The Films We Most Want to See at TIFF 2021
By Original-Cin Staff
The world is still upside down, but glimmers of normalcy are in evidence.
Witness the 46th annual Toronto International Film Festival, running September 9 to 18 in as close to a regular fashion as might be expected, given the circumstances. While in-person screenings will feature now-de rigueur masking, physical distancing, and limited capacity, they are happening. Which is more than could be said a year ago.
These screenings — at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Roy Thomson Hall, the Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre, and Scotiabank Theatre as well as various drive-in sites citywide — happen in lockstep with public digital film screenings available across Canada, meaning the festival is at once more inclusive yet more impersonal. But hey, with COVID-19, one takes what one can get.
Last Night in Soho
The red carpets might be dimmer than years past, but there’s still nearly 200 films from across Canada and around the globe on offer, featuring a rich list of shorts, documentaries, and features on topics that touch on every facet of human (and in some cases, extra-human) life. As always, there’s notable adaptations of beloved books, theatre productions, and foreign films as well as an amazing slate of original productions, some previously screened, some screening for the very first time.
Over the course of the festival, Original-Cin will be previewing as many films as possible to help readers choose titles most deserving of time and money. As is our custom, we will also wrap with a candid roundup of hits and misses.
But for now, on the cusp of the festival, with stardust still in our eyes and hope in our hearts, we offer a selection of the titles we are most keen to see… with fingers crossed, of course.
Jim Slotek
I have as much dreaded the prospect of Denis Villeneuve’s take on Frank Herbert’s reputedly unfilmable sci-fi opus as anticipated it. David Lynch hit a career wall with his misbegotten attempt. But if Villeneuve nails it, it will “make” his career more than any film he’s done.
They had me at director Edgar Wright (haven’t missed one of his films). Then they had me at the hypnotic Anya Taylor-Joy doing psychological horror (with an era-hopping twist). On top of that, it features the final performance by the legendary Diana Rigg, who died almost exactly a year ago.
A car show model becomes pregnant after having sex with a car. Occasionally she bleeds motor oil. Then she starts killing people. Then things get weird. It certainly sounds like a perfect opener for the Midnight Madness program, albeit with the extra cred of having won the Cannes Palme d’Or award.
Linda Barnard
Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet puts a fresh spin on the post-war dystopian thriller with a movie that draws from the painful legacy of Canada’s residential school system. Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers stars as a mother desperate to shield her daughter (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) from abduction as the new government decides to take children from their families for relocation to forced-education camps.
I’m excited about the big-screen return of director Jane Campion with her take on old-west myths and manifest destiny in a drama about rancher brothers and dysfunctional relationship dynamics. Benedict Cumberbatch appears to be on a path to a career-defining role as manipulative and often-cruel Phil. Jesse Plemons plays his more sensitive brother who marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), who brings a teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) with her. Adapted from Thomas Savage’s ground-breaking novel.
This one looks like it could be very wow, baby. Edgar Wright’s take on time-jumping Carnaby Street birds sees the writer-director dip into psychological horror for the first time with swinging sixties style, including a final screen appearance by Dame Diana Rigg. Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy star. Wright’s movies always deliver, with plenty of sharp wit, action, and excellent soundtracks. This one includes Taylor-Joy’s moody cover of Petula Clark’s 1964 melancholy escapism tune “Downtown.”
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Thom Ernst
Jessica Chastain plays Tammy Faye Baker, television’s most recognizable sidekick on the Christian talk-show circuit. This is nostalgia for the young sinners of the 80s who’d stumbled home after a night of carousing and tune into The Jim and Tammy Faye Baker Show not to be saved but to shamelessly watch Tammy Faye’s teary onstage meltdowns. But will director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) settle for a fine-tuned imitation or is he willing to unearth the deception, corruption, and shameless exploitation of a woman’s very public mental breakdown?
This is on my list of anticipated films for one simple reason: it’s a musical. I have a vague concept of the story but little knowledge of the songs. Will Evan Hansen appease the musical lover in me who longs for extravagant dance numbers along with heart-wrenching ballads? Or am I in for another Les Miz?
Any movie promising scenes of demonic possession and exorcism, as this Iranian horror movie does, is likely to make it on my lists of films to see. But my interest is piqued further by rumours that Zalava gives North American audiences a unique cultural twist on a familiar theme.
Karen Gordon
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes movies like no one else I can think of. Longish movies that drift along slowly and serenely, blurring the lines between reality and the unseen or mystical, incorporating bits of Thai myths. Memoria, his first foray into a western setting, puts Tilda Swinton in Colombia, trying to find the source of an odd sound metallic thumping sound that she keeps hearing.
Iran’s Asghar Farhadi makes well-thought-out, intelligent movies about relationships that are as entertaining as they are deep and psychologically insightful. Circumstances that are already entangled when the movie begins become more complicated and often more ambiguous as the story unfolds. He’s a master of human behaviour
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(Tie… if my editors will permit)
I interviewed Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier at TIFF in 2017 for his clever sci-fi film Thelma and really liked his ideas and the way his mind works. I’ve been looking forward to seeing what he’d do next. I love clever slice of life rom-coms and, from the rave reactions that his new movie got at Cannes, I can hardly wait to see this.
Dune
No one blends sci-fi opera, spiritual philosophy, and art film like Denis Villeneuve. And this cast has some of my favourite actors. But it’s all down to Villeneuve’s vision. How will he handle this crazily difficult adaptation? I can hardly wait to see.
The Guilty
Kim Hughes
Based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2012 novel and expertly cast with Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a patrician and very unhappily married English couple on holiday in Morocco. When a careless, drunken accident results in the death of a local, the pair must confront each other’s differences and those of the observant — and vastly poorer — Muslim community in their midst. Stories don’t come itchier or more riveting.
The famed French explorer’s aquatic work has impacted generations and has arguably never been more important. Coupled with the allure of learning more about the man behind the legend in a film from acclaimed documentarian Liz Garbus makes this title irresistible.
On paper, this thriller has everything: amazing source material (the superb 2018 Danish-made original film), director Antoine Fuqua working from a script by True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto and a cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Paul Dano, and Peter Sarsgaard with eerily timely California fires blazing in the background. Its premise is nifty, too.
Liam Lacey
Illness, solitude, windows, a person who remembers everything, the jungle setting — long static takes that make you contemplate the frames of the film and the tick-tock of your own existence. All this sounds like the familiar tantalizing perplexities of Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Recalls His Past Lives). But Tilda Swinton as a Scottish botanist in Colombia who is suffering from loud auditory hallucinations? That’s something new. Memoria (which I’ve seen) also has splashes of playful humour and a what-the-hell-was-that? ending that have would set the after-screening lobby abuzz back when people gathered in movie lobbies.
The subject of America’s bloodiest prison riot, the 1971 Attica prison hostage-taking and its brutal aftermath, has been visited in film before in a number of documentaries and fictional films, including the signature moment in Dog Day Afternoon, when Al Pacino’s character starts chanting, “Attica” to rouse the crowd on the street. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, the revived interest in civil rights movement of 50 years ago, it’s a great time to consider how the massacre at Attica shaped history. The current film by Stanley Nelson (Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, Emmet Till) was commissioned for Showcase. I’ve heard good things.
With chutzpah and charm, actor/writer, and director Kenneth Branagh has made a career bridging divides, from cinema’s foremost Shakespearean popularizer (Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet) to go-to blockbuster director (Thor, Cinderella). Who is this man who is determined to be all things to all people? Branagh has never been a personal filmmaker but that changes with Belfast, a black-and-white drama set during the height of the sectarian violence, when Branagh was a child in Belfast. With Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds and Jamie Dornan.
The Humans
Bonnie Laufer
Being a huge fan of Broadway and live theatre, I was truly lucky when I scored a ticket to see Ben Platt’s performance of Dear Evan Hansen in New York. I was mesmerized from beginning to end thinking how on Earth does he pull this raw and emotional performance out of himself eight shows a week? The story centres a high school senior who suffers from social anxiety disorder which leads him to struggle at school. His journey of self-discovery and acceptance begins following the suicide of a fellow classmate.
Dear Evan Hansen went on to win six Tony Awards and has since spawned touring productions all around the world. Platt is back in the title role; no one can play Evan Hansen better and every single song is brilliant. I can’t wait for this big screen version that also stars Julianne Moore, Amy Adams, and Kaitlyn Dever. Big bonus: a few new songs written specifically for the film by the brilliant Pasek and Paul. Need I say more?
Last Night In Soho
Edgar Wright is back and I cannot be more excited. The genius British director’s latest is being described as a trippy psychological horror. Judging by the trailer, Last Night In Soho is filled with fantasy, mystery, fun and intrigue coupled by some pretty fabulous performances and spot on cameo appearances. Put me in the front row and get me a huge box of popcorn! Groovy baby!
Just the cast alone makes me giddy! The Humans stars Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, Amy Schumer, June Squibb and Richard Jenkins in Stephen Karam’s adaptation of his multi-generational family drama that was also a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play.
The story is set inside a pre-war duplex in downtown Manhattan and follows the course of an evening in which the Blake family gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving. As evening falls outside the crumbling building, family tensions begin to grow and reach a boiling point that hits too close to home. Given the cast, subject matter, and pedigree of the material I anticipate a master class of performances and a truly fabulous theatrical experience.