As August dwindles down to a precious few days, the winds of the North grow stronger and louder with more than a few drumbeats of excitement.
After all, the commotion could only mean how close we are getting to the 48th annual Toronto International Film Festival, with movie publicists suddenly making their email presences felt more repeatedly than even hard-working TIFF personnel.
Actually, the frenzy started in late June — with the announcement of “Next Goal Wins” as the first world-premiere offering for the 10-day festival. Of course, the Searchlight Pictures sports comedy, based on a 2014 documentary and starring Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss, comes directed by Toronto favorite Taika Waititi, not only an Academy Award (and TIFF People’s Choice) winner for 2019’s “Jojo Rabbit” but also a multi-hyphenate talent who brought the hilarious “What We Do in the Shadows” mockumentary to TIFF audiences way back in 2014.
Then the usual summer floodgate of notable festival announcements truly opened, initially with a few more world-premiere teasers for the likes of “Les Indesirables” (director Ladj Ly’s follow-up to his TIFF46-shown “Les Misérables”) and Toronto homeboy Atom Egoyan’s opera-inspired “Seven Veils,” before the follow-up barrage of naming 60 or so “gala presentations” here, 50 assorted Canadian titles there and dozens of World Contemporary Cinema entries mixed in with the usual bombshell array of small ”discoveries,” documentaries, and “Midnight Madness” offerings for the stay-up-late crowd. Whoo!
Of course, as we get closer to the festival’s opening-night films on Sept. 7 — a pair paced significantly by celebrated director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated “Boy and the Heron” (shown long before the later, 11:59 p.m. screening of Larry Charles’ uproariously named “Dicks: The Musical”) — those aforementioned PR types keep making us aware of titles that simply also have some pull-‘em-into-the-theater appeal.
We are talking about movie monikers such as the very serious-sounding Canadian/Inuit indie “Tautuktavuk (What We See).” And “Daddio,” with Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn taking a two-hander cab ride. And “Wicked Little Letters,” a world-premiere “dark comedy” — what else? – particularly featuring the likes of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. And 20th Century Studios/Hulu’s “Quiz Lady,” another world-premiere comedy, this one starring Awkwafina and Sandra Oh.
Or how about even “An Endless Sunday,” which could cause someone to ponder how many films he might watch during TIFF’s opening weekend, sending out some wild Italian vibes with a story about millennials tooling around Rome. And, finally, for now, why would that same someone, who writes about movies, leave out something as simply named as “The Critic,” especially if it is a period drama with the grand Ian McKellen in the title role?
Obviously, we have left out upwards of 150 titles, but please return here next week, likely just after Labor Day, when we will list more celebrity-filled movies before leaving for Toronto’s Sept. 7 lid-lifters. Meanwhile, to learn more about any films mentioned here, festival tickets, or what is where on the complete schedule, visit tiff.net.
John M. Urbancich, former and first executive editor of CriticsChoiceMovies, reviewed films and wrote related features and celebrity profiles at Cleveland’s Sun Newspapers from 1983 to 2018. He has been an accredited journalist at the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 years. Look for his ratings on recent releases at JMUvies.com.
