TIFF 2013: ScreenAnarchy's Super Wrap With All Our Reviews and Top Fest Picks - UPDATED

What was your favorite film of the fest?

Todd Brown: There were a lot of really great genre fare and more typically 'Twitch-y' titles to choose from this year, but I think my pick would have to go to Siddharth. It's just such an incredibly finely crafted film, filled with amazing performances, incredibly heartfelt and really emotionally powerful.

Ryland Aldrich: This is such a difficult question but it's really impossible not for me to say Gravity. It's the first time I've seen a film twice at the same festival (in both IMAX and non-IMAX – see it big but IMAX isn't necessary). As everyone is about to discover when the film hits theaters in the next few weeks, this is so much more than just a film. Gravity is an adventure experience.

Kurt Halfyard: Jonathan Glazer’s long overdue Under The Skin was my most anticipated film of this year's Festival. Somehow, with all that expectations (fan of the book, the director, and the star), it still managed to deliver on the impossible-to-adapt promise of an ambiguous science fiction head-scratcher. From its 2001: A Space Odyssey styled opening overture (which depicts the fabrication of a human eye) to its poetic and memorable final sequence, this film is delivering bonafide new cinematic language and challenges its audience towards a curious empathy. It may not leave everyone coming out happy, but there is no denying the ambition on display here, not to mention the trust it puts in its audience, while sustaining a delicate and disturbing mood. The movie is a venus fly trap, that you slowly, slowly sink into the murk to be digested by its strangeness.

Jason Gorber: I'm totally going to cheat here - I saw some 65+ films for TIFF, and there's no way I'm going to narrow it down to one. Gravity and 12 Years A Slave are magnificent, but hardly a surprise. Rush was better than I could have hoped, and I spent much of the fest convincing people of this fact. If I had to pick one feature film that nobody had heard of pre-fest it'd be iNumber Number, an absolute delight, and totally worth seeking out.

What title disappointed you the most?

Jason Gorber: This is harder, since I try to go in with moderate expectations to everything (there are, of course, exceptions). Still, I was kind of surprised how little The Fifth Estate worked. There was a chance to make a great film there, and they kind of blew it.

Kurt Halfyard: Here we have a tie. Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties and Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Real failed hard for spectacularly different reasons. The former is a cops 'n family drama that pulls every cliché out of the book, combines even less imaginative musical choices, and even fails in the modest ambition of recreating gritty seventies American cinema. Kurosawa's science-fiction slash horror slash psychological mind-fuck ends up being pitched at the 14 year old girl level of sophistication that not even a 30 foot CGI Plesiosaur can save it from its own convoluted melodrama. Considering the past resumes of both directors, their 2013 films can be considered career low-points.

Todd Brown: Based on how it turned out relative to expectations going in to it, probably The Station. That's not to say it's the worst film I saw (which it definitely wasn't), but it's the one that missed expectations by the largest margin.

Ryland Aldrich: It's a really bad sign when you're watching Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis banter for 30 minutes before you even utter a chuckle. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's first foray into feature filmmaking You Are Here is an utter failure. I walked out after 45 minutes to go watch Gravity again.

Who gave the best performance?

Ryland Aldrich: When Nic Cage is given a meaty role to work with, there are few better. The title role of Joe is a porter house steak and Nicolas Cage tears it apart like an angry dog. Perhaps it's not a performance we'll hear much about come Awards time, but it deserves its recognition.

Todd Brown: Rajesh Tailang in Siddharth. He's the soul of the film, in pretty much every shot, and he's exceptional.

Jason Gorber: It's hard to not see Chiwetel Ejiofor's turn in 12 Years A Slave as anything less than a star making turn.

Kurt Halfyard: Donald Rumsfeld. After 90 minutes of questioning from director Errol Morris, as well as his own reading of policy memos ("Snowflakes") and we are still no closer to understanding the former Defense Secretary outside of the context of 'career-ist' and 'spin-meister.' Rumsfeld's cadence is mesmerizing, almost sleep inducing, which should be familiar to anyone watching the news after September 11th until his own resignation just before the Obama administration. I cannot remember much of what he actually said for the duration of The Unknown Known, but I want to see it again, if only to look into those calculating eyes and hear the wordplay issued from his snake-like tongue.

What was the best documentary you saw?

Kurt Halfyard: Jodorowsky's Dune - For the past few years at TIFF there has been a real renaissance of quality documentaries. There were more ambitious docs (The Unknown Known), and were more cinematic docs (Watermarks) than this straightforward 'talking head' entry. But when your principal talking head is Alejandro Jodorowsky, who at 84 is showing not a hint in waning energy or madness, well, the whole thing is electric. Animating the storyboards to the Chilean director's enthusiastic description of the now 40 year old project that never was, along with the context provided by Richard Stanley and Nicolas Winding Refn and coupled that with my inner-Dune nerd, and the legend of his never produced fever-dream adaptation of the novel: Dork-bliss! Plus, I want someone issue a re-print of the massive storyboard and production tome (of which only two are left in existence). I'd pay real money for a copy of that.

Jason Gorber: Again, a tie - The Square won the Doc award, and I couldn't be more pleased. It's a film that's in desperate need of a wide audience. I for one will be pleased when both it and The Act of Killing are likely to vie for Oscars, making their prominence even higher, thus garnering more viewers. On a much lighter note, Tim's Vermeer really is quite an astonishing feat, and beyond the built in star power of its director, it's a tremendous accomplishment and one to be celebrated.

Ryland Aldrich: Not only is the subject matter of Tim's Vermeer mountainous enough to change the field of art history, but it's told in a way entertaining enough to make this a joy to watch. This little ingredient of making the docu fun was missing from many of the documentaries at TIFF.

Todd Brown: I didn't see any. I'm a bad man.

What was your biggest discovery of the fest?

Todd Brown: Without a doubt for me, South African action film iNumber Number. It's a great flick that reminds me a lot of Europa Corp product from 10-15 years ago. Director Donovan Marsh is a huge talent that we should hopefully see a lot more from. And while it wasn't a discovery – we've been covering his short films for ages – it was pretty great to watch the Canadian press go nuts for Jeff Barnaby's debut feature, Rhymes For Young Ghouls. International press seems to have largely overlooked it, but it's pretty great. The keen eyed out there will recognize that XYZ Films (where I'm a partner) is involved as a sales rep on both of these but that's because a) I 'discovered' them and b) they're awesome.

Jason Gorber: Again, I'd like to think iNumber Number will make many people happy, but I also thoroughly adored Oculus, finding it a near perfect thriller.

Ryland Aldrich: John Ridley has a mixed track record as a writer (12 Year A Slave: good, Redtails: hrmm), but what is very clear now is that he's an incredibly talented director. His sophomore follow-up to 1997's Cold Around the Heart is the audaciously stylish and incredibly successful Jimi Hendrix biopic All Is by My Side.

Kurt Halfyard: Manakamana - While Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab issued one of my favourite films of last year, Leviathan, since the concept, location and directors of their second feature, Manakamana is so vastly different, I feel it qualifies as a discovery. It came darn close to edging out Under the Skin as my favourite film of the fest. Description alone is not enough to underscore just how good this film is for the observation of people. 11 cable car rides, 5 up, 6 down, to and from a temple located at the top of a verdant Nepalese mountain give further insight that it is not the destination, it is the journey. Two 90 year old women trying to scarf down ice-cream on a stick and unguardedly laughing about the futility of doing so in close quarters on a sunny day, might just be the best cinematic image I've been treated to all year.

What was the best non-movie TIFF moment?

Jason Gorber: Chatting with Teller and Tim of Tim's Vermeer for a good 45 minutes about aesthetics and epistemology was intoxicating -- as well the time spent talking with Professor Skip Gates and about 12 Years A Slave was also amazing (plus, being star-struck by Alfre Woodard). I also adored the conversation I had with Oculus' Mike Flannigan as I walked him to the Midnight Madness anniversary party as I continued to tease him about his views on Kubrick.

Todd Brown: I did precisely zero parties or other events this year, with most of my time going to business meetings and being a parent (I never even saw Ryland at the fest this year, which sucks), so my best non-movie moments would both go to interviews. I limited myself to just three this year out of time concerns but the moment where Blue Ruin's Jeremy Saulnier realized I was from ScreenAnarchy and leapt out of his seat was pretty awesome, as was landing a half hour one-on-one conversation with The Double's Richard Ayoade, who I'm PRAYING is audible on the tape given that he speaks so very softly and there was a lot of background noise in the room.

Kurt Halfyard: Wandering around a party like a breathless 13-year-old girl because I heard Shane Carruth was in attendance. The Primer/Upstream Color director remained elusive and was never discovered, but was good enough to embrace your quite non-professional inner fanboy once a year. Anything higher in frequency for a 38-year-old father of two is a bit retrograde, but I am happy for the pleasure of those moments - even if they ended fruitlessly. Equally geeky was my 10 year old son being cast in an ABCs of Death 2 segments, but that is another story for another time.

Ryland Aldrich: Toronto is always one of the busiest and most stressful festivals of the year for me. What was particularly cool this year was having so many busy and stressed out friends to share the screenings and lines with. It's always particularly cool to sit in the audience and realize you actually really like a film your friends have spent months of their lives slaving over. Congratulations to all the filmmakers!