Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Fall Festivals Start Paving Way to Oscars

Elizabeth Both
Opinions Editor

As the summer blockbuster movies die down, CGI dinosaurs are replaced by Matt Damon lost in space (again! two movies within the past year!).
 Early in September, the annual Toronto Film Festival premiered its biggest contenders for the fall season:The Martian, Black Mass, Sicario, The Danish Girl, Room and Steve Jobs.
Fall movie festivals foreshadow potential Oscar contenders. The Martian, based on the book by Andy Weir, is predicted to be a huge success at the box office for an early October release, but will fail with Oscar nominations. The book was fun, but I just don’t think it will make Academy members swoon. One major hit for the awards race and the box office will be Steve Jobs, out Oct. 9 and directed by Danny Boyle, who won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, written by Aaron Sorkin.
Sicario, meaning hitman in Spanish, stars Emily Blunt as an FBI agent enlisted by the government to track down an anonymous drug lord. The film has gotten rave reviews for Blunt’s performance and received a rare ‘A’ from Entertainment Weekly.
 The documentary He Named me Malala, screened at the Toronto Film Festival as well, looks deep into the Taliban’s attack on the young Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, who became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner ever.
Horror director Guillermo Del Toro finds his way back into his dark Halloween aura with Crimson Peak, in theaters Oct. 16.
 Bill Murray plays a rock music promoter stranded in Kabul in Rock the Kasbah, out Oct. 23.           
 Daniel Craig joins in on the fall fun with the new James Bond movie titled Spectre, out November 6.
 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie make their first debut as a couple in a film since 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in By the Sea which Jolie directed, out Nov. 13.
 Keep an eye out for these movies; some of them are bound to make an impact for viewers and voters alike.