Sunday, September 15, 2024




THR's executive editor of awards discusses the dearth of world premieres of real awards contenders, the comatose sales market and the bizarre audience award pick.

By Scott Feinberg

Over the years since this policy was adopted, we have not been able to get a real sense of its impact, partly because in several of those years the pandemic and the strikes were already making TIFF feel very different. But this year, with neither the pandemic nor the strikes an issue, we found out. As one top awards strategist put it to me, “Opening weekend just felt dead.” Indeed, there were chunks of empty seats throughout the major venues; there was little buzz on the streets and in the restaurants; and there were very few world premieres of films with any real awards potential.

Amazon/MGM’s Unstoppable and The Fire Inside proved to be solid entertainments, but with very limited awards paths. A24’s We Live in Time is an effective tearjerker, but it’s more The Fault in Our Stars than A Star Is Born. Searchlight’s Nightbitch stars the great Amy Adams, and some liked it more than others, but it’s not going anywhere with the Academy. And I could go on. The only opening weekend world premiere of an awards hopeful that seemed to matter at all was the one for The Wild Robot, an animated feature which was produced by DreamWorks Animation (in its 30th year on the scene) and will be distributed by Universal.

TIFF certainly caught some bad breaks this year. For one thing, it’s not a particularly deep awards season to begin with, which meant that the fest had limited options. Additionally, while a few big names showed up — among them, Elton John (on behalf of the Disney+ documentary feature Elton John: Never Too Late), Robbie Williams (Paramount’s Better Man), plus a bunch of Netflix talent including Angelina Jolie (Maria), Denzel Washington (The Piano Lesson), Will Ferrell (Will & Harper) and Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) — many others did not. Nicole Kidman (A24’s Babygirl) had to bow out after her mother passed away. None of the stars of Focus’ Conclave — Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow — were able to get out of work obligations in Europe. Emilia Pérez helmer Jacques Audiard suffered a back injury that prevented him from traveling. And the list goes on.

The rest of the TIFF sales market was largely comatose. The only deals of real note were A24’s acquisition of the U.S. distribution rights for The Brutalist, a nearly four-hour VistaVision film with an intermission, after it generated a strong response at Venice; and Hulu’s surprising eight-figure purchase of the opening night film Nutcrackers, which stars Ben Stiller, but about which there was decidedly muted enthusiasm.

A lot of other films, many with big-name talent, came to the fest hoping to find a buyer, but left without one, including The Last Showgirl (Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis), On Swift Horses (Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones), The Friend (Naomi Watts and Bill Murray) and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (the feature directorial debut of Embeth Davidtz).

Which brings us to the TIFF audience award, which has long been a harbinger of Oscar success — each of its last 13 winners went on to at least a best picture Oscar nomination, and three of them, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, 2018’s Green Book and 2020’s Nomadland, took home that prize — but which this year, we learned this morning, went to Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.

The Life of Chuck may be a lovely film, but it had virtually no profile coming in to the fest, generated virtually no discussion at the fest, and still does not even have a U.S. distributor. Passed over for it were Emilia Pérez (which finished second), Anora (which finished third) and The Wild Robot (which the fest apparently tried to boost a little by giving it twelve screenings).

In other words, if TIFF’s relevance to this awards season was in doubt prior to the announcement of the audience award, the audience award announcement certainly did not help its standing.





Which brings us to 2024, where, at the moment, the two movies that have most thrilled audiences at Cannes and the fall film festivals are Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” a musical soap opera about a Mexican cartel boss looking to transition to being a woman, and Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the madcap, generous story of a Brooklyn sex worker who impulsively marries the young son of a Russian oligarch. Both films premiered earlier this year at Cannes, where “Anora” won the festival’s highest prize, the Palme d’Or.

“This isn’t exactly a mainstream movie,” Baker said at Cannes, both stating the obvious and expressing the tone of the upcoming awards season in a mere half-dozen words.

From the size of the crowds standing outside theaters showing “Anora” at Telluride, you might have suspected Baker was underselling his movie a bit. Hundreds were turned away, a notable (and happy) contrast to the divisive reception that Baker’s last movie, “Red Rocket,” received at the festival two years ago.

Have audiences become more open and adventurous? We’re about to find out as we enter an Oscar season that seems as unsettled as any in recent memory, dominated by international auteurs, indie offerings and, fingers crossed (because we could really use a maximalist miracle), Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II.”

Even the one blockbuster that’s already locked for a best picture nomination, Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two,” stands as daring cinema, its spectacle aiming for both the gut and the intellect.

Villeneuve’s first “Dune” movie won six Oscars two years ago. The sequel might equal that count. But being the second film of a planned trilogy (even if Villeneuve doesn’t like to define the series that way), a best picture win is unlikely, an outcome any middle child already knows in their secret heart.

While “Anora” and “Emilia Pérez” established themselves at Cannes, the fall festivals offered a murkier picture of the season. “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film, won the Golden Lion for best film at Venice. The drama follows a terminally ill journalist (Tilda Swinton) who asks a close friend (Julianne Moore) to stay with her as she contemplates taking her own life. Festival buzz at Venice and Toronto, aside from the Golden Lion, felt respectful but not quite rapturous.

The Telluride premieres of “Conclave” and “Nickel Boys” offered contrasting portraits of the ways audiences receive movies at festivals. The movies played back-to-back on Telluride’s opening night, with Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” a lively and occasionally clever melodrama about a bunch of petty cardinals choosing the next pope, wowing the crowd with a series of pulpy plot twists. Ralph Fiennes does most of the heavy lifting, playing a dutiful and doubting man overseeing the vote. “Conclave” feels like a movie made for the Oscars: absurd, stylish and not nearly as shrewd as it thinks it is. Expect it to clean up.

“Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’ disorienting adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s celebrated novel, followed “Conclave” and knocked its audience sideways. Shot from the point of view of its characters, two Black boys navigating the horrors of a Florida reform school, “Nickel Boys” invites moviegoers to immerse themselves and bear witness. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, wonderful as a loving grandmother, said festivalgoers approached her after the screening, calling the movie “tough.” That’s fine with her.

“I think that we have been conditioned as moviegoers, particularly in this country, to have an expectation of how we should feel watching a film,” Ellis-Taylor told me at Telluride. “I want to be an advocate for cinema that is not palliative.”

To that end, the movie of the season might be “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s 3½-hour epic that inspired a fierce bidding war after its Venice premiere, with chic indie studio A24 winning the rights. The story of a Hungarian Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) who survives World War II and relocates to America, the film is sprawling, nervy and demanding. It has an overture and an intermission and has been compared to “The Godfather” in the way it examines the American dream. The hype will be overwhelming when it arrives in theaters later this year.

By contrast, a below-the-radar standout is Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s astonishing “All We Imagine as Light,” winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, and also a selection at Telluride, Toronto and the upcoming New York Film Festival. The film follows the lives of two roommates who work together as nurses at a hospital in Mumbai, capturing their dreams and disappointments in rich, evocative detail.

Some films failed to make it out of the festivals unscathed, with critics roasting “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the sequel to Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” with Joaquin Phoenix reprising his Oscar-winning turn opposite Lady Gaga. The good news: Gaga now will have more time to tour behind her new record rather than campaigning for an Oscar.

“Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as legendary opera singer Maria Callas, is Pablo Larraín’s latest look at a famous woman imprisoned by image and celebrity, following “Jackie” (about Jacqueline Kennedy) and “Spencer” (about Princess Diana). It’s a feast for the eyes and ears but also a bit lifeless. Reviews were mixed, but never underestimate how awards voters will swoon for a biopic.

Jolie will have plenty of competition in the lead actress category, including Mikey Madison (“Anora”) and Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”), along with Saoirse Ronan, who received a tribute at Telluride primarily pegged to her work playing a woman trying to maintain her sobriety in “The Outrun,” a Sundance premiere.

There’s also a ferociously raw turn from Oscar winner Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl,” a drama about desire that was the talk of Venice and Toronto, and more greatness from Amy Adams, somehow not yet an Oscar winner, in the Toronto-premiering “Nightbitch,” a movie about the demands and joys of motherhood that also prompted a great deal of conversation, much of it decidedly dumb. Demi Moore was in Toronto too for the North American premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” a horror movie about women’s value in showbiz that contains the best work she has ever done.

Which brings us to movies not yet seen. There’s James Mangold’s look at Bob Dylan going electric, “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet. Jon M. Chu has staged a lavish adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked.” And Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen pays tribute to Londoners living through World War II in “Blitz,” which will premiere in a few weeks at the London Film Festival and will close the New York Film Festival, making it one of the last contenders to launch.

Except, of course, for “Gladiator II,” this year’s only appropriate answer to the question: “What’s your Roman Empire?” Unless it’s Ridley Scott, cranking out epic movies year after year, well into his 80s. He’s an acceptable response as well.


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