Every year, audiences, critics and Hollywood insiders look to the Toronto International Film Festival to guide us. The 40-year-old event has a shockingly impressive reputation for introducing the world to some of the best motion pictures ever made, and of kicking off the yearly Oscar season by highlighting powerful and distinctive motion pictures, many of which are destined for those pesky year-end “Top Ten” lists we all have to write.
Don’t believe me? Here is a very short list of exceptional films that played TIFF over the last few years alone: 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Spotlight, The Martian, Anomalisa, The Witch, Nightcrawler, Whiplash, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Ida, Under the Skin, The Wind Rises, Blue Ruin, Argo, End of Watch, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Act of Killing.
Crave will, of course, be at TIFF 2016, reviewing films and interviewing filmmakers, but it’s such an enormous event that even if we sent our whole staff we couldn’t possibly see and do everything. So we simply have to prioritize, and to do that we need to be methodical. We took at look at the TIFF 2016 schedule and highlighted one dozen films that we think you should try to see if you’re with us in Toronto, and that you should probably keep an eye on as the buzz emerges from the festival.
Then again, the point of any and every film festival is to discover something completely new. So while we have a good feeling about these films, it’s entirely possible that A) they might let us down, and B) the biggest story of TIFF is going to be a motion picture that comes completely out of nowhere.
So take a look at thirteen of the films we think you should be excited about, and keep coming back to Crave this week and next for all of our ongoing coverage!
Thirteen Must-See Films at TIFF 2016:
Top Photo: Focus Features
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
TIFF 2016: 12 Films That Should Excite You
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All I See Is You
Blake Lively stars as a blind woman who regains her sight, and discovers that her marriage might not be all it seemed to be. A challenging concept with a great cast, directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball).
Photo: LINK Entertainment
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The Bad Batch
Ana Lily Amirpour brought her unique sensibilities to the vampire genre with the acclaimed A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, and for her big follow-up she's tackling community cannibalism. Another impressive cast features Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves.
Photo: Annapurna Pictures
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Colossal
Anne Hathaway stars in a very unusual kaiju story, about a woman who loses everything but discovers she has a connection to a giant monster. Nacho Vigalondo (Time Crimes) directs, Jason Sudeikis and Dan Stevens co-star.
Photo: Warner Bros.
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Elle
Paul Verhoeven may be best known to American audiences as the director of Robocop and Total Recall, but his latest film sounds dark as hell. Isabelle Huppert stars as a successful business woman who is sexually assaulted, and begins stalking her assailant for revenge.
Photo: SBS Productions
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Free Fire
Kill List and High-Rise director Ben Wheatley travels to America for a shoot out movie with a stellar cast, including Cillian Murphy and recent Oscar-winner Brie Larson. Will the horror master who brought us Kill List be able to change the way we look at action?
Photo: Film4 Productions
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The Handmaiden
Shock filmmaker Chan-wook Park has blown our minds with disturbing films like Oldboy and Stoker, but his new film is a classy period piece about a handmaiden (hence the title) conning her new mistress, but falling in love with her anyway. The promise of sumptuous costumes and production design, old school romance and - since it's still Chan-wook Park after all - a few mind-blowing twists make The Handmaiden one of the most enticing films of the year.
Photo: CJ Entertainment
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Jackie
Since winning a Best Actress Oscar for Black Swan, Natalie Portman hasn't really found a high-profile role worthy of her talents. Perhaps this biopic about Jackie Kennedy, which takes place over the course of the JFK assassination, will finally give her the opportunity to shine again.
Photo: Wild Bunch
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La La Land
Damien Chazelle does an about-face after his impossibly dark, award-winning Whiplash for a colorful musical about Hollywood, inspired by European classics like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling reteam for a film that everybody is already raving about after its premiere at other festivals.
Photo: Summit Entertainment
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Loving
One of the most important court cases in American history, dramatized by the great Jeff Nichols (Mud), starring the great Ruth Negga (Preacher) and the great Joel Edgerton (Warrior), as an interracial couple who dared to get married when their love was literally illegal.
Photo: Focus Features
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A Monster Calls
The Orphanage director J.A. Bayona returns to the supernatural genre with an adaptation of the hit novel by Patrick Ness, about a boy who deals with his mother's illness by escaping into a world of the supernatural. A Monster Calls could be one of those rare films that bridges the gap between horror and drama in a way that awards voters find palatable... if it's good enough.
Photo: Focus Features
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Nocturnal Animals
A Single Man director Tom Ford finally - FINALLY - returns with an ambitious dramatic thriller, starring Amy Adams as a woman who gets lost in a novel written by her first husband, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Whatever Tom Ford is doing, we're interested.
Photo: Focus Features
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(re)Assignment
Genre master Walter Hill is back with a premise so audacious, it's downright offensive. Michelle Rodriguez plays a man who is forced to undergo genre reassignment surgery, and sets out to exact revenge. Will (re)Assignment be completely wrongheaded and worthy of scorn, or will Walter Hill prove that he has something worthwhile to say?
Photo: SBS Productions
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The Unknown Girl
The Dardennes Brothers try their hand at the thriller genre with an emotional drama about a doctor at a clinic who ignores a patient's cries for help, and winds up exploring the unknown woman's life out of guilt after she dies. Few filmmakers navigate difficult emotions more beautifully than the Dardennes.
Photo: Diaphana
