1 Lower your expectations for the 2016 Oscars
Festival season has become a choice launchpad for any prestige movie with ambitions of awards glory. Gravity, Twelve Years a Slave, Birdman, The Imitation Game, Still Alice and The Theory of Everything all began that way over the past couple of years. But, despite new efforts from awards veterans, there is a dismaying lack of frontrunners in this year’s slightly mediocre pack. Julianne Moore’s gay-rights drama Freeheld, Tom Hiddleston’s Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light and Kate Winslet’s The Dressmaker have all fallen at the first hurdle with unimpressed reviews; solid, yet unexciting, films such as Steve Jobs, Truth and Spotlight will likely feature in the race by default. The pressure is now on the year’s remaining unseen chances, including Jennifer Lawrence’s Miracle Mop comedy Joy, and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. If they don’t come through, Vin Diesel’s dream of driving past the finish line with Fast & Furious 7 could become a reality. BL
2 If you want success, skip the studios
Breakout films from all three festivals originated not from studios but streaming services such as Netflix (Beasts of No Nation, Venice), Kickstarter (Anomalisa, Telluride) and Michael Moore’s own pocket (Where to Invade Next, Toronto). Charlie Kaufman’s film is doubtless the big hit – one of the few high-profile sales that has also won critical consensus. There’s a feeling afoot that if studios want to survive in the long term, they need to stop making movies by committee and start identifying hard-up auteurs to bankroll. The creative bankruptcy that has already affected the mainstream is now trickling down to the art-house; a self-perpetuating circle of success, commission, conventionality and inevitable, dull success. “If things aren’t perceived as having commercial potential,” said Kaufman, “there’s really no place in the business for them. Everybody is running scared. It sucks for audiences and film-makers. That’s an unfortunate thing for our society. People are not being fed anything substantial.” CS
3 Bums are back
Some years are all about the nipples; others, it’s the side-boob that rules. This year, however, it’s the turn of the tush. Bryan Cranston’s stood firm against repression as he stripped off in prison for Trumbo, a biopic of the screenwriter blacklisted by 1940s Hollywood; Tom Hiddleston’s hot buns got plenty of airtime as he scampered around Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise; and Sandra Bullock’s buttocks became the talk of the festival after her Our Brand is Crisis character pointed them out of a bus window to a rival political campaign manager. At the press conference for the film, Bullock, asked if she’d used a body double, demurred. When pressed she revealed that yes, she had indeed had a bum buddy: co-star George Clooney. “Great ass!” runs a line of dialogue in the film that follow her exposure. Its echoes round town have scarcely ceased. HB
4 Kate Winslet + Toronto = turkeys
Kate Winslet seems to have a rather rough time at the Toronto film festival. She received an absurdly detailed lesson from a convict in how to make a peach pie in 2013’s romantic melodrama Labor Day, and struggled to hide her impatience at Alan Rickman’s leisurely direction and interest in perennials in 2014’s gardening comedy A Little Chaos. But not one to be put off by bad reviews or non-existent box office, she returned to this year’s fest with oddball Aussie drama The Dressmaker. Tonally exhausting (it veers wildly from marital rape to makeover montages) and bizarrely misjudged, it is being chalked up as another oddity on a CV that was once graced with Oscar love. Yet Winslet’s other film of the season, Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, premiered at Telluride and might push her unevenly accented key role into the awards race. Blame Canada for Kate’s non-triumphs? BL
5 No sense of an ending
Movies that do well at festivals tend to be the ones to leave the audience pumped, or, at least, sniffily. The awards format plays into the hands with final reel crackers because votes are cast by putting your stub in a box as you exit. Remember how exciting the end of Whiplash was? That film won audience and jury prize at Sundance. Remember what a wreck you were as the credits rolled on Twelve Years a Slave? That film triumphed at Toronto two years ago, and went on to win a lot of Oscars. But this year … there’s a problem. Even the iffiest film tends to slump as it reaches its climax, rather than exhibit an upturn. One, for instance, closes with someone randomly funding a carousel for children with learning difficulties. Another – a biopic, this time – has possibly the most heavily foreshadowed death scene of all time. And another wraps up with bagpipes. We bet our house that none of these will take the top gong. CS
