Unstoppable: Rising to the Challenge, We Embrace uphill award climbs
The Toronto International Film Festival reserves its opening weekend for world premieres — as in, films that did not previously screen at Sundance, Cannes, Venice or Telluride. Unfortunately for the fest, it seems like most of this season’s movies with serious awards prospects opted not to wait. Cases-in-point: two films that debuted in prime slots on Friday night, Unstoppable (5:30 p.m. at Roy Thomson Hall) and We Live in Time (9:30 p.m. at the Princess of Wales Theatre). Both are very engaging and moving, but also have very narrow awards paths moving forward.
Unstoppable, the directorial debut of the Oscar-winning film editor William Goldenberg (2012’s Argo), recounts the real story of Anthony Robles, who was born with one leg and into a broken home but nevertheless manages to become a world-class college wrestler. Jharrel Jerome, a gifted Emmy winner for When They See Us, does a particularly fine job playing Robles, with the aid of some first-rate visual effects. Also very good are Jennifer Lopez as his mother; Bobby Cannavale as his abusive stepfather; and Michael Peña and Don Cheadle, as his high school and college coaches, respectively.
Unstoppable, which jerked a lot of tears and received a two-minute standing ovation (goosed by the presence of the real Robles), is not altogether unlike Rocky, which it repeatedly references in numerous ways. The difference is that we have now seen numerous sequels to Rocky and countless similar ripoffs, which have collectively somewhat desensitized audiences — and awards voters — to underdog, against-all-odds sports stories, even if they happen to be true and well done.
In a very thin awards season for male performers, I would not totally count out Jerome, who is just 26, from the best actor race. But barring the influential TIFF Audience Award being voted to this film, I think that Amazon/MGM will probably have to settle for a nice limited theatrical and streaming reception sometime before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, We Live in Time is the latest film from John Crowley, the Irishman who guided 2015’s Brooklyn to best picture, actress (Saoirse Ronan) and adapted screenplay noms, and then crashed back to earth with 2019’s critical and commercial bomb The Goldfinch. Crowley’s new film is neither as wonderful and awards-friendly as Brooklyn nor as frustrating and awards-unfriendly as The Goldfinch. It falls somewhere in the middle.
Derived from an original screenplay by Nick Payne, We Live in Time — like Constellations, the 2015 play for which Payne is probably best known — is a two-hander that jumps backwards and forwards in time. It stars two of the most likable movie stars in the game, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, as a young couple falling in love, living their lives and confronting a tragic situation — though not necessarily in that order. And it achieves what it apparently set out to do.
The film — which A24 will release on a date still to be determined — is a good old-fashioned tearjerker, a more modern and risqué version of something that, say, Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson would have starred in together 80 years ago. Is it, however, something that possesses the sort of scale and gravitas to which Academy members usually respond? Probably not.