In previous years the Venice/Toronto line-ups have almost perfectly matched, but in 2011 there is a whole world of difference. As well as such Venice titles as WE, Ides Of March, Dangerous Method – and so on and so forth – plus a sprinkling of Cannes and Sundance titles – Drive and The Artist among the good grabs from the former, Like Crazy and Martha Marcy May Marlene from the latter – there are literally dozens of films that will be stand-alone debuting there. So without further ado, here are some my picks from the TIFF, reminding you that what premieres there often follows up swiftly with a UK bow, either at the London Film Festival or at the Leeds International Film Festival and others…
FEATURE PREMIERES
Twixt (Francis Ford Coppola, USA)
Coppola's latest (pictured) will be an interesting one. The trailer is already dividing critics on the internet, starting out as an interesting-looking thriller before morphing into something a little more credulity-testing, like Lucio Fulci's late-period straight-to-video shockers. Val Kilmer, who appears to have eaten a house, stars as a Stephen King-style mystery writer who visits a small town and becomes involved in the murder of a young girl (played by Elle Fanning).
The Lady (Luc Besson, France/UK)
A change of pace here for France's action king Luc Besson – The Lady is a biopic of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, played, equally untypically, by Malaysian-born Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh. Despite the backdrop of political unrest, this is essentially a love story, detailing the robust and often sorely tested relationship between Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris, played by – I can't believe I'm writing this – David Thewlis.
Moneyball (Bennett Miller, USA)
Originally to be directed by Steven Soderbergh and now in the hands of Capote writer/director Miller, this true-life sports drama stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, manager of baseball club the Oakland As, who decides to throw baseball wisdom to the wind and use logic to compile his teams. Jonah Hill plays the Ivy League grad who helps him with the scheme by recruiting from the pool of players out there with form but not profile (“like an island of misfit toys”).
Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, Canada)
Polley's last film, Away From Her, was an awards-season sleeper, chiefly getting traction for its lead performance by Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's. This less obvious production stars Michelle Williams – whose My Week With Marilyn is curiously absent, opting instead to open the New York Film Festival later in the year – as a married woman who is shocked when her new crush moves into an apartment across the street. Seth Rogen and Luke Kirby co-star.
50/50 (Jonathan Levine, USA)
AKA I'm With Cancer, this bittersweet comedy is tipped (finally) to bring some awards buzz for Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man struggling to beat a rare form of spinal cancer. A great supporting cast includes Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston, and the whole shebang comes to you courtesy of Jonathan Levine, the man behind the underrated 2008 stoner comedy The Wackness.
360 (Fernando Meirelles, UK/Austria/France/Brazil)
Thankfully the undeserved beasting that his last film, Blindness, endured hasn't put Meirelles off a) directing and b) taking those films to festivals. Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's novel La Ronde and scripted by Peter Morgan, it's a melange of stories with episodes in Vienna, Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix, starring heavy-hitters Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins and Rachel Weisz. Look out for David (No, Not THE David Frost) Frost as Well Dressed Passenger.
Anonymous (Roland Emmerich, Germany)
Another change of pace for a European director – this period drama sees Emmerich not trying to destroy the world for once, instead trying the ruin the reputation of a once-promising playwright called William Shakespeare. Starring David Thewlis and Vanessa Redgrave, Anonymous suggests that the Bard's classic works were actually written by someone else, against a torrid backdrop of courtly intrigue, snooty in-fighting and lots and lots of candles.
The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, UK)
Davies' latest has to be the UK's most prestigious entry at TIFF, skipping Venice to make its world premiere here. Based on Terence Rattigan's 1952 play, it stars Rachel Weisz as a middle-class woman, estranged from her rich husband and shacked up with a young lover, who wakes up from a failed suicide attempt and tries to take stock of her life. Weisz's Best Actress campaign surely starts here.
The Descendants (Alexander Payne, USA)
Tipped for Cannes but finally swerving a European premiere altogether comes Payne's first feature since, astonishingly, Sideways in 2004. A clear front-runner for awards buzz given that it's getting the same positioning that the wine-tasting comedy received back then, it stars George Clooney – and, oh, the Academy hate him, don't they – as a father of two girls whose life is thrown into turmoil after the death of his wife. Loss. Grief. Payne. Clooney. Put some money on it right now.
Friends With Kids (Jennifer Westfeldt, USA)
Director Westfeldt directed the well-received indie Kissing Jessica Stein in 2001, but you probably know her better as the woman who's going out with Mad Men's Jon Hamm. Friends With Kids is another indie with a low-key premise – two friends agree to have a child together – but with half the cast of Bridesmaids showing their faces (Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd), plus a certain Megan Fox, this is likely to punch way above its weight in terms of press coverage.
Hick (Derick Martini, USA)
Martini's last film, Lymelife, was a word-of-mouth hit, so there'll be a lot of interest in this road movie about a girl who runs away from her boozy mother with a fantasy of becoming a star. A great cast includes Blake Lively, Chloe Moretz, Alec Baldwin, Juliette Lewis and Rory Culkin.
Jeff, Who Lives At Home (Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass, USA)
Wow, if even this is in the TIFF, what's going to be left for Sundance to programme? The follow-up to the lovely Cyrus is another “sell-out” movie from the indie brothers, starring “proper” stars like Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Judy Greer and Susan Sarandon. Another pensive comedy, it stars Segel as a mother's boy who has an epiphany while going to the hardware store to buy some wood glue.
Machine Gun Preacher (Marc Forster, USA)
On paper, this is an Oscar dark horse: the latest from Monster's Ball and Quantum Of Solace director Forster is the “inspirational” true story of a former drug-dealing biker who finds religion and ends up in the Sudan helping former child soldiers. Gerard Butler plays the lead.
Rampart (Oren Moverman, USA)
The co-writer of I'm Not There and director of The Messenger re-teams with the latter's Woody Harrelson for an LAPD drama set in the 1990s. Harrelson plays a cop with a complicated private life who gets caught up in allegations of corruption. An eclectic cast is rounded out by Anne Heche, Cnythia Nixon. Ice Cube, Sigourney Weaver, Ned Beatty and Robin Wright.
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen (Lasse Hallstrom, UK)
Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt team up for the first time in the latest quality-lit adaptation from, well, the king of 'em. Adapted from Paul Torday's acclaimed comic novel, it stars McGregor as a fisheries scientist recruited by a wealthy Middle Eastern Sheik to bring salmon farming to the region. Blunt, currently the go-to girl for credible love interest, plays the Sheik's assistant in a film that, with the presence of Kristin Scott Thomas in the supporting cast, practically screams “superior upscale fluff”.
Trishna (Michael Winterbottom, UK)
Good grief, he's made another one. While TV series/US-only feature film The Trip is still finding audiences, one-man British film industry Winterbottom returns not with the Gaza Strip drama he seemed to be working on but an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess Of The D'Urbevilles. This is not a straight period piece, however. Set in modern-day India, it stars Riz Ahmed as the son of a rich property developer and Freida Pinto as the daughter of a poor rickshaw driver.
MIDNIGHT MOVIES
God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait, USA)
Goldthwait's great black comedies don't really find an audience in the UK, which is a shame since he's a very capable and unusual director, whose films deal with some jet-black issues in a surprisingly charming way. This one features a terminally ill man who declares war on the privileged youth of America, grabs a gun and sets off on a killing rampage. What's not to like?
Lovely Molly (Eduardo Sanchez, USA)
One half of the Blair Witch Project team returns with what seems to be his ghost story The Possession but with a new title. It stars newcomer Gretchen Lodge as a newlywed who returns to her family home after the death of her father. General scariness ensues – hopefully enough to bring Sanchez back into the genre fold after ten years in the wilderness.
DOCUMENTARIES
Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope (Morgan Spurlock, USA)
Spurlock's documentaries have lost their edge lately, and it may just be that his good-natured exploration of the San Diego fan convention is coming a little late in the day. Still, it will be interesting to see what he makes of the event, following seven attendees as they descend upon what I'm reliably informed is “the ultimate geek Mecca”. Somewhat inevitably, it includes interviews with Stan Lee, Joss Whedon, Frank Miller and Matt Groening.
Into The Abyss (Werner Herzog, USA)
As he edges close to 70, Herzog has never been more high-profile (he was recently on The Simpsons) or, arguably, commercial (as he would put it, “I am the secret mainstream”). His new film, another of his documentaries or “feature films in disguise", is about killers on Death Row in Texas, including a 28-year-old man who is only eight days away from execution.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, USA)
Staying on a grim prison theme, the latest in the Paradise Lost series continues to explore the ongoing story of “the West Memphis Three”, three teenage boys who were locked up in 1993 for the murder of three local boys in what was said to be a Satanic ritualistic murder. Again, the facts are re-examined, new evidence is revealed, and new suspects are scrutinised.
Paul Williams: Still Alive (Stephen Kessler, USA)
Edgar Wright will probably want to keep an eye out for this Grammy and Oscar award-winning actor/singer/songwriter who starred in Brian De Palma's little-seen rock horror Phantom Of The Paradise and was pretty much everywhere in US culture throughout the 70s. In the 80s, though, he disappeared, and this film sets out to find him. With appearances by Robert Blake, The Carpenters. Telly Savalas, Kermit The Frog and Jack Klugman, this is a must-see.
Sarah Palin – You Betcha! (Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, UK)
This one is sure to light the blue touchpaper in a way that Broomfield hasn't since Kurt And Courtney. With his trusty boom and earphones, Broomfield makes his way to the icy reserves of Alaska to speak to school friends, relatives and colleagues of the batty Republican. Clearly, nothing goes quite according to plan, but it wouldn't be a Broomfield movie if it did, would it?
* Go here for 2011 Autumn Festival Preview Part One: Highlights from Venice...
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