AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Fall's approaching, and with it comes another kind of season - one for movies. Big festivals in Venice and Telluride kick things off, but the biggest one is in Toronto. Alison Willmore's a film critic for New York Magazine and is at the Toronto International Film Festival to tell us about the movies making waves this year. Welcome.
ALISON WILLMORE: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: The festival just kicked off a few days ago, so there's much more to see. But what's been the highlight so far?
WILLMORE: My personal highlight has been this movie called "Tender Loving Care," which is the latest movie from Mike Leigh, who's this really respected U.K. director. It's maybe his last film. He's said he's been having some health problems. If it is a movie that's going to cap off his career, it's a really wonderful one.
RASCOE: TIFF is where Oscar season tends to kick off. So what are some of the performances we should be keeping an eye on, and they might be getting that statuette later on?
WILLMORE: That movie I just mentioned, "Tender Loving Care" - it features a lead performance from Kate O'Flynn, who many people might know now as one of the stars of "Widow's Bay," that Apple TV series that I'm a big fan of.
RASCOE: Me too. Me too.
WILLMORE: And she's doing a very different role here as a social worker who just got out of a five-year relationship and has moved back in with her best friend. And I can see her being maybe a outside best actress contender. And then we've also got a movie coming up called "Elsinore," which stars Andrew Scott as Ian Charlson, who was himself an actor. He was in "Chariots Of Fire." And this is a movie about how he went looking for stage work after that, trying to get away from the screen after this enormous movie. And he acts as Hamlet, the role of a lifetime. But right around that same time, he receives a diagnosis of AIDS.
We've got "A Talent For Murder" with Helen Mirren playing Patricia Highsmith, who's the author of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and so many other of these incredible thrillers. And it's about an agent from her publisher coming to try and persuade her to do one last Ripley book. And then we have a movie called "Being Heumann," which was directed by Sian Heder, who directed "CODA," that best picture winner from a few years ago. It's about Judy Heumann, who was this really influential disability rights activist. And she's played by an actress named Ruth Madeley, who I can also see maybe being in the mix for awards.
RASCOE: What about "I Play Rocky"? That's also something that's going to be at the festival, right?
WILLMORE: Yeah. It is. You know, it is the true story of Sylvester Stallone.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLMORE: Anthony Ippolito plays Sylvester Stallone from when Sylvester Stallone was this unknown actor trying to make things happen for himself and with this idea about an underdog boxing movie called "Rocky."
RASCOE: Yes.
WILLMORE: You know, that comes from Peter Farrelly, who directed - I'm going to say - the divisive "Green Book."
RASCOE: Yeah.
WILLMORE: But, you know, certainly is someone who knows how to make a kind of crowd-pleasing, rousing movie.
RASCOE: Any other movies that you'd encourage us to check out when they're released?
WILLMORE: Well, I just saw a movie called "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother," which I really liked. It is not awards-y, I would say. It is coming out soon too. It was directed by Bassam Tariq, who, with its star, Mahershala Ali - they were supposed to make the new "Blade" film together. That kind of fell apart, it sounded like. So in the meantime, they made this movie together that is about this devout Muslim. He's a widower whose wife just passed away, so he's taking care of their three kids by himself. And he is also a hit man, so Ali is putting all of those swordfighting skills to use. But it's just this incredibly fun movie about both, like, faith, but also about Houston as this place with all of these different corridors and communities and factions. It's just very alive, definitely violent, but also really has a lot of heart to it.
RASCOE: Now, the festival is happening at this extraordinary time for U.S.-Canada relations. They're not on the best terms. Can you feel a different vibe there?
WILLMORE: Yeah. You know, certainly every public screening I've seen so far, the head of the festival has pointedly mentioned Ontario - you know, Lake Ontario or the province of Ontario - as an important word to everyone here. And that always gets a big reaction from the crowd. So people in the audience are acutely aware of the current state of relations between the U.S. and Canada and particularly, in this case, certain attempts to rename major shared border lakes.
RASCOE: That's Alison Willmore. She's covering the Toronto Film Festival for New York Magazine. Thank you so much for being with us.
WILLMORE: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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