In an unusual turn of events, nothing coming out of Toronto Film Festival looks like a sure thing for the Academy Awards.<\/b>
\nTORONTO \u2014 A funny happened on the way home from the festival.
Instead of drawing up a list of definitive Oscars favorites, much of Hollywood boarded planes in puzzlement leaving Toronto International Film Festival, with the 2018 Oscar race as cloudy as ever.
What happened? \u201cUsually the festivals anoint two or three unanimous front-runners,\u201d like last year\u2019s Moonlight and La Land, says Dave Karger, special correspondent for film site IMDb.com. With critics disagreeing over many of the season’s biggest films, \u201cthat didn\u2019t happen this year.\u201d Let\u2019s take a look at what we know for sure.
After Guillermo del Toro\u2019s The Shape of Water ( a dark fairy tale about a voiceless janitor who cares for a scary sea creature) won the Venice International Film Festival’s top Golden Lion prize, we knew it was a hit, and the magical tale held steady in Toronto, where audiences swooned, too.
But critics were divided on Alexander Payne\u2019s Downsizing ( which miniaturizes humans like Matt Damon) and George Clooney’s Suburbicon hit a critical wall . \u201cClooney\u2019s movie just opened and closed in terms of awards,\u201d says Pete Hammond, awards columnist for Deadline.com.
And Sunday brought a surprise twist: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a film about a grieving mother (Frances McDormand) who defiantly takes a stand against the police after her daughter’s murder, took the coveted People’s Choice Award, the festival’s top prize.
Emotional fare resonated at the fest, including Breathe, Andrew Garfield\u2019s true tale about an adventurous English man who is struck down by polio, along with continued praise for Armie Hammer’s gay love story, Call Me By Your Name, unveiled at Sundance back in January. Greta Gerwig turned heads with coming-of-age tale Lady Bird, her solo directorial debut. The moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship \u00ab\u00a0has the momentum to build and build as people see it,\u201d says Hammond. \u201cIf I had to bet on anything, I\u2019d bet on that movie getting in\u201d the best picture race.
This year held a dizzying collection of strong performances by women in lead roles. \u201cToronto turned the Oscar best-actress race into a crowded diva smackdown,\u201d says Tom O\u2019Neil, founder of awards prognostication site GoldDerby.com.
Those whose campaigns were kickstarted include Jessica Chastain ( Molly\u2019s Game), Emma Stone ( Battle of the Sexes), Judi Dench ( Victoria & Abdul), Saoirse Ronan ( Lady Bird), Sally Hawkins ( The Shape of Water), McDormand ( Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Annette Bening ( Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool).
Could an ice queen skate in? Margot Robbie\u2019s acid-tongued Tonya Harding mockumentary, I, Tonya, left the festival with a hot distribution deal and an expected fall release date. Robbie \u201ceither will sneak (into the best-actress race) or, at the very least she has really upped her credibility with this performance,\u201d Karger says.
The good news is critics were impressed by Gary Oldman\u2019s hand-wringing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour; the bad is that the film itself failed to generate much excitement. Damon earned high marks for his shrunken Everyman in Downsizing, though the movie took heat for being too \u00ab\u00a0message-y\u00a0\u00bb about global warming. And Garfield had an entire theaters passing tissues thanks to his stunning performance in Breathe, playing a man who maintains his joie de vivre despite coping with paralysis.
What happens now? \u201cMost Oscar prognosticators are looking at the movies coming out at the end of the year, as opposed to the ones that just played,\u201d says Karger, with an eye to Steven Spielberg\u2019s Pentagon Papers drama starring Meryl Streep, The Post, and Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s as yet untitled high-fashion drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis. By all accounts, Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic, Dunkirk, remains a sure bet in the best-picture race, and there is a silver lining: \u00ab\u00a0All of this bodes well for a handful of earlier 2017 releases like Get Out,\u00a0\u00bb says Karger. \u00ab\u00a0Even Wonder Woman could now benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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