It’s six weeks away from the start of the Toronto International Film Festival, and the launch of the awards season. It surely will amount to a bounty of offerings for cinephiles, as Hollywood puts a troubling summer in the rear view and gets ready to show off prestige pictures. This morning, organizers at TIFF raised the curtain on the first wave of Gala and Special Presentation pictures.

Among the highlights of the films coming to Toronto this year in the Special Presentation slate are: Marc Forster‘s “All I See Is You” starring Blake Lively, Andrea Arnold‘s “American Honey,” Ewan McGregor‘s “American Pastoral,” Nate Parker‘s Sundance sensation “Birth Of A Nation,” Miles Teller‘s boxing flick “Bleed For This,” western “Brimstone” starring Guy Pearce, Rachel Weisz‘s “Denial,” Paul Verhoeven‘s controversial “Elle,” Park Chan-Wook‘s “The Handmaiden,” musical “La La Land” starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, Kenneth Lonergan‘s “Manchester By The Sea,” Christopher Guest‘s “Mascot,” Pablo Larrain‘s “Neruda,” Tom Ford‘s “Nocturnal Animals,” Jim Jarmusch‘s “Paterson,” Asghar Farhadi‘s “The Salesman,” Werner Herzog‘s “Salt And Fire,” “Toni Erdmann,” “Trespass Against Us” starring Michael Fassbender and “Una” starring Ben Mendelsohn and Rooney Mara.

Continue reading TIFF 2016 Brings ‘Nocturnal Animals,’ ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ ‘La La Land,’ ‘Arrival,’ ‘Deepwater Horizon’ & More To Toronto at The Playlist.

Let’s be honest, this summer movie season has been kind of a bummer. “Captain America: Civil War” got things off to a pretty good start, but since then, the big blockbusters — “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Alice Through The Looking Glass,” “Warcraft,” “Independence Day” — have mostly been painful to sit through. And even the better wide releases, like “The Nice Guys,” “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and “The Neon Demon,” have mostly done poorly with audiences.

Continue reading 50 Films We Hope To See At The 2016 Fall Festivals at The Playlist.

Ewan McGregor’s had a venerable career so far, one he’ll likely continue for years to come. But clearly yearning for new challenges, the actor has turned to filmmaking and is making his feature-length directorial debut with an adaptation of “American Pastoral,” a 1997 novel by the great Philip Roth.

READ MORE: 15 Great Directorial Debuts By Actors

Starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, McGregor himself, Uzo Aduba, Molly Parker and Rupert Evans, the story is set in postwar America, and centers on a man who watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter’s new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.

Continue reading Ewan McGregor Gets His Philip Roth On In the First Trailer For ‘American Pastoral’ at The Playlist.