'Insidious: Chapter 2' creeps into the fall lineup

A little bit of a fall chill is in the air, and there's no better way to get in a cozy mood than with a spine-tingling movie like Insidious: Chapter 2 (3,049 theatres), which comes from prolific horror director James Wan. The Saw helmer is coming off his surprise hit this summer, The Conjuring, which was also advertised as "from the director of Insidious." Our critic Maitland McDonagh worries that similarity in marketing campaigns could end up hurting the sequel. The

content itself isn't as fresh as the original. The focus on exploring the original film's backstory makes it "more than a little dull and [verging] on incoherence." Still, the recognizable name could make this movie have one of the best horror openings in September. In 2005, The Exorcism of Emily Rose opened to $30 million during the same month, so a figure at or above $30 million would be excellent. That number would also be nearly three times the opening of the original, which debuted to $13 million and slow-burned for weeks afterward.

Even weeks ago, it was fairly clear that The Family (3,091 theatres) wasn't going to do so well. Now, forecasters have zoned in on its likely opening figure: somewhere around $10 million. The Luc Besson-directed movie about a family of American gangsters who hide out in France has the right ingredients, but they don't add up. "Despite a dream cast [which includes Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones],  The Family is an only intermittently
funny gangster comedy," FJI's Daniel Eagan laments.

The specialty slate this weekend is slight, but IFC Films is using the slot to release Blue Caprice, a festival pickup about the Beltway sniper. Comparing the story to other true-life tales like Fruitvale Station and Elephant (a stylistic cousin), critic Ethan Alter feels the movie succeeds in creating emotion, but fails in a cerebral sense. The drama "comes armed with answers, but misses the chance to pose bigger questions."

On Monday, we'll see if Insidious: Chapter 2 is able to break any September records, and if The Family is able to rally past its so-so opening projection.

 

Toronto docs: Mystery photographer Vivian Maier, irrepressible 'Dog Day' thief

Among the most surprising
discoveries at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival were documentary portraits of two
very different but equally fascinating and complicated individuals: Vivian
Maier and John Wojtowicz. The former has only just recently become known among
devotees of photography; the latter name you may recognize as the inspiration
for the ’70s movie classic Dog Day
Afternoon.

Finding Vivian Maier is the remarkable story of the discovery of the
eponymous Maier, a Chicago nanny who became a celebrated photographer only after the film’s co-director John Maloof purchased her
cache of 150,000 negatives at auction two years before her death in 2009, was astonished by her photos,
and proceeded to post a selection online. Maloof makes it his mission to


learn
just who Maier was, and finds a very private, eccentric, troubled woman who
also happened to be a phenomenal artist. The evidence is there onscreen, in
brilliant, evocative street portraits that bear comparison to greats like
Robert Frank, Helen Levitt and Diane Arbus. But they were never made public
until Maloof’s acquisition.

So what kept Maier from
exhibiting her work? Her reasons remain a mystery, although Maloof discovers
late in the doc that she did intend to market the photos she shot in her
ancestral village in France. Otherwise, Maier was content to live a discreet
life as a nanny, an occupation which allowed her the freedom to take to the
streets with her low-slung Rolleiflex camera (sometimes bringing her young
charges with her to dicey neighborhoods).

Always an odd duck,
Maier became increasingly mentally ill as she got older; her few friends and
her former employers (including talk-show host Phil Donahue!) and their children
recall her obsessive-compulsive disorder, her out-of-control hoarding, and her
transformation from a loving nanny to an abusive one.

Although Maier’s
wonderful photographs have been exhibited in galleries around the world, the
art establishment is still resistant to welcoming her as a major photographer.
Maloof’s revelatory documentary is another step toward helping her claim her
place in 20th-century art history.

Dog Day Afternoon is one of the great “stranger than fiction”
movies of all time, but wait till you hear the full story from the subject of
Sidney Lumet’s film, John Wojtowicz. In August 1972, the New York media (and a
neighborhood in Brooklyn) went crazy once word got out that the reason behind a
bank robbery turned hostage situation was Wojtowicz’s desire to fund his
lover’s sex-reassignment surgery. For the TIFF documentary The Dog, directors
Allison Berg and Frank

Keraudren go behind the headlines and the subsequent
movie, with Wojtowicz’s full cooperation. And what a character he is!

Wojtowicz proudly admits
to being a sex addict, attracted to both men and women. (He has no other vices,
he claims.) A former Goldwater Republican and Vietnam veteran, he was
transformed by the war (where he had his first same-sex affair with “a
hillbilly from Kentucky”) and became active in the New York City gay rights
movement in the years right after the Stonewall riots. (He and his trans lover Ernest
Aron even staged a wedding ceremony in Greenwich Village in 1971.)

Wojtowicz, with his huge
ego and profane outlook, is very entertaining movie company, even if you can’t
always take his self-justifying statements at face value. (The sex-change
motivation for the robbery has been disputed, even by Aron, seen as Liz Eden in a
later TV appearance.) But his narrative of the days leading up to the robbery
(including several other failed tries) supports the movie’s portrait of him and
his partner Sal Naturale as anything but pros. And his unapologetic pansexuality
is weirdly refreshing coming from a man Liz’s good friend Jeremiah Newton calls
a “troll.” As Wojtowicz sees it, “Anybody can be straight. It takes somebody
special to be gay.”

Nearly stealing the film
is John’s lively mother Terry, who disapproves of her son’s same-sex adventures
but dotes on him all the same. And John’s most admirable moments involve his
affectionate devotion to his mentally challenged older brother Tony.

John Wojtowicz died in
2006, and The Dog (his nickname) is an admirable ten-year labor of love for the
filmmakers. For any fan of Dog Day Afternoon, the movie is catnip.

I saw 23 and one-third movies
during my six days in Toronto. (The one-third is Mandela, which was surreally
shut down due to technical problems during a scene when Nelson Mandela and his
fellow activists enter an all-white movie theatre and stop the show.) Other personal high points of this bountiful festival not already covered in previous reports include: Jason Reitman's surprisingly romantic hostage drama Labor Day; Belle, the handsomely produced, involving true story of the daughter of a white British admiral and a black Caribbean slave who is raised as an aristocrat (but not quite a full member of the family) in late 18th-century England; Ralph Fiennes directing himself as Charles Dickens in the plush romance The Invisible Woman; director Denis Villeneuve's double appearance in Toronto with the creepy kidnapping thriller Prisoners and the even creepier doppelganger tale Enemy, both starring Jake Gyllenhaal; Hong Kong director Johnnie To's entertaining mix of comedy and mystery thriller in Blind Detective; French auteur Patrice Leconte's assured English-language debut with A Promise, a tale of love deferred; the tough and compelling British prison drama Starred Up; Kevin Kline impersonating Errol Flynn quite well in The Last of Robin Hood, the story of the actor's scandalous late-life romance with an underage aspiring actress played by Dakota Fanning; Jude Law in Ben Kingsley/Sexy Beast mode as a hotheaded gangster in the crime comedy Dom Hemingway; and Scarlett Johansson as a highly seductive alien visitor in director Jonathan Glazer's abstract and eerie Under the Skin. Now it's back to New York and the real, non-movie world.

Music in Toronto: 'Can a Song Save Your Life?' and a Jimi Hendrix biopic

Twelve years ago today,
like everywhere else in North America, all business stopped at the Toronto Film
Festival as the world watched the terrifying attacks on the World Trade Center.
Here in Toronto this morning, thinking of that day, it seemed appropriate to be
watching a film that’s an unabashed love letter to New York City. Can a Song Save Your Life?, the new
film from John Carney, the Irish director of the sleeper hit Once, is a
fairytale about the music business and as far from somber as a movie can get.
The festival has certainly hosted better films this edition, but Carney's lovely
location shooting all around the city was a sweet antidote to today’s
melancholy.

Keira Knightley plays an
aspiring songwriter and sometime singer who we later learn has broken up with
five-year boyfriend Adam Levine (the Maroon 5 front man and “Voice” coach)
after he’s achieved stardom and cheated on her. Singer pal James Corden
encourages her to perform a song at one of his bar gigs, where she catches the
ear of Mark Ruffalo, playing an alcoholic record company co-founder who’s just quit
over long-simmering “creative differences” and after a dry spell without a
successful new discovery. Ruffalo (platonically) pursues Knightley, who, after
putting up considerable resistance, decides to cast her fate with this wild
card. They hit on the idea of recording a demo album outdoors at various spots
around the city, incorporating the sounds of the neighborhoods.

You can surely predict
where all this is going, but Can a Song Save Your Life? is very genial, the songs are catchy, and screen
beauty Knightley reveals a fine singing voice. The Weinstein Company pounced on
this feel-good musical after its debut screening in Toronto.

Another musical
attraction today was All Is By My Side, which traces the early career of Jimi Hendrix from
his time playing backup with a funk band at New York’s Cheetah Club to his
extended stay in England, up to just before his jaw-dropping breakthrough at
the Monterey Pop Festival. The

biopic marks the second feature directing effort of
writer John Ridley, also represented in Toronto by his gripping screenplay for
the festival smash 12 Years a Slave. Ridley adopts a jagged style both visually and aurally,
evoking the whirlwind life of the groundbreaking, spacy and introspective
guitarist during a time when he was still finding his artistic identity and
sometimes confounding his listeners. It’s Hendrix before he became Hendrix, the
rock ’n’ roll wunderkind who briefly thrilled audiences before his death at 27.

All Is By My Side is still awaiting a
U.S. distribution deal, most likely because it’s an art film about the rock
legend, eschewing narrative drive for a more naturalistic approach to Hendrix’s
relationships and his evolution as an artist. Two women play central roles in
the story: Imogen Poots as Linda Keith, Keith Richards’ girlfriend, who is
presented in the film as the first true believer in Hendrix’s exceptional
talent and an important catalyst in his career; and Hayley Atwell as Kathy
Etchingham, a not-very-bright groupie who is utterly devoted to her man (and
sometimes oversteps her bounds). Hendrix is played by Andre Benjamin of
Outkast, who not only creates a reasonable surface facsimile of the music icon
but burrows into his earnest ’60s flower-child personality (and seems to be
doing the virtuosic guitar work required).

Even though it portrays
the pre-Monterey years, the film could have included Hendrix’s early U.K.-based
hits “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze.” It doesn’t. But you will hear a pretty wild
version of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” nervily performed by
Hendrix before an audience including two Beatles. For the rest of the canon,
there’s always the documentary Jimi Plays Monterey.

Powerful '12 Years a Slave,' outrageous 'August: Osage County'

Toronto is such a movie-mad city that an 8:30 a.m. screening can attract a packed house. That was the case this morning at the press and industry screening of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, but of course much of the intense interest stemmed from its electric pre-Toronto showings in Venice and Telluride. For this writer, it certainly ranks as one of the most powerful movie experiences of the past few years.

12 Years a Slave is based on the amazing true story of Solomon Northup, a well-educated, free black violinist living with his wife and children in Saratoga, New York in the 1840s, who is drugged and

kidnapped by a pair of con men and sold into slavery. (Northup published the memoir of his ordeal in 1853.) What follows is searingly painful to watch, and supports Spike Lee’s argument that the jokey Django Unchained (however much a revenge fantasy) was in questionable taste.

McQueen likes to push boundaries, as he did in the scenes of prison brutality in his IRA drama Hunger and the edgy sex scenes in Shame. Here, the camera doesn't turn away from hangings and whippings, particularly in one extended take involving the brutal lashing of a young slave woman who’s displeased her psychotic master played by McQueen regular Michael Fassbender.

Watching 12 Years a Slave, one realizes that a feature film depicting the bane of slavery from the slaves’ perspective is a rare thing indeed. And thanks to British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s charismatic, quietly seething, fully committed performance as Northup, that perspective becomes immediately relatable to any viewer of this film, black or white or of any race. The injustice, the arbitrariness of cruelty, the suffering and the struggle to survive are vividly conveyed by McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley. And when those 12 years come to an end, I dare anyone to hold back the tears. I’m not ashamed to admit I was physically overcome during the film’s concluding scene.

Along with the many harrowing moments, thank goodness McQueen also includes a couple of lovely grace notes, each centered on a tight shot of the highly photogenic Ejiofor: one as he joins in the singing of the spiritual “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” the other a silent close-up as he ponders his future fate. Talk about putting a human face on a shameful American legacy…

After the devastation of 12 Years a Slave, something a bit lighter was needed. I rushed across town to the 11 a.m. Elgin Theatre screening of August: Osage County, director John Wells’ film of the

Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts (who also wrote the screenplay). This is one of the more successful stage-to-screen adaptations of recent years, capturing all the laughs and shocks of the play while opening it up rather deftly from the confines of the original’s multi-level house to the parched vistas of Oklahoma. (The tradeoff is that the claustrophobia of the walls enclosing the story’s bickering family is lost.)

Substituting for the excellent but not widely known Steppenwolf company actors who originated the play in Chicago and New York, some major marquee names have gathered for the film: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and Ewan McGregor, with able support from the likes of Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Abigail Breslin, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch and Sam Shepard. Shepard plays the family patriarch, a noted poet, who suddenly disappears after the first scene; Streep is his pill-addicted wife, an uncensored holy terror who’s battling mouth cancer. Roberts, Nicholson and Lewis are her three daughters: Nicholson is the responsible caretaker, Lewis the flighty one, and Roberts the one who fled the coop as soon as she could. When Dad is found dead, the family reassembles for the funeral and a dinner that erupts in cruel taunts and recriminations, many coming from the diseased mouth of Streep’s blunt and drug-addled matriarch.

The protean Streep knocks it out of the park again, nailing every uproarious laugh out of her devilishly mean and manipulative character. And Roberts, in her first pairing with Streep, rises to the occasion of those fierce arguments with the mother from hell. McGregor, in the film’s least rewarding role, makes a wan impression, but Cooper and Martindale make the most of their big moments, and Nicholson breaks your heart as the dutiful daughter with a big secret.

A number of Academy Award nods may materialize here, but one thing seems for certain: Get ready for Meryl Streep’s 18th Oscar nomination.

Jewels and Misfires at Toronto 2013: 'Philomena' and 'Night Moves'

Arrived here fresh from Venice, Philomena directed by Stephen Frears more than fulfills the buzz.  Frears has stumbled with such recent efforts as Cheri but in this searing story of the search for a lost adopted child -- and an indictment of aspects of Catholicism --he's again in top form.  As the "inciting incident" (in moviespeak), Martin (Steve Coogan), a world-weary political journalist, gets bounced from his job, then wooed by an editor interested in "human interest" stories, a genre for which Martin has only contempt.  Enter humble single mother and devout Catholic, Philomena (Judi Dench), who remains haunted by the disappearance of her little boy, literally sold to American buyers by the Sisters in an Irish abbey for wayward -- i.e. pregnant -- girls.  The consuming joint search of Martin and Philomena for a boy swallowed by cruel circumstance becomes the very human interest story Martin has so disdained.

The subject of pregnant Irish girls forced into slave labor in church-run homes is familiar from Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters.   But in Frears's telling, the subject remains fresh due to a brilliant screenplay which explores the dynamic bond of cynical Martin and pious Philomena, surprising at every turn.  While the theme of a mother's disappeared child is in itself heart-breaking, Frears makes the story especially haunting when the child's destiny as a successful lawyer--and beyond--is finally uncovered.  But given Frears's social concerns, this is no mere weeper.  In exposing the machinations and concealments the Irish Sisters use to separate mother and child, he mounts a scathing critique of righteous villainy under the guise of saintliness.  The story's complex resolution, which I will not reveal, is deeply satisfying.

Less successful is Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves. The film is particularly frustrating because so many elements are in place: a splendid cast; the director's trademark feeling for Oregon's beauty, and, best of all, a relatively high-concept plot after such past meanderings short on story as Old Joy.

Aptly titled, Night Moves unfurls mainly in darkness and at night, which makes the daylight scenes on an Oregon farming cooperative all the more striking.  The film centers on a trio of eco idealists whose efforts to halt the industrial despoilment of the planet turn to violent acts.  Jesse Eisenberg is the kingpin of a plot to blow up a dam, assisted by rich girl Dakota Fanning and ex-marine Peter Sarsgaard.  The actors are all superb, the naturalness of their dialogue vintage Reichardt.   Eisenberg is intensely private and a coil of angry energy, though you never forget you're watching this particular actor rather than his character; Fanning a revelation as a confident, impassive cohort who cracks when the scheme goes wrong; and Sarsgaard magnetic and inscrutable portraying the idealist as loose cannon.  As the trio implements their scheme we root for them--as we do for characters undertaking a difficult task.  Reichardt newly reveals her talent for suspense as the trio docks their dynamite-loaded boat at the dam before making their getaway in a canoe.  Then, along with the dam, the film implodes.  A finger-wagging morality lecture is added on about the dangers of idealistic violence.  Are we meant to conclude that extreme protest can bring only mayhem and madness?   Somehow Night Moves has shifted into Kathy Boudin/Weathermen terrain, dissipating  the power of its original vision.   

'Gravity' soars as a modern 3D landmark

The buzz out of Venice was sensational, and I finally caught up with Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity at this afternoon's screening in Toronto (alas, minus the presence of Cuaron or stars Sandra Bullock

and George Clooney, who attended last night). And yes, the advance word is justified—Gravity takes its place with the other great landmarks of modern digital 3D cinema, Avatar, Hugo and Life of Pi.

Cuaron's film recaptures some of the awed excitement '60s and '70s audiences felt on their first viewings of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. The entire film takes place in the dazzling and terrifying vastness of outer space, with only two characters (if you don't count one ill-fated fellow far in the background who has perhaps two lines). Cuaron tops the virtuosic single take of an attack on a vehicle and its occupants in his Children of Men with an amazing opening 13-minute sequence which begins at a very far distance and gradually closes in on astronauts Bullock and Clooney at work outside their spacecraft. Then, in the very same take, they're ordered to abort their repair mission and get inside their ship, only to be quickly overtaken by fast-moving, hurtling
debris from a destroyed Russian satellite. Again, within the same shot, the astronauts and their ship are hit and
Bullock becomes untethered from the craft.

Like Robert Redford's upcoming solo seafaring drama All Is Lost, Gravity is a stripped-down tale of survival—stripped-down in the narrative sense, but incredibly visually rich and nail-bitingly suspenseful. Bullock, always one of our most relatable actresses, is the audience surrogate we root for, in arguably her most demanding and emotionally open screen performance ever.  Cuaron and his CGI team have created screen spectacle with a searing human dimension, and bring a true sense of wonder to this groundbreaking movie experience.

'Riddick' reigns amid September slump

In late August and September, it doesn't take much in order to ascend to the top spot. For Riddick, it took just $18.7 million to lead in the slowest weekend yet in 2013. This marks the third time Vin Diesel has played the Riddick character, and the third film fell somewhere in the middle: better than the accompanying film Pitch Black, and weaker than The Chronicles of Riddick. Even with back-to-school obligations and the start of NFL season drawing away interest, Riddick connected with its core audience, which skews male, 30+, and Hispanic.

Box office as a whole was down, but a couple of movies bucked the trend. Last week's Spanish-language hit, Instructions Not Included, went up 3% to $8.1 million, maintaining its audience as it expanded into twice as many theatres. That's an excellent second week, and distributor Pantelion's biggest hit yet. Sony was able to squeeze another $2 million from This Is the End in a one-week return to over 2,000 locations, which put the comedy just shy of $100 million.

The faith-based inspirational movie The Ultimate Life had a solid, if not spectacular, debut of $650,000 in limited release, with a so-so per-screen average of $1,500.

The Weinstein Co. had one hit and one miss this week. Salinger, the documentary about the reclusive writer, debuted to a solid $22,000 per screen in four locations, the highest average of the week. Meanwhile, its French import, Populaire, averaged just $5,500 per-screen while playing in three locations.

This Friday, the action-comedy The Family will go up against the sequel to 2011's sleeper horror hit, Insidious: Chapter 2.