One of our very best actors, Brian Cox, makes a somewhat belated directorial debut with the Toronto world premiere Glenrothan, in which he also stars. Set in his native Scotland and lovingly photographed, the film tantalizes even without a terribly original story. Family conflicts ripple and get fairly predictably resolved. But the cast gallops right past the clichés.
To tell the story of two estranged brothers, Cox turned to another Scottish-born actor, Alan Cumming, who gives the most surprising and resonant performance in the movie. The brothers have not communicated for many years. Cox’s Sandy runs a family distillery in the Scottish Highlands. Cummings’ Donal has been running a music club in Chicago. But when that is destroyed in a fire, he decides to return to Scotland, along with his daughter (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter (Alexandra Wilkie), to see if there is any chance to renew family ties.
Glenrothan
The Bottom Line
The cast compensates for missteps.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Shirley Henderson, Alexandra Shipp Director: Brian Cox Screenwriter: David Ashton
1 hour 37 minutes
The outcome of that long-simmering family quarrel is never really in much doubt, but there are still a few neat surprises involving a couple of rare bottles of whiskey and the fate of two family businesses. Cox is now probably best known for playing Logan Roy in the multi-Emmy winning series, Succession, for several seasons. But he also has had many vivid film roles, including the first incarnation of Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s movie Manhunter. He’s graced Hollywood epics Braveheart, Troy, The Bourne Identity, mixed in with smaller gems like Rushmore, Adaptation and L.I.E. It’s a pleasure to see him at home in the Highlands, and as a director he’s predictably generous with his fellow actors.
Cox was wise to hand the co-star role to Cumming, who shatters his usual image by “butching up,” as the actor noted at the festival. (This film offers a good lesson in the rewards of refusing to typecast actors.) Cox helps Cumming to bring off one of the most rewarding performances of his long career. Shipp also scores as the daughter who knows just when to take charge of her father, and veteran British actress Shirley Henderson proves that she has the presence to make the most of a smaller role as a workhorse at the distillery, who earns a satisfying payday at the end.
Even though the film runs just 97 minutes, it sometimes seems padded and plucks a bit too strenuously at the heartstrings. The overemphatic score by Tommy Reilly and Roddy Hart only exacerbates this tendency to overstate. Cox sometimes needs to place more trust in the actors and the central story without resorting to sentimental flourishes.
Yet the superb cinematography by Jaime Ackroyd helps to ride over excesses in the direction. Cox’s love of the Scottish countryside is apparent, and the beauty of the landscapes works on Donal as he comes to appreciate the homestead that he abandoned. Even those who have an aversion to earnest tales of family reconciliations may give this likable picture a pass. In interviews he gave in Toronto, Cox has said he might direct again, and we look forward to the results.
If there was any lingering doubt regarding Bob Odenkirk‘s late-career reinvention as a legit everyman action star, Normal handily seals the deal. Having proved himself up to the task after Nobody and Nobody 2, he wildly ups the ante with an unapologetically over-the-top small-town crime thriller.
Directed by genre-hopping Ben Wheatley and written by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad from a story hatched by Kolstad and Odenkirk, the subversive Western is a take-no-prisoners gore fest that peppers all the visceral carnage with an equal sprinkling of dry wit. Given that it shares so much of its DNA with those Nobody movies (also penned by Kolstad), it would be understandable if some might think it’s actually Nobody 3, which wouldn’t necessarily work against it. Given the energetic reception that greeted the movie’s world premiere as part of TIFF‘s genre-heavy Midnight Madness section, the indie production should be able to corral U.S. distribution with little difficulty. Amazon MGM Studios has the film for Canada.
Normal
The Bottom Line
A bone-crunching good time.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Midnight Madness) Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey Director: Ben Wheatley Screenwriter: Derek Kolstad
Rated R,
1 hour 30 minutes
As a recent arrival to the quaint town of Normal, Minnesota (population 1890, at least before the bloodbath begins), Odenkirk’s Sheriff Ulysses is more than okay with his temporary placement in the half-abandoned municipality, especially since he seems to be escaping some trauma from his recent past. “My goal is to leave this town just the way I found it,” he maintains, as he leaves yet another unanswered phone message for his estranged wife.
But that proves more easily said than done when Ulysses starts to notice a few cracks in Normal’s genteel exterior. Maybe it’s that overabundance of firearms on display in all the local establishments, or the suspicious death of his predecessor, Sheriff Gunderson, or the town’s oddball Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler). Or maybe it’s that spirit animal of a mysterious mammoth moose that keeps popping up.
Those suspicions are confirmed when, responding to a botched bank heist in progress, Ulysses discovers everybody’s keen on shooting the sheriff, including his two deputies (Ryan Allen and Billy McLellan).
Left with no one to ally himself with except the two failed robbers (Rena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher), Ulysses opts to fight back, whining, “I’m tired of running away from every goddamn thing!” In the middle of unleashing an insane amount of violence, they make the discovery that the bank vault is hiding a substantial stash of gold bars belonging to the incoming Japanese Yakuza, which had been using Normal to hide a portion of their illicit profits in return for a percentage divided among the struggling townspeople. What starts out as a geographic and comedically thematic companion piece to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo decisively shifts gears into Tarantino-worthy grindhouse excess and never looks back. There’s an inventive, Rube Goldberg precision to the barrage of violence that keeps things involving, especially when the Yakuza arrives on the scene.
Handling it all with a detached, shrugging sense of doom, Odenkirk proves the right man for the job at hand in both of the film’s two tonally separate halves, and he’s supported by a colorful cast including Lena Headey as the town’s enigmatic barkeep and McLellan as one of those two deputies, whose squeaky stiff leather jacket keeps announcing his arrival.
The wintry Winnipeg, Manitoba, backdrops provide some stark contrast for all the spilled bits of red, effectively captured by cinematographer Armando Salas (Ozark) in hues of blue and amber, while British director Wheatley marks a welcome return to his earlier works — in particular 2016’s Free Fire, which took home TIFF’s Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award that year.
Even though Wheatley’s previous film was the considerably less enthusiastically received sequel Meg 2: The Trench, one can’t help wondering what tantalizing possibilities a Meg vs. Ulysses match-up might hold.
In introducing his new comedy just ahead of its TIFF world premiere, director Bobby Farrelly noted that Dumb and Dumber, the 1994 release that introduced him and brother Peter to jaded audiences hankering for something edgier or grosser, or, yes, dumber, was also a road movie. But while that 1994 Jim Carrey-Jeff Daniels hit firmly established the Farrelly Brothers brand, the latest solo effort is pretty benign stuff by comparison.
In Driver’s Ed, an earnest but naive high school senior (Sam Nivola), worried that his college freshman girlfriend may have broken up with him, commandeers his driving instructor’s canary-yellow KIA and, joined by three classmates, embarks on a three-hour excursion to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to ensure his fears are unfounded. Those expecting more of a Farrelly-style joyride will have to settle for a casual Sunday drive that cruises along pleasantly but without inspiration, following safely within the established boundaries of Thomas Moffett’s formulaic script. Granted there’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach and, fueled by a charismatic young cast, the vehicle reaches its intended destination with few wrong turns on the way.
Driver’s Ed
The Bottom Line
Sticks safely to the slow lane.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Sam Nivola, Sophie Telegadis, Mohana Krishnan, Aidan Laprete, Molly Shannon, Kumail Nanjiani Director: Bobby Farrelly Screenwriter: Thomas Moffett
1 hour 42 minutes
Handed its gala premiere at the tail end of TIFF, the picture has yet to secure a U.S. distributor. Prime Video has it for Canada.
Nivola, who recently made an impression as Jason Issacs’ and Parker Posey’s sensitive youngest kid in the third season of White Lotus, is well cast as lovelorn Jeremy, a Wes Anderson-obsessed budding filmmaker who fails to see what everyone around him knows all to well — that his girlfriend, Samantha (Lilah Pate), has moved on.
Still unconvinced, he makes the decision to hear it from the source while in the middle of a driving lesson being given by Kumail Nanjiani’s Mr. Rivers, a card-carrying goofball of a substitute instructor with both of his arms in a cast. Opting to accompany Jeremy on his fact-finding mission are cynical Evie (Sophie Telegadis), overachieving valedictorian Apurna (Mohana Krishnan) and, most notably, the high school’s permanently stoned resident drug dealer Yoshi (Aidan Laprete, handily stealing every scene with his pitch-perfect deadpan line-readings).
Meanwhile, harried Principal Fisher (the always reliable Molly Shannon) is doggedly determined to track down the motley crew, snarling “I’m not going to let three dipshits and the valedictorian f-ck me out of tenure!”
Aside from encountering a few inevitable bumps in the road, including an empty gas gauge and almost running over a three-legged cat whom they name Tripod, the trip functions mainly as a journey of self-discovery. The compact KIA functions as a rolling confessional in which the young passengers share their deepest fears, darkest secrets and the realization that they’re all on the same anxiety and depression meds. It all culminates at a prolonged frat party that allows the characters to pair off predictably, arriving at the sort of conclusion that feels like peak John Hughes.
Allowing everything to unfold at an unhurried pace, underscored by a gentle acoustic John Frizzell score, Farrelly hasn’t lost the knack he shared with his brother for mining promising young talent and giving them a platform to shine. Following in the career-boosting footsteps of the likes of Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz and Anthony Anderson, Laprete makes a lasting, tragicomic impression here, which could be a jumping-off point for his film and television future, provided he’s able to sidestep inevitable typecasting.
Maybe it was too much to have expected something fresher than the totally 80s feel-good vibe that Drivers’ Ed is content to deliver, but considering the source, the comedy can’t help but feel unmotivated. It’s what the kids today would call mid.
Taking the notion of skeletons in the family closet quite literally, Alex Winter‘s Adulthood sets out to expose something sinister lurking just beneath suburbia’s fake wood-paneled veneer of respectability. In the case of adult siblings, Megan and Noah, it’s the discovery of a seriously decomposed cadaver stuffed behind one of the basement walls of their childhood home that forces them to reassess their seemingly conventional upbringing.
It’s certainly a tasty premise — one that holds considerable noir-tinged promise — and for at least the first half of the film, the quirky blend of increasingly grisly goings-on and wryly observed social commentary forms a cohesive whole before veering irretrievably out of sync.
Adulthood
The Bottom Line
Suffers from arrested development.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Josh Gad, Kaya Scodelario, Billie Lourd, Anthony Carrigan, Alex Winter Director: Alex Winter Screenwriter: Michael M.B. Galvin
Rated R,
1 hour 37 minutes
While Kaya Scodelario, Josh Gad and a cast of colorful characters keep it all reasonably engaging, the film, which was handed its world premiere at TIFF and is scheduled to arrive in select theaters Sept. 19 ahead of a streaming bow four days later, falls short of reaching its full potential.
Reuniting at their small-town family homestead when their invalid mom has been further incapacitated by a stroke, methodical Megan (Scodelario) and her melodramatic brother Noah (Gad) are reliving childhood memories in their musty basement when they make that fateful discovery behind some damp drywall. It doesn’t take long for them to make the connection that the rotting corpse is that of their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Metzger, who had gone missing back in the ’90s.
Whispers at the time implicated her since-deceased husband as the culprit, but this recent development has Megan and Noah putting their mom and late dad on top of the list of likely suspects. Afraid to call the cops at the risk of losing their inheritance to a crime scene, Noah, an out-of-work L.A. screenwriter, contends he knows what’s best after having worked two seasons on Blue Bloods: They’ll bury Mrs. Metzger’s body in the swamp.
Alas, she doesn’t stay submerged very long, and in short order the police pop up at the hospital where their recovering mother is still unable to speak. Meanwhile, her plotting caregiver (Billie Lourd) shows up at the house claiming Mom admitted to killing Mrs. Metzger and she will take that information to the authorities unless she’s paid $10,000.
Now in full panic mode, Noah calls in back-up in the guise of their weird cousin Bodie (a terrific Anthony Carrigan), who’s something of an Uncle Fester-Freddy Krueger mash-up with a scary weapons collection. But the more he and Meg try to dig themselves out of the nightmare, the deeper they get pulled in, with a mounting body count to match.
In his director’s statement, Winter, whose more recent behind-the-camera output includes documentaries profiling Frank Zappa, YouTube and showbiz kids, counts Alfred Hitchcock, Dashiell Hammett and Bong Joon-ho as key influences in his artistic vision for the script by Michael M.B. Galvin (Fat Kid Rules the World.). That may have been Winter’s intention — there’s also more than a whiff of the Coen brothers figuring into all the mordant mayhem — but the execution proves trickier to pull off for a sustained period. While Winter maintains an effective grip on the desired “noir-lite” tone early on in the proceedings, as Megan and Noah’s lives begin spiraling helplessly out of control unfortunately so does that crucial dark/light balance. By the time Megan seizes control of the reins at the film’s close, the abrupt denouement feels jarringly disconnected rather than organic to the storytelling.
Winter’s cast is certainly up to the seriocomic challenge, with Gad playing a pitch-perfect man-child in an Alamo Drafthouse t-shirt who can’t help but notice that his life has turned into one of his unsold scripts. Meanwhile, Scodelario (Teresa in the Maze Runnerfilm series) is convincing as a wife and mother already contending with a high-stress job and a diabetic child, who comes to rationalize that the apple might not fall far from the tree where her larcenous mama is concerned.
The production also takes good visual advantage of its many scenic Ontario, Canada, locations, especially a sweeping pivotal sequence that’s shot on the SkyBridge, which holds the record as the longest pedestrian bridge in North America.
If only Adulthood could have ended up making it to the other side.
Back in the early 2000s, a pair of blue-eyed Scottish lads with dreams of becoming the next Eminem — but dismissed as sounding like “the rapping Proclaimers” — proceeded to pass themselves off as Southern California hip-hoppers, remarkably managing to pull off a hoax that gets them signed by a major record label.
It’s the stuff that episodes of VH1’s Behind the Music are made of, but in the talented hands of James McAvoy, making his directorial debut, those well-traveled, rise-and-fall tropes nevertheless make for an underdog dramatic comedy that proves hard to resist.
California Schemin’
The Bottom Line
A thoughtful charmer.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Cast: Seamus McLean Ross, Samuel Bottomley, Lucy Halliday, Rebekah Murrell, James McAvoy Director: James McAvoy Screenwriters: Archie Thomson, Elaine Gracie
1 hour 47 minutes
With a charismatic cast headed by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley, California Schemin’ is a nimbly paced yarn that may not have set out to reinvent the wheel, but makes for a buoyant excursion nonetheless. It wouldn’t be surprising for the film to emerge from TIFF, where it was handed its world premiere, securing a U.S. theatrical distribution deal.
Finding it tricky to establish hip-hop street cred when you’re two baby-faced kids from Dundee, rap duo Billy Boyd (Bottomley) and Gavin Bain (Ross), better known as Silibil N’ Brains, have been occupying their waking hours spitting bars with a decidedly Scottish brogue. Realizing they’re going to need to up their game if they have a shot of making it into the big leagues, they grab a map of California and proceed to create a fake backstory for themselves: They claim to hail from Hemet (!) after their first answer, “the projects of Beverly Hills,” fails to fool a record exec (James Corden) and they cobble together a semblance of an American accent studying movies like Jerry Maguire and The Usual Suspects.
They take the rebooted Silibil N’ Brains for a test run at a club, where they capture the attention of a talent scout (Rebekah Murrell) for Neotone Records in England. A hotshot producer (McAvoy) agrees to sign the boys to a recording contract.
Initially the scheme is to drop their facade during a scheduled appearance on a popular MTV show where they would decry the industry’s “racism.” But Gavin, finding himself swept up by the more excessive trappings of their new lifestyle and growing resentful of Mary’s emotional tug on Billy, reneges on the deal, driving a widening wedge between them.
Taking its cues from Bain’s 2010 tell-all, Straight Outta Scotland, which in turn inspired the 2013 BBC Four documentary, The Great Hip Hop Hoax, their story held understandable attraction for McAvoy, himself no stranger to the concepts of authenticity and remaining true to oneself. Despite his hailing from Glasgow, over the course of his 30 years as a film actor there have only been a handful of times when he’s actually played Scottish characters.
Sharing a tangible feel for the characters and their working-class milieu, McAvoy demonstrates an unfussy sincerity in his directing approach, one that, especially before things take a darker turn in the second half, evokes the sort of easy charm found in the films of fellow Scotsman Bill Forsyth.
Given that the Silibil N’ Brains story played fast and loose with the truth, it should come as no surprise that the screenplay by Elaine Gracie and Archie Thomson obviously takes its own dramatic license. For example, their record deal was actually with Sony Music UK and their break-up happened years before the hoax was revealed; it was not the cause of the split, as depicted in the film.
At the end of the day, Bain and Boyd may have duped the public, but they didn’t have to hang their heads in Milli Vanilli shame. Fake accents aside, it was still their own voices doing the rapping. And while that 15-minutes-of-fame schematic might be an all-too-familiar tune, California Schemin’sultimate success is all in the delivery.
High school can really get under your skin, as Emile Hirsch is discovering in this exclusive first look image from the horror-comedy Lice.
Hirsch stars in the film, which is in post-production, as a burned-out science teacher, Mr. Shanker, whose school is thrown into chaos when a parasite begins infecting the student body, turning the teenagers into maniacs. The uninfected students and staff are left to reign in the chaos and get to the bottom of the illness — a possible government experiment gone wrong. And, in a first look at the film, Hirsch’s Mr. Shanker is clearly not having a good time.
Elsewhere in the movie, from director Jonathan Bensimon, are the overwhelmed and over-imbibing Principal Van (Justin Long) and Detective Sikorski (Kevin Connolly), who is working outside the school grounds to contain the outbreak before it consumes the entire town.
Connelly is pulling double duty, producing under Connolly’s ActionPark Productions banner, with Jeremy Alter and Gary Goldman also acting as producers.
Anthony Musella and Lizze Gordo wrote the screenplay for Lice, which is for sale out of the Toronto Film Festival with Highland Film Group handling international sales.
The Last Viking, the latest collaboration between Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen and his longtime muses Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, is a wild, darkly comic fable about brotherhood, identity and the limits of sanity.
The frankly bonkers plot follows two brothers. Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber whose loot is entrusted to his traumatized younger brother Manfred (Mikkelsen). But by the time Kaas is released from prison, Manfred — a former Viking obsessive — has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. He now believes he’s John Lennon. To jog his memory as to where he stored the cash, Kaas decides to find a collection of similarly afflicted patients — ones that think they’re George, Ringo and Paul — and bring the Fab Four back together.
For Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas, who have previously pushed Jensen’s brand of lunatic sincerity in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice, The Last Viking was another chance to dive headfirst into the madness while keeping hold of something real. “The brother story was, I thought, really beautiful,” Mikkelsen notes. “That way we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where they saw each other for who they were.”
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas to talk about why they keep returning to Jensen’s universe, how they found the reality inside these extreme characters, and whether they’re team Beatles or team Abba.
What made you decide to come on to this absolutely nuts movie? What about the story pulled you in?
NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS For me, it was basically the question about identity and how we have to accept that we are different people. We’re in the same community, and we have to coexist with all our differences. I think it’s a great question to raise, and that was the main reason I saw this as a great project. We also talked about the brothers and how they have to accept each other because they have this huge difference from the start.
MADS MIKKELSEN I was attracted to these guys, and because it’s Anders Thomas. This theme of being yourself, as well, but the brother story was, I thought, really beautiful. We enhanced it, made sure it was the heart of the film. That way, we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where [the two brothers] saw each other for who they were.
KAAS Because Anders’ universe is so crazy, full of all these wild personalities, we knew we had to focus on the bond. What is their profound connection? That was where we kept our attention.
You’ve both pushed the limits with Anders Thomas before, in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice.
MIKKELSENWe’ve both gone to the edge of what’s possible with Anders. We might even have crossed it a few times. But it’s a nice place to be — in Anders’ universe, with friends who know how far to go. You feel comfortable reaching for that limit because you know they’ll pull you back if it’s too much. I don’t think I’d do that with any other director.
How did you approach Manfred — a grown man who thinks he’s John Lennon?
MIKKELSENI approached him as a child — a kid seven, eight, nine years old — with the same impulses, the same narcissism, and the same sense of poetry and beauty in places no one else sees. That also makes him very difficult to live with. That informed everything I did, how he moves, how he talks, how he reacts to things. He’s a guy who tends to throw himself out of windows when things don’t go his way.
Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in The Last Viking.
Courtesy of TrustNordisk
The film touches on identity and even identity politics. How does that discussion play out in Denmark, and how does it connect to the film?
MIKKELSENEverything that comes to Denmark comes five years later, and with a smaller wave. So yes, the discussion is there too. But it hasn’t influenced my life in a big way. It was very important for the media to deal with it constantly for a period. I don’t know if that’s why Anders made the film but, for me, it’s not the main theme. It’s more the “hat” the film is wearing. If you make films about politics — and you just called it “identity politics” — it’s boring. Everything is boring when it’s about politics. It has to be about human beings and their behavior. That’s the heart of a film. Then you can put a political hat on top. But it can’t be the core.
KAASI think the film raises a big question mark about the idea of identity. It doesn’t make a statement. It asks: Can we accept our differences? That is so important. We have to coexist. That’s the main plan for everyone — to find a way, because we all have to be here.
MIKKELSEN Exactly. And Anders also shows how quickly we build walls, because somebody says, “They’re the problem.”
Which Beatle do you self-identify as?
MIKKELSEN Which one is alive? Ringo. I’d be Ringo.
KAAS I’d say the same. He’s a really nice guy; everybody talks about how nice he is. He seems to have the best time.
MIKKELSEN And he’s got no gray hair.
KAAS Exactly. I’d choose Ringo as well.
A major conflict in the film is between Abba and Beatles fans. Are you team Abba or team Beatles?
KAAS You can’t put them up against each other.
MIKKELSEN Exactly — why does there have to be a conflict? They’re great for different things. We grew up with Abba and were proud of our neighbors making music that went global. But in terms of the music itself, that’s really up to a musician to answer.
KAASI love both worlds. You can’t say one is better than the other.
What was the most fun moment on set?
MIKKELSEN The funny thing is, if you play the “straight guy,” as Nikolaj does, then you’re standing next to complete insanity. That’s a hard job, because you’re not part of it. Being in that insanity is easier — you rarely crack up because you’re in that bubble. But being the one looking at it can be absurd.
KAASDefinitely. But honestly, we held it together better on this one. On Men & Chicken, that was tougher. You have to remind yourself that these characters don’t see their world as absurd or comedic. This is reality to them. That’s the most important thing in Anders’ films — to keep it real, even in the midst of insanity.
What makes Anders Thomas Jensen’s films so different?
KAASI don’t think he has a choice, that’s how his mind works. In Denmark, a lot of directors envy the fact that he’s that bold. His storytelling has something of the fable about it. He creates his own realm every time.
MIKKELSEN It’s there even in his first film, Flickering Lights, that poetry was there. He didn’t really get the credit for it — people called it a “boys’ film.” But he’s always been dealing with big subjects: Family, death, life, God, Satan. Enormous things. For him, the only way to tell those stories without being pretentious is to wrap them in insanity. But inside there’s big honesty and big poetry. That’s what makes him unique.
Many of Anders Thomas’ films have been adapted into English. Do you think his work translates well internationally?
KAAS That’s a good question. I’ve seen some of his films received in the U.S., and the approach is completely different. His films tend to be received very differently in different countries. Even Canada receives them differently from the U.S.. And I honestly don’t know how Sweden will take this one.
MIKKELSEN I once accepted an award on his behalf for The Green Butchers. For Best Drama. Now, that film is obviously not a drama. But that’s how they travel sometimes. Anders is also very wordy, and subtitles can only capture maybe 30 percent of it. Those words are very important to his universe. If people still like the film despite missing that layer, then they’re getting something else out of it. But it’s hard to say what.
KAASThat’s why I’m always curious to see what happens abroad. And yes, maybe even a little worried.
MIKKELSEN Especially with Sweden. They’re so close to us, yet sometimes the establishment there interprets things very differently. But I hope they’ll love it.
Speaking of adaptations — Mads, one of your most acclaimed films, Another Round, is being remade in the U.S. What are your thoughts on that?
MIKKELSENI’m fine with people doing it — as long as I don’t have to. (Laughs.) I don’t know how it works, honestly. Another Round had a very specific Danish approach: It looks at heavy drinking not by condemning it, but by finding comedy in it. Finding comedy in the drama without making it into a comedy. That tonality is hard to replicate. My fear is they’ll turn it into a straight comedy or a finger-wagging “don’t drink” story. But if they can’t find the same balance Thomas did, then why do it? Maybe they’ll change it completely. But then it becomes a different story.
You both work internationally but keep returning to Denmark. What brings you back?
MIKKELSEN My language, my friends, and this kind of storytelling. Anders Thomas’ films are unlike anything else. It’s just nice to come home. I love being abroad, but I love being home too. So far, I’m lucky enough to do both.
KAAS For me, it’s specifically Anders Thomas. You don’t find his kind of storytelling anywhere else. That’s a big reason to keep working with him in Denmark.
Maude Apatow’s directorial debut Poetic License is an intergenerational coming-of-age film about an aimless middle-aged wife and mother who comes into the lives of two college students with problems of their own. When her husband (Method Man) accepts a position as an economics professor at a prestigious university, Liz (Leslie Mann) decides to audit a poetry class to fill her time while their daughter Dora (Nico Parker) starts her last year of high school. In a new town full of people she doesn’t know, Liz is floundering while both her husband and daughter quickly adjust and make new friends. When Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) and Ari (Cooper Hoffman) meet her in poetry class, Liz becomes a romantic fixation for both of them. But Liz is oblivious to their feelings and the growing rivalry between the two for her attention and affection — she’s too busy obsessing over Dora and the looming realization that her daughter doesn’t need her as much anymore.
As a former couples therapist, Liz immediately clocks the codependent relationship between Ari and Sam, spending time with them mainly because she’s intrigued by their dynamic. Ari is a rich kid who lives alone in a lavish apartment with no ambition beyond getting Sam to move in with him. But Sam would rather live in the dorms and be an RA, while working on his degree in economics. Sam also has a girlfriend (Maisy Stella) whose presence is a constant source of annoyance for Ari.
Poetic License
The Bottom Line
Warm and well-acted but disappointingly generic.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Cast: Leslie Mann, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Nico Parker, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Martha Kelly, Maisy Stella, Will Price Director: Maude Apatow Writer: Raffi Donatich
1 hour 57 minutes
But both boys agree on Liz, asking for her advice and approval at every turn. She gives her time to them freely, simultaneously revisiting her youth while also acting as a parental figure. And despite her lack of confidence, Liz gives Sam and Ari some solid advice throughout their time together.
Mann, Hoffman and Feldman are clearly having a good time, and their comedic chemistry carries the film. But for the most part, Poetic License feels just as aimless as Liz, wandering from scene to scene without much of a vision. Each scene seems to end too quickly, not giving the characters and their dialogue enough space to breathe. Even in the emotional moments, the audience is never given time to sit with the meaning behind what’s being said. The scenes in the poetry class feel perfunctory, suggesting no real interest in writing, form or meter. The professor (Martha Kelly) never actually teaches her students anything, instead rambling about her ongoing divorce and conflicts with her soon to be ex-wife. Kelly is funny in the role, but she never feels like a poetry professor and there’s a sense that if the film had centered on just a regular creative writing class everything would have played out in the exact same way.
Nothing feels specific about Poetic License and all the details seem randomly chosen. “Poetry” and “economics” are portrayed like topics drawn out of a hat, with no real reasoning behind their inclusion in the narrative. We don’t know why Sam or Liz’s husband are into economics in the first place or what it means for both these characters to share an area of study. We also don’t know why Ari is taking the poetry class at all, or even what his major is.
The film’s script, written by Raffi Donatich, works best as an exploration of the troubled bonds between Ari, Sam, Liz and Dora. But everything around them comes off as superficial, with interchangeable details that only serve to set the scene. This gives the movie a generic quality, most obvious in the scenes involving Liz’s husband. Method Man seems lost in Poetic License, woefully miscast as a no-nonsense academic with no real personality to speak of. His role in Liz’s life functions as a built-in barrier to ensure that the film’s love triangle has no real romantic stakes. Parker fares a bit better as Liz’s level-headed daughter, even though her personality is just as ill-defined as her father’s.
As a first-time director, Apatow shows some promise, especially in the tender scenes between Mann and Parker. Apatow shoots Mann with the eye of an adoring daughter, in awe of her mother’s seemingly effortless humor and warmth. The camera also loves Hoffman, who quietly steals the movie whenever he’s onscreen, giving dimension to a character who could so easily come off obnoxious.
Despite its shortcomings, Poetic License is a film with a big heart populated by talented actors genuinely having fun with their characters. It’s a shame, then, that the story begins to fade from memory as soon as the credits roll.
The season of Skarsgards continues with Dead Man’s Wire, a Gus Van Sant-directed dramedy based on a dark true story from 1977, which showcases a terrific performance by Bill Skarsgard (It) as a Luigi Mangione-like figure. The timely film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Princess of Wales Theatre on Sunday — having world premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a rave from THR — and went over extremely well. It is still seeking U.S. distribution, but will surely soon find it, and when it does, assuming it is released this year, it could thrust Skarsgard into the thick of an Oscar race that already includes his father Stellan (for a supporting performance Neon’s Sentimental Value) and brother Alexander (for a supporting turn in A24’s Pillion).
Dead Man’s Wire, the first produced feature scripted by Austin Kolodney, centers on Tony Kiritzis, an Indianapolis man who poured his life savings into a real estate investment, the sale of which, he felt, was then deliberately sabotaged by his mortgage broker, thrusting him into a rage. He showed up at the office of the mortgage company, seeking its CEO M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), but, upon learning that the man was on vacation, met up with the man’s son Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), the company’s president, and took him hostage. Kiritzis connected a sawed-off shotgun to a wire that he placed around Hall’s neck, and, in full view of the police and media, transported him back to his own apartment, from which negotiations commenced. As twisted as Kiritzis’ behavior was, he became something of a folk hero after sharing his motives via interviews with a popular local DJ (Colman Domingo).
Watching the film, one cannot help but think of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon (underscored by the presence of Pacino in both films) and Mangione, the man who assassinated a health care executive in cold blood late last year but retained support from much of the public. Resentment of the rich by the poor dates back to the beginning of time, but it is clearly spiking at the moment, as evident in everything from the popularity of Donald Trump (ironically), Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to another 2025 film about the abduction of a powerful corporate titan, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia.
Dead Man’s Wire, which was shot in just 19 days, is clearly a low-budget film, so I imagine its asking price won’t be terribly high. A distributor who would like to have an instant best actor Oscar contender would be wise to snap it up. Van Sant, one of the great actors’ directors of his time, has directed several prior performances that went on to not only Oscar noms, but wins (Robin Williams in 1997’s Good Will Hunting and Sean Penn in 2008’s Milk), and he’s in fine form on this one.
The opening credits of the heist thriller Fuze flicker and shake like action-movie credits used to do back in the good old Tony Scott days. That’s an early indication that the film, from director David Mackenzie and writer Ben Hopkins, has a clear sense of what tradition it wants to honor. The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.
Mackenzie, the director behind sturdy films like Hell or High Water, keeps Fuze trotting along at a steady clip. It begins as a story of civic suspense: A London construction crew unwittingly digs up an unexploded bomb from the Blitz, similar to an event that really happened in Plymouth last year. It’s a compelling setup, connecting the sleek modernity of Fuze to a horror of the past. The clock ticks all too swiftly as the police and military work to clear the area and bring in a special team, led by an army major played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who will try to defuse the bomb.
Fuze
The Bottom Line
Meat and potatoes, well-prepared.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw Director: David Mackenzie Writer: Ben Hopkins
1 hour 38 minutes
While they perform that bogglingly dangerous task, another series of events is unfolding beneath them. Theo James and Sam Worthington (this is a film admirably committed to the casting of hunks) are down in the basement of a suddenly abandoned building, surely up to no good. It soon becomes evident that they are using the distraction to stage a raid on a bank vault, up against their own ticking clock as they drill through brick and concrete.
The fun of this opening stretch is that we’re rooting for both groups to succeed, for London to be saved and for the thieves to get their hands on whatever they’re after. Mackenzie smoothly toggles between storylines, ratcheting up the tension and giving us quick but useful character sketches.
Fuze has a lively energy, a cool, daylit bravado that occasionally brings to mind Spike Lee’s Inside Man. Like that shrewd film, Fuze is more than first meets the eye. Before long, the two narratives have intertwined and the film rollicks away from its initial premise and into the realm of double-cross, job-gone-wrong crime caper. Some of the plot mechanics may strain credibility, but one does not come to a film like Fuze looking for docudrama. The internal logic of Hopkins’ busy script is sound enough to hold our attention as we try to suss out just who is zooming whom, and how.
Throughout, Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography is bright and crisp, holding the film in the glossy, liminal space between A-feature and B–movie. That’s a great place to be, one that used to be occupied by many studio films every year. Not so much in our streaming era, when there is a stark aesthetic divide between what makes it to theaters and the toss-off stuff that is designed to only ever exist in the digital bazaar of the internet. One hopes that an enterprising American distributor will give Fuze a go at multiplexes; it earns that distinction.
The actors are having fun, too. Taylor-Johnson is a convincingly intense and sweaty hotshot, while James gamely dons a South African accent to play a slimy operator who seems a step or two ahead of everyone else. Gugu Mbatha-Raw radiates steely competence as a policewoman overseeing things from a multi-screen control room—any movie of this ilk worth its salt needs that kind of omniscient observer. Worthington is perhaps a little underserved, but it’s always nice to see him outside the blue fugues of the Avatar films.
Mackenzie has now debuted two solid thrillers at Toronto in a row. So why not make that a new annual custom? Hampering the dream some is that Relay, which premiered here last year, didn’t do much business when it opened in the U.S. in late August. But maybe Fuze, with its more easily parsed and marketable premise, will break through. It’s not high art, but not everything ought to be. And anyway, riding the middle is its own tricky maneuver; it takes a lot of smarts to not overthink things.
John Candy is having a bit of a moment. While it has been more than three decades since the beloved Canadian comic actor died tragically too soon, at the age of 43, of a heart attack, his legacy continues to burn brightly. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of Splash, the film that really jump-started Candy’s big screen career; next month sees the release of the biography, John Candy: A Life in Comedy, penned by Paul Myers (brother of Mike); and this week the Toronto International Film Festival kicked off its 50th anniversary edition with the premiere of John Candy: I Like Me, a big-hearted documentary that’s as embracing and generous of spirit as the man himself. It launches on Amazon Prime Video starting October 10.
Directed by Colin Hanks, and featuring testimonials and reminiscences from those who knew him best — family, friends and colleagues including Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Andrea Martin, Bill Murray and Hanks’ dad Tom, who played his brother in the aforementioned Splash — the assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter while also provoking plenty of tears. Residing just beneath that easygoing, eager-to-please, everyman exterior was a chronic anxiety that reached a crippling peak during his final years.
John Candy: I Like Me
The Bottom Line
The affection is infectious.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) Airdate: Friday, October 10 (Prime Video) Director: Colin Hanks
1 hour 53 minutes
As Hanks charts Candy’s career trajectory from the Second City stages in Chicago and Toronto to cult sketch series SCTV to serving as John Hughes’ muse in eight collaborations — including Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, from which the documentary derives its title, and Uncle Buck — he never loses sight of that nagging undercurrent of insecurity that would haunt the actor despite those successes. As O’Brien puts it, “This industry is very unhealthy for people-pleasers.”
Toronto-raised John Franklin Candy was a shy, introverted big kid who was all of 5 years old when his own father died at age 35, also from heart disease. He’d gain confidence performing improv and sketch comedy, but it was his character work on SCTV, including his inspired takes on Pavarotti, Julia Child and Orson Welles, that made industry folk sit up and take notice.
Spielberg would come calling with a part in 1941. Mel Brooks, on the high praise friend Carl Reiner had for Candy after directing him in Summer Rental, proceeded to cast him as the half-man, half-dog Barf in Spaceballs. “He stuck acting in his back pocket and behaved like a human being,” says Brooks of Candy’s professional ethic.
Despite all that good stuff coming his way, there was still that stubborn undercurrent of melancholy. In response to news of John Belushi (who had tried to persuade his old Second City buddy to join him on Saturday Night Live) dying of a drug overdose in 1982, SCTV colleague Dave Thomas tearfully recalls a despondent Candy saying, “Oh God, it’s starting.” As Thomas elaborates, he carried the weight of his father’s passing every day.
Ironically, eating and drinking would become Candy’s coping mechanism, even as he was aware of his family history. And while his wife Rose shares he would often work out with a trainer and go on extreme diets, she adds that “the industry wanted him big” and his representation wasn’t exactly thrilled when he once shed close to 100 pounds.
By the early ’90s, when he was no longer picking the hits — as one interviewer not-so-gingerly puts it, “You’ve been in more turkeys than a stuffing mix” — Candy embarked on a second career as co-owner of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, along with Wayne Gretzky and Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall.
By then increasingly plagued by panic attacks, he’d die in his sleep on March 4, 1994, while on location in Durango, Mexico, filming the ill-fated comedy Wagons East.
Hanks — who previously directed a pair of music-themed documentaries, including All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records — knows to give the assembled wealth of comedic talent, along with Candy’s widow and two adult children, all the space they need to share the many lively and affecting anecdotes. He accompanies those with a generous sampling of memorable movie and TV clips, archival interview and home movie footage, not to mention a stirring Cynthia Erivo cover of “Every Time You Go Away” by Daryl Hall & John Oates.