TORONTO (AP) – This year’s Toronto International Film Festival belonged to the actors.
Among the 300-plus films premiering at the annual movie feast – the north star to much of Hollywood’s fall season and the continent’s largest film fest – there were, of course, many terrific movies and a theater’s worth of fine filmmakers. But nothing captured the spotlight of this year’s Toronto, which wraps up on Sunday, like the performances.
That’s unlike many previous years where the loudest buzz from Toronto rang out for a freshly proclaimed masterpiece like “12 Years a Slave” or a stunning cinematic event like “Gravity,” both of which left last year’s festival hoisted upon the shoulders of enthusiastic Oscar prognosticators and awed moviegoers.
While likely best-picture nominees certainly played at Toronto, no movie quite stood out like those heavyweights or previous TIFF sensations like the Academy Award-winners “Slumdog Millionaire” or “The King’s Speech.” Instead, the applause was thickest for its stars, many of whom turned in memorable feats of transformation, reinvention and, yes, some pretty interesting hairdos.
Many of these performances will surely be drafted into the autumn awards hunt, joining a field of such previous festival standouts as Michael Keaton (“Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Innocence”), Steve Carell (“Foxcatcher”), Timothy Spall (“Mr. Turner”) and Kristen Stewart (“Clouds of Sils Maria”). The best of this year’s Toronto talent: