The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival is over, but there’s still life in the sales market.  According to Variety, Millennium Entertainment has acquired the U.S. rights to Rampart in a $2 million dollar deal (plus performance bonuses).  The cop drama represents a reunion between writer/director Oren Moverman, Woody Harrelson, and Ben Foster after Moverman’s directorial debut The Messenger earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination and an acting nod for Harrelson in 2009.  Harrelson stars as “a never- changing LAPD cop (Woody Harrelson) whose past is finally catching up with him in the wake of a department-wide corruption scandal.” Foster is joined in the supporting cast by Ice Cube, Brie Larson, Sammy Boyarsky, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, Ned Beatty, and Robin Wright.

I’m guessing Millennium wants Rampart in theaters before the end of the year to knock on Oscar’s door with a campaign focusing on Harrelson’s performance.  Works for me—I’m looking forward to seeing the film.  Read the official synopsis after the jump.

What are film festivals for if not to introduce studio executives to foreign films they can remake?  The 2011 Toronto Film Festival put forth a nice set of remakeable properties.  Screen Gems has their eye on the Indonesian action movie The Raid; Warner Bros. found their own action movie from France.  According to Heat Vision, Warner Bros. has picked up he rights to make an English-language adaptation of Sleepless Night.  The original, directed by Frederic Jardin, centers “an undercover cop trying to get back his kidnapped son from a drug-dealing nightclub owner.”  Roy Lee will produce the American version; he has had prior success with remakes including The Ring, The Departed, and Quarantine.

Sleepless Night was a big hit in the Midnight Madness portion of the festival—Matt called it “one of the most exciting films” he’s seen at TIFF.  Hopefully both versions will eventually be available to us here in the U.S.  Hit the jump for the official synopsis.

Film criticism is a tricky beast. One man’s Citizen Kane is another man’s Glen Or Glenda and it’s impossible to discredit either opinion. During TIFF my esteemed college Matt Goldberg and I disagreed pretty wildly on Bobcat Goldthwait’s vicious pop culture satire God Bless America. While I can’t pretend the film is a flawless masterpiece, I was rather fond of Goldthwait’s psychotically satirical take on the material. Perhaps it says more about my pop culture stained brain than anything else, but I do feel that Goldthwait’s message and approach are valid, if admittedly twisted and a little f-ed up. I guess I’m just fond of the twisted and the f-ed up. That’s me, what are you gonna do? In the interest of debate (and inevitably, message board bashing), I thought I’d present an alternate take on this fairly divisive movie. I’m not saying I’m necessarily right, I just want this opinion of the movie out there. Hit the jump for more and make of it what you will.

This was my first year attending the Toronto International Film Festival and it did not disappoint.  Rather than seething with anger as I read reviews from critics who were at the festival, I got to be one of those critics!  I caused seething anger!  In all seriousness, it was great to be on the frontline of a flick and getting to put in my two cents before the buzz started to cement and cast a shadow over the awards season.  There were plenty of terrific films to see as well as plenty of in-no-way-terrific films to see.

Hit the jump for my brief thoughts on the TIFF experience as well as my final scorecard for all of the films I reviewed.

While a slew of films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival have already been picked up for distribution, there are other high-profile titles still hammering out their deals.  Variety reports that Lionsgate has acquired Jennifer Westfeldt’s new comedy Friends with Kids.  The story stars Westfeldt and Adam Scott as lifelong friends who decide to have a kid but keep their relationship platonic and open.  I was slightly disappointed by the film, but it’s got a great cast (the film also stars Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Chris O’Dowd) and I can see the flick having wide appeal.

In other TIFF picks-ups, Music Box has picked up the U.S. rights to Terrence Davies’ romantic drama The Deep Blue Sea starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston.  Weisz plays the wife of a high court judge who leaves her husband to move in with a dashing young ex-RAF pilot (Hiddleston), with whom she has fallen passionately in love.  Weisz picked up strong notices for her performance and I’m glad I’ll have a chance to see the film eventually.  No U.S. release dates have been announced for Friends with Kids or The Deep Blue Sea.  Hit the jump for Music Box’s press release regarding The Deep Blue Sea.

The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival has come to a close.  We covered the hell out of it and we’ve got loads of interviews still to post.  Today, TIFF announced the winners in three award categories for Canadian films and the winners of the Cadillac People’s Choice Awards.  Nathan Morlando’s crime drama Edwin Boyd (pictured above) won Best Canadian First Feature Film, Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar picked up the award for Best Canadian Feature Film, and Ian Harnarine’ Doubles With Slight Pepper was awarded Best Canadian Short Film.  As for the Cadillac People’s Choice Awards, Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? won the top prize, Jon Shenk’s The Island President won in the documentary category, and Gareth Evans’ The Raid picked up the award for The Cadillac People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award.

Hit the jump for the full press release along with a list of all the films that were sold to distributors.  Keep in mind that just because a film didn’t sell during the festival, that doesn’t mean it won’t be picked up for distribution in the near future.

There are horror movies that jump out at you from the first scene and grab you by the short and curlies before the title even hits the screen. Then there are the horror movies that sneak up to you, deliberately lulling you into a false sense of security before pulling the rug out from under you, so that while the overall scare count is lower, the big moments cut deeper (think Audition or the original version of The Wicker Man). Kill List falls into the latter category and the blood thirsty viewers at The Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program are sure to find themselves coddled and devastating, leaving the theater feeling like they’ve been chatted up and punched in the face. It’s a good flick, one that should find itself a healthy cult audience upon theatrical release. Hit the jump for the review.

The concept of an adorable female assassin is nothing new.  I’m pretty sure that at least half of all anime is based on this premise.  The appeal is that you juxtapose wide-eyed innocence and blood-drenched experience.  However, it’s an idea that’s been done to near-death (see: anime, +50%) and I was curious to see how Oscar-winning screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious) would handle adorable-assassins in his directorial debut Violet & Daisy.  Fletcher has delivered a script was tons of potential for a fun action-comedy that doesn’t blow the genre apart but manages to do a solid job of staying playful and upbeat with the talented Saoirse Ronan and James Gandolfini selling the dramatic aspects of the story.  Unfortunately, Fletcher is constantly hamstrung by his lack of experience, budgetary constraints, and Alexis Bledel’s lackluster performance.

Adam Wingard’s You’re Next is the home invasion horror sub-genre played to near-perfection.  Through a terrific blend of setting, characters, pacing, and creative kills, Wingard delivers a horror film that even non-horror fans can enjoy.  The film falters slightly when it offers more information than necessary, but you’ll suspend your disbelief for the fun, thrills, and excitement you’ll get in return.

With the craziness that is the Toronto International Film Festival winding down this weekend, things around Collider are slowly shifting back into normalcy (whatever that means). Although I’ll talk more about TIFF after the jump, I’d like to take this space to give Steve, Matt and Phil a big “thumbs up” for a job well done in covering the event. Especially our own Mr. Goldberg who, by my last count, has turned in an impressive 33 film reviews over the last nine days. Kudos, gentlemen. Now, enough with the backpatting…

In this week’s installment, you’ll find our recap of the Raiders of the Lost Ark Los Angeles screening with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, the first look at Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, interviews with Drive‘s Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn, an exclusive with Megan Fox where she discusses (among other things) whether or not she has seen Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and all of our TIFF 2011 coverage in one place. Hit the jump for a brief recap and link to each.

Lars von Trier’s depression is well-documented. He’s a visionary plagued by his own personal demons. His fears and phobias have kept him out of the skies and the rush of international film promotion. In 2007 they even led him to say, “basically, I’m afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.” His depression was so crippling, in fact, that it had made him “a blank sheet of paper” that year, unable to create. Luckily, his struggles did not keep him from the directorial chair. The self-proclaimed “melancholy Dane” returned to work and dug to the very depths of empathy with his harrowing Antichrist, and now he’s dared to display his emotional demons front and center with the apocalyptic Melancholia. My review after the jump:

The Duplass Brothers’ Jeff, Who Lives at Home opens on a terrific note by bashing the silliness of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs.  Unfortunately, that’s about as hilarious and insightful as Jeff gets.  While the lead performances are solid and there are some funny jokes along the way, the film is saddled with a weak sub-plot and an even weaker subtext.  Jeff, Who Lives at Home ends up revering what it originally mocked.

As TIFF 2011 winds down and festival fatigue sets in, you don’t want to start your day with an awful film.  I can’t blame Philippe Garrel’s That Summer for my schedule or how tired I am.  However, I can blame it for attempted murder as it tried to bore me to death with annoying characters, empty drama, and thoughtless direction.  Then it threw on a big dollop of misogyny just to make me hate it even more.

I feel pretty conflicted about Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intruders. On the one hand I recognize that the director is trying to play with the horror genre a bit and take a more psychological and intellectual approach to what starts off as a fairly conventional ghost story. The thing is that I’m not entirely convinced that the experiment works, but I am entirely convinced that it’s not scary. I admire the attempt to create something different, but no matter how hard I tried and could never fully enjoy the movie. I guess you could call it a failed experiment and that’s a shame because it’s only the third film in Frenadillo’s 10 year career (after Intacto and 28 Weeks Later) and I desperately hoped that Intruders would build on the promise of his previous movies. Instead, I got a noble failure and will probably now have to wait another four years or so until he releases another movie and hopefully sets things right. Sigh…whatcha gonna do? Hit the jump for all the disappointing details.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt wants to take pot shots at every kind of horror story by working under the guise of being a bad horror movie.  Coppola mocks Edgar Allan Poe, Steven King, vampire stories, and 3D but his criticism is rarely playful.  Twixt wants to keep things silly and fun in the “real” half of the story but then wants act superior when it comes to the ethereal aspects of its tale.  The result is a film that’s always campy, somewhat lazy, and more than a little tiresome.