Jason Sudeikis and Ed Harris develop a bittersweet portrait of an estranged father and son in Mark Raso’s “Kodachrome,” which premiered Friday in Toronto at the Princess of Wales Theater.
Sudeikis’ trademark deadpan and salty dog Harris made for plenty of laughs, but some sneaky last minute redemption in Johathan Tropper’s script hit home hard for the men in the crowd — TheWrap spotted quite a few sniffling back tears and choking into their blazers.
Sudeikis plays Matt, a complacent and behind-the-times indie music executive who has just lost another edgy rock client. Matt believes in the artist as a visionary, to quote Sudeikis’ character directly, in a music landscape filled with EDM and the white noise of social media.
It’s not working out for him, and just as he learns of his imminent firing a nurse (Elizabeth Olsen) to his sick and father Harris turns up on his doorstep.
Harris plays a famous photographer with a terminal disease, and has requested his son pilot a road trip to Kansas, where he might develop decades-old photos at the last storefront in America to process Kodachrome film. Matt agrees, because Dad’s connections might help him save his career, but the acid flies the moment the men are reunited and pumps consistently throughout the trip.
“What have you done with your life?” father asks son after barely more than a handshake. Son gleefully responds that the only people left in dad’s life are employees, and soon enough he’ll deservedly die alone.
Olsen becomes inevitable romantic fodder for Sudeikis, though she has an interesting (if not under-explored) backstory as a self-saboteur divorcee. This is the Sudeikis-Harris show, andit really works.
When illness overtakes the foul-mouthed photographer, he mourns the loss of all the love he had for his once-infant son. Feeding Matt from a bottle in the middle of the night was the happiest he had ever been, he says, as he wonders aloud what broke inside him and led him from that place. Cue waterworks.
“Kodachrome” is for sale, repped by WME and CAA, and a potential emotional grip on the hard-to-crack older male audience could bring multiple suitors for North American distribution rights.
Itshould be said that the film does not fetishize the dusty tech of years past, as the premise might suggest. There are plenty of relics like cassette tapes, beat-up Cabirolets, record players and of course Kodak camera film. None of the equipment is played up for cheap nostalgia.
If anything, that works in movie’s favor. There’s a moment when Sudeikis has to load a camera, and he recites a poem his dad taught him as a child to make sure the film catches and locks into place. It’s almost as tear-jerky as the hospital bed confessions.
“Kodachrome” was produced by The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein Goldsmith, Dan Cohen (“Arrival”), Shawn Levy, Eric Robinson, Jonathan Tropper, Dan Levine, and Leon Clarance.
12 Hottest TIFF Movies for Sale, From 'Hostiles' to Tonya Harding Drama (Photos)
Though it's not as robust as the annual Sundance Film Festival market or populous as Cannes' Marche du Film, TIFF is a pedigreed springboard for solid indies. Here are this year's hottest films for sale.
"I, Tonya" [UTA / CAA / Miramax] Arguably the hottest title for sale at TIFF 2017, producer-star dynamo Margot Robbie offers up a drama about U.S. Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding and her notorious involvement in the beating of teammate Nancy Kerrigan before the 1994 Olympics. Buyers are dying to see this one.
TIFF
"The Children Act" [CAA / FilmNation] Richard Eyre’s drama has an attractive cast in the firebrand Emma Thompson (who wouldn’t buy this movie simply for the joy of watching her promote it?) and Stanley Tucci, reunited after the recent box office smash “Beauty and the Beast.” The film is an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s same-named novel, about a British judge asked to intervene when a minor refuses a blood transfusion over his religious beliefs.
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"The Cured" [WME] High-brow horror is hard to do, but a category critics and select audiences adore for delivering chills without the tackier conventions of the genre. “The Cured” would certainly check that box, thanks to a clever and unsettling premise: A portion of the population became zombies but were cured. They suffer extreme judgment in a recovering society for, well, eating other people.
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"Hostiles" [CAA / WME] Christian Bale reunites with his "Out of the Furnace" director Scott Cooper for this gritty Western -- already putting Bale in the Oscar conversation after an earlier festival debut. Rosamund Pike, Ben Foster and Jesse Plemmons co-star.
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"Submergence" [UTA] Perhaps the dreamiest trio at TIFF, auteur Wim Wenders will offer up a romance between Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy. The former plays a deep-sea researcher, the latter a water engineer, attempting to connect across continents and oceans while a civil war rages.
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"Mom and Dad" [CAA / XYZ] Giving a fabulous middle finger to helicopter parents, Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair star in writer-director Brian Taylor's super-dark comedy about a 24-hour hysteria that sees parents attempt violence against their own children.
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"Papillon" [CAA] Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek star in a remake of the 1973 thriller that starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman -- where two men plot an escape from a prison island.
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"Three Christs" [CAA / Highland Film Group] Jon Avnet sets about the ambitious task of creating both a black comedy and a film that gets mental illness right. Richard Gere stars as a doctor treating three paranoid schizophrenics (Peter Dinklage, Walton Goggins, Bradley Whitford) who all believe they are Jesus Christ.
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"My Days of Mercy" [UTA / WME] This politically charged gay love story pits Kate Mara and Ellen Page against each other on two sides of a capital punishment debate. It also brings them together romantically. Trivia: The official TIFF festival guide labels Page a "powerhouse Canadian," which just makes us smile.
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"Eating Animals" [CAA] Natalie Portman produces this well-received doc about the horrors of meat consumption based on a memoir by Jonathan Safran Foer.
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"Marrowbone" [CAA / Lionsgate] Screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez makes his directorial debut in a buzzy, supernatural thriller about four children orphaned by the loss of their mother. The lost brood take refuge in an abandoned house only to find sinister forces lurking there.
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"Woman Walks Ahead" [CAA] Jessica Chastain and Michael Greyeyes lead this substantive drama about New York artist Catherine Weldon, who became the trusted confidante of legendary Sioux chief Sitting Bull.
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Toronto film market has awards bait, high-brow horror and sweaty Charlie Hunnam
Though it's not as robust as the annual Sundance Film Festival market or populous as Cannes' Marche du Film, TIFF is a pedigreed springboard for solid indies. Here are this year's hottest films for sale.
TIFF
