For all our coverage of Toronto International Film Festival 2017, click here.
Well, it was my first Toronto International Film Festival this year as Vanyaland film editor, and it was a tremendously crazy six days while I was up there. I saw a total of 22 movies, including some that I'll be writing about later, but what we've got for you today, to wrap up our coverage of the TIFF, is a collection of capsule reviews -- what we've dubbed "the rest of the fest." Some are notable and award-winning, others are absolutely miserable and worth running away from. We have new works from Joseph Kahn, John Woo, Brie Larson, Scott Cooper, and many others telling tales from all ends of the genre spectrum. Hey, this list even includes one of the best films I've seen all year, so check it out.
Chappaquiddick
It may not be obvious at first glance, but Jason Clarke really does look like Ted Kennedy in profile, and Clarke exploits this slight likeness for all that it’s worth. And, in director John Curran’s Chappaquiddick, he turns in one hell of a performance as the Senator during one of the worst weeks of his life, full of shifty ego and worn charisma after a tragedy of his own making. It’s a shame he’s not in a better movie, as Curran doesn’t exactly know what kind of movie he’s making here.
He’s stacked the rest of the cast with comedians out of their respective elements — Ed Helms and Jim Gaffigan, here playing Kennedy clan friends — and character actors like Bruce Dern, Taylor Nichols and Clancy Brown who aren’t given enough room and space to do what they do best. Worst of all is that the film’s guilty of the own sin that it’s trying to excavate and re-examine: It buries the tragedy of the moment — the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, played here by Kate Mara — for the usual politics of the cover-up. That’s somewhat understandable, as her drowning is the inciting event for the film, but the film keeps trying to be humorous, to be something other than totally damning of its central character that her loss winds up buried under pounds of celluloid. Curran directs it well enough, but it’s not visually memorable in any way, and Clarke’s performance, as stated, is good, but even that can’t help it from being utterly forgettable.