Indie Focus: Breaking out at the Toronto International Film Festival, plus ‘Home Again’
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week we’re writing from Toronto, where the Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing. Just last week we published our fall movie preview, and now with the onslaught of films from festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, it is really all happening.
From Telluride, Josh Rottenberg spoke to Greta Gerwig about her “Lady Bird” and Guillermo Del Toro about “The Shape of Water,” two of the most anticipated and most talked-about films form the fall circuit so far. He also put together a wrapup in which Angelina Jolie confides, “You think it’s a festival and it’s going to just feel like a festival but it doesn’t.”
Separate from festival madness, Tre’vell Anderson took a look at the recent controversy around movies such as “Gone With the Wind,” which do not match up with contemporary social attitudes.
“You can’t sweep history under the rug,” said Todd Boyd, a professor of cinema and media studies at USC. “A lot of it is not pretty and it may contradict the ways some people see things in contemporary society. … But it’s important to have context whenever you’re viewing material of this kind. Otherwise, people can embrace and celebrate it without dealing with the whole truth.”
Angelica Jade Bastién wrote a dynamic essay exploring these same issues for Vulture.
We also are hard at work on lining up some screenings for the fall prestige season. To find out more and for updates on future events, go to events.latimes.com.
Toronto International Film Festival
In his opening preview of the Toronto International Film Festival, Steven Zeitchik noted that “the gathering will provide an artistic response and even collective therapy to the roil emanating from Washington, D.C. — all while offering a glimpse at how the country might debate issues and seek solace at movie theaters in the months to come.”
In the first of his ongoing dispatches from the festival, Justin Chang noted, “Oscar buzz has become a necessary evil at Toronto. On one hand it ensures the packed houses, bustling red carpets and gobs of press coverage that keep this festival running year after year. But it also inevitably overshadows the many, many worthy films that arrive here with no media profile or awards prospects of which to speak.”
Justin in turn spotlighted Frederick Wiseman’s “Ex Libris,” which focuses on 11 of the New York Public Library’s 92 branches. He also wrote about the festival’s official opening night film, “Borg/McEnroe,” declaring, “There have been far better and far worse TIFF opening-night movies than ‘Borg/McEnroe,’ which is fast-paced, inoffensive and about as emotionally resonant as your next poutine. But few have been more emblematic of the reality that film festivals have become their own competitive sport — a kind of cinephile Grand Slam.”
Jen Yamato wrote about the opening night title of the festival’s beloved Midnight Madness program, Korean American filmmaker Joseph Kahn’s “Bodied.” Set amid the world of underground battle rap, the film is purposefully designed to skirt the edges of being offensive to a wide array of people, grappling with stereotypes, constructions of race and the difficulties of honestly interrogates your own prejudices, privileges and blind-spots
“I’m not trying to give you any answers,” said Kahn. “The world today is race-obsessed and conflicted; race is probably the biggest problem in America right now, it’s literally fracturing everything. And I’m in the thick of it.”
Amy Kaufman was at the premiere of the new documentary on Lady Gaga, titled “Gaga: Five Foot Two” and directed by Chris Moukarbel. She posted the five most revealing moments from the film. One of them is actual nudity.
I spoke to filmmaker Angela Robinson about “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” about the unusual love story behind the origins of the character of Wonder Woman.
“Wonder Woman is the only superhero whose ideas are founded on love. … And I think that is so valuable and poignant and necessary. And that’s why I think she’s hit such a chord. Literally her message is powerful.”
And I’ll also have a story posting soon about Brie Larson’s feature directing debut, “Unicorn Store,” in which she also stars as a young woman convinced she is about to receive a unicorn.
“This film is like an abstract self-portrait,” Larson said in an interview before the festival. “It’s totally a metaphorical journey of not only my experience of being an actor and learning how to be true to myself in the face of people telling me no or that I was wrong or telling me to change, but it was also directly my experience directing this film.”
‘Home Again’
It’s no secret we are huge fans around here of filmmaker Nancy Meyers. So you know we were very excited about the prospects of “Home Again,” the feature debut of Nancy’s daughter Hallie Meyers-Sheyer. The movie stars Reese Witherspoon as a woman trying to start the next chapter in her life after separating from her husband.
In her review for The Times, Katie Walsh said, “Call it nepotism, call it a legacy or simply call it the family business. It inspires a sense of trustworthiness, quality and consistency. … Thank goodness the Meyers mantle has been passed on to the next generation. Meyers-Shyer may have gotten it from her mama, but the point of view is all hers.”
Amy Kaufman spoke to Meyers-Shyer about making a film that would inevitably be compared to the work of her mother.
“A lot of people have asked me, ‘Why didn’t you want to do your own thing — like something in horror?’” said Meyers-Shyer. “But that’s not me. I just wanted to be true to myself, and my mom’s films are the kind of movies that I love. I don’t have a big ego in that way, where I feel like I have to be different.”
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus
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