Toronto – Dearest Hollywood: I feel emboldened by what I’ve seen at the Toronto International Film Festival (which ended Saturday) to quote to you the incomparable words of the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde: “Yes, it’s time for you to stop all of your sobbing.”
1. Thanks to the sneak preview provided by Toronto (and before it, the Telluride Film Festival), fall and the holidays look to be thick with unexpected pleasures and smarts. Does that mean happy days are here again at the box office? Who knows? But take pride in your embrace of quality storytelling – I plan to.
Big flicks worthy of your better-days impulses: “North Country,” starring Charlize Theron as a miner who sues her workplace for sexual harassment; “Walk the Line,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny Cash and June Carter. Curtis Hanson’s “In Her Shoes” with Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine is a bitter but ultimately sweet sibling journey not afraid to tussle with some edgier issues in the midst of a comedy.
Then there was “Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story.” Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell and Kris Kristofferson help ride this flick into the winner’s circle.
2. The award season is launched in earnest. Names bandied about: Phoenix, Witherspoon and Theron, plus Frances McDormand (“North Country”), Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”), Judi Dench (“Mrs. Henderson Presents”), Tommy Lee Jones (“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”), Heath Ledger (“Brokeback Mountain”).
3. This gleaned standing in the very long line for a press and industry screening for Atom Egoyan’s Hitchcock-infused “Where the Truth Lies,” starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a comedy-singing duo popular in the 1950s who are linked to the mysterious death of a young woman:
“Have the credits started?” asked one journalist of another exiting an earlier screening. “OK, then, it’s 10 minutes before they begin cleaning and another 10 before they seat.”
4. A sweet degree of separation: Catherine Keener delivers a morally subtle performance in “Capote” as Nelle Harper Lee. Turns out the Alabama-bred author inspired Vera Ngassa, a judge in a small court in Kumba, Cameroon, and one of the no-nonsense stars of “Sisters in Law.” “You know what her inspiration was?” asked the wonderful documentary’s co-director Kim Longinotto. “It was ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ She was about 16, read that and said, ‘I’d really like to get involved in law in some way.’ She quotes from Harper Lee all the time in her court.”‘
5. Two directors. Two genres. Two journeys to the hometowns of not-quite-known fathers. Both work.
In Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown,” Drew Baylor heads for his father’s childhood home in Kentucky to retrieve his body and take it back to Oregon.
In Thomas Allen Harris’ “Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela,” the documentarian journeys to Bloemfontaine, South Africa. The city was the home of his stepfather, Pule “Lee” Leinaeng, who went into exile 30 years earlier. The dough for the music rights for “Elizabethtown” (unfairly characterized by some critics as a fine soundtrack, not a movie) probably cost more than Harris’ entire budget.
6. Regrets, I’ve had a few: Although the festival felt at times light on discovery, there were still movies I wished I’d seen (either because of a building hum about them, the filmmaking talent, or both): “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in a comedy thriller by Shane Black; Lee Daniels’ “Shadowboxer,” starring Cuba Gooding and Helen Mirren; “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” with Judi Dench; “Thank You for Smoking,” Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s satirical novel.
7. There’s good movie violence, meaningful mayhem, and empty but oh-so-stylish film brutality: In one day, I saw all three. The battering started with David Cronenberg’s remarkable “A History of Violence,” proceeded to Tommy Lee Jones’ impressive directorial debut (“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”) and ended with bangs and whimpers of existential profundity in Guy Ritchie’s “Revolver.”
