Watch Toronto videos of Oscar winners and the best of the fest
TORONTO — It’s not everyday that we take photos of Oscar winners, unless we happen to be at the Toronto International Film Festival, when it is everyday.
On Friday, during our first session of operations alone, we had the pleasure of shooting Academy Award winners Michelle Yeoh and “Boyhood” mom Patricia Arquette, not to mention two-time Cannes Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, most recently of the upcoming “Fjord.”
You should bookmark this link and check it regularly to see Jason Armond’s beautiful portraits. Courteney Cox? Jodie Comer? Sebastian Stan doing his serious face? It’s all here.
Our first wave of video interviews is live
Want a quick hit of festival buzz? How about Courteney Cox, Arquette and David Harbour getting scrappy over their favorite pizza toppings? They’re here to promote the Cox-directed “Evil Genius,” about the notorious pizza bomber incident.
Ten years after “The Love Witch” rocked audiences, writer-director Anna Biller is back with “The Face of Horror,” a medieval ghost story and a Technicolor-styled riot of design. She dropped by and mixed it up with our Mark Olsen.
Being a scream queen is a serious honor for Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe, in town with the excellent new slasher “River” but already our favorites for, respectively, “Evil Dead” and “Happy Death Day.”
What are we watching tonight?
‘Misty Green’
Rosalind Eleazar in the movie “Misty Green,” directed by Chris Rock.
(Merrick Morton / TIFF)
Misty Green is an actor — played with searing conviction by Rosalind Eleazar in a star-making performance — who may have missed her moment.
Though the industry has not made things easy for her as she suffers racist and sexist slights both big and small, Misty has not done herself any favors either, at times self-sabotaging with a careless attitude toward her undeniable talent and the work that must go with it.
The past few films Chris Rock has written and directed himself, including 2014’s “Top Five,” have felt distinctly personal, as if he is working out his own feelings about his career and the world.
“Misty Green” points toward redemption and hope on the other side of darkness: a pitiless examination of contemporary Hollywood and the difficulty of holding it all together. — Mark Olsen
‘Closing Night’
Sarah Paulson in the movie “Closing Night.”
(TIFF)
The first half of Cody Fern’s strong debut is about the sweet schadenfreude of watching estranged sisters Sandra (Sarah Paulson) and April (Naomi Watts) scream at each other.
The second half pivots to ask if it’s as cathartic to leave things unsaid. Sandra, a stern Broadway actor, has hit the end of her career. April, an anxious Michigan hairdresser, is in Manhattan to see her dopey son Theo (Toby Wallace) and his pregnant girlfriend Lucy (Odessa A’zion) — who, after the family’s controlling matriarch Diane (Dianne Wiest) shows up, should start having second thoughts about passing down their dysfunctional DNA.
Both Fern and his co-screenwriter Devon are actors themselves, so they’ve written their leads one show-stopper scene after another.
Impressively, Paulson even manages to steal the climax away from Watts’ flighty kleptomaniac as her hard luck character takes her lumps with the courage of someone facing down a firing squad, chin held high. — Amy Nicholson
‘Elsinore’
Andrew Scott in the movie “Elsinore.”
(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)
Already becoming a must-see out of Telluride and now Toronto, this extraordinary actor’s showcase (arriving in theaters Nov. 20) is carried by a fascinatingly complex turn by Andrew Scott, who just might finally earn some of the hardware he deserved for 2023’s “All of Us Strangers.”
Scott plays real-life Scottish actor Ian Charleson, the bright presence of “Chariots of Fire” and “Gandhi” who never quite had the movie career he deserved. But near the end of his career, in defiance of an AIDS diagnosis, he took on the stage role of Hamlet and left a burning impression.
It’s a performance that consistently elevates “Elsinore” from its recognizable trajectory. Scott deepens Charleson’s race against his own mortality with notes of humor, desperation, guilt, self-delusional avoidance and ultimately the deftness of someone who likes playing pretend. — Joshua Rothkopf