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Movies & TV

5 TIFF 2016 films Glenn Sumi can’t wait to see

1. American Pastoral

Philip Roth‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the rise and fall of a New Jersey family in the mid-1900s is so big, detailed (pages and pages about the leather glove industry!) and full of intergenerational anger, I can’t imagine how difficult it was to adapt to the screen. But here it is, the directorial debut of Ewan McGregor, who also plays the book’s fallen-from-grace golden boy, whose daughter (Dakota Fanning) becomes a Weather Underground-type anti-Vietnam protester and terrorist. 

Sep 9, 6:30 pm, Princess of Wales Sep 10, 10 am, Elgin

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2. Blair Witch

Being out in nature hasn’t been the same since the summer of 1999, when Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project scared the bejesus out of campers and inspired dozens of YouTube parodies and an entire subgenre of terrible found-footage films. Now comes a sorta sequel about the brother of one of the Blair Witch disappearees who goes into the forest with paranormal experts, GPS-enabled cameras and… lots of hubris. The fact that the film stayed under the radar for so long (it was called The Woods for a while to prevent online naysayers from hating on it before they even saw it) was the PR stunt of the year. Let’s hope the film is as successful.

Sep 11, midnight, Ryerson Sep 15, 4:45 pm, Scotiabank 2

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3. Jackie

As TIFF’s recent retrospective proved, Chile’s Pablo Larraín is an effective chronicler of his country’s heated political landscape, in works like Tony Manero and the darkly funny No. He’s got another Chilean-themed film at this year’s festival, Neruda, about the great poet. But I’m curious to see his take on a singularly American subject: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman), whose legend and charisma matched her president husband’s. Can an outsider capture the essence of a woman whose mystique and power continue to intrigue?

Sep 11, 8:30 pm, Winter Garden Sep 12, 2:30 pm, Elgin Sep 18, 3:45 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

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4. (re)Assignment

The premise has already got trans activists up in arms: a cosmetic surgeon (Sigourney Weaver) avenges the death of her brother by finding the killer and giving him complete gender-reassignment surgery so he’s now a she (Michelle Rodriguez). Of course, the killer wants payback, too. It sounds ludicrous, but count on legendary director and producer Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors, Alien) to confront the sexism inherent in many genre pictures.

Sep 14, 6 pm, Ryerson Sep 16, 3:30 pm, Hot Docs Cinema Sep 17, 9:30 pm, Hot Docs Cinema

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5. Lady Macbeth

As a full-time theatre critic, I’m always curious to see what stage directors do when they make a film. Now William Oldroyd, a maverick at London’s Young Vic, transitions to cinema with this adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District, which inspired the shocking Shostakovich opera. Oldroyd has set the film on a 19th-century English country estate. But its primal passions and premeditated murders will, in Oldroyd’s hands, feel nothing like Merchant-Ivory fare.

Sep 9, 4:15 pm, Winter Garden Sep 10, 12:15 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1 Sep 18, 6:45 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

glenns@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi

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