and why not? The first 10 minutes or so are insufferably quirky, but from the moment Page decides to put the baby up for adoption, this bittersweet comedy starts to click and doesn't stop, thanks largely to her dynamic performance, which masks deep feeling behind protective layers of irony.
Redacted
Premise: The alleged real-life rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl by a troop of U.S. soldiers gets reenacted by writer-director Brian De Palma, a cast of young actors, and a dozen different media sources, from security cameras to video blogs.
Pedigree: De Palma began his career as a socially conscious avant-garde filmmaker, and to his devotees, he's never stopped commenting on the culture at large, even when making neo-noirs and Hitchcockian thrillers.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 0. De Palma has never been an Academy favorite, even at his most mainstream, and this intentionally off-putting exercise in media criticism—which even riffs on his own far superior Casualties Of War—is unlikely to get a full screening by most Oscar voters.
The view from TIFF: As in Venice and Telluride, Redacted was heralded in Toronto by some camps and derided by others, though frankly, the former seemed to be reacting more to the intent than the result, and the latter were too annoyed by that result to properly credit De Palma for his intentions. Still, on its own merits, even accounting for De Palma's filmmaking eccentricities, Redacted is pretty much a botch.
Youth Without Youth
Premise: Based on a novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade, Francis Ford Coppola's first feature in 10 years stars Tim Roth as a professor whose involvement in a cataclysmic incident prior to World War II sends him on the run through places as far-flung as Switzerland, India, and Malta.
Pedigree: Coppola won his first Oscar for his Patton screenplay, then later got Best Picture and Director nominations for both Godfather movies (he won for II) and a Palme D'Or for Apocalypse Now. But that was all three decades ago.
Oscar-O-Meter rating: 2. Coppola is touting Youth Without Youth as his return to "personal filmmaking," which presumably means it has more personality than The Rainmaker or Jack, but implies a close connection to idiosyncratic projects like The Rain People and One From The Heart.
The advance word: The film is shrouded in mystery, with no festival premières planned and not even a synopsis on its official website. Even the teaser trailer only offers a jumble of pretty images and Bruno Ganz thickly whispering, "We are running out of time."
Also in multiplexes: There's really only one thing to say about a live-action Alvin And The Chipmunks, featuring attituded-up CGI rodents opposite Jason Lee as Dave Seville: "Make it stop make it stop I'm begging you I'll be good aaauuuugh!" Okay, you could probably also say "Screw that, I'm going to go see Will Smith put his Serious Hero hat back on in the Richard Matheson adaptation I Am Legend instead, even though it really looks like they turned it into 28 Days Later."
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