10 Movie Revelations We Had at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival

We learned a lot about the futures of Nicolas Cage, Scarlett Johansson, and other Hollywood heavyweights.

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Eight days. 30 movies. Little sleep. And 90 minutes worth of Japanese dominatrixes on a kinky, violent warpath.

That was my experience at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, though only in broad strokes. Note: Those dominatrixes came in the form of Hitoshi Matsumoto's bonkers dark comedy R100, a crowd favorite during the festival's Midnight Madness section.

Reporting from a festival as gigantic as TIFF is no easy task. One look at the film program, which details every single world premiere and special screening on the enormous schedule, is enough to send the most diligent of movie critics into feverish sweats. How the hell will I see everything I need to see? Why must they screen the biggest movies all alongside each other, as to make it impossible to see them all? And what in cinema's name are Asphalt Witches and Borgman? Do I need to watch them, or spend that time watching hopping vampires in Rigor Mortis? And, just accept it, by sitting through three-hour epics like Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her, and Blue Is the Warmest Color, you're missing out on two other movies at a time. There's no way around it.

It's an endurance test, as well as an exercise in strategizing and time management, but by the end of something like TIFF, you're a more informed movie lover, able to tell the masses all about what's on the horizon in the wide world of filmdom. Taken from the best of the 30 movies Complex saw at the Toronto International Film Festival, here are 10 new truths about where the movies and their stars stand after the globe's largest, and one of its most influential, film-centric gatherings. We survived with these new perspectives. With only a few S&M scars from Matsumoto's R100.

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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

There's a clear frontrunner for the next Academy Award for Best Picture.

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The movie: 12 Years a Slave

Lee Daniels could learn a lot from Steve McQueen.

Despite its huge box office success and mostly positive critical response, Lee Daniels' The Butler suffers from one major, deal-breaking (for me, at least) flaw: It's an unnecessary, often frustrating hey-it's-that-famous-actor-now affair. A stranger to subtlety, Daniels cast several big-name actors to play minor, sometimes single-scene roles. Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower. Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson. Mariah Carey as a mother working on a plantation. And…David Banner as Carey's character's husband? Yes, that's true, and incredibly distracting. It's not that those folks aren't good actors—they're all fine in The Butler. It's a two-headed matter of tone and intent. Rather than play the movie with restraint, Daniels goes for the big emotions, all-around showiness, and, as a result, overheated melodrama. He really wants you to acknowledge that it's not some no-name actress playing Nancy Reagan but, rather, Jane Fonda. He'd probably be heartbroken if gossip bloggers didn't notice Minka Kelly playing Jackie Onassis Kennedy. Yes, Lee Daniels has the industry gusto and respect to gather such an impressive lineup of talent. Please, give him that praise—it's what he so desperately craves.

McQueen, however, doesn't need your back patting. Heavyweights like Paul Giamatti and Brad Pitt don't show up for minuscule cameos in his latest film, 12 Years a Slave, because the British filmmaker wants people to admire his clout. He's confident enough to know that the film does all the heavy lifting, so that by the time Pitt appears late into 12 Years a Slave for a brief but pivotal performance, McQueen's already earned the carte blanche to introduce whomever he pleases. The film is a remarkable achievement in tone, storytelling, and boldness that never calls attention to its bravery. The A-listers involved aren't simply playing dress-up; they're small, though equally powerful and important, parts of a much bigger picture. One that's as devastating as it is expertly made.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, a free black man living in Saratoga, New York, in 1841, with his wife and two children. He's an accomplished violin player, and when his family goes on a two-week trip out of town, Solomon's tricked into joining a circus to share his musical abilities in Washington, D.C. His travel companions drug Solomon and sell him into slavery after a week's worth of performances, for which he wakes up in chains, confined to a dark, lonely room in an unknown building barely miles away from the Capitol Building. As 12 Years a Slave progresses, Solomon is passed around from one slave master to the next, starting with an all-business trader (Giamatti), getting bought by the kindly Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), renamed "Platt," and, after a violent confrontation with Ford's malicious righthand man (Paul Dano), ending up under the ownership of Master Epps (Michael Fassbender). Tyrannical, impulsive, and unhinged, Epps becomes the film's main antagonist, particularly in how he mistreats Patsy (Lupita Nyong'o, worthy of all the Best Supporting Actress awards), his helpless plaything.

Inevitably, comparisons have been drawn between 12 Years a Slave and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, parallels that are unavoidable once you've seen the former (based on Northup's 1853 memoir of the same name). For one, like Jamie Foxx whipping the hell out of that evil white man, there's a cathartic moment in McQueen's film where Solomon lays the smack-down on Dano's character. But connecting 12 Years a Slave to Django Unchained is like making parallels between the startling serial killer flick Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Showtime's goofy Dexter. Whereas Tarantino played every scene for applause and cool-guy points, McQueen's trying to paint as honest—moreover, brutally real—a presentation of our country's most inhumane period as possible. His method: showing the horrors of slavery (whippings, humiliation, the tearing apart of families, hangings) without any filters or genre trappings.

The effects are clear in 12 Years a Slave's most harrowing sequence, where Epps forces Solomon to administer seemingly endless lashings upon Patsy's back. In a single take, McQueen's camera calmly moves around the scene, shifting from the hideous scars on Patsy's back instantly forming on Patsy's back as the whip makes contact to the look of anguish on Solomon's face, right back around to the look of pain on Patsy's. You're right there with them. It's impossible to look away.

12 Years a Slave is the third towering motion picture from McQueen, who's firmly established himself as one of the world's best working directors, bar none. His previous films, Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011), were aggressively raw depictions of prison life and sexual addiction, respectively. Unless you're an adventurous moviegoer who's willing to submit to a filmmaker's darkest impulses, they're inaccessible. Here, though, perhaps knowing the importance of the material and the fact that he's working with Brad Pitt's Plan B production company, McQueen replaces his usually uninviting approach delivering a gorgeously shot, somewhat Hollywood veneer to the film, right down to its emotive, Oscar-ready musical score.

But make no mistake—he's no less daring. Known for long, static shots that reveal much about characters without cutting away or needing any exposition, McQueen one-ups himself midway into 12 Years a Slave. Having narrowly avoided being hung, Solomon's left in the noose that's attached to a tree, his feet barely touching the muddy dirt beneath him, the rope still tight enough to restrict his breathing. And as he remains there, struggling, life goes on all around him—his fellow slaves ignore him. The wind blows as normal. The soundtrack is all gnats, rustling leaves, and other nature sounds.

As much as you're hoping that either McQueen will switch frames or someone, anyone will help Solomon out, everything remains as is. You feel Mr. Northup's misery. As you do every other emotion he feels over the course of his 12 grueling years as a slave, thanks to Chiwetel Ejiofor's exceptional performance. Always one of the movie game's most underrated actors (see: Kinky Boots, Children of Men, Talk to Me), the London native is a powerhouse, internalizing his emotions when it's needed (McQueen isn't afraid to fasten the camera on Ejiofor's face for extended portraits) and lashing out with thunderous sorrow and anger when he's pushed beyond his constantly readjusted breaking point.

When 12 Years a Slave concludes, you're left reeling from both Solomon Northup's incredible ordeal and the mastery with which McQueen has executed the whole thing. Tears are warranted, though not requested by the director or yanked from viewers' eyeballs through insecure artistry. Jane Fonda's services aren't required.

We're all gonna forget about James Cameron's Avatar real quick.

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The movie: Gravity

Remember what it was like to be a kid, looking up at the sky, wondering what the hell was going on beyond the stars? You knew Han Solo wasn't actually being a supreme badass up there, or that those little green martians seen on Sightings—sci-fi's answer to Unsolved Mysteries—weren't plotting ways to abduct you Fire in the Sky style. But you knew something was definitely happening, and, for a quick second, working for NASA became a dream job. The possibilities outside of Earth seemed boundless.

If that describes your childhood experience in any way, Alfonso Cuarón's breathtaking Gravity will tap into something special. With phenomenal 3D effects and true visual grandeur, the Children of Men director transports viewers directly into outer space right from the opening seconds. Gravity's first 15 minutes are dedicated to a single sequence, where the camera casually hovers around the Hubble Space Telescope as two astronauts, first-time space traveler Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and the veteran wisecracker Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), routinely go about making repairs. Wearing their space suits, Stone and Kowalski float in the cosmos while chatting with their radio control person, "Houston"—it's an otherwise mundane set-up made truly remarkable by the setting's realism. Earth remains visible off in the distance, as Cuarón's keeps reminding viewers by spinning back around and around to recapture the planet in the camera's frame. There's a lightness and ease to the camera movements that lends a certain gravity-defying sensory vibe to the film's opening—you, too, feel like one of NASA's bravest employees, moving weightlessly over Earth.

Meaning, the sheer panic and franticness once a Russian satellite's debris starts hurling towards the camera, crashing into the Hubble telescope and sending Stone and Kowalski helplessly flying off into the sky, is just as tangible. Gravity quickly turns into a race for survival, with Stone doing everything in her power to not drift away into the sky's netherworld. If there's one major problem with the script, co-written by Cuarón and his son, Jonás Cuarón, it's that Gravity is essentially one long action scene—Bullock and Clooney in space, trying to get back home, for 90 minutes. Attempts at characterization are made, but they're mostly tossed in for the sake of two-dimensional storytelling. Stone tells Kowalski about a recent family tragedy, which, of course, is meant to make her a sympathetic character, rather than a one-note survivalist, but the anecdote registers more like a too-easy ploy for Stone's endearment. Bullock, the film's emotional and plot-moving anchor, is at her best here—she's especially on-point during a monologue given in a state of peaceful acceptance, with impending, lonely death on the horizon.

Should Bullock get ready for another Academy Award acceptance speech, though? Not so fast. As starry as its minimal cast is, Gravity isn't about its actors, and, although there's a concerted effort to give the story resonance larger than purely aesthetic pleasures, there's no denying that it's all about what Cuarón's pulled off technically. The Mexican director's always been a master. In Y Tu Mamá También (2001), he produced excellence through simple, talky human interactions, but in Children of Men he executed two stunning show-stoppers: an attack on a moving car shot in the backseat and devoid of any cutaways, and a nearly 20-minute, again single-take climax replete with gunfire, explosions, and all-out warfare. Gravity, though, is Cuarón operating on some whole other shit. Along with the film's effects department, he's created a star-bound landscape that's amazingly photorealistic—it's not, of course, but good luck trying to figure out what's CGI and what's not in any given scene.

It's no wonder the almighty James Cameron has declared Gravity "the best space film ever"—it's the first movie of its kind to viscerally put the audience above the clouds. Moments seen through Bullock's characters eyes—via seamless transitions where the camera glides through her helmet and switches to first-person POV—convey the kind of you-are-there sensations previously exclusive to virtual reality simulators. Impressively, Cuarón opts for the POV flips during the film's tensest, most chaotic action scenes—yes, whether intentionally or not, he's showing off, but why shouldn't he? With Gravity, he's trying to push cinema forward in new post-Avatar directions, to give those now-grown-up kids who daydreamed about outer space a transformative ride.

Granted, it's a lean, bold, hastily paced thriller where space seems like a never-ending coffin, not a play land—thanks to Cuarón, you can now live out those fantasies without any of the danger.

Nicolas Cage (and his beard) can still act. Really, really well.

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The movie: Joe

There's a scene in Nicolas Cage's new film Joe that seems made for any and all future online lists, blogs, or essays about the actor's most ridiculous moments. It comes midway into the film, with Cage's character, the eponymous Joe, heading into a private bedroom with a prostitute, to relieve tension caused by the country brothel's resident watch dog, a canine that Joe constantly refers to as "that asshole." Before the door shuts, Joe asks the woman, "What was your cat's name?"

Prostitute: "Pussy."

Joe:" What's your favorite color?"

Prostitute: "Red."

Joe: "Blow me."

In any other recent Nicolas Cage movie, that response would elicit howls of laughter, no doubt, but that's not the case in Joe. It's still reasonably funny and completely random, yes, but not at all ridiculous. By that point, Cage has already solidified his performance's excellence—he's sufficiently convinced you that Joe's his best movie in ages, that his acting's better than it's been in anything since, shit, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). "Blow me" feels like an added bonus for one's Cage-centric enjoyment amidst two hours' of grade-A filmmaking, not the only worthwhile future soundboard-ready line of dialogue in an altogether crap movie.

Which is to say, it's unintentionally jarring. An engrossing, brooding, character-powered drama, Joe comes from David Gordon Green, the erratic and unpredictable indie director who, here, is back in pristine, indie George Washington/Snow Angels form, far removed creatively from his underwhelming Hollywood detours like Your Highness and The Sitter. In a way, Green's on the same kind of trajectory as Cage—lately, both men have mostly been known for their diminishing potential, though at least Green's been actively working his way back towards his older, more respected ways (see: this summer's critically praised indie dramedy Prince Avalanche, starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch). Cage, however, continues to make disposable films like Seeking Justice (2011), Stolen (2012), and Frozen Ground (2013). You've never heard of those movie for good reasons.

In Green, though, Cage has found the motivation needed to, you know, legitimately act again. He's certainly been given a strong character. Based on Larry Brown's 1991 novel, Joe centers on its title character, an ex-con who oversees a ragtag group of tree-poisoners—workers who get rid of old trees for a lumber company's supply—in the backwoods of Mississippi. Warm-hearted and actively social, Joe knows everyone in town, and they all love him, but he's also harboring an angry side, constantly being provoked by his hard boozing. One day, a 15-year-old kid named Gary (The Tree of Life and Mud scene-stealer Tye Sheridan, as great as ever) shows up at his worksite asking for a job. The more time Joe spends with Gary, the clearer he sees the youngster's messed-up life: Gary's father (Gary Poulter, a first-time actor who gives an incredibly authentic performance) is a deadbeat drunk who hits him, his mother, and younger sister inside their condemned, unlivable shack. Struggling with his own demons, Joe sees an opportunity to do right by someone else for a change, but not without serious consequences.

At his best, Green creates naturalistic, real worlds that come across as not as movie sets but documentary locations. The woodsy community seen in Joe feels genuine to the point of the film often seeming like a cinéma vérité experiment offset by the unmistakable Cage-ness of one Nicolas Cage—no amount of unkempt facial hair can hide the world's most scrutinized Academy Award winner/dinosaur skull collector/possible vampire's A-list identity. The locals in Joe, right down to Gary's family, never give off a collective "actor" impression, and Cage, in an airtight turn that's up there with Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation., quickly settles right into that groove along with them. He's still Nicolas Cage, but a Southern-fried, lovable, dangerous version.

He's firing on all cylinders here, earning sympathy in his tender father-figure interactions with Gary, fiercely intimidating whenever, and, most impressively, getting big laughs without going overboard into Wicker Man territory. Though it's definitely a heavy, dark affair, Joe is humorous in all the right places, namely an enjoyable sequence where Joe and Gary share some beers and look for the elder's missing American Bulldog, named, perfectly, "Dog."

The highest compliment we can pay Joe, though, is this: Nothing in in Green's film would qualify for any forthcoming incarnations of our recent gallery of the "Nicolas Cage Reaction GIFs for the Emotionally Challenged." Or whatever other assortment of hilariously absurd Cage-isms the Internet has in store. Nope, not even that "Blow me" line, which comes close but, kudos to Cage's back-to-greatness performance and Green's marvelous direction, feels natural to the character.

A few more projects like this and The Cage (as we like to call him around these parts) may finally redeem himself for the sins of Next (2007), Bangkok Dangerous (2008), Knowing (2009), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010), Season of the Witch (2011), Drive… You get the idea.

Zoe Kazan is the best thing to happen to romantic comedies since…Meg Ryan?

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Adèle Exarchopoulos is the most exciting new actress in years.

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The movie: Blue Is the Warmest Color

A theatre that holds nearly 560 people, filled to capacity, doesn't seem like the ideal setting to watch some of the most explicit sex scenes this side of an adult movie, yet that was the setting for the first Toronto International Film Festival screening of this year's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning Blue Is the Warmest Color. Tunisian-French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche's NC-17 drama is already notorious for those aforementioned moments of love making. High-school junior Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and the college-aged Fine Arts student she's smitten over, Emma (Léa Seydoux) have quit the innocent flirtations and leering for something more passionate. And Kechiche doesn't shy away from any of it, spending what must've been ten solid minutes in the bedroom with them, his camera never pulling away from their most intimate interactions.

In any other context, this explosion of on-screen intercourse would qualify as pornography. Everyone in that theatre would've felt as if they weren't in Toronto but in a fancier-than-usual 42nd Street peep show. But that's because skin flicks only offer mindless banging devoid of anything resembling emotional connections. Blue Is the Warmest Color, on the other hand, is a 180-minute celebration of love in all of its forms, from joyous to heart-shattering.

As Adèle and Emma express their uncontrollable affections for one another, the shared passion is all over the faces, and elsewhere. Kechiche shows the audience just how intense his characters' feelings are for each other. And in that, the controversial sequence never feels exploitative. It's unfiltered sexuality. The press members in that theatre yesterday weren't being asked to fetishize anything—the proposition centered on accepting the film's honest sensuality. And for many, myself included, the director's challenge was wholly welcomed.

Let's not let Kechiche off the hook so easily, though. Throughout the film he's clearly in love with Exarchopolous'—the film's protagonist and exceptional anchor—body, evidenced by the somewhat ridiculous amount of shots where she's walking away from the camera, leaving her derriere front and center. If Kechice's film wasn't so damn emotionally robust, he'd certainly deserve all of the criticism he's received from some reviewers (and the author of the graphic novel the film is based on), but, to his immense credit, Blue is the Warmest Color is overwhelmingly affecting. Exarchopolous' performance is a thing of naturalistic and expressive beauty—the longer the camera stays on her every movement, the deeper her character resonates.

And, indeed, Adèle is a phenomenal character to inhabit. At the beginning of the flim, she's your average 15-year-old girl—happy-go-lucky, a star amongst her friends, and a proud bookworm. But she's also unsure about her sexuality, a source of inner turmoil that's exacerbated by the courtship of Tommy, a cool, good-looking, all-around nice senior boy. He's all about her, yet the closer they get, the more Adèle can't hide the feeling that "something's missing." It's the sensation that comes from catching eyes with Emma—a blue-haired, confident and open lesbian—while walking across a crowded public street. When one of Adèle's female classmates playfully kisses her it emboldens her to visit a local gay bar where, as fate would have it, Emma is in attendance. They immediately hit it off, their butterflied conversations quickly growing into heartfelt carnality.

It's a shame that the chatter surrounding Blue Is the Warmest Color has focused on the sexual highs, because Kechiche's film truly soars in its quieter moments. Before any bumping or grinding goes down, Adèle and Emma get comfortable on a park bench to discuss Sartre's philosophies as the latter nonchalantly sketches the former's face, and it's delicate, authentic, and touching. It's the moment where the relationship begins to feel real, like something more than your average romantic drama coupling.

Clocking in at three hours long, it's a hugely ambitious work, almost to a fault. A handful of extended scenes don't warrant their prolonged durations—Kechiche has no qualms with letting his characters breathe, giving some of their routine chats with friends and workplace rituals more attention than seems necessary. But his dedication to uninterrupted episodes also grants his actresses the chance to vastly explore every facet of love, from the fiery lust that kickstarts relationships to the frustratingly complacent middle-sections experienced in longterm commitments and the agonizing lows felt when things fall apart.

Genuine to its core, Blue is the Warmest Color foregoes the neatness of a clean ending and lets the characters hurt, and Exarchopolous and Seydoux—whose chemistry forms the best cinematic romance you're likely to see anytime soon—reach towering and devastating levels of emotion in the film's dialogue-and-tear-driven climax.

Leaving the theatre, people were raving about the performances, and how amazingly Kechiche and his cast nailed the complexities of pure, mutually overpowering love. "I wish my daughter was here to see that," said one middle-aged woman exiting inches away from me. That's the right sentiment and proper testament for Blue Is the Warmest Color.

Jude Law is a comedic beast.

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We have a new best horror movie of 2014.

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The movie: Oculus

The Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section is notorious for its raucous audiences, those ravenous horror movie junkies who stay out until past 2 a.m. eight nights in a row every September just to be on the cutting edge of the genre's next wave. On Sunday, the 8th, before the Midnight Madness legion finally settled in for 2013 edition of TIFF's fourth MM film, Oculus, the party atmosphere was in full effect. A pungent air of Hennessy filled the theatre. An inflatable, camouflage-colored beach ball the size of a medicine ball was punched all around the crowd, including the upper balcony. The energy was high, especially when programmer Colin Geddes stepped on stage to introduce the film shortly after midnight. Everyone was ready to rock out to what Geddes has labeled this year's equivalent to Insidious, a 2010 Midnight Madness premiere itself.

But then a strange thing happened—the usually live-wire crowd went silent. For the next 100 minutes, you could hear a pin drop. Well, except for the moments where everyone broke out into loud applause. But for the most part, one quick glance around the Ryerson Theatre's attendees confirmed one thing: There wasn't a single person whose eyes weren't facing forward, directly at the screen, in pure, nerve-wracked silence. Oculus had them all. And it wouldn't let go, from its instantly brooding opening to the disturbingly grim ending.

Get ready, horror fans, because, whenever Oculus gets picked by a worthy distribution company and hits a theatre near you, you're in for something really special.

You'll also want to get familiar with the name Mike Flanagan—he's the director/co-writer of Oculus, and he's now two-for-two. Early last year, Flanagan's made-for-pennies debut, Absentia, quietly made its way to DVD after a 2011 film festival run, but anyone who gave the film a chance acknowledged its first-class creep-out factor. Making the most out of his limited resources, Flanagan cast his friends and family and utilized his natural filmmaking skills to convey his subtle, unique story about a tunnel found in a suburban neighborhood that just so happens to be a gateway to another dimension, one occupied by insect-like creatures. The creatures are never shown, but their presence is consistently felt throughout Absentia. The film's a superlative example of DIY horror, and promised big things for Flanagan—that is, as long as someone gave him a chance.

Fortunately, someone—i.e., the folks behind the indie Intrepid Pictures—did. Working with a larger budget, Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard haven't held anything back with Oculus. With their ambitions sky-high, the filmmakers have pulled off that rarest of horror movie tricks: creating something wholly original. It's supernatural, but not exactly a ghost story. Blood and viscera flow, yet it's not a gore-fest by any means. Character-driven and audacious in its mythology, Oculus is an intelligent horror fan's dream come true.

The antagonist is an antique mirror. More specifically, it's the Lasser Glass, a piece of reflective, decorative furniture that dates back to the 1750s. In 2002, Alan (Rory Cochrane) and Marie Russell (Katee Sackhoff) bought the mirror and placed inside their new home's office, where Alan works. As their children, 10-year-old Tim (Garrett Ryan) and 12-year-old Kaylie (Annalise Russo), watch helplessly, something inside the mirror sends both of their parents into different states of insanity before, through a nightmarish series of events one night, mom and dead are killed. Flash forward 11 years, when a grown-up Tim (Brenton Thwaites) comes home from a mental facility and reunites with Kaylie (Karen Gillan), who's now obsessed with the Lasser Glass and determined to somehow destroy it. Having rigged their old childhood home with cameras to record what happens (thankfully, Oculus never flips to the found-footage style), Kaylie convinces Michael to spend the night with her there and confront the mirror and whatever kind of malevolent forces it's about to send their way.

The beauty of Oculus is that—save for spoilers, of course—there's no way to predict what it's in store for Kaylie and Michael. Without giving too much away, Flanagan's film is comparable to Insidious in its dedication to looney-tunes imagery and ideas, but there's no carnival funhouse trope like The Further or iconic ghouls like the red-skinned demon or the manly bride. Oculus uses memories as its scare tactics—aggressively blurring reality for Kaylie and Michael, the Lasser Glass is a manipulator more than a monster. The present collides with the past; the characters' younger and older versions continually switch places, as do the house's various rooms and, even more effectively, everyday objects—just wait until you see what Flanagan's able to do with an apple and a lightbulb. Going H.A.M. with the characters' perceptions throughout its final act, Oculus is superbly edited. The leaps through time and space are all seamless and perfectly disorienting.

The film is also efficiently paced, with Flanagan setting up its hellish end-game with assured patience. The sound design—all ominous strings and rattling—keep the dread on full tilt, yet co-writers Flanagan and Howard aren't in any rush, as evidenced by the clever manner in which they explain the Lasser Glass' dark, sprawling back-story: Kaylie dictates the mirror's origins directly into the cameras she's positioned in her father's old office. A 13-minute sequence in which someone gets all exposition-happy could have potentially been insufferable, but it's played terrifically and with convincing urgency by Gillan. A veteran of Britian's beloved Dr. Who TV series, Gillan shares Oculus M.V.P. honors with Sackhoff, who's put through the ringer—e.g., glass meals, chains, physical assaults, and more—and believably sells every last trauma.

Films like Oculus are why genre fans flock to TIFF's Midnight Madness screenings. They want to be freaked out into a soundless submission—that just happens so infrequently, but that's what Mike Flanagan's all about. With Absentia and now Oculus, the upstart Salem, MA, native is gaining a reputation for mature, smart, eyes-peeled-to-the-screen horror.

Good news: He's already working on his next one—the other day, news surfaced that Flanagan's been given the money to re-team with Oculus co-star Katee Sackhoff for Somnia, a "a haunting, emotionally absorbing horror film about an orphaned child whose dreams—and nightmares—manifest physically as he sleeps." Midnight Madness 2014, here we come.

Scarlett Johansson is about to become a cult movie hero.

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The movie: Under the Skin

Men find Scarlett Johansson irresistible in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin. They're more than willing to hop into her van and ride along to wherever she pleases. Red flags don't exist alongside her playful flirtations and gorgeous appearance. She's strangely ready to bring any guy back to her house, but there's a problem: The men never leave.

That's the genre hook of Glazer's avant-garde, Stanley Kubrick-inspired new science-fiction film cum quasi-horror flick and midnight movie freakshow. You see, Johansson's character is some kind of alien, and the guys she lures to her "home" are the human victims she and her muted, motorcyclist overseer needs for whatever experiments they're performing. The reason why that description's so oblique is because, well, Under the Skin resists explanation. Glazer and co-writer Walter Campbell—adapting the 2000 novel by Michel Faber—have no interest in clearing up anything on screen. The goal here is to unsettle, provoke thought, and use a career-best Johansson to examine the duality of a person's evil and good sides, even though said "person" is actually an extra-terrestrial. Though it's tough to tell from the exterior. Even when Johansson's character appears naked.

Got your attention now? Good, because Under the Skin is a film that deserves as many eyes as possible, and if the superficial, even cheap bait of Johansson's knockout looks brings viewers to see this one whenever A24 (the distribution company that just acquired it) releases it, all good. Under the Skin is a tough sell otherwise, an obtuse, atmospheric chamber piece that falls in line with experimental oddities like last year's Beyond the Black Rainbow.

After an opening 2001: A Space Odyssey nod, with Glazer's camera putting the audience inside an eyeball and surreally pulling back, the film kicks off with the aforementioned motorcyclist picking a dead female body up off the side of a highway in Scotland. Inside a glowing all-white room, the corpse is undressed by a lookalike (Johansson), who wears the dead girl's clothes and sets off on her way to abducting horny dudes. Under the Skin's weirdness moves into overdrive once she brings the first gentleman back home. (What's really weird? The men are all non-professional actors. They're just regular dudes that Johannson actually picked them up.) Leading him upstairs, she slowly, seductively walks into an all-black room that's endlessly long—staged in slow-motion by Glazer, and accompanied by the film's omnipresent blend of heartbeat bass and shrieking violins, the man gradually sinks into the pitch-black floor as he's following her. And then she leaves to obtain the next sucker.

That set-up repeats itself a few more times, until the otherworldly temptress happens to pick up a disfigured, timid young man, to whom she exudes tenderness and, ultimately mercy when she lets him go. From there, Under the Skin's real narrative intentions come to light: What happens when a villain suddenly gains a conscience? Especially an antagonist who, in her non-human state, doesn't even understand herself. It's in the film's latter half where Johansson's hypnotic and quietly layered performance becomes unquestionably excellent. At first, she's completely in control, a sexual predator with no remorse and a cold, calculated determination towards homicide. Gradually, though, as the character begins figuring herself out, Johansson flips a switch and turns vulnerable and scared. There's a specific moment where the switch occurs, and it's one of many that Johansson sells without any dialogue.

As straightforward as that may sound, trust—Under the Skin is wall-to-wall bonkers. Scenes with little action and zero words go on longer than you'd expect, to at times frustrating lengths. The sound design immediately taps into the hallucinogenic, orchestral unease heard in movies like The Shining and never alternates tones. Even the alien mythology is, at best, perplexing—a late-game revelation about the nature of her being only makes you scratch your head even harder right before the end credits roll. That's all surely how Glazer wants it, too. Under the Skin creeps into the mind rich from its first images and lingers.

Sure, the actual story is muddled and too bizarre for its own good, but who cares? Sometimes, genre heads need a good, exquisitely shot, totally fucking nutty head trip. And, of course, Johansson in the buff certainly doesn't hurt.

Artistically minded cinephilia and shallow frat-boy logic—how's that for duality?

Britain's next great filmmaker is the guy standing next to Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill in The Watch.

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The movie: The Double

Covering film festivals, especially one as humongous as the Toronto International Film Festival, can be overwhelming. That's not a complaint—there are just so many movies to see in what ends up being so little time. Every screening choice is precious. Every 30- to 40-minute session spent waiting on a line full of equally tired and antsy press members is less relaxing than the previous one. One of the things that unites all journalists attending a fest like TIFF, though, is the hope that they'll happen across a new film that's truly something special. You enter the festivities with a long list of must-sees, usually starring actors like George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and/or directed by filmmakers of Ron Howard's prestige caliber. But it's the smaller, less conspicuous festival selections that hold the biggest mysteries. Every so often, that element of surprise pays off in the best possible way: Your favorite film ends up being one that you never saw coming.

This year at TIFF, two films fit that bill so far: the Jake Gyllenhaal-led psychological rattler Enemy and now Richard Ayoade's delightfully oddball comedy The Double. A loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1846 novella, Ayoade's sophomore feature—the follow-up to his 2010 debut Submarine—is the best Terry Gilliam movie (i.e., Brazil, 12 Monkeys) the former Monty Python member never made. Funny, surreal, and impressively otherworldly without any sci-fi visual trickery, The Double places viewers into a heightened reality that can be described as an urbanized remodeling of the industrial setting seen in David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977), right down to the constant horns that blare from off-camera, as if Ayoade's film takes place in the town neighboring Eraserhead's opening scene's location.

The script, co-written by Ayoade and Avi Korine, is a shrewd comedy of epic fails experienced by Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg, his neurotic drollness utilized perfectly here). He's a cubicle dweller who wouldn't be out of place in Office Space; his co-workers rarely acknowledge his existence, beginning with the security guard who makes him sign in everyday and acts like he's never seen Simon before, even though Simon's worked there for five years. Par for the course, there's a pretty girl in his office (played by Mia Wasikowska) whom Simon adores but, though she's at least friendly, also can't be bothered by his awkward, nebbish attempts at conversation. His lack of identity takes a wild turn when new employee James Simon (also Eisenberg) shows up one day looking like Simon's clone, because, well, in a way, he is. Except, James is the polar opposite kind of person: He's confident, smooth-talking, and able to get his way. Plus, people acknowledge his presence. They also don't see the resemblance between Simon and James, yet another cruel slight against the former's meaningless life.

The British accents of Simon's colleagues imply that The Double takes place somewhere in England, but, really, who the hell knows? Though it resembles our reality, the world in which Simon aimlessly drifts around feels not of this universe, in the best ways. The streets are fog-cloaked and eerily vacant at all times. The commercials and shows Simon watches on his rinky-dink television have the aesthetics of brainwash propaganda made in the 1980s. The office building where he works is part factory and part prison-like nest of long-running bars and corridors. If not for the sharp, purposely mean-spirited comedy, The Double would qualify as an existentialist horror flick.

Ayoade—an actor turned director who's best known for the BBC sitcom The IT Crowd and, thankfully, less known for last year's Neighborhood Watch—is too comedically sound to let The Double descend into psychological gloom. Simon, in all of his passive-aggressive nothingness, can't be bothered with defending himself against one ridiculous social injustice after another, from his boss (Wallace Shawn) calling him Stanley to the cops investigating a suicide outside the apartment across from his putting him down as "Maybe" candidate for self-offing. Simon's whipping boy status is Ayoade's main target for jokes, and Eisenberg is game for every single one, finding the perfect middle ground between numbness and boiling-with-inner-rage for his reactions.

The poorer everyone in Simon's life treats him, and, simultaneously, the more popular the malevolent James becomes, the funnier and crazier The Double gets, eventually erupting in a darkly redemptive ending that'd make Dostoyevsky smile, if, you know, his corpse wasn't 132 years old. With this eye-opening and unique comedic triumph, Ayoade's put himself at the forefront of England's best young directors. Who knew TIFF 2013 would introduce us to Terry Gilliam's heir apparent for the "king of gonzo genre comedy" throne?

There's nothing like a horror movie that goes completely WTF.

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The Movie: The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears isn't the kind of movie you'd want to watch in the morning, or even in the afternoon, and especially not at a film festival like Toronto's. It's a visual stimulant, the perfect jolt one needs after a long day filled with prestige pictures and lethargic, character-driven dramas. Come nightfall, when a festival goer's brain is nearly mush, a film like the latest from French provocateurs Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is a shock to the system—that is, if you're willing to submit to its sheer craziness. If you're able to appreciate movies that favor style over narrative or substance, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is a potent, one-of-a-kind fix.

However, at its screening, the majority of the press and industry members in attendance weren't having it. About 15 or 16 people grabbed their belongings and vacated to the nearest exit at various points, and then I lost count. It's understandable. Bombarding the senses with gorgeous images soaked in blood-red and sexual perversion, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears can be described as a throwback mixtape packed with covers of psychedelic '70s Italian horror, with a heavy leaning toward blatant erotica. DJ Argento Presents Sex and Death, Vol. 1. As they did in their stunning 2009 feature-length debut, the surrealistic "giallo" homage Amer (with its badass poster art), Cattet and Forzani treat the camera like a murder weapon, slashing it across rooms, penetrating characters' eyeballs in extreme close-ups, emphasizing the garish color schemes, and obscuring conversations with multiple split screens. They're not telling a story so much as transmitting hallucinations.

There's a morsel of a story at work in The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, a mere fragment of a tale. A surly guy named Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange) returns home from a business trip in Frankfurt, Germany, to see that his apartment's empty and his wife, Edwige, is missing. And that's basically all Cattet and Forzani offer in the way of plot.

You could say that Dan searches throughout his ornately designed building—think Salvador Dali and Mario Bava guest-hosting Extreme Makeover: Home Edition together—for any clues into Edwige's whereabouts, but, come to think of it, it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say so. Rather than an investigation, it's a random trip through a funhouse of expressionistic nightmares. The elderly woman upstairs tells Dan a story, seen in what are possibly "flashbacks," about the time her husband disappeared into the ceiling. Her younger, beautiful neighbor, meanwhile, has a body that, when naked, glows like a lightbulb. Later into the night, a naked Dan is chased through his apartment by several other naked Dans, with some of them getting stabbed repeatedly, shown from both the interiors of his body to the exteriors. Intercut through these scenes are looped black-and-white images—yes, in close-ups—of Edwige moaning erotically as someone caresses her nude body with a knife, paying extra special attention to one of her nipples.

What does it all mean? Hell if I know, and, frankly, hell if I care. Could the film afford to lose 15-20 minutes? Probably, but forget about that. The title itself is a put-on. Aside from its allusion to blood, "the strange colour of your body's tears" means nothing within the context of The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. It just sounds cool. So be it.

To fully appreciate Cattet and Forzani's moving collage of a film, you need to abandon concepts like "conflict," "characterization," and "meaning" and allow yourself to bask in the endless phantasmagoria. If you do so, you'll be rewarded with numerous sequences that, in terms of mental scarring, rival anything seen in horror movies recently. My personal favorite: an extended black-and-white stalk-and-slash scene that's pure giallo, with a sexy lady being hunted by a killer dressed in all black leather, except the film skips throughout as if its playing on scratched vinyl.

I'll be damned if there's another moment in any other horror flick this year that tops it. I feel bad for those close-minded saps who walked out The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears before it happened.

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