This year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) featured some fascinating and key contenders for the Oscars, 2016!
1.The Martian
This Ridley Scott big-budget science fiction flick will be the probably revive feelings of awe and amazement a movie like Interstellar did, we assure you.
Based on the fantastic Andy Weir novel of the same name, the plot centres around a biologist and astronaut who struggles survive alone on Mars after being mistaken for being dead and thus left on the inhabitable planet by his colleagues. Ridley Scott’s recent attempts at blockbuster films have tanked majoraly (Exodus:Gods and Kings anyone?) so this could just be his massive comeback into the Sci-fi movie fray.
The cast consists of some phenomenal actors including the infallible Matt Damon as the protagonist, supported by Donald Glover, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
2. The Danish Girl
After The Theory Of Everything, there is really no stopping a devoted and skilled actor like Eddie Redmayne it would seem. He stars in The Danish Girl, a movie based on the remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer. In a time when dialogue of trans experiences is at a height, it is only apt that we see a movie that documents the first ever man to woman gender reassignment.
3. Beasts Of No Nation
True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga and Idris Elba for this Netflix original movie that chronicles West Africa’s civil war and it’s atrocities. Told through the eyes of a young boy forced to join a mercenary group as a child soldier, this movie will devastate and haunt you forever.
Watch the desolate and poignant trailer below :
4. I Smile Back
Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and now Sarah Silverman in I Smile Back – Comedians doing serious roles are the new black. Sarah Silverman received major praise for her role in this movie, where she plays an attractive, intelligent suburban wife and devoted mother of two adorable children with the perfect husband. However, just beneath the façade lie depression and disillusionment that send her careening into a secret world of reckless compulsion. The movie very realistically captures and tackles a controversial subject like depression, which Sarah Silverman delicately portrays. Even if the Academy doesn’t pick this one up, from the look of the trailer this movie should make you must-watch list.
5. ROOM
Based on a 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue, Room is told through the perspective of a young boy Jack who is being held captive in a small room with his mother. The story is based off an the horrific Fritzl case that Donoghue heard about before conceiving the idea. Critics have called Brie Larson’s performance ‘a thing to behold’.
6. Spotlight
Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schrieber, Brian D’Arcy James and Stanley Tucci, SPOTLIGHT tells the riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that unsurfaced one of the biggest allegations of systematic child-sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The year long investigation uncovered a 10 year cover up at the highest levels of Boston’s religious, legal and government establishment. Directed by Academy Award-nominee Thomas McCarthy this movie will definitely be nominated for a few Academy Awards at least.