Is TIFF’s People’s Choice Winner ‘The Life of Chuck’ an Oscar Contender?
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival was a success on many fronts, launching many titles into the marketplace looking for buyers, and others into the fall season, including the usual spate of Oscar contenders. But the festival continues to contract, with empty seats in the largest houses.
Many sales titles weren’t scooped up quickly. According to buyers, many were demanding too much money, which should eventually shake out. David Gordon Green’s opening night family movie “Nutcrackers,” starring Ben Stiller, found a home at Hulu, and Paramount just picked up Munich Olympic Games thriller “September 5” for November release, promising an Oscar campaign.
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Surprisingly, “The Life of Chuck,” without a distributor, won the People’s Choice Award that usually leads to a Best Picture Oscar nomination and occasionally an actual win (“Nomadland,” “Green Book,” “Twelve Years a Slave,” and “The King’s Speech”). The likelihood that the film will instantly become an Oscar contender the way “American Fiction” did last year remains slim.
In order for that to happen, it will need a distributor willing to mount an expensive campaign within a tight time frame (“The Wrestler” and “I, Tonya” managed it). The last two films to win the People’s Choice Award without a distributor were “Where Do We Go from Here” (picked up by Sony Pictures Classics in late September) and “Bella” (acquired by Roadside after nearly a year).
Critics could help “The Life of Chuck” overcome its genre fantasy roots, as horror director Mike Flanagan, adapting a Stephen King novella, this time leans toward the sweet and uplifting. The movie is a crowdpleaser, and with careful handling and a boost from charismatic star Tom Hiddleston, it could go far. But it sits at 66 on Metacritic, when most Oscar contenders land in the high 70s or 80s. Exceptions? Best Picture nominee and Best Actor winner “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Metascore: 49), and Best Picture winners “Green Book” (69) and “Crash” (66). Critics don’t always reflect Academy tastes. But “The Life of Chuck” is as American as apple pie, and the Academy has been leaning international of late.
Of note: “The Life of Chuck” was backed by producer-financier-foreign sales company FilmNation Entertainment, which also backed “Anora,” “Maria,” and “Conclave.” FilmNation CEO Glen Basner is enjoying this festival season.
At this stage of the awards timeline, it’s easy for prognosticators to proclaim Oscar contenders right and left. But the steady frontrunners remain the same two Cannes prize-winners: People’s Choice Award second runner-up “Anora” (Neon) and first runner-up “Emilia Pérez” (Netflix). Everyone else is playing catch-up.
Festival awards do supply extra oxygen. Venice Golden Lion winner “The Room Next Door” (Sony Pictures Classics) will ride plenty of good will for veteran Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar and his two stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. His first English-language movie should play well at the upcoming New York Film Festival. But reviews are mixed; strong box office would build momentum.
Coming out of the fall festival trifecta of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, the list of contenders for Best Actress is massive. Who will remain standing is anyone’s guess, but popularity (and willingness to work the room), being overdue, and critics plaudits will push some actresses forward.
Actresses who have already won Oscars include Angelina Jolie (“Girl, Interrupted”), who plays opera diva Maria Callas in her last days in Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” (Netflix), Venice Best Actress winner Nicole Kidman (“The Hours”), who yet again pushes the boundaries of intimate onscreen sexuality in Dutch director Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl” (which A24 will release on Christmas Day), and Julianne Moore (“Still Alice”), who supports a dying friend (Swinton) in her last days in “The Room Next Door.” Swinton, who is also an acting Oscar winner (“Michael Clayton”), could nab a slot.
Overdue: Amy Adams, with six nominations, earned raves for Marielle Heller’s hybrid family fantasy drama “Nightbitch” (Searchlight), but overall reviews were mixed. Anecdotally and perhaps predictably, the movie about an angry unfulfilled at-home mom played better for women than men.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, with one nomination (“King Richard”), lights up the screen in documentarian RaMell Ross’s hard-hitting first fiction feature, “Nickel Boys” (Amazon/MGM). Luckily, she’s running for Supporting Actress, which is a less crowded field.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, with one nomination (“Secrets & Lies”), delivers a towering performance in “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street), her reunion with Mike Leigh, as an older woman who cannot see anything positive in her world and angrily lashes out at everyone around her.
Demi Moore has never been nominated for an Oscar. After a storied career in Hollywood, the veteran actress breaks out in Coralie Fargeat’s feminist body-horror feat “The Substance,” which has been racking up raves since Cannes. Of course the question is how many voters in the actors branch are willing to check out a movie that goes over the top on the gross-out scale. Those actors who see Moore’s brave, naked performance should embrace it.
Florence Pugh, with one nomination (“LIttle Women”), gives her all as a chef, wife, and mother fighting cancer in John Crowley’s sensitive love story “We Live in Time” (A24), but she’s up against tough competition.
Saoirse Ronan, with four nominations, first nabbed raves at Sundance for her recovering alcoholic isolating in the Orkney Islands in Nora Fingscheidt’s well-shot drama “The Outrun” (Sony Pictures Classics). She’s never given a ragged performance like this, but the dour movie is a tough sit.
Among the hopeful first-timers are young breakout Mikey Madison, who in “Anora” plays a New York dance-hall escort who marries in Las Vegas an out-of-control Russian scion whose parents try to annul the marriage. She is hilarious and touching. The title character in musical “Emilia Pérez” is played by magnetic Spanish actress Karla Sofia Gascón, while Zoe Salda?a and Selena Gomez are contending for Supporting Actress.
Debuting at the 2023 Toronto fest was Azazel Jacobs’ dramedy “His Three Daughters” (Netflix), which stars Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen, who are equally incandescent in this often funny drama about three sisters wrangling as their beloved father dies in the next room. Netflix has yet to decide how to manage their categories.
On the actor side of the equation, the same verities apply but there’s less competition, with more room for new entrants, too, as “A Complete Unknown,” “Gladiator II,” and more have yet to be seen. Those who have already won an Oscar include Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”), who returns in Brady Corbet’s critics’ favorite “The Brutalist,” which won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice.
Overdue: Ralph Fiennes, with two nominations, towers over Edward Berger’s rousing Vatican thriller “Conclave,” which is told from his character’s point of view as he supervises the election of a new pope. A second film, “The Return,” about Odysseus’ arrival on the island of Ithaca, will only buttress his standing as one of the best film actors working today.
Colman Domingo, with one nomination, follows up last year’s “Rustin” with a gritty, heart-breaking performance as a prison convict who performs and writes theater to stay sane in Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing,” which after winning the audience award at SXSW, A24 released on August 2 to strong reviews and poor box office.
Jesse Eisenberg, with one nomination (“The Social Network”), is in the hunt for writing, directing, and starring in Sundance critics’ choice “A Real Pain” (Searchlight), which should score Kieran Culkin his first nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.
Andrew Garfield, with two nominations, gives a naturalistic, soulful performance as a husband and father dealing with his wife’s cancer diagnosis in “We Live in Time” (A24).
Brian Tyree Henry, with one nomination (“Causeway”), plays the dogged, passionate coach of a young woman boxer (Ryan Destiny) from Flint, Michigan in cinematographer-turned-director Rachel Morrison’s well-reviewed sports biopic “The Fire Inside” (MGM/Amazon), which could play well for families at Christmas.
First-timers would include Harris Dickinson, who holds his own with Kidman in “Babygirl” as an intern challenging his boss in more ways than one.
I’m leaving out a ton of movies that played well at the festivals, from editor-turned-director William Goldenberg’s true wrestling drama “Unstoppable” (MGM/Amazon) starring Jharrel Jerome and Jennifer Lopez, to Justin Kurzel’s well-directed thriller “The Order” (Vertical Entertainment), starring Jude Law as a rugged FBI man. These films may prove themselves over time.
In fact, inevitably, many of the films I’ve mentioned will lose steam as the awards race slims down.
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