At this year's Toronto Film Festival, I have already seen more stars in two days than in all the days I spent at last year's film festival. I am seeing the same number of films but this year, the movies all seem to be more mainstream. Is mainstream a bad thing?
Well I guess it depends on why you want to see the movies. Sure some of the films seen here may never to show anywhere else. Either lack of interest, inability to find a distributor, perhaps some are so awful, they do belong in a straight to DVD pile. Others are hidden gems lost forever.
However, seeing Stranger than Fiction was a mainstream film that was worth the price of its A-List stars: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman. A few words of introduction and some improv humour followed by a really enjoyable, darkly comic and romantic movie. It reaffirmed my belief that TIFF is the film festival that is most accessible to the public. Today's screening of The Last Kiss, with a screenplay by Paul Haggis echoed this sentiment.
In direct contrast is the Post-modern life of my Aunt. Captivating acting by the lead but the story line meandered. The perspective of the story was allegedly from that of her nephew yet the boy makes appearance only the start and end of the film. Add in a "moon" fantasy sequence that left most people scratching their heads and jarring change in the tone of the film from romantic comedy to greek tragedy to get a thoroughly disjointed movie. Yet, I do think it was worth watching if only of the delightful performance of Chow Yuen Fat.
And so I await the coming 6 films left to view at this year's TIFF with great anticipation for each movie holds new promise.
