The best part of going to a film festival is finding something new. Sure, it’s great to find out that movies you’re excited about are in fact good — I’ve had luck so far with Exit 8, No Other Choice, and Wake Up Dead Man — but it’s so much more exciting to be surprised by something when you had no expectations going in.
That’s what happened to me when I walked into a theater to watch Arco, an absolutely gorgeous animated film from director Ugo Bienvenu, on day 4 of the Toronto International Film Festival. For the animation nerds out there, it’s sort of like a cross between Scavengers Reign and Time Masters, with a hint of Castle in the Sky. And yeah it’s as good as that sounds.
Elsewhere, I saw two features that fall into the now very crowded genre of “movies about how terrible rich people are.” One tried to explore the topic through jokes, the other a combination of humor and very bizarre drama. Neither were totally successful, but at least one had Keanu Reeves as a hapless angel.
A time travel story that’s also about the plight of the Earth, the first thing you’ll probably notice is just how incredible Arco looks. It has the retrofuturistic sci-fi energy of Moebius and the natural beauty of a Hayao Miyazaki film, which combine in a unique future where rainbows are actually the trails of flying time travelers. Things go wrong when a boy from the far future ends up going back in time to 2075, and befriends a young girl and her robot nanny, who try to help send him home. Arco is much more than its good looks, though, as the time-hopping story is full of both heart (and heartbreak), along with genuine concern for the future of the planet. But the good looks sure help.
In select theaters on November 14th.
This movie gets by purely on its jokes. It’s a pretty straightforward mixture of Freaky Friday and It’s A Wonderful Life, in which the angel Gabrielle (Keanu Reeves) tries to help gig worker Arj (Aziz Ansari, who also directs) see that his life has some meaning by switching places with a rich tech bro (Seth Rogen). The problem is that Arj doesn’t want to switch back because, well, money did solve all of his problems. This creates plenty of very funny situations, particularly for Reeves who is a wonderfully clueless celestial being that becomes obsessed with tacos and chicken nuggets. But the film struggles to find much new to say about the gig economy or the widening gap between the rich and poor, and instead comes across a little hollow.
In theaters on October 17th.
At first, Sacrifice feels like a satirical black comedy. The rich and famous are gathering on a remote island for a climate change charity event with the tagline “make the earth cool again,” and there are a handful of laughs at the uselessness of everything, particularly when a washed up actor (Chris Evans) gives a nonsensical speech meant to fire everyone up. But then a cult-like group of militarized activists take everyone hostage, believing that the only way to prevent an extinction event is through human sacrifice. The movie drops its sense of humor and becomes a strange and tedious action-drama that, despite its star power — Evans is joined by Salma Hayek Pinault, Anya Taylor Joy, and Charli XCX — struggles to stay very interesting.
No word yet on a wider theatrical release.
