What Does TIFF Matter?

By

 The Toronto International Film Festival is unique among film festivals because, bluntly, studios actually release the movies that play there. It has a reputation as a top tier fest, but unlike Cannes or Venice, it enjoys plenty of attendance from the general public, and over time this has sort of caused it to play more mainstream and perhaps less good films. So let's do some data!

 The 2021 version of the fest saw 6 films that got a wide release - a relatively low number that was probably artificially deflated by both the pandemic and the rise of streaming services as platforms for prestige dramas. "Belfast", "The Eyes of Tammy Faye", and "Spencer" are exactly the kinds of films that would play a prestige festival and not get a wide release if reviews were bad, while "Dune" and "Last Night In Soho" are well-funded mainstream films that were deemed of high enough quality to play at the fest, and "Dear Evan Hansen" is our token transparently awful film that has no business playing in a prestigious environment. None of these movies other than "Dune" made any money at all, of course.

 Nothing can be gleaned from 2020 of course, so back to 2019 we go! Immediately there's an obvious difference: 13 wide releases (and "The Lighthouse" which technically never hit 1000 theaters but made far more money than most small movies since the pandemic), with the overwhelming majority falling into the category of quality dramas that might not have gotten a major studio push if it was not perceived as awards quality, and some surprise hits like Lorene Scafaria's "Hustlers". Yes, somehow, an aggressively bad film ("The Goldfinch") snuck into the field. 2018 is also higher, with 9 wide releases plus a smattering of less-than-wide distributions like "Can You Ever Forgive Me" that made more box office revenue than plenty of films that did get a bigger distributer push. Even back then we have a handful of streaming-only titles that theoretically could have been wide releases, such as Eddie Murphy's comeback "Dolemite Is My Name", but at this point Netflix appears not only here to stay but just first the first of several streaming services to be awards players. 

 So what does 2022's edition of the festival have on tap? Streaming movies, for one! Surely ten years ago Netflix's "Knives Out 2" and Apple's "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" would fit the bill for movies with one foot each in the pools of popular and prestigious. "The Woman King" is an action movie scheduled for an Imax release next week, and "Bros" the week after is definitely getting a big marketing push. And then... who knows? Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Florian Zeller, Darren Aronofsky, Sarah Polley, and Martin McDonagh all have films that could get a real marketing budget and get released in malls if they catch on, and arguably would have ten or twenty years ago, but now maybe won't? I have to think the Spielberg will, if nothing else, but I find it extremely suspicious that no poster was released until its festival premiere, and as of its premiere showing on the 10th of September a trailer still has not been released.

 One area where the fest has been consistent is in how much of the Oscars field it makes up: almost half. More when it comes to foreign language films. There are some very strange quirks involved here, such as "Dunkirk" being released everywhere in the U.S. and Canada in July but getting a special showing in the September festival, or "The Sound of Metal" playing in TIFF 2019, not being released until 2020, and then getting nominated for the latter year. But generally, you can feel comfortable saying that 3 or 4 of the films playing at TIFF this year will be in the thick of the Oscars race, probably another 1 or 2 films just as good as those gets some traction but misses a nomination in the major category, and out of that blend you hopefully have a couple of breakthrough mainstream successes, although there were literally none of those last year.

 So what does TIFF mean, going forward? As much as audiences let it mean. I see no reason to think that it will stop being the place to launch dramas that have a chance of catching on in the American mainstream. Anyone who's being paying attention will see reasons to believe that the American mainstream has totally stopped paying money to watch dramas in theaters. Hopefully the audiences come out, because if they don't, there's at least some possibility that the alternative is dramas simply stop getting made on this scale.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Carmen Film - A Big, Mostly Successful Swing

By
 A retelling of the classical opera "Carmen", but moving the setting to present day California and having the romance be between a U.S. border patrol agent and a Mexican immigrant, was always going to be the least marketable idea for a movie one could possibly have. Given that, I'm happy that the money people decided to go all the way in on, "what if Bob Fossee made La La Land about the border wall?" This is the first film from choreographer Benjamin Millepied, and you can tell, because this is a ~dance~ musical. There are multiple long dance breaks in the film. I loved "Carmen". I probably loved the ambition more than I loved what was on the screen, but I did love it.   For a musical, there are few original songs. "Succession" composer Nicholas Britell crafted a lovely score for it, and that score spends a lot of time driving the film. Melissa Barrera of "Scream" fame is the Mexican woman, forced to run away from her home. Paul Mes...
Read more

The Doom Generation, and Gregg Araki, Restored

By
 Gregg Araki is a pivotal figure in the "Queer Wave" movement, which makes him a key player in the 90s independent film wave as a whole. To a younger person, someone young enough that I could not have possibly watched an Araki film in a theater before, it sure seems that he's never gotten the respect of a major filmmaker. Part of that is due to his edgy content, okay, sure. But what part of that lack of love is due to distribution? One of the topics that fascinates me in the history of film is this idea of functionally "lost" media that's only a few decades old and was reasonably notable when it did come out. "The Doom Generation" premiered at the Sundance festival less than 30 years ago, was nominated for multiple Indie Spirit awards, and then vanished off the face of the earth, its distributor bankrupt and its content as un-mainstream as one can imagine. You cannot stream "The Doom Generation", nor can you buy or rent it from Apple or A...
Read more

"To Leslie", Thoroughly Mediocre

By
 A film guaranteed to be remembered more for its baffling Oscars push than for anything that happens on the screen itself, "To Leslie" is perfectly fine. I basically buy the hype on Andrea Riseborough's performance. She finds nuance in her performance - she tends to be quieter than you expect from a toxic mess rural woman, and Riseborough makes sure to always play her as unaware of how toxic she is. Her best scene is the one of aggressive flirting. The man is not interested in the slightest, and is only barely willing to humor her. Leslie is incapable of taking a hint, and keeps pushing harder.   I wish the rest of the actors here were more willing to take the same approach. Basically every actor except Riseborough and Marc Maron (softly strong, but the romance plot he gets is unnecessary) has severe Sundance Disease, in which every negative emotion is played at an 11. It makes the whole ordeal feel rather performative. The easy claim for this little film with a big...
Read more