Here's What You Missed at the Toronto Film Festival

Whiplash originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it snagged a handful of awards, and it's easy to see why it's become a favorite. The film focuses on the very intense relationship between a gifted drummer (Miles Teller) and the teacher who pushes him too far to succeed (J.K. Simmons), and the chemistry between the two actors lights up the screen in a surge of musical energy. The film is gripping, original, and easily stands out among even the best of the festival's offerings.

James Gandolfini's final film, in which he plays a Brooklyn bar owner who gets mixed up in a lot of unsavory criminal business, is a run-of-the-mill thriller that doesn't bring anything new to the table. The bonus is that half the film focuses on Tom Hardy adopting and raising a puppy, which is endlessly cute, even if the movie on the whole is forgettable. While Gandolfini's performance is perfectly adequate, we'd prefer to think of Enough Said as his last bow instead.

Jason Reitman's star-studded drama centers on how we connect to other people in today's technology-obsessed society through a handful of intersecting storylines. A few of the plot points feel a bit too much like the cautionary tales you'd see in an after-school special, but on the whole, the film is an engaging study that often feels relatable (even when you know it's in spite of yourself) and showcases some great performances, particularly from Adam Sandler, Ansel Elgort, and Rosemarie DeWitt.

This dark tale of a strange and ambitious man (Jake Gyllenhaal) who discovers he has a talent for filming — and selling — grisly crime scene footage is bold and entertaining, but it teeters on the verge of being over the top. So does Gyllenhaal’s performance, which doesn’t quite transcend his movie star persona, despite having lost 30 pounds for the role. It’s an eyebrow-raising thrill ride, but nothing about it will blow you away.

Eddie Redmayne is wonderful as legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, who starts physically deteriorating from motor neuron disease just as his career is taking off. While the focus is more on his marriage to wife Jane (Felicity Jones, who’s lovely) than his scientific breakthroughs, it’s an eye-opening slice of domestic life when one of the partners is physically challenged. Redmayne, who painstakingly portrays Hawking’s limitations, speech, and frustrations, could not be more impressive (or charming) as Hawking goes from promising student to renowned scientist.

Moneyball director Bennett Miller weaves another real-life tale, but this time, it's grim and tedious. John du Pont (Steve Carell) becomes an obsessive patron of Olympic wrestlers Mark (Channing Tatum) and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), and things turn deadly, but Miller’s bleak portrayal of it is not as riveting as you’d expect. However, Carell’s transformative performance is the standout of the movie, while Ruffalo and Tatum also have robust turns.

Wild will appeal to fans of Cheryl Strayed's beloved memoir and newcomers alike. Reese Witherspoon turns in her best performance since Walk the Line as we watch Cheryl struggle with the physically demanding task of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and the emotionally demanding task of finding herself after a downward spiral. In addition to providing stunning visuals of gorgeous scenery, the film astutely captures both of Cheryl's journeys.

Noah Baumbach, director of The Squid and the Whale and the criminally underseen gem Frances Ha, reteams with his Greenberg star Ben Stiller in While We're Young. Josh (Stiller) and his wife, Cornelia (Naomi Watts), are married, documentary-making, bistro-loving Brooklynites in their 40s who meet a 20-something pair, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Comedy and drama ensue, due to the vastly different technological preferences between the couples. Thanks to Baumbach's fresh script, While We're Young is a must-see movie. He manages to find the fun in the city's many cinematic clichés, even though Brooklyn's been done to death and we've seen Driver do his wacky artistic thing on Girls.

Chris Rock is at his raunchiest in Top Five, which he also wrote and directed. And who doesn't love that? He plays Andre Allen, an actor who, after a career of big-budget schlock and a very public battle with alcoholism, is trying to right his career with a "very serious" film about a Haitian slave uprising and a televised wedding to America’s biggest reality star. Andre is forced to do some unwelcome introspection, however, when he's interviewed by Chelsea (Rosario Dawson), who writes for The New York Times. Rock's gut-busting script is bested only by the long list of celebrity cameos. If you've heard about a certain scene in which Jerry Seinfeld makes it rain on a group of strippers, all I can say is this: it's real, and it's spectacular.

Andrew Garfield takes a much-appreciated break from playing Spider-Man for 99 Homes, where he plays a hardworking construction worker whose life unravels when his home is foreclosed during the mortgage crisis in 2010 and compromises his morals to provide for his family. The topical subject matter is handled with the right amount of harsh realism and emotion by director Ramin Bahrani. Michael Shannon also gives an excellent performance as the wealthy real estate broker who is profiting off the foreclosures and tempts Garfield's character into the darker side of greed.