Toronto International Film Festival awards were announced this morning. The top award, the People’s Choice, goes to Hamnet, while the first runner up is Frankenstein, and Wake Up Dead Man being the second runner up. This is Chloe Zhao’s second time winning the award, and she is the only director to do that. With the win, Hamnet should be a major player for Best Picture, much like Nomadland was for Zhao. Over on the International side, No Other Choice won the International People’s Choice, with Sentimental Value being runner up. Now, for me at least, this all leads into Thursday when the Chicago lineup is revealed. I’m expecting some major Oscar players to show up there. They already announced the International Competition selections this past week, and The Secret Agent part of it. Now it just depends on scheduling. On to the reviews.
To start, the plot of this one to put it simply is when a one twin loses his other half in an accident, he finds friendship in another person he meets in a support group for twins. To be more specific, Roman (played by Dylan O’Brien) is grieving the death of his twin Rocky (also O’Brien). When he attends a support group for twinless twins, he meets Dennis (James Sweeney) and the two form a friendship. What Roman doesn’t know is Dennis had a one-night stand with Rocky shortly before his death. So now, Dennis sees Roman as a second chance, despite Roman being straight, but he also has to hide the truth from Roman. This film is Sweeney’s second film he has written/directed, and what he has crafted here was a story about finding someone to help you get through tough times, the importance that can be, and the fear of all of that going away in a second. This film premiered at Sundance in January, and won the Audience Award for dramas. The real standout is O’Brien here, as he plays both twins in very distinct ways, and the pain you can see Roman feeling through the film is heartbreaking. My quibble with this is the ending seemed rushed to me. Once everything is revealed, we only get two or three scenes, and I could have used a little more. Doesn’t ruin the movie without it at all though.
When you leave the theater after watching this, you may just have the feeling like the movie just spun its wheels for an hour and 40 minutes. You wouldn’t be wrong about that. We start the film with Ashley (Adria Arjona) telling her husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) that she wants a divorce. Carey doesn’t take this news well, and proceeds to run to his friends Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul’s (Michael Angelo Covino, the film’s director) house for support. There he finds that Julie and Paul have an open relationship, and when seeing that it works for them, he tells Ashley that it can save their marriage too. What we have for the next hour are the repercussions when those open relationships begin to intermingle. While this is fun for the most part, there aren’t a lot of big ideas within the story. This is a good example of the stigma of festivals being wrong. This premiered at Cannes and so not like the snobby Oscar films I know so many think are found at festivals. This was a just a stupid fun time.
The simplest of plots for this Stephen King story: in a dystopian version of America, a yearly contest is held where one entrant from each state enters a race where the last person walking wins. If you walk off the road, or drop under 3 mph, you get your ticket. That ticket is bullet to the head. So, fun times. Our story revolves around Raymond Garraty, played Cooper Hoffman, but it’s the friend he makes during the walk that I think steals the show. David Jonsson’s Peter injects a spirit into this film that it desperately needs. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any other interesting characters. There are, but the friendship of Ray and Peter is the focus. We also get Mark Hamill here as the antagonist Major. I will point out that if you read the novel, there are enough changes here that this feels its own thing. I was left wishing for certain changes as well. The film does have the same issue as the novel, but to a smaller extent. There isn’t a truly satisfying ending. One final note: this film is pretty graphic, so be aware of that. Not everyone in my theater was.
1984’s This is Spinal Tap was not an immediate success. While bombing in the box office, it found its second life in homes, and became an immense cult classic. 42 years later, we get a follow up with a majority of the cast returning, and I think we are going to see history partly repeat itself. We already know that its box office numbers are not going to be good, but it’s the home market that I don’t think will be there. This just isn’t as good as the original. The jokes are mostly flat, and the story I think suffers from focusing just on one concert. That means we are only really in the recording studio are the arena for the most part. Guest, McKean, and Shearer are all ok in this, but there is just something missing in all their characters. We also get appearances from some others in the Guest mockumentary orbit, and they don’t really work either. Was it cool seeing Elton John or Paul McCartney singing Tap songs? Yeah, but that wasn’t what this film really needed to be. I just don’t think this film needed to happen in the first place. I’m not sure who the audience is, and looking at how it did in the opening weekend, I’m sure the studio is wondering that now too.
Originally, AMC had Screen Unseens every two weeks these next two months. Then, they announced one for the 22nd. So, tomorrow’s mystery movie is the first of three straight weeks of them. Later in the week, it’s Him and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Two films I have low expectations for.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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