'Wild Tales' and more at Toronto Fest 2014

Maybe I’m just picking the films well, but my 2014 Toronto International Film Festival experience has been an exceptional one. Back in New York, I’d already seen some of the Festival’s standout entries: Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Whiplash, The Drop and Mr. Turner, all of which made a splash here with their stars and directors in attendance. But there was plenty more to savor, and other tantalizing films I just couldn’t fit into my schedule or had to forego because the only seats left were in the dreaded front rows facing the mammoth screens at the Scotiabank complex.

I’ve already written about the wonderful The Theory of Everything and Love & Mercy, the entertaining Pride, and the worthy Rosewater. Here are some other highlights from Toronto 2014:

I couldn’t get a reasonably distant seat at the press screening of the buzzed-about Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle Nightcrawler, so I settled in for The Humbling, Barry Levinson’s film based on the novel by Philip Roth, with

a screenplay co-written by Buck Henry. And I’m so glad I didn’t miss it. This is the best vehicle Al Pacino’s had in years, a deliciously mad comedy in which he plays Simon Axler, a famous actor having a mental breakdown over his declining powers. Simon’s morale is boosted tremendously when he’s visited by Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the daughter of a former co-star, who’s always had a crush on Simon and finally acts upon her desire. That doesn’t sit well with two former lovers of Pegeen’s who come calling, the very angry Louise (Kyra Sedgwick) and Prince (Billy Porter), formerly known as Priscilla before his sex change. Oh, and there’s also the crazy stalker (Nina Arianda) Simon met when he was institutionalized, who’s convinced Simon is just the man she needs to murder her despised husband because he played a killer in a movie. The film constantly shuttles back and forth between Simon’s fevered imagination and reality, although it’s left to the audience to decide just where one ends and the other begins. Pacino is onscreen throughout this dementedly funny phantasmagoria, giving a soulful and nuanced performance as a man truly suffering for his art and his ebbing capabilities.

With its buzz out of Cannes and Telluride, Argentinian director Damian Szifron’s Wild Tales was a must-see, and a

packed house at the Elgin Theatre roared at this outrageous collection of vignettes about anger and vengeance. The opening pre-credits sequence set aboard an airplane has a hilarious premise I don’t dare spoil; it’s enough to say this appetizer got a thunderous round of applause. There’s an episode involving road rage that outdoes Steven Spielberg’s classic Duel for sheer delirium, another to delight anyone who’s been driven around the bend by bureaucratic rigidity and indolence, a diner encounter that turns delightfully deadly, and the most chaotic wedding reception ever committed to film. During the post-screening Q&A, the handsome director said the unifying theme of his tales is "the pleasure of losing control." Szifron has the bold visual style and go-for-broke wit of Quentin Tarantino at his best, and seems destined for a major directing career.

I didn’t care much for the dreary Greenberg, director Noah Baumbach’s last collaboration with star Ben Stiller, so I’m very happy to report that the new Baumbach-Stiller movie, While We’re Young, is a delight. Stiller plays Josh, a struggling New York documentary filmmaker married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts), the daughter of an esteemed documentarian. At

a lecture, Josh is approached by a young fan, Jamie (Adam Driver), and his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried), and before long Josh and Cornelia are ditching their baby-obsessed friends to hang out with these Brooklyn hipsters. But Jamie isn’t as laid-back as he seems; in fact, he’s quite the ambitious operator. Along with that main plot-driver, Baumbach gets lots of comic mileage out of Josh and Cornelia’s attempts to recapture their youthful energy, including a witty montage contrasting their state-of-the-art lifestyle with Jamie and Darby’s low-tech, retro pleasures. As a man of a certain age who lives amidst the hipsters of Brooklyn (for whom Driver has become the poster boy) and sometimes pines for his lost youth, I can certainly relate to the witty cross-generational insights of Baumbach’s latest.

Other very worthwhile Toronto picks include Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke’s gentle and thought-provoking documentary portrait of Seymour Bernstein, a once-acclaimed pianist who left the performance world to become a brilliant teacher; Francois Ozon’s mischievous and gender-fluid The New Girlfriend, in which Romain Duris finds his true identity by dressing as his dead wife; The Good Lie, starring Reese Witherspoon and a quartet of engaging African actors in a poignant story of Sudanese refugees adjusting to a new life in America; and Men, Women & Children, Jason Reitman’s ensemble drama about social media’s impact on lives both young and old.

Tomorrow, in between screenings, I plan to check out visual-effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull’s presentation of UFOTOG, his 12-minute 3D short shot in 4K at 120 frames per second. Should be an eye-opener.