I’m compelled to say a few things about choice. And how it’s been raining in Toronto the entire weekend.

If you have but a single option, choice is not a consideration; and two options will lead to an arbitrary decision. It’s only when one has three options that a process begins that involves a range of considerations. The ideal spectrum—according to a long-ago statistics class—is three to seven. Beyond that it gets messy. And there are times during the Toronto International Film Festival that there can be a dozen or more film options.

I had good reasons to opt for Trumbo, a kinda-bio of the screenwriter that takes place during Hollywood’s blacklist era. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood 10, and served prison time for contempt of Congress. Later, he wrote screenplays under assumed names and ultimately was the first of those scribes to get a credit under his own name once more — a significant start to healing wounds and ruptures.

Bryan Cranston, that screen chameleon, captures the subject’s wit, passion and humor and that goes a long way to paving over the awkwardness of a parade of cameros of iconic glitterati. Trumbo famously said it was an era without heroes or villains, only victims. I met quite a few (almost all are gone) and was happily surprised that young attendees unaware of that time “got it.”

Blacklisted Lionel Stander observed that the House Committee went after the likes of movieland and the military because it got headlines and most of the U.S. Communist party leadership was made up of FBI plants. It was classic bait-and-switch that one might ascribe to today’s immigration controversy.

Crime and gangsters became a running theme of my weekend with 1960s London, 196070s Boston and modern Belgium some of the stops en route. Appropriately the most flamboyant of the trio was Legend, the saga of the Kray Brothers, the East Ender twins who muscled their way into posh society with more brute force than suasion. Countless Brit films have used them as inspiration and in 1990’s The Krays, Spandau Ballet’s Kemp frères played Ronnie and Reggie. I remember that film fondly but it’s likely to be erased by Tom Hardy playing both roles effectively.

That was followed by Black Mass, the rise and disappearance of gangster “Whitey” Bulger (played by Johnny Depp), Beantown’s comparably violent capo of the Winter Hill gang. The similarities between the two films are jarring. In both instances, gangs emerged from working class neighborhoods, saw themselves as Robin Hood, used force to quash competitors and showed sufficient wiles to coerced government and/or the police to maintain a stranglehold.

Legend unfolds through the narration of Ronnie Krays’ girlfriend and later wife, while Black Mass is structured around the investigation that brought Bulger down with ex-gang members divulging how they operated and where muscle was applied. I found the former more compelling and organic and the latter onstrained and disconnected by secondary elements and characters. Nonetheless, both pack f punch, literally and figuratively.

The action is more down to earth in The Ardennes, from the same company that produced Oscar foreign-language nominee Bullhead. Again the focus is brothers (but not twins), albeit small timers. The saga opens with a botched robbery that lands one in jail, and by the time he’s released the other has gone straight and is involved with the sibling’s girlfriend. The title references Belgium’s more idyllic, bucolic region with the implication of happier times and something approaching normalcy. While it has an inexplicable pull on the two characters, the area proves to have much darker and disturbing consequences.

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