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Still from Free Fire. (Image courtesy of TIFF.)

Sep 11, 2016 By Jason Wilson Web Exclusive

If I could recommend any ticket package to prospective TIFF-goers, it would have to be Midnight Madness. Initial reaction may be somewhere between “that’s too late at night” and “I don’t like horror movies” or a combination of the two. That’s fine, but there’s something to be said for stepping outside your comfort zone and embracing the weird. Fans of the madness know this well and those in attendance are the real reason to go. The crowds for Midnight Madness are the best I’ve ever been around. There is sheer glee leading up to, throughout, and after every screening. In 2015, Hardcore Henry was a runaway hit, selling for an astounding amount of cash before landing like an empty water balloon on pavement in its wide release.

The Madness crowd embraced it and it embraced Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, TIFF 16’s opening night entry into bonkers cinema. Those who elected to see it during the day, or in another setting, may not have been given a peak inside the minds of who this movie is for. A good crowd can elevate, but that’s almost damning with faint praise. Free Fire is a fantastic piece of pulp genre goodness. While yesterday, I celebrated Manchester by the Sea for its astute storytelling and subtlety, Free Fire operates on a much different wavelength. It’s fairly obvious early on that none of these people are exactly shining pillars of the community. They’re dealing guns, after all. Why it works is it cuts out all the fat. There are some attempts at broadening the scope of characters, often in stereotypical ways that are later undercut by reversals or betrayals, and what seemed predictable becomes anything but. Wheatley and co-screenwriter Amy Jump crafted a straightforward premise that dives in early and barrels towards its inevitable conclusion.

The gun deal at the center of Free Fire breaks down within the opening 20 minutes. In an abandoned warehouse, tensions boil when one of the gun runners recognizes one of the buyers’ associates. A fight breaks out, guns get pulled, and people get shot…repeatedly. It devolves into chaos with bodies strewn around, crawling on all fours, trying to make off with the briefcase. No one is unscathed. Free Fire will be a polarizing film, which won’t be new to Wheatley’s catalog, but there is no question that premiering at Midnight Madness was the right choice. The crowd cheered, gasped and laughed at all the over the top acts of violence unfolding on the screen. It was helped by a cast including Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley, Cillian Murphy, and snappy all-star Armie Hammer. It’s a bunch of violent men, and one woman, who each thinks he/she is the smartest player in the room, only they’re all too stupid to win. A load of fun.

The following morning, Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals premiered at the Princess of Wales venue a block away from the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The Princess of Wales is a large room, and a preferable venue to Scotiabank where most of the P&I screenings take place. Scotiabank is good because it’s convenient due to its large selection of screens. The Princess of Wales and the Ryerson (where all the Midnight Madness films are screened) provide a unique venue that helps breathe a little variety into the festival – same goes for Bloor Hot Docs and the Elgin (more on them later in the week).

Like Free Fire, Nocturnal Animals will likely go either way. Initial tweets following the screening were up and down, and I side primarily on the down. Amy Adams plays Susan, a disenchanted artist who receives a copy of her ex-husband’s novel in the mail. As she reads it, another film begins and both her reality and the novel she’s reading run concurrently. She struggles with her current marriage to Walker (a much more sedate and much less fun Armie Hammer than we got in Free Fire) and begins lamenting her lost love. The novel is a piece of pulp fiction where a family’s road encounter with a carload of violent rednecks goes south. As Susan travels through flashback to her past, thematic parallels become more apparent between the novel and her relationship with Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Director Ford doesn’t quite harness what he’s trying to accomplish by showing the vapid reality Susan chose over the romantic alternative with her ex-husband and how it seems less real and more disaffected than the novel Edward wrote. Her life is filled with clichés, and while it all seems purposeful, it’s a nearly impossible line to toe and it never quite coalesces. Nocturnal Animals tries to be the perfect marriage between the art house and dimestore paperback novels, and it can’t. Worth it for Michael Shannon’s performance as a West Texas detective in the novel within the film.

The hype machine is dangerous. Heading into TIFF, Maren Ade’s off-kilter German comedy Toni Erdmann had received almost universal praise following its debut at Cannes. Every review, too, seemed to come with the caveat that it works despite being nearly three hours long. It doesn’t, not entirely. There is a lot to admire, and clearly it has worked for the majority of audiences, but it needs some serious trimming around the edges.

It’s fine if a film touted as a comedy isn’t constantly, or even often, funny as long as it’s constantly engaging and interesting. There are several scenes chronicling the absurdist relationship between Ines and her estranged father Winfried (and alias Toni Erdmann). Ines is a tightly-wound business woman desperately trying to climb the corporate ladder while her father is a clownish man-child trying to bring happiness into his daughter’s world, though his clumsy attempts are met with reticence and downright discomfort. He’s out of line interfering, but when he dons a wig and fake teeth to become Erdmann, inserting himself into his daughter’s business, it often gets very funny.

It works as well as it does because it is completely void of any saccharine realizations or embracing of the silly and absurd. Neither Ines nor her father are treated as correct, and thus the comedy is allowed to land at a more gracious tempo. Too many scenes stall the momentum, though, for it to be fully successful.