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If the goal of this year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival is to introduce a lot of the films that will be competing for awards for the next seven months, the jury is still out after the first four days of the 10-day fest.<\/p>\n
If the goal is to welcome back audiences and give them a chance to celebrate crowd-pleasing cinema in the kind of communal environment that\u2019s been missing for most of the last two years, the verdict is in and the goal has been achieved.<\/p>\n
In the course of 24 hours on two blocks of downtown Toronto\u2019s entertainment district on Friday, three packed houses \u2014 no social distancing and few masks \u2014 played host to, in chronological order:<\/p>\n
And that was just a one-day stretch, which was followed by the enormously successful back-to-back premieres of Rian Johnson\u2019s \u201cGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery\u201d and Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cThe Fabelmans\u201d on Saturday, both of which found the directors coming onstage to celebrate the TIFF experience. \u201cFirst, I\u2019m going to say I\u2019m really glad we came to Toronto!\u201d said Spielberg, who\u2019s been making movies for more than 50 years but said he\u2019d never before brought a film to the festival.<\/p>\n
The lack of social distancing and the paucity of masks may have repercussions down the road, but it gave the festival\u2019s first few days an exuberance that was sorely missed in 2021, when a scaled-down TIFF was a little depressing except when you were able to lose yourself in the films. (The previous year, the festival had been all-virtual, apart from some special screenings for locals only.)<\/p>\n
People came to this year\u2019s festival badly wanting to celebrate, and so far the fest seems programmed to let them do just that, with an unexpectedly large number of mainstream crowd-pleasers screening in prime slots over the first four days. If we can ignore the Oscar race for a little bit longer, this year\u2019s festival is definitely giving us a brutally competitive race for the TIFF audience award, which could plausibly go to almost any of this weekend\u2019s big premieres.<\/p>\n
Of course, the personality of a year at Toronto is not formed wholly by the most commercial entries, even if those seem to have seized most of the attention in the early going. But TIFF has also seen smaller films get attention, including Elegance Bratton\u2019s \u201cThe Inspection\u201d (Jeremy Pope as a gay Black teenager who joins the Marines), Lila Neugebauer\u2019s \u201cCauseway\u201d (with deeply understated performances by Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry) and Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm\u2019s \u201cThe Good Nurse\u201d (more great performances from Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne). Plus some killer (in some cases literally) black comedies, including Mark Mylod\u2019s \u201cThe Menu\u201d (a very twisted comedy about food, art death and Ralph Fiennes\u2019 state-of-the-art imperious glowering), Zachary Wigon\u2019s \u201cSanctuary\u201d (a deliciously nasty two-hander with Christopher Abbott as a rich guy inheriting his father\u2019s company and Margaret Qualley as the dominatrix who\u2019s always a couple of steps ahead of him) and Tim Story\u2019s \u201cThe Blackening\u201d (a twist on the horror movie trope that says the Black characters are killed off first).<\/p>\n
On the documentary side, always a highlight at TIFF, Gabriela Cowperthwaite\u2019s \u201cThe Grab\u201d was an opening-night shocker in the way it followed (and assisted) investigative journalists in uncovering shadowy global schemes to control the food supply in the future; Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen\u2019s \u201cIn Her Hands\u201d had uncommonly deep access to the last female mayor in Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover; and Sacha Jenkins\u2019 \u201cLouis Armstrong\u2019s Black & Blues\u201d tackled the life and work of the protean jazz pioneer and managed to get across all of his contradictions.<\/p>\n
Still to come at TIFF are the movies that have premiered at other festivals but that will play in Toronto at the end of the first weekend; that number began with Darren Aronofsky\u2019s gloriously harrowing \u201cThe Whale,\u201d which received an enormous and lengthy ovation on Sunday afternoon. It will also include Martin McDonagh\u2019s \u201cThe Banshees of Inisherin,\u201d Sam Mendes\u2019 \u201cThe Empire of Light\u201d and Sarah Polley\u2019s provocative \u201cWomen Talking.\u201d<\/p>\n
No doubt the TIFF slate will go a long way toward filling the 2022 awards roster, but the Oscar handicapping feels a little premature at this point. For now, the Toronto International Film Festival seems to be about having fun at the movies. And after the last couple of years we\u2019ve all been through, there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. <\/p>\n
View this article at The Wrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Toronto So Far: Forget the Awards Race! The Crowds Are Loving the Fest, From Spielberg to Weird Al Yankovic: If the goal of this year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival is to introduce a lot of the films that will be competing for awards for the next seven months, the jury is still out after the
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