TIFF TUESDAY 2016

I've never been less excited for the film festival than I have this year, which is saying a lot if you know me.  I talk about TIFF all the time...to a degree that it's probably annoying for those around me.  My standard response to "what are you doing this summer?" is "just counting the down the days until TIFF." 

I'm not sure what the issue is, whether it be the new website design that I want to put my fist through every 5 minutes (seriously....seriously no words for how NOT user friendly that thing is. What was the user testing process? "It's visible and the films are somewhere on the site, good enough for me"???  Also fuck anyone using a mobile device!)

My membership renewal that "never arrived" (much like when I stood in front of an agent for about 20 minutes last festival to add another person to my membership account and was told a separate card would be send to me in the mail.  It's a year later and I'm still waiting on that.  No problem sending me countless packages through the mail asking me for more money but something I'm paying for?....just breathe. Calm down Alex), which has resulted in me getting a later selection window.   

Or maybe it's just the films in general. 

For the first time in years, I actually have time off from work so I really WANT to be excited for TIFF 2016. 

Whatever the reason is for my lackluster feelings, I'm uploading this post to try to get myself excited.  And to force myself to review the film list.  Seriously, it's three days away from my selection window and I've done no work to prepare.  Never in the history of my festival experiences have I not had at least three schedule options prepared by this point.  I have at least sixteen films that I need to select, so I'd better start planning.

Without further ado, here is a selection of the films I'm looking forward to seeing this year (I also know that some are already off sale....frowny face): 

 Lion

This film stars Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara.  It's about the true story of Saroo Brierly and his journey to reconnect with his birth mother after being separated from her for 25 years.

 

 

Snowden

Joseph Gorden-Levitt stars as NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The film is directed by Oliver Stone and also stars Shaliene Woodley, Timothy Olyphant and what I'm hoping is mass amounts of Nicholas Cage.

American Pastoral
Ewan McGregor's directorial debut is an adaptation of Philip Roth's Pulizter Prize - winning novel, about a "perfect" American family that is torn apart by the social and political upheavals of the 1960s.  Plus I got to listen to Mad World world while watching the preview.


Free Fire
One of my festival favourites, Ben Wheatley, is back again this year with Free Fire.  The film about a 1970s gun deal gone bad, stars a mustache-y Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer and Brie Larson.

Loving
Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga star as Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who waged a decade-long legal battle that eventually led to the overturning of the state of Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriage. I teared up just watching the trailer.

Arrival
This is a sci-fi drama about the panic that follows a wave of mysterious spacecraft landings across the globe.  To be honest, I'm a little bit on the fence with this one.  The synopsis you just read has potential, but the actual trailer looks kind of ridiculous.  It's directed by Denis Villeneuve who also directed Prisoners, Enemy and Sicario, which are all great movies.  I was completely enamored with the Sicario soundtrack at last year's festival and it sounds like it may have been scored by the same person.  I also think that Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker, and to an extent, Jeremy Renner have made some really great films.  Fingers crossed.


 

Manchester by Sea  

Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler star in this emotionally overwhelming and critically acclaimed drama from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me, Margaret), about a reclusive handyman who must face his painful past when he returns to his Massachusetts hometown after the sudden death of his beloved older brother.

The Belko Experiment
Office politics turns into a real-life survival of the fittest when a group of co-workers are forced into a sick game of kill or be killed by sinister forces who lock down their building, in this gruesomely funny horror thriller from director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and writer James Gunn (Slither, Guardians of the Galaxy). 

If any of you haven't wanted to kill at least one of your coworkers at some point, you haven't had a true office environment experience.

Into the Inferno
Werner Herzog teams up with volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer for this globe-trotting tour of some of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes.  It's Werner Herzog, man.  If you can get tickets to a screening where he does a Q&A, that's worth the admission alone.


I think I'm going to stop here for tonight.  Is there anything that you're looking forward to seeing?  Let me know.

Night!

Alex & Arthur