YouTubeThe Toronto International Film Festival came to a close yesterday.
This year's annual event was full of movies that were buzzed about before, during and after their red carpet screenings. Some are already being touted as Oscar favorites.
Here, I give you the six films everyone at TIFF was talking about...
1. The Imitation Game: The true story of Alan Turing, the brilliant Nazi code-breaker who was later convicted of "indecency" for being gay, picked up this year's prestigious Grolsch People's Choice Award. Cumberbitches, rejoice! It looks like your hero Benedict Cumberbatch will be an Oscar nominee for his portrayal of Turing.
2. The Theory of Everything: Cumberbatch's Oscar competition will likely include fellow Brit Eddie Redmayne for his work as Stephen Hawking in this adaptation of the physicist's ex-wife Jane Hawking's memoir about their romance. The real Hawking reportedly approves of the movie—so much so that he actually shed some tears while watching it. Felicity Jones co-stars as Jane.
3. Top Five: Chris Rock's movie caused a bidding a war that resulted in the festival's highest film sale when Paramount reportedly scooped it up for a cool $12.5 million. The funny man wrote, directed and starred in this story about a comedian who ends up in a love triangle with a New York Times reporter (Rosario Dawson) and his reality TV star wife-to-be (Gabrielle Union) while trying to pursue serious acting jobs.
4. Wild: We're sure designers are already putting red carpet dress sketches together for Reese Witherspoon. Critics and audiences are going, well, wild for the Oscar winner's work in the big screen adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The "amazing" Oprah Winfrey was a surprise guest just a week before when the movie premiered at Telluride.
5. Rosewater: Jon Stewart took a break from hosting The Daily Show to make his directorial debut with his adaptation of Then They Came for Me, the memoir by journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael García Bernal) about the 100 days he spent in an Iranian jail after authorities accused him of communicating with an American spy. Reviews may have been mixed, but as Eric Kohn of Indiewire wrote, Stewart maintains his "sincere desire to demystify international problems and celebrate efforts to solve them."
6. Cake: Could this really be the film that earns Jennifer Aniston an Oscar nomination? It certainly could be. The former Friends star went through a "liberating" make-under to play a woman suffering from debilitating chronic pain. And if you have trouble recognizing Aniston with no makeup and scars on her face, you're not alone—neither did some shoppers at Target.