Detroit native
Mike Binder's
Black and White
MIS
Hollywood North
Toronto Film Festival brims with Jewish-related
features and documentaries. Here are some highlights.
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
T
his year's Toronto International
Film Festival will run Sept. 4-14,
with screenings of more than
300 films from more than 60 countries in
almost a dozen theaters scattered through-
out Metropolitan Toronto. The 2014 festi-
val offers an astonishing number of festival
films with a Jewish connection — writers,
directors, actors and/or themes.
Here, briefly described, we spotlight
some of these films in the two marquee
festival categories — "galas" (films with
major stars and a red carpet premiere)
and "special presentations" (high-profile
premieres) — as well as less high-profile
offerings from contemporary world cin-
ema (narrative feature films with "a com-
pelling story") and notable documentaries.
Gala Guide
Black and White stars Kevin Costner
as the maternal grandfather of a biracial
child. The child's paternal grandmother,
an African-American, disputes his cus-
tody. This film was written and directed by
former Detroiter Mike Binder.
Boychoir is a drama in which a troubled
11-year-old clashes with the choirmas-
ter (Dustin Hoffman) of a fancy music
school. Debra Winger co-stars.
Foxcatcher, for which Capote direc-
tor Bennett Miller and writer Dan
Futterman once again team up, is based
on the true story about the troubled rela-
tionship between two Olympic wrestling
champs (Channing Tatum and Mark
Ruffalo) and a neurotic millionaire (Steve
Carrell).
Map to the Stars is a very acerbic look
at Hollywood life, directed by David
Cronenberg (Eastern Promises).
Pawn Sacrifice, a docu-drama directed
by Edward Zwick, recounts the famous
1972 world chess championship match
that pitted Russian Boris Spassky (Liev
Schreiber) against American Bobby
Fischer (Tobey Maguire).
Ruth and Alex co-stars Morgan
Freeman and Diane Keaton as a long-
married couple forced to consider selling
their Brooklyn apartment. Alysia Reiner
and former Detroiter Miriam Shor have
supporting roles.
Samba, a French film about a recent
migrant to France who fights to stay with
the help of a rookie immigration officer
(Charlotte Gainsbourg), was written and
co-directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric
Toledano, Sephardic Jews whose parents
fled Algeria and Morocco, respectively.
This is Where I Leave You, directed
by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum)
and the most Jewish film among the big-
budget features, is based on a 2009 novel
of the same name by Jonathan Tropper,
who also wrote the screenplay. The plot:
The four combative siblings of the Altman
family (changed from "Foxman" in the
novel) reunite at their childhood home
after their father dies for a week of sitting
shivah (the siblings are played by Jason
Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and
Corey Stoll; Jane Fonda plays their Jewish
mother).
Special Presentations
99 Homes stars Andrew Garfield (The
Amazing Spider-Man) as an unemployed
construction worker so desperate to save
his family home that he joins an unscru-
pulous realtor in foreclosing on poor
people.
American Heist is about two brothers
(Adrien Brody and Hayden Christensen)
with troubled pasts who become
embroiled in a high-stakes bank robbery.
Cake, directed by Daniel Barnz, stars
Jennifer Aniston as a woman in a chronic-
pain support group who begins to investi-
gate the suicide of a fellow group member
(Anna Kendrick) and develops an unex-
pected relationship with the dead woman's
husband.
Clouds of Sils Maria, a French film
written and directed by Oliver Assayas,
stars Juliet Binoche as a veteran stage
star who leans on her assistant (Kristen
Stewart) as she jousts with a younger
actress.
The Cobbler stars Adam Sandler as a
lonely N.Y.C. shoe repairman who discov-
ers a major heirloom that allows him to
walk in another man's shoes. This fantasy
co-stars Dustin Hoffman and Ellen
Barkin.
The Humbling, directed by Barry
Levinson from a 2009 Philip Roth novel
of the same name, stars Al Pacino as a
former star actor whose talent has faltered.
Things get complicated when he enters
into affairs with younger women. Co-stars
include Kyra Sedgwick and Charles
Grodin.
The Keeping Room is about three
Southern young women (one played by
Hailee Steinfeld) who are left on an iso-
lated farm at the end of the Civil War and
have to fight off some murderous Yankee
soldiers.
Madame Bovary, an adaptation of
Gustave Flaubert's classic novel, stars Mia
Wasikowska as the disgruntled provincial
wife yearning to breathe free and co-stars
Ezra Miller as one of her lovers.
Manglehorn stars Al Pacino as a quirky
small-town locksmith who tries to start
his life over again with the help of a new
friend (Holly Hunter). Harmony Korine,
the director of Spring Breakers, has a big
supporting role.
Men, Women and Children, directed
by Jason Reitman and co-starring Adam
Sandler, offers a poignant look at the
many ways the Internet has changed the
relationships between teenagers and their
parents.
Mr. Turner, directed by Mike Leigh, is
a British film about the famous 19th-cen-
tury British painter, J.M.W. Turner (played
by Timothy Spall).
My Old Lady, directed and written by
Israel Horovitz based on his play, stars
Kevin Kline as a Jewish New Yorker trying
to sell the Paris apartment he inherited.
His plans are delayed by the apartment's
tenants, played by Maggie Smith and
Kristin Scott Thomas.
Nightcrawler stars Jake Gyllenhaal as
a drifter and petty thief who picks up a
camera and scours the city for gruesome
crime-scene footage he can sell.
Rosewater marks the directorial debut
of Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame.
It recounts the true story of Iranian-
Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (played
by Gael Garcia Bernal), whose appearance
on Stewart's show in 2009 precipitated his
five-month imprisonment by the Iranian
government.
Phoenix is a German film that takes
place in ravaged postwar Berlin. Nelly, a
Jewish concentration camp survivor, has
facial reconstructive surgery after the war
and begins to search for her (non-Jewish)
husband. She finds him, but he doesn't
recognize her. But because she resembles
his wife, who he believes dead, he asks her
to impersonate his wife so he can claim
her big inheritance. She agrees because she
needs to know if her husband ever loved
her, or if he betrayed her to the Nazis.
The Reach stars Michael Douglas as a
high-rolling corporate shark who plays a
most dangerous game with his impover-
ished young guide during a hunting trip in
the Mojave Desert.
The Search, a French film directed by
Oscar-winner Michel Hazanavicius (The
Artist), tells about the terrible face of war
as experienced by a 9-year-old Chechen
orphan and a teen Russian soldier during
the 1999 Russian invasion of the break-
away republic.
A Second Chance, a Danish film direct-
ed by Oscar winner Susanne Bier, is about
a veteran police officer, with a new wife
and baby, who makes a fateful decision
regarding some drug-addict parents.
Shelter co-stars Jennifer Connelly and
Anthony Mackie as homeless people on
the streets of New York who find solace
and strength in each other.
Still Alice, co-directed by Richard
Glatzer, stars Julianne Moore as a suc-
cessful Columbia University professor
who struggles to maintain her mind and
self after being diagnosed with early onset
Alzheimer's.
Time Out of Mind, directed by Oren
Moverman, stars Richard Gere as a New
York man forced into a homeless shelter
who tries to reconnect with his estranged
Hollywood North on page 68
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