Toronto 2015 Wrap: All Our Reviews & Top TIFF Picks

What was your favorite film of the fest?

Ryland Aldrich: It was a TIFF packed with great films but the big winner for me was the film most likely to be a box office smash. The Martian succeeded wildly not only because of the fantastic story and enjoyable performances, but perhaps also because of the slightly lowered expectations based on Ridley Scott's recent films. You've brought me home, Mr. Scott.

Kurt Halfyard: The full Arabian Nights trilogy was shown as a single road-show style presentation. All in one sitting was certainly the film experience of this year's TIFF. Gloriously absurd, the film evoked Monty Python as much as it did Krzysztof Kieślowski and the recent the Greek Weird Wave. The film has political allegory, documentary, and experimental storytelling all collide over 6 hours of cinemaphile smorgasbord. Portugal's painful year of financial austerity at the hands of the EU and the IMF is the subject, but director Miguel Gomez somehow makes the whole thing work as a universal comedy of errors, all the while keeping you on your toes. The film is never predictable, re-inventing itself with each new idea as it goes. Bonus: It has the single best 'jump-scare' I have seen in 2015.

Todd Brown: This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer both because my viewing is spread out over a long period of time – so things I saw months ago have to compete with things I saw in the last few days – and because of the overall quality of the selections, but I think I need to go with Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa. It’s basically everything you would hope for from a Kaufman directed stop motion feature.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Into the Forest is the perfect blend of contemporary drama and science fiction, and an incredibly timely film for a generation whose future is uncertain in light of economic and environmental crisis. With great performances by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, and masterful direction by Patricia Rozema, it is a haunting elegy to family and our relationship with nature.

Jason Gorber: If I count films I saw at other festivals that played this year's TIFF I saw over eighty, so this is a bit harder than usual. Forgetting masterpieces I saw elsewhere like Son of Saul or Green Room. I adored Room and several others, but it was Alan Zweig's doc Hurt that really punched me in the gut - a tremendous doc that's as effective at capturing its subject as it is in making one question our own parasitic connection to those we dub heroes, and our culpability in ignoring their downfall after we've spent our time lauding them. Killer stuff, and I am ecstatic this won the inaugural Platform jury prize.

Zach Gayne: Within minutes of My Big Night, I knew there was nothing I was going to see at TIFF that would make me happier. Álex de la Iglesia's romp on a never-ending production of a years end TV variety special is the perfect ensemble chaos comedy. Like They Shoot Horses Don't They, a film about a cruel and unusually endless dance competition for dollars, My Big Night is an existentially anxious meditation on spectacle with madcap claustrophobia breeding laugh out loud delirium. It's where the hungry long-faces of They Shoot Horses meet the manic desperation of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World's slapstick ensemble and the result is perhaps the most expansive, uproarious illustration of a shit show I've ever seen - Baskin not withstanding... though I think that more accurately classifies as a fuck show.

Who gave the best performance?

Jason Gorber: Brie Larson in Room is the one that we're likely going to be talking about most come next awards season - she's terrific as the mom, even more so when the film really gets going in the second half. A special shoutout to 3D-printed penis and breasts during the sex scene in Anomalisa

Zach Gayne: Though Brie Larson surely deserves the title for her frighteningly good work in Room, I'll take this opportunity to shout out Tom Hardy's dual performance as twin gangsters, Reggie and Ronnie Kray, in Legend. How Hardy turned in such dynamically distinct characters - all the while playing his own scene partner - is a brain-boggling, but very entertaining conundrum.

Ryland Aldrich: While both Brie Larson and Tom Hardy certainly deserve mentions here, my award goes to Bryan Cranston for his titular role as blacklisted screenwriter Trumbo.

Todd Brown: There’s plenty of room to argue this point, obviously, and I’m not even going to pretend that it’s the most nuanced, or emotionally demanding role of what I saw in the festival but there’s just something about Alex Van Warmerdam’s performance in his own Schneider vs Bax that I just really love. There’s a combination of weariness, wry humor and genuine concern for his daughter that I found really appealing.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Itay Tiran in Demon. His slow transformation from happy bridegroom to a man inhabited by a female ghost is an understated but powerful, and he uses every muscle to convey the alien spirit and its manipulation of his form.

Kurt Halfyard: Christopher Walken puts in his best on screen performance since Catch Me if You Can in Jason Bateman's The Family Fang as a performance artist that puts his kids into his gonzo-street performances because he cannot relate to them. Walken is funny, warm, outrageous as a parent, and is having a total blast while still essaying an actual human being. But it would be wrong not to mention Japanese septuagenarian actress Kirin Kiki, who plays an elderly crippled cook who labours in a small shop making bean paste for Doryaki. Her character's struggle to retain her dignity in Namoi Kawase's An by simply working at what she loves doing. I wept for the back half of that film like a child. And thirdly, simply David Thewlis' voice in animated hotel romance, Anomalisa was all kinds of wonderful. The polar opposite of his iconic homeless philosopher from Mike Leigh's Naked, he is world-weary, but happy to discover something precious and hang onto it for a time. Between those three radically different, but utterly amazing performances, it is hard to pick just one. Please do not make me choose.

What was the biggest surprise or discovery of the fest?

Kurt Halfyard: While should be neither a surprise or a discovery, because I've been following the career of Joachim Trier with each film he brings to TIFF, his English language debut, Louder Than Bombs is such an astonishingly effective work of intelligence, acting and visuals that it floored me anyway. Looking at how a family of men mourn the loss of the woman in their lives, the wife and mother played by iconic French actress Isabelle Huppert, the film equates our emotional lives to photography. It shows how me frame our emotions to others and perhaps more importantly, to ourselves, to either be truthful, or avoid the truth. With a fragmented editing strategy, and wonderful performances from Gabriel Byrne, Jesse Eisenberg, and newcomer Devin Druid, Louder Than Bombs is one of the smartest emotional films of the year.

Todd Brown: The Ardennes. I went into this one knowing absolutely nothing about it and it absolutely blew me away. Fabulously well written, directed and performed. A winner on all levels.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Baskin. It's marketed as a film full of mayhem, violence and chaos. And while there is some of that, it's more of a slow-burn, psychological horror film, making it better and much more interesting.

Jason Gorber: I truly never expected for 45 Years to hit me as hard as it did. It's just a sublime and quiet film with a real chill underneath. Tremendous stuff, far better than the dreary Brit drama I would have believed it to be.

Ryland Aldrich: I think Hardcore was my biggest surprise, maybe not because of how cool it is, but how convincing the first person cinema can be. Get ready with those VR helmets, folks.

Zach Gayne: Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by the quality of Room, given how many critics sung it's praises prior to my screening, but even my love of Lenny Abrahamson's previous film, Frank, couldn't prepare me for his new triumph. Audiences would be wise to enter Room with as little information as possible. It's also surprising the People's Choice award winning film is finally one I actually like!

What was your biggest disappointment?

Todd Brown: Calling it a disappointment feels a bit like minimizing the situation, but the news of Demon director Marcin Wrona’s unexpected passing hit me like a punch to the gut. I’d had lunch with him just five days previous, had a fantastic conversation with him and his wife / producer and was excited to see what was next for the super talented writer /director. And now he’s gone. And that’s just how life works.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Lace Crater. I had hoped for something funny, and that was how it started. Sadly, it fell into the inexplicably popular trope of 'woman has casual sex and gets punished with an STI that turns her into a monster'. I don't care how it's spun, it's boring and cliché.

Jason Gorber: The cancelling of Amazing Grace - it was one of the films I was most looking forward to seeing, and it being pulled was a real disappointment.

Zach Gayne: It's always a sad day when a movie as visually and conceptually enthralling as High Rise amounts to a meandering snooze fest. TIFF-goers had especially high hopes for Ben Wheatley's return to Toronto only to find something was maddeningly amiss. Woe was audiences.

Kurt Halfyard: Johnnie To's Office had so much going for it. It was musical, had a solid cast (Sylvia Chang, Tang Wei, Chow Yun Fat), an elaborate and ornate set, and even gives 3D a go. His previous go around with white collar financial crisis was the excellent Life Without Principle. But here, with To stepping out his action comfort zone, the result feels lazy, the songs are acutely unmemorable, the characters paper thin, and the story rote and unengaging. (And the 3D is terrible.)Office is boring - and a boring Johnnie To movie is by any measure, a fiasco!

What was your favorite non-film moment?

Zach Gayne: I was waiting in a hotel lobby in anticipation of my interview with Gaspar Noe about his surprisingly tender, albeit pornographic, film, Love, when who should take a seat across for me but Charlie Kaufman. I knew better than to tell him I found his film Anomolisa tragically beautiful, subjecting him to a potentially awkward exchange. I get the feeling he doesn't suffer stingers well and the last thing I wanted was to be 'that guy' for the brain behind Adaptation. Nevertheless, my no-chat was memorable enough for me. Both Noe and Kaufman have made excellent pieces on the nature of love and psychology and I was very pleased to literally see them exist in the same space.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Doing the Mamo podcast with Matthew Price and fellow ScreenAnarchy writer Matthew Brown. It was great to be able to talk about all the films we've seen and what films we should see.

Jason Gorber: Was it Sharon Jones having the courage to sing Gospel to a rapturous crowd mere moments after she announced that her cancer had returned? Maybe having conversations with two kights - Sir Patrick Stewart and Dame Hellen Mirren - within the span of 24 hours? Nerding out with Brad Bird about Pete Townshend? Or how about seeing Kim Novak on stage to present Vertigo with the Toronto Symphony performing Bernard Herrmann's score live at Roy Thompson Hall? Maybe just seeing team Twitch/XYZ at their second annual party and realizing what a terrific team I'm a part of? -- Over the course of ten days that felt like a year, there's so many moments to recount that days later I'm still processing them.

Kurt Halfyard: If you want a director moment, having a brief exchange with Miike Takashi and thanking him for 'Staying Foolish' in Yakuza Apocalypse, that was a keeper. Miike was all class, and very serious about making the kind of crazy that he makes.

But, oddly enough, simply the sun coming out mid-fest was perhaps the best. In early September in Toronto, the daytime temperature is usually a blistering 38 degrees centigrade with the full glare of the sun and punishing humidity. In my 17 years of attending TIFF, I can only think of a scant few times it ever rained during any of the festival weeks. Altogether, that would be over 175 days of festival with have a dozen days of rain! However, this year, for the busiest first weekend of the fest, it was cold and it was damp. An umbrella was mandatory when walking between venues and meet-ups. It puts a bit of a downer on Toronto's biggest party. So when the sun came back out and the warmth returned to the city, it was again pleasant to share beer and company on the cities numerous patios; at any hour between films.

Todd Brown: Running into Donald Sutherland before the premiere of Jamie Dagg’s River and having a few minutes to talk politics with the iconic Canadian actor. That was a thing.

Ryland Aldrich: As good as it is to see all the friends and colleagues, the best non-film moment of the fest was the delicious dinner my wife and I shared at what one local called the best restaurant in Toronto. I agree. Okay fine, it's called DaiLo and the cocktails are particularly good -- as anyone who saw me later that night can attest.