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.
Unicorn Store
Brie Larson’s directorial debut covers some well-trodden ground: The difficulty of becoming an adult in an era of extended adolescence, and the rejection of reality that follows. Larson plays a young woman who, having being forced out of art school for her Lisa Frank-styled ways, decides to join a temp company and sink into the drab and boring workforce. Yet a mysterious man (Samuel L. Jackson) sends her invitations inviting her to a store downtown where she can purchase, with enough heart and time, an actual real-life Unicorn. It’s twee-as-fuck, occasionally kind of annoying, and weirdly problematic in how it uses Jackson, but Larson acquits herself well enough with some wonderfully funny moments. Also, it helps that she’s stacked the cast: Bradley Whitford and Joan Cusack play her group-therapy camp counselor parents; Hamish Linklater is quite funny as her boss at the temp company; and the one truly excellent part of the Patti Cake$ ensemble, Mamoudou Athie, plays Larson’s love-interest, a hardware store employee tasked with building her soon-to-be-arriving unicorn a stable.
It’s flatly directed but occasionally crackles with life thanks to its performers, and it’ll be interesting to see what Larson will do from here, and Unicorn Store is well worth seeking out if you’re a Larson completest or a fan of glitter. Like, not the Mariah Carey film or the shiny alluring glint on most fine stones, but the arts-and-crafts stuff that will never ever ever get off of you. Yeah, it’s a lot like that.