(TIFF wrap piece for FFWD)
Now in its 34th year, the Toronto International Film Festival always provides ample fodder for conversation. This year’s fest was no exception, drawing international attention for everything from its controversial choice to spotlight Tel Aviv as the first focus of its City to City series, to an appearance by the closest thing to a new messiah that pop culture has yet produced; Oprah Winfrey herself.
Despite the haze of flashbulbs around the red carpet galas and the constant celeb-gawking at the numerous semi-exclusive after-parties, though, nothing draws more attention than the films themselves. Public premierès draw lineups hours in advance, and industry screenings bring in film buyers and festival programmers from around the world to view the latest films from Michael Moore, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Michael Haneke, not to mention the undiscovered gems waiting to be spotted by the right set of discerning eyes. For film lovers, there’s no better place to be.
Taking in all of the noteworthy films is an impossibility. Even at an average of five films a day, I missed Lars von Trier’s irresistibly controversial Antichrist and People’s Choice Award-winner Precious. Of the 37 films I did manage to see, though, the following are the most noteworthy.
Best picture: A Serious Man (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Coens revisit the same thematic territory they explored in the excellent No Country for Old Men, namely the search for meaning in a seemingly chaotic universe, this time mining it for laughs rather than horror. It’s no less thought-provoking for its sense of humour, though, finding equal insight in philosophical paradoxes, Talmudic wisdom and Jefferson Airplane lyrics. The cast of relative unknowns initially seems like a reaction to the star-studded silliness of last year’s Burn After Reading, but their anonymity only makes the film more immersive.
Biggest disappointment: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (dir. Terry Gilliam)
Parnassus should be Terry Gilliam’s masterwork, a spiritual successor to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen sans that film’s notoriously trouble-plagued production. Even the death of star Heath Ledger midway through production couldn’t derail it, with Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepping in for the scenes Ledger couldn’t complete.
The actor-swapping is actually one of the film’s more successful elements, which only highlights its main flaw. Gilliam functions best within creative restraints; his previous, non-CGI-filled films have a ramshackle charm to their pasted-together special effects. Parnassus is so filled with whimsical worlds that its best elements — a deliciously off-kilter Tom Waits as the devil being chief among its charms — are overshadowed. After the underrated Tideland, Parnassus can’t help but feel like a step in the wrong direction.
Most pleasant surprise: The Disappearance of Alice Creed (dir. J. Blakeson)
On its surface, Alice Creed appears to be a standard genre flick — a pair of kidnappers grab a pretty young rich girl, strap her down in a custom-built room and wait to collect their money. It doesn’t take long before the scheming, plotting and backstabbing begins, but unlike most heist flicks every twist and double-cross actually fleshes out the characters involved, transforming them into something greater than stock crime-flick archetypes. The cast and setting are both minimal, but writer-director J. Blakeson’s impressive debut maintains the tension throughout, keeping the viewers’ attention no matter how convoluted the proceedings get.
Most Overrated: Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman)
Up in the Air is by no means a bad movie. Featuring a typically charismatic lead turn from George Clooney as well as a star-making performance from Orphan’s Vera Farmiga, it’s as well-executed a middle-brow dramedy as you’re likely to come across this year. Still, the Oscar buzz that’s built since its TIFF debut is confounding. Jason Reitman’s direction is still every bit as affected as it was in 2007’s Juno, but the story at the film’s core isn’t as infectious as that teen pregnancy tale. Its conservative moral is at odds with the film’s tone, and jokes about text messaging can’t hide the film’s general lack of insight. For a far more satisfying bit of Oscar bait, see Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child, which would top Up in the Air on the strength of Naomi Watts’s wondrously heartless performance alone.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
TIFF Day 10: Mothers, mothers, mothers
It’s the last day of the fest, and I feel compelled to add a retroactive disclaimer to everything I’ve reviewed in this blog: Watching 37 movies in 10 days is not a natural way of viewing films. Seeing a comedy sandwiched between two esoteric art films, or watching a movie when your eyes are starting to hurt from staring at theatre screens for so long, is bound to bias the experience. So take them for what they’re worth — honest appraisals of how the movies affected me during the fest.
So, without further ado, the last two.
Mother and Child (dir. Rodrigo Garcia)
Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air has earned a lot of Oscar buzz since its TIFF debut (which I would say is giving the movie too much credit, but that’s just me), but in my view, Mother and Child is a much better Academy Award candidate. It’s an ensemble drama, for one thing, and the Oscars love those. The subject matter (motherhood in all its forms) is just middle-brow enough to appeal to a wide range of critics. Most importantly, though, it’s actually good. Very good.
Naomi Watts is excellent as a driven, manipulative and occasionally cruel career woman who is determined to succeed on her own terms. She’s marvelously, three-dimensionally bitchy, a callous person with no emotional ties to the world. Her story is connected to two others — Annette Bening, a socially stunted woman caring for her aging mother, and Kerry Washington, who is in the process of adopting a child. The relationships between the stories are peripheral but not contrived, which is a step up from a lot of the six-degrees-of-separation dramas out there. Each story also has its own perfectly satisfying arc, with even the bit players getting the attention they deserve.
There’s no doubt that Mother and Child is straightforward, glossy Oscar fare, but it’s not cynical about it. It’s just a solid example of the traditional well-made movie.
Mother (dir. Joon-ho Bong)
It wasn’t until his third film, 2006’s creature comedy The Host, that Korean director Joon-ho Bong gained an international following. That movie was a genre-defying mash of horror, action, comedy and drama, a fun and original if not so weighty bit of popcorn fare. Mother is a step forward all around, with deeper psychology, a more harrowing plot and genuine emotional resonance.
Bin Won plays Yoon Do-joon, a slow, probably mentally handicapped character whose life revolves around his mother (played perfectly by Hye-ja Kim). But what seems to be a fairly typical over-protective mother scenario transforms when Yoon ends up in jail for murder, and his mother sets about trying to prove his innocence. The lest you know about the plot going in, the better, as Kim’s journey has no end of surprising detours. It’s a thriller in the classic sense, with each new piece of information shedding new light on all the characters, and the script never takes the easy way out. Bong’s vision is remarkably complete, and Mother is easily one of the best films of the fest this year.
So, without further ado, the last two.
Mother and Child (dir. Rodrigo Garcia)
Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air has earned a lot of Oscar buzz since its TIFF debut (which I would say is giving the movie too much credit, but that’s just me), but in my view, Mother and Child is a much better Academy Award candidate. It’s an ensemble drama, for one thing, and the Oscars love those. The subject matter (motherhood in all its forms) is just middle-brow enough to appeal to a wide range of critics. Most importantly, though, it’s actually good. Very good.
Naomi Watts is excellent as a driven, manipulative and occasionally cruel career woman who is determined to succeed on her own terms. She’s marvelously, three-dimensionally bitchy, a callous person with no emotional ties to the world. Her story is connected to two others — Annette Bening, a socially stunted woman caring for her aging mother, and Kerry Washington, who is in the process of adopting a child. The relationships between the stories are peripheral but not contrived, which is a step up from a lot of the six-degrees-of-separation dramas out there. Each story also has its own perfectly satisfying arc, with even the bit players getting the attention they deserve.
There’s no doubt that Mother and Child is straightforward, glossy Oscar fare, but it’s not cynical about it. It’s just a solid example of the traditional well-made movie.
Mother (dir. Joon-ho Bong)
It wasn’t until his third film, 2006’s creature comedy The Host, that Korean director Joon-ho Bong gained an international following. That movie was a genre-defying mash of horror, action, comedy and drama, a fun and original if not so weighty bit of popcorn fare. Mother is a step forward all around, with deeper psychology, a more harrowing plot and genuine emotional resonance.
Bin Won plays Yoon Do-joon, a slow, probably mentally handicapped character whose life revolves around his mother (played perfectly by Hye-ja Kim). But what seems to be a fairly typical over-protective mother scenario transforms when Yoon ends up in jail for murder, and his mother sets about trying to prove his innocence. The lest you know about the plot going in, the better, as Kim’s journey has no end of surprising detours. It’s a thriller in the classic sense, with each new piece of information shedding new light on all the characters, and the script never takes the easy way out. Bong’s vision is remarkably complete, and Mother is easily one of the best films of the fest this year.
Friday, September 18, 2009
TIFF Day 9: More Herzog, Ricky Gervais and the last press screening of the festival
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (dir. Werner Herzog)
Like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Herzog’s second film at TIFF is at its core a cop movie. But where Lieutenant camped up and darkened an otherwise straightforward procedural, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done takes a hostage situation and gives it a Lynchian twist. Not that it dives into disconnected surrealism of the style that Lynch (who executive produces) usually indulges in. Rather, he captures the off-kilter esthetic while keeping both feet in reality.
Based on the true story of a San Diego man who stabbed his mother with an antique sword, My Son is more about atmosphere than storyline. The details of the crime come up front, while the killer’s (Michael Shannon) backstory is fleshed out in interviews between a detective (Willem Dafoe) and the killer’s friends. It turns out Shannon was an actor in a production of Electra, a situation that would seem too perfectly Freudian if it weren’t actually true.
The trouble with My Son is that, while it creates an uneasy atmosphere, it never really creates any tension. Too much of the story takes place only in flashback, and too little of that history plays any role in the film’s present. The result is a movie that contains some solid performances with nothing to anchor them — it feels more like an exercise than an actual film.
The Invention of Lying (dirs. Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson)
The latest from The Office and Extras creator Ricky Gervais is essentially the anti-Liar Liar. Gervais plays a schlub of a screenwriter who lives in a world where the idea of telling an untruth has never crossed anyone’s mind — there isn’t even a word for “lie,” or “truth” for that matter. After a series of humiliations, he has an odd synaptic misfire which gives him the ability to make things up, an ability that puts him on the path to wealth, fame and success.
Much of the humour in The Invention of Lying comes from hearing characters speaking the whole, unvarnished truth, regardless of how it reflects on them. At the start of a date, Jennifer Garner tells Gervais that she dreads how the night will go, and that he interrupted her masturbating. Companies advertise with straightforward slogans like “Coca Cola: It’s Very Famous,” and “Pepsi Cola: For when they don’t have Coke.” There’s a fine line between truthfulness and assholishness, and the characters in the film’s world seem to cross that line with ease, but Gervais’s script still gets a lot of mileage out of the conceit.
As a high concept comedy, Invention gets to cover a lot of ground, from commercialism to religion and societal conventions. Fortunately, he actually has insight into most of those issues, which means the film never gets overly sanctimonious. In fact, I might want to take back that Liar Liar comparison — accurate as it is, Invention deserves far better than that.
Gaia (dir. Jason Lehel)
It’s not surprising to see that before his full-length directorial debut, Jason Lehel was a cinematographer. Gaia is a very visual film; its dialogue is so scant that it occasionally feels like a silent. One of the main characters is a deaf mute, which just gives more of an excuse to avoid dialogue. It’s a pleasure to look at, but it’s also something of a chore.
That’s mostly because, as striking as the images are, they don’t always make sense together. Lehel prefers hinting at backstory (and even the main plot) through silent montages, and there’s enough detail to piece together a few different readings (it’s either a story of sexual abuse or an ecological allegory, and my money’s on the latter), but not enough for a solid grasp of the plot. In some films, that kind of ambiguity makes for interesting viewing; in Gaia, it’s more just frustrating.
Like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Herzog’s second film at TIFF is at its core a cop movie. But where Lieutenant camped up and darkened an otherwise straightforward procedural, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done takes a hostage situation and gives it a Lynchian twist. Not that it dives into disconnected surrealism of the style that Lynch (who executive produces) usually indulges in. Rather, he captures the off-kilter esthetic while keeping both feet in reality.
Based on the true story of a San Diego man who stabbed his mother with an antique sword, My Son is more about atmosphere than storyline. The details of the crime come up front, while the killer’s (Michael Shannon) backstory is fleshed out in interviews between a detective (Willem Dafoe) and the killer’s friends. It turns out Shannon was an actor in a production of Electra, a situation that would seem too perfectly Freudian if it weren’t actually true.
The trouble with My Son is that, while it creates an uneasy atmosphere, it never really creates any tension. Too much of the story takes place only in flashback, and too little of that history plays any role in the film’s present. The result is a movie that contains some solid performances with nothing to anchor them — it feels more like an exercise than an actual film.
The Invention of Lying (dirs. Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson)
The latest from The Office and Extras creator Ricky Gervais is essentially the anti-Liar Liar. Gervais plays a schlub of a screenwriter who lives in a world where the idea of telling an untruth has never crossed anyone’s mind — there isn’t even a word for “lie,” or “truth” for that matter. After a series of humiliations, he has an odd synaptic misfire which gives him the ability to make things up, an ability that puts him on the path to wealth, fame and success.
Much of the humour in The Invention of Lying comes from hearing characters speaking the whole, unvarnished truth, regardless of how it reflects on them. At the start of a date, Jennifer Garner tells Gervais that she dreads how the night will go, and that he interrupted her masturbating. Companies advertise with straightforward slogans like “Coca Cola: It’s Very Famous,” and “Pepsi Cola: For when they don’t have Coke.” There’s a fine line between truthfulness and assholishness, and the characters in the film’s world seem to cross that line with ease, but Gervais’s script still gets a lot of mileage out of the conceit.
As a high concept comedy, Invention gets to cover a lot of ground, from commercialism to religion and societal conventions. Fortunately, he actually has insight into most of those issues, which means the film never gets overly sanctimonious. In fact, I might want to take back that Liar Liar comparison — accurate as it is, Invention deserves far better than that.
Gaia (dir. Jason Lehel)
It’s not surprising to see that before his full-length directorial debut, Jason Lehel was a cinematographer. Gaia is a very visual film; its dialogue is so scant that it occasionally feels like a silent. One of the main characters is a deaf mute, which just gives more of an excuse to avoid dialogue. It’s a pleasure to look at, but it’s also something of a chore.
That’s mostly because, as striking as the images are, they don’t always make sense together. Lehel prefers hinting at backstory (and even the main plot) through silent montages, and there’s enough detail to piece together a few different readings (it’s either a story of sexual abuse or an ecological allegory, and my money’s on the latter), but not enough for a solid grasp of the plot. In some films, that kind of ambiguity makes for interesting viewing; in Gaia, it’s more just frustrating.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
TIFF Day 8: A lighter approach
As the festival winds itself down, I’m weaning myself off of movies gradually — four today, three tomorrow and two on Saturday to round it all off. And after a week’s worth of challenging, unconventional and occasionally frustrating picks, I figured it was time to go a little more straightforward. Hence, a Drew Barrymore-directed comedy, a musical about vampires, and some martial arts action. And the night was capped off with a live performance by Deerhoof at Yonge-Dundas square (basically the equivalent of Olympic Plaza), which was a bizarre but thoroughly rad venue to see the band.
Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore)
Roller Derby hasn’t crossed into the mainstream quite yet(though it’s been on Fast Forward’s cover, for what it’s worth), but Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut aims to change that. Ellen Page stars as a 17-year-old living in a small town outside Austin, Texas, who dreams of a more stimulating life than beauty pageants and high school football can provide. Lying about her age, she joins a Roller Derby team in Austin, catching the eye of a young indie rocker in doing so. As to whether lying about her age comes back to bite her, and whether she’ll be forced to choose between the sport she loves and the pageants her mom wants her to be a part of, well, conventions are conventions.
Barrymore doesn’t push any boundaries, but she clearly knows enough about moviemaking to put together a competent comedy. Page is great, as usual, especially since she’s not saddled with absurd dialogue. Her and best friend Alia Shawkat strike a good rhythm together, and are perfectly believable as a couple of teens smart enough to want to get the hell out of town. But the action on the roller derby ring is never as frenzied as it should be, and the movie’s standard Bad News Bears story arc puts too much pressure on the actors to carry it — and as good as Page and Shawkat are, the supporting cast isn’t always up for it.
Still, the goodwill they generate (and a great performance from Marcia Gay Harden as Page’s mom) are enough to make Whip It a winner.
Suck (dir. Rob Stefaniuk)
In his first feature, Phil the Alien, Rob Stefaniuk played a naive alien who becomes a rock star and eventually a messiah figure (shades of Ziggy Stardust, for sure). In Suck, he plays an aspiring rock star whose band gets a boost in profile when its bass player becomes an honest-to-God vampire. Clearly, Stefaniuk likes his rock mythology.
That love bleeds into every aspect of the film, from shots that (sometimes ham-fistedly) imitate famous album covers to cameos from Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins, and, most entertainingly, Moby as a steak-loving heavy metal frontman.
The trouble is, for a musical, the songs all feel pretty inessential. They don’t advance the plot, they don’t mesh well with the rest of the movie’s esthetic, and worst of all, they’re just not all that good. Though the film’s already tight at 90 minutes, it’d probably benefit from a further pruning — keep the comedy, ditch the tunes and you have a potential cult hit on your hands.
Ondine (dir. Neil Jordan)
Fisherman Colin Farrell gets more than he expects when his drag net picks up a woman. Farrell’s daughter, a brainy, precocious elementary school student with kidney problems, suspects that the woman is a selkie, a seal that can take on human form to marry a land-man. That may or may not be true, but regardless, she has a hidden past that will interfere with her burgeoning relationship with Farrell and his daughter.
It’s a straightforward feature from director Neil Jordan, who’s known for edgier fare like The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto, but he handles it swimmingly, leaving enough time for relationships to develop naturally before getting too deep into the plot. Farrell’s performance isn’t as memorable as in last year’s In Bruges, but he’s soulful enough when he needs to be and funny enough when he can. It’s another low-key winner in a fest where the better films have largely been the more unassuming ones.
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (dirs. Tony Jaa and Panna Rittikrai)
It might be blasphemy in some circles, but I far preferred The Protector to the original Ong Bak. It didn’t even pretend to have a plot, just a never-ending stream of action scenes with extreme sports ninjas, gratuitous limb-snapping and one incredibly impressive single-take scene in a restaurant.
With Ong Bak 2, Jaa returns to the realm of plot, this time trying to capture the grandeur of a historical epic, plus lots of punching. Not surprisingly, the action is far more entertaining than the bits in between. The fight choreography is incredible, with battles stretching almost to the point of absurdity and a ceaseless variety of weapons. Jaa doesn’t use the environment to his advantage the way he did in past films, but he more than makes up for it with his mastery of the various swords and other weapons he uses throughout — and if you really want that Jackie Chan-style choreography, there’s a great fight that takes place on and around an elephant.
More than any of his other films, though, Ong Bak 2 is best suited to the home theatre, where you can skip past all the nonsense about an exiled prince and the band of bandits that takes him in. Less talking, more punching.
Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore)
Roller Derby hasn’t crossed into the mainstream quite yet(though it’s been on Fast Forward’s cover, for what it’s worth), but Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut aims to change that. Ellen Page stars as a 17-year-old living in a small town outside Austin, Texas, who dreams of a more stimulating life than beauty pageants and high school football can provide. Lying about her age, she joins a Roller Derby team in Austin, catching the eye of a young indie rocker in doing so. As to whether lying about her age comes back to bite her, and whether she’ll be forced to choose between the sport she loves and the pageants her mom wants her to be a part of, well, conventions are conventions.
Barrymore doesn’t push any boundaries, but she clearly knows enough about moviemaking to put together a competent comedy. Page is great, as usual, especially since she’s not saddled with absurd dialogue. Her and best friend Alia Shawkat strike a good rhythm together, and are perfectly believable as a couple of teens smart enough to want to get the hell out of town. But the action on the roller derby ring is never as frenzied as it should be, and the movie’s standard Bad News Bears story arc puts too much pressure on the actors to carry it — and as good as Page and Shawkat are, the supporting cast isn’t always up for it.
Still, the goodwill they generate (and a great performance from Marcia Gay Harden as Page’s mom) are enough to make Whip It a winner.
Suck (dir. Rob Stefaniuk)
In his first feature, Phil the Alien, Rob Stefaniuk played a naive alien who becomes a rock star and eventually a messiah figure (shades of Ziggy Stardust, for sure). In Suck, he plays an aspiring rock star whose band gets a boost in profile when its bass player becomes an honest-to-God vampire. Clearly, Stefaniuk likes his rock mythology.
That love bleeds into every aspect of the film, from shots that (sometimes ham-fistedly) imitate famous album covers to cameos from Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins, and, most entertainingly, Moby as a steak-loving heavy metal frontman.
The trouble is, for a musical, the songs all feel pretty inessential. They don’t advance the plot, they don’t mesh well with the rest of the movie’s esthetic, and worst of all, they’re just not all that good. Though the film’s already tight at 90 minutes, it’d probably benefit from a further pruning — keep the comedy, ditch the tunes and you have a potential cult hit on your hands.
Ondine (dir. Neil Jordan)
Fisherman Colin Farrell gets more than he expects when his drag net picks up a woman. Farrell’s daughter, a brainy, precocious elementary school student with kidney problems, suspects that the woman is a selkie, a seal that can take on human form to marry a land-man. That may or may not be true, but regardless, she has a hidden past that will interfere with her burgeoning relationship with Farrell and his daughter.
It’s a straightforward feature from director Neil Jordan, who’s known for edgier fare like The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto, but he handles it swimmingly, leaving enough time for relationships to develop naturally before getting too deep into the plot. Farrell’s performance isn’t as memorable as in last year’s In Bruges, but he’s soulful enough when he needs to be and funny enough when he can. It’s another low-key winner in a fest where the better films have largely been the more unassuming ones.
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (dirs. Tony Jaa and Panna Rittikrai)
It might be blasphemy in some circles, but I far preferred The Protector to the original Ong Bak. It didn’t even pretend to have a plot, just a never-ending stream of action scenes with extreme sports ninjas, gratuitous limb-snapping and one incredibly impressive single-take scene in a restaurant.
With Ong Bak 2, Jaa returns to the realm of plot, this time trying to capture the grandeur of a historical epic, plus lots of punching. Not surprisingly, the action is far more entertaining than the bits in between. The fight choreography is incredible, with battles stretching almost to the point of absurdity and a ceaseless variety of weapons. Jaa doesn’t use the environment to his advantage the way he did in past films, but he more than makes up for it with his mastery of the various swords and other weapons he uses throughout — and if you really want that Jackie Chan-style choreography, there’s a great fight that takes place on and around an elephant.
More than any of his other films, though, Ong Bak 2 is best suited to the home theatre, where you can skip past all the nonsense about an exiled prince and the band of bandits that takes him in. Less talking, more punching.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
TIFF Day 7: Micmacs, gang attacks and dull, dull vikings
Micmacs a Tire-Larigot (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Few directors handle whimsy as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I’ve only met two people who didn’t like 2001’s Amelie, an achingly sweet movie that somehow stays on the right side of cloying. Even the director’s darker films, like The City of Lost Children, have a core of sweetness that’s unshakeable. (Alright, this might not be true of Alien: Resurrection, but I’ll stand by it for all the films that Jeunet actually co-wrote.)
Micmacs adds a few unusual (for Jeunet, at least) elements to the mix, including politics, an area that doesn’t tend to mix well with flights of fancy. Dany Boon plays a video store clerk who gets shot in the head when he gets too close to a gunfight. Doctors leave the bullet in his head for fear that surgery could leave him permanently comatose. When he gets out of the hospital, Boon finds himself evicted and jobless, forced to live on the streets. Yet, in Jeunet’s world, this doesn’t seem like a great tragedy — merely an inconvenience.
After Boon is taken in by a motley crew of street-people (including an inventor, a contortionist and a human calculator), he forms a plan to get his revenge on the company that manufactured the bullet that shot him, and (conveniently across the street from the first target) the company that made the land mine that killed his father.
It’s the kind of caper that can only be described as madcap, and though Boon and friends are messing with arms dealers and international criminals, it never feels particularly dangerous. That might sound like a crippling problem for what’s essentially a spin on the heist movie genre, but the fun of it all more than makes up for the film’s lightweight nature. Plus, the film’s world is incredibly detailed, full of tiny touches and self-aware nods. Highly recommended.
The Joneses (dir. Derrick Borte)
Satirizing consumer culture in film is no easy task. Josie and the Pussycats tried to do just that almost a decade ago, and ended up getting criticized for indulging in the product placement and shallow consumerism it was poking fun at. The Joneses, the debut feature from writer-director Derrick Borte, initially falls victim to that same problem. Its conceit, an only slightly exaggerated take on lifestyle marketing, doesn’t feel pointed enough to make up for the constant, glowing references to real brands and products, falling a little too close to the “cheap shill” side of the art/commerce balance.
As it develops, though, the film starts to focus more on its characters and less on its critique — always a good move. Strong turns from David Duchovny and the always-reliable Gary Cole (a.k.a. Bill Lumbergh from Office Space) certainly help on that front, and newcomer Ben Hollingsworth will likely pop up more frequently after this. A heavy-handed ending and an adherence to Hollywood convention don’t do The Joneses any favours, but it’s at least my second-favourite anti-capitalist screed of the fest so far.
Valhalla Rising (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)
It turns out you can make Vikings boring. All it takes is absurdly slow pacing, vague plotting and an abundance of monochromatic characters. Despite its historical focus, the movie never really finds a point, indulging in long stretches of nothingness that could politely be called reflective but don’t do much to hold interest. When violence does break out, it’s brief and brutal, but even still, it feels too matter-of-fact.
In the interest of saying something positive, I should mention the soundtrack by Peter Kyed and Peter Peter, which incorporates elements of doom and drone metal into the film’s (sparse) climactic sequences. Aside from that, Refn’s film didn’t do much for me.
Down for Life (dir. Alan Jacobs)
Based on the real life of a Latina gang leader in Los Angeles, Down for Life mixes elements of inspirational teacher flicks with Thirteen-ish “look how messed up kids are” grit for a movie that feels capital-I Important. The movie revolves around a teen’s (Jessica Romero) choice between sticking to the violence-laden path she’s on or accepting a creative writing scholarship to a school in Idaho, and how one particularly bad day forces her to examine the life she’s living. Romero is convincing enough as a street tough, but she falls short in the film’s more emotionally demanding scenes, which gives the whole film a bit of an amateurish feel. And a cameo from Snoop Dogg is baffling until you realize that his Snoopadelic Films is one of the producers. The movie’s heart is in the right place, but it’s basically a more violent than usual after-school special.
Lourdes (dir. Jessica Hausner)
When a quadriplegic woman joins a pilgrimage to the healing baths at Lourdes, it opens the door for a rumination on God, faith and the nature of miracles. It’s a very low-key film considering the subject matter, but it’s sophisticated not to pontificate; with the exception of a pair of gossiping women, the characters feel like real people rather than soapboxes. Lourdes takes its time making its points and it wraps things up on an ambiguous note, but that’s perfectly in keeping for its subject.
Few directors handle whimsy as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I’ve only met two people who didn’t like 2001’s Amelie, an achingly sweet movie that somehow stays on the right side of cloying. Even the director’s darker films, like The City of Lost Children, have a core of sweetness that’s unshakeable. (Alright, this might not be true of Alien: Resurrection, but I’ll stand by it for all the films that Jeunet actually co-wrote.)
Micmacs adds a few unusual (for Jeunet, at least) elements to the mix, including politics, an area that doesn’t tend to mix well with flights of fancy. Dany Boon plays a video store clerk who gets shot in the head when he gets too close to a gunfight. Doctors leave the bullet in his head for fear that surgery could leave him permanently comatose. When he gets out of the hospital, Boon finds himself evicted and jobless, forced to live on the streets. Yet, in Jeunet’s world, this doesn’t seem like a great tragedy — merely an inconvenience.
After Boon is taken in by a motley crew of street-people (including an inventor, a contortionist and a human calculator), he forms a plan to get his revenge on the company that manufactured the bullet that shot him, and (conveniently across the street from the first target) the company that made the land mine that killed his father.
It’s the kind of caper that can only be described as madcap, and though Boon and friends are messing with arms dealers and international criminals, it never feels particularly dangerous. That might sound like a crippling problem for what’s essentially a spin on the heist movie genre, but the fun of it all more than makes up for the film’s lightweight nature. Plus, the film’s world is incredibly detailed, full of tiny touches and self-aware nods. Highly recommended.
The Joneses (dir. Derrick Borte)
Satirizing consumer culture in film is no easy task. Josie and the Pussycats tried to do just that almost a decade ago, and ended up getting criticized for indulging in the product placement and shallow consumerism it was poking fun at. The Joneses, the debut feature from writer-director Derrick Borte, initially falls victim to that same problem. Its conceit, an only slightly exaggerated take on lifestyle marketing, doesn’t feel pointed enough to make up for the constant, glowing references to real brands and products, falling a little too close to the “cheap shill” side of the art/commerce balance.
As it develops, though, the film starts to focus more on its characters and less on its critique — always a good move. Strong turns from David Duchovny and the always-reliable Gary Cole (a.k.a. Bill Lumbergh from Office Space) certainly help on that front, and newcomer Ben Hollingsworth will likely pop up more frequently after this. A heavy-handed ending and an adherence to Hollywood convention don’t do The Joneses any favours, but it’s at least my second-favourite anti-capitalist screed of the fest so far.
Valhalla Rising (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)
It turns out you can make Vikings boring. All it takes is absurdly slow pacing, vague plotting and an abundance of monochromatic characters. Despite its historical focus, the movie never really finds a point, indulging in long stretches of nothingness that could politely be called reflective but don’t do much to hold interest. When violence does break out, it’s brief and brutal, but even still, it feels too matter-of-fact.
In the interest of saying something positive, I should mention the soundtrack by Peter Kyed and Peter Peter, which incorporates elements of doom and drone metal into the film’s (sparse) climactic sequences. Aside from that, Refn’s film didn’t do much for me.
Down for Life (dir. Alan Jacobs)
Based on the real life of a Latina gang leader in Los Angeles, Down for Life mixes elements of inspirational teacher flicks with Thirteen-ish “look how messed up kids are” grit for a movie that feels capital-I Important. The movie revolves around a teen’s (Jessica Romero) choice between sticking to the violence-laden path she’s on or accepting a creative writing scholarship to a school in Idaho, and how one particularly bad day forces her to examine the life she’s living. Romero is convincing enough as a street tough, but she falls short in the film’s more emotionally demanding scenes, which gives the whole film a bit of an amateurish feel. And a cameo from Snoop Dogg is baffling until you realize that his Snoopadelic Films is one of the producers. The movie’s heart is in the right place, but it’s basically a more violent than usual after-school special.
Lourdes (dir. Jessica Hausner)
When a quadriplegic woman joins a pilgrimage to the healing baths at Lourdes, it opens the door for a rumination on God, faith and the nature of miracles. It’s a very low-key film considering the subject matter, but it’s sophisticated not to pontificate; with the exception of a pair of gossiping women, the characters feel like real people rather than soapboxes. Lourdes takes its time making its points and it wraps things up on an ambiguous note, but that’s perfectly in keeping for its subject.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
TIFF Day 6: Todd Solondz, Michael Cera and the first 3-D flick of the fest
Life During Wartime (dir. Todd Solondz)
While it’s not quite as fucked up as his most unsettling work (I’m looking at you, Happiness), Life During Wartime, Todd Solondz’s first film in five years, is still pretty fucked. The director has a set of themes that he loves returning to, including pedophilia and other forms of perversion. In this film, there’s an ex-con who can’t stop making lurid phone calls, a woman who’s been uncomfortable with men since discovering her (now ex) husband was a child rapist and a social worker haunted by the (occasionally horny) ghosts of her past.
It’s a dark comedy with the emphasis on darkness, but it’s also surprisingly accessible, at least for Solondz. Many of the characters are sympathetic, even verging on normal, which makes the constant unease easier to take. The script is also more explicit than usual in explaining Solondz’s goal, which is to explore the ideas of guilt, forgiveness and redemption.
The cinematography is astounding throughout, capturing a sense of wholesome ’50s suburbia. It’s entirely ironic, of course, given that dark obsessions are always just beneath the surface, but it’s gorgeous either way.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed (dir. J. Blakeson)
An intense and compellingly original kidnapping flick from first-time writer-director J. Blakeson. The film starts with two characters kidnapping Alice Creed off the streets and locking her in an apartment they’ve fortified for the purpose. The overall dynamic is familiar — crooks in a battle of wits with an abductee — but the details make all the difference, and the dynamic shifts rapidly with each new revelation.
Unlike fellow crime-obsessed Brit Guy Ritchie, Blakeson doesn’t go in for the glamour of illegal activities. The characters are more than just stock crime-flick archetypes, and every twist and double-cross stems naturally from their interactions. Even when things get a bit brutal, it’s impossible to look away. Great genre filmmaking and a very promising debut.
Get Low (dir. Aaron Schneider)
Up until this point, the Coen Brothers had hands-down the single best line of dialogue at TIFF in “Embrace the mystery” (you really need the context to appreciate it). Get Low comes close when Robert Duvall’s character is asked what it was like to be a self-imposed hermit for 40 years: “The first 38 years are the hardest.”
That dry sense of humour is all over Get Low, a period dramedy set in 1930s Tennessee and starring Duvall and a perfectly cast Bill Murray as a hermit and a funeral director, respectively. Like Life During Wartime, Get Low is all about redemption and forgiveness. Unlike Solondz’s movie, you certainly won’t need a shower after watching it. Despite some fairly heady subject matter, the film is always kept light, and strong performances from Duvall, Murray and Sissy Spacek make for an easy film to enjoy. Schneider’s direction doesn’t do much to enhance the film (it gets a bit too Little House in places) and Duvall’s dark secret is hyped to an almost impossible degree, but it’s nice to see Murray working his smarm in something other than a Wes Anderson film.
The Hole (dir. Joe Dante)
Considering Dante’s Gremlins 2 is one of my all-time favourites, I’ve been looking forward to the director’s return to teen horror. First things first — like all the 3-D movies that’ve been coming out lately, there’s really no reason to see The Hole on anything but a regular screen. It doesn’t add anything to the atmosphere and the presence of objects in the foreground can be distracting.
That said, The Hole is a lot of fun. The premise is simple but great: kids move into a new house, find a padlocked bottomless pit in their basement. Terror ensues. Dante handles it all masterfully, balancing effortlessly between jump scares, laughs and truly creepy moments. Make no mistake, it’s made for kids, but Dante’s good enough to make even a theatre full of jaded industry vets jump.
The ending gets a little hokey (if Dr. Parnassus proved anything, it’s that ending your film with a climactic CGI battle is never a good idea), but that’s a small price to pay for a genuinely enjoyable PG horror flick.
Youth in Revolt (dir. Miguel Arteta)
Full disclosure: I went into this one fully expecting to hate it. I loved Michael Cera on Arrested Development and still liked him up through Superbad, but you can only see him play the same character so many times before you shake your head and give up. So the idea of him playing another awkward teenager hoping to find a girlfriend and lose his virginity, well, alarm bells went off.
And yet, I ended up liking Youth in Revolt. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it’s cute and charming almost despite itself. The incredibly mannered dialogue is a barrier, for sure — it probably reads well in C.D. Payne’s novel, but on screen it’s altogether too precious. The supporting cast, which includes Fred Willard, Steve Buscemi and Zach Galifianakis, is grossly underused. The chemistry between Cera and Portia Doubleday is almost nonexistent, and it even indulges in that hoary old trope involving secretly getting authority figures high.
So, what makes it work? Oddly enough, it’s Cera. He’s coasting in his main role as Nick Twisp, but as Twisp’s bad-ass, moustachio’d alter ego (created Tyler Durden-style to help Twisp woo Doubleday), he’s positively endearing. Smoking cigarettes, torching cars, seducing women — it’s a chance for Cera to play against type even if he’s only doing it with a wink and a healthy dose of irony. It’s hard to give it a hearty recommendation, but it’s certainly better than I was expecting.
While it’s not quite as fucked up as his most unsettling work (I’m looking at you, Happiness), Life During Wartime, Todd Solondz’s first film in five years, is still pretty fucked. The director has a set of themes that he loves returning to, including pedophilia and other forms of perversion. In this film, there’s an ex-con who can’t stop making lurid phone calls, a woman who’s been uncomfortable with men since discovering her (now ex) husband was a child rapist and a social worker haunted by the (occasionally horny) ghosts of her past.
It’s a dark comedy with the emphasis on darkness, but it’s also surprisingly accessible, at least for Solondz. Many of the characters are sympathetic, even verging on normal, which makes the constant unease easier to take. The script is also more explicit than usual in explaining Solondz’s goal, which is to explore the ideas of guilt, forgiveness and redemption.
The cinematography is astounding throughout, capturing a sense of wholesome ’50s suburbia. It’s entirely ironic, of course, given that dark obsessions are always just beneath the surface, but it’s gorgeous either way.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed (dir. J. Blakeson)
An intense and compellingly original kidnapping flick from first-time writer-director J. Blakeson. The film starts with two characters kidnapping Alice Creed off the streets and locking her in an apartment they’ve fortified for the purpose. The overall dynamic is familiar — crooks in a battle of wits with an abductee — but the details make all the difference, and the dynamic shifts rapidly with each new revelation.
Unlike fellow crime-obsessed Brit Guy Ritchie, Blakeson doesn’t go in for the glamour of illegal activities. The characters are more than just stock crime-flick archetypes, and every twist and double-cross stems naturally from their interactions. Even when things get a bit brutal, it’s impossible to look away. Great genre filmmaking and a very promising debut.
Get Low (dir. Aaron Schneider)
Up until this point, the Coen Brothers had hands-down the single best line of dialogue at TIFF in “Embrace the mystery” (you really need the context to appreciate it). Get Low comes close when Robert Duvall’s character is asked what it was like to be a self-imposed hermit for 40 years: “The first 38 years are the hardest.”
That dry sense of humour is all over Get Low, a period dramedy set in 1930s Tennessee and starring Duvall and a perfectly cast Bill Murray as a hermit and a funeral director, respectively. Like Life During Wartime, Get Low is all about redemption and forgiveness. Unlike Solondz’s movie, you certainly won’t need a shower after watching it. Despite some fairly heady subject matter, the film is always kept light, and strong performances from Duvall, Murray and Sissy Spacek make for an easy film to enjoy. Schneider’s direction doesn’t do much to enhance the film (it gets a bit too Little House in places) and Duvall’s dark secret is hyped to an almost impossible degree, but it’s nice to see Murray working his smarm in something other than a Wes Anderson film.
The Hole (dir. Joe Dante)
Considering Dante’s Gremlins 2 is one of my all-time favourites, I’ve been looking forward to the director’s return to teen horror. First things first — like all the 3-D movies that’ve been coming out lately, there’s really no reason to see The Hole on anything but a regular screen. It doesn’t add anything to the atmosphere and the presence of objects in the foreground can be distracting.
That said, The Hole is a lot of fun. The premise is simple but great: kids move into a new house, find a padlocked bottomless pit in their basement. Terror ensues. Dante handles it all masterfully, balancing effortlessly between jump scares, laughs and truly creepy moments. Make no mistake, it’s made for kids, but Dante’s good enough to make even a theatre full of jaded industry vets jump.
The ending gets a little hokey (if Dr. Parnassus proved anything, it’s that ending your film with a climactic CGI battle is never a good idea), but that’s a small price to pay for a genuinely enjoyable PG horror flick.
Youth in Revolt (dir. Miguel Arteta)
Full disclosure: I went into this one fully expecting to hate it. I loved Michael Cera on Arrested Development and still liked him up through Superbad, but you can only see him play the same character so many times before you shake your head and give up. So the idea of him playing another awkward teenager hoping to find a girlfriend and lose his virginity, well, alarm bells went off.
And yet, I ended up liking Youth in Revolt. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it’s cute and charming almost despite itself. The incredibly mannered dialogue is a barrier, for sure — it probably reads well in C.D. Payne’s novel, but on screen it’s altogether too precious. The supporting cast, which includes Fred Willard, Steve Buscemi and Zach Galifianakis, is grossly underused. The chemistry between Cera and Portia Doubleday is almost nonexistent, and it even indulges in that hoary old trope involving secretly getting authority figures high.
So, what makes it work? Oddly enough, it’s Cera. He’s coasting in his main role as Nick Twisp, but as Twisp’s bad-ass, moustachio’d alter ego (created Tyler Durden-style to help Twisp woo Doubleday), he’s positively endearing. Smoking cigarettes, torching cars, seducing women — it’s a chance for Cera to play against type even if he’s only doing it with a wink and a healthy dose of irony. It’s hard to give it a hearty recommendation, but it’s certainly better than I was expecting.
Monday, September 14, 2009
TIFF Day 5: The exhaustion sets in
It is very late in Toronto, so I’m going to go a bit shorter on these today.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog)
Come for Nicholas Cage’s glorious overacting, stay for exactly that. Herzog’s take on Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cops-gone-bad feature (which I haven’t seen) is explicitly not a remake, though what it is is hard to say. A genre pic, sure. A spectacle, undoubtedly. Cage’s performance is wonderfully unrestrained as a cop with a bad back who moves from painkillers to far harder stuff (like crack), embracing and reveling in every one of the character’s myriad faults. The camera lingers in the oddest places, inexplicably following an alligator once, and dwelling on a pair of iguanas for what feels like ages. It’ll be interesting to compare this to Herzog’s other film at this year’s fest, reportedly inspired heavily by David Lynch. Odds are, Bad Lieutenant is far more fun.
Chloe (dir. Atom Egoyan)
I’m a little torn on this one. It seems to me that it’s two thirds of a great movie, with a last act that goes oddly off the rails. One of the things about a fest like this is you have to make a lot of snap judgments, and this strikes me as a movie that doesn’t lend itself to snap judgment. Julianne Moore is fantastic as a woman who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair. In a familiar move, she decides to test her man’s love by hiring prostitute Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him and to report back with the details.
As you might expect with Egoyan, no one’s motivations are quite what they seem, and personal and sexual relationships become increasingly complex. Seyfried, probably best known as the bride from Mama Mia!, is a revelation, completely embodying a character that’s a bizarre mix of superficial and complex — at least, until the film moves into the third act and things start to fall apart.
The Warrior and the Wolf (dir. Tian Zhuang Zhuang)
A disclaimer on this one: mid-TIFF exhaustion was setting in, and I was drifting a bit, but I also know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one who thought this Chinese period piece was tough to follow. The attrition rate was far higher than any other movie I’ve seen at TIFF, and even interstitial title cards couldn’t spell out exactly what was going on. A great warrior (maybe) is reluctant to kill people in battle, leading to his army’s defeat (I think). He hides out in a desert for a bit, sleeping with a female outcast he meets, and after a really strange sandstorm, they both turn into wolves. For some reason. It’s well shot, but that’s about all I can really say for it.
Videocracy (dir. Erik Gandini)
I had high hopes for this Swedish doc, based around Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The subject matter is rich, what with Berlusconi’s control of Italy’s television and print media, but Gandini’s film isn’t the direct assault I was expecting. Instead, it’s more focused on Italy’s national obsession with scantily clad ladies (the first Italian TV show was a call-in quiz show where correct answers led to a masked housewife taking off her clothes in front of a live audience), manufactured celebrities and tabloid journalism. The danger of choosing a leader who’s essentially responsible for creating that kind of culture is touched upon but never really discussed, and Berlusconi himself is fairly peripheral to the doc. Despite this, the trailer for the movie has already been banned in Italy.
What Videocracy actually covers, it covers well, but I can’t help feeling it’s a wasted opportunity.
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (dir. Brigitte Berman)
There’s no confusion with what this one’s about. Berman’s doc is a well researched, well presented and very thorough look at the man behind the Playboy brand. While most takes on this subject have played up Hef’s party-heavy lifestyle and his role in sexing up America, Berman is more interested in his often understated role in societal change. A good deal of time is given to Hef’s fights for equal rights for minorities, his promotion of blacklisted artists during the McCarthy era and his passion for jazz, as well as the magazine’s contributions to interview pieces and literature.
Of course, you can’t make a Hefner movie without sex, and sex is always present. But it’s more the stream of interviewees, from Mike Wallace to Joan Baez to Jesse Jackson and Pat Boone, who really make the film work. It’s a fascinating reminder of just how important Playboy used to be, and the high standards that “men’s magazines” once had.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog)
Come for Nicholas Cage’s glorious overacting, stay for exactly that. Herzog’s take on Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cops-gone-bad feature (which I haven’t seen) is explicitly not a remake, though what it is is hard to say. A genre pic, sure. A spectacle, undoubtedly. Cage’s performance is wonderfully unrestrained as a cop with a bad back who moves from painkillers to far harder stuff (like crack), embracing and reveling in every one of the character’s myriad faults. The camera lingers in the oddest places, inexplicably following an alligator once, and dwelling on a pair of iguanas for what feels like ages. It’ll be interesting to compare this to Herzog’s other film at this year’s fest, reportedly inspired heavily by David Lynch. Odds are, Bad Lieutenant is far more fun.
Chloe (dir. Atom Egoyan)
I’m a little torn on this one. It seems to me that it’s two thirds of a great movie, with a last act that goes oddly off the rails. One of the things about a fest like this is you have to make a lot of snap judgments, and this strikes me as a movie that doesn’t lend itself to snap judgment. Julianne Moore is fantastic as a woman who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair. In a familiar move, she decides to test her man’s love by hiring prostitute Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him and to report back with the details.
As you might expect with Egoyan, no one’s motivations are quite what they seem, and personal and sexual relationships become increasingly complex. Seyfried, probably best known as the bride from Mama Mia!, is a revelation, completely embodying a character that’s a bizarre mix of superficial and complex — at least, until the film moves into the third act and things start to fall apart.
The Warrior and the Wolf (dir. Tian Zhuang Zhuang)
A disclaimer on this one: mid-TIFF exhaustion was setting in, and I was drifting a bit, but I also know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one who thought this Chinese period piece was tough to follow. The attrition rate was far higher than any other movie I’ve seen at TIFF, and even interstitial title cards couldn’t spell out exactly what was going on. A great warrior (maybe) is reluctant to kill people in battle, leading to his army’s defeat (I think). He hides out in a desert for a bit, sleeping with a female outcast he meets, and after a really strange sandstorm, they both turn into wolves. For some reason. It’s well shot, but that’s about all I can really say for it.
Videocracy (dir. Erik Gandini)
I had high hopes for this Swedish doc, based around Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The subject matter is rich, what with Berlusconi’s control of Italy’s television and print media, but Gandini’s film isn’t the direct assault I was expecting. Instead, it’s more focused on Italy’s national obsession with scantily clad ladies (the first Italian TV show was a call-in quiz show where correct answers led to a masked housewife taking off her clothes in front of a live audience), manufactured celebrities and tabloid journalism. The danger of choosing a leader who’s essentially responsible for creating that kind of culture is touched upon but never really discussed, and Berlusconi himself is fairly peripheral to the doc. Despite this, the trailer for the movie has already been banned in Italy.
What Videocracy actually covers, it covers well, but I can’t help feeling it’s a wasted opportunity.
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (dir. Brigitte Berman)
There’s no confusion with what this one’s about. Berman’s doc is a well researched, well presented and very thorough look at the man behind the Playboy brand. While most takes on this subject have played up Hef’s party-heavy lifestyle and his role in sexing up America, Berman is more interested in his often understated role in societal change. A good deal of time is given to Hef’s fights for equal rights for minorities, his promotion of blacklisted artists during the McCarthy era and his passion for jazz, as well as the magazine’s contributions to interview pieces and literature.
Of course, you can’t make a Hefner movie without sex, and sex is always present. But it’s more the stream of interviewees, from Mike Wallace to Joan Baez to Jesse Jackson and Pat Boone, who really make the film work. It’s a fascinating reminder of just how important Playboy used to be, and the high standards that “men’s magazines” once had.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
TIFF: Day 4 — Bees, war and Michael Moore
Colony (dir. Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell)
Confession: I was planning on watching the new Ricky Gervais movie this morning, but accidentally went to the wrong theatre. Lack of sleep can make navigating these festivals a bit tricky. Fortunately, it led to my catching a decent documentary on honeybee colony collapse disorder.
It’s a pretty straightforward doc, but very thorough, and does a great job of illustrating the extent of the problem. A third of the U.S.’s honeybees have disappeared or died in the span of a couple of years, which means trouble for more than just apiaries. Given that bees are the only creatures capable of pollinating a good chunk of the world’s food crops, their disappearance could have disastrous consequences.
Gunn and McDonnell direct with a light touch, letting the personalities of their subjects balance out the direness of the story. While the interviewees are mostly beekeepers, they make sure to talk to people on all sides of the issue, including the pesticide manufacturers who many beekeepers suspect are responsible for the disorder.
It’s an impressively comprehensive doc on a subject that’s fallen from the public consciousness — what a pleasant surprise.
Capitalism: A Love Story (dir. Michael Moore)
Moore’s approach to documentary filmmaking hasn’t evolved much over the years, but his ambition has. Roger & Me limited its scope to one company, Fahrenheit 911 to one administration. Capitalism sets its sights on the complete overthrow of the free market, with the aim of inspiring people to prioritize true democracy over the profit motive.
As usual, Moore doesn’t put much effort into constructing a solid argument. That’s not to say he has no valid points, though — each of the emotionally charged segments is convincing in its own right, and combined, they do paint a pretty damning view of the system. In Capitalism’s world, who the heroes and villains are is clear as black and white, and the biggest crimes are never punished. But Moore’s detractors will have no problem poking holes in the film, as there’s not so much as an attempt to connect the various dots.
The typical Moore grandstanding is also present. At 55, it might be time for the director to give up on stunts like putting Wall Street execs under citizen’s arrest (although surrounding the buildings with crime scene tape is a sight in itself), and I’m still not sure why Wallace Shawn (a.k.a. Vinzinni from The Princess Bride) is used as an expert, aside from the fact that he’s pals with Moore.
As usual, if you go into the film sympathetic with Moore’s viewpoint, you’ll likely be moved by the film. If you don’t, it probably won’t convince you. Odds are, either way, the revolution won’t be too influenced by Moore’s love story.
Lebanon (dir. Samuel Maoz and Maoz Shmulik)
This one just took the top prize at the Venice film fest, so the screening room was absolutely packed. A claustrophobic war film set in the First Lebanon War of 1982, almost all of the film takes place within a single tank. Exteriors are viewed only through the tank’s sights. The interiors are too cramped for anything but close-ups. It’s an extremely limiting perspective, but it does wonders to up the intensity.
The cramped location is pretty much the only innovation Lebanon offers as far as war film conventions go, though. The film’s characters fall into the usual genre stereotypes: There’s the hard-edged commander, the insubordinate underling, the newbie who’s prone to freezing up. But putting them all in close quarters and never allowing them a moment’s reprieve is enough to make you forget that some of the situations seem a little stock. I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker, so I can’t offer a valid comparison on that front, but personally, it’s the best war movie I’ve seen in years.
Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (dir. Manoel de Oliveira)
At 100 years, Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira can lay a strong claim to being the oldest working director in the world. Starting as a short documentary filmmaker in the 1930s, he made his first narrative film in 1942, so it’s more than a little impressive that he’s already working on his next project.
Eccentricities, his 48th film, feels older than it is. Everything from the rich colours to the rigid, photographic framing and the long takes that linger a few frames past their natural cutoff point all contribute to the feeling that this film belongs more in the ’70s than the new millennium — it’s actually jarring to see modern computers in the main character’s office.
The story is scant, following a young accountant as he falls for the girl across the street, a gorgeous young thing with an Asian hand-fan. Naturally, all doesn’t go smoothly, and the man’s career suffers as he pursues her (as he puts it, “commerce shuns a sentimental accountant.”) Instead of plot, the film offers luxury — decadent apartments, expensive fabrics and precious gems are all lovingly filmed. Even Oliveira’s depictions of poverty somehow come off rich despite their simplicity.
Only 64 minutes long, the film still drags in places thanks to Oliveira’s languid pacing. It’s impressive that the director can make a film feel as timeless as Eccentricities does, but it leaves more of an impression as a novelty than a movie.
Confession: I was planning on watching the new Ricky Gervais movie this morning, but accidentally went to the wrong theatre. Lack of sleep can make navigating these festivals a bit tricky. Fortunately, it led to my catching a decent documentary on honeybee colony collapse disorder.
It’s a pretty straightforward doc, but very thorough, and does a great job of illustrating the extent of the problem. A third of the U.S.’s honeybees have disappeared or died in the span of a couple of years, which means trouble for more than just apiaries. Given that bees are the only creatures capable of pollinating a good chunk of the world’s food crops, their disappearance could have disastrous consequences.
Gunn and McDonnell direct with a light touch, letting the personalities of their subjects balance out the direness of the story. While the interviewees are mostly beekeepers, they make sure to talk to people on all sides of the issue, including the pesticide manufacturers who many beekeepers suspect are responsible for the disorder.
It’s an impressively comprehensive doc on a subject that’s fallen from the public consciousness — what a pleasant surprise.
Capitalism: A Love Story (dir. Michael Moore)
Moore’s approach to documentary filmmaking hasn’t evolved much over the years, but his ambition has. Roger & Me limited its scope to one company, Fahrenheit 911 to one administration. Capitalism sets its sights on the complete overthrow of the free market, with the aim of inspiring people to prioritize true democracy over the profit motive.
As usual, Moore doesn’t put much effort into constructing a solid argument. That’s not to say he has no valid points, though — each of the emotionally charged segments is convincing in its own right, and combined, they do paint a pretty damning view of the system. In Capitalism’s world, who the heroes and villains are is clear as black and white, and the biggest crimes are never punished. But Moore’s detractors will have no problem poking holes in the film, as there’s not so much as an attempt to connect the various dots.
The typical Moore grandstanding is also present. At 55, it might be time for the director to give up on stunts like putting Wall Street execs under citizen’s arrest (although surrounding the buildings with crime scene tape is a sight in itself), and I’m still not sure why Wallace Shawn (a.k.a. Vinzinni from The Princess Bride) is used as an expert, aside from the fact that he’s pals with Moore.
As usual, if you go into the film sympathetic with Moore’s viewpoint, you’ll likely be moved by the film. If you don’t, it probably won’t convince you. Odds are, either way, the revolution won’t be too influenced by Moore’s love story.
Lebanon (dir. Samuel Maoz and Maoz Shmulik)
This one just took the top prize at the Venice film fest, so the screening room was absolutely packed. A claustrophobic war film set in the First Lebanon War of 1982, almost all of the film takes place within a single tank. Exteriors are viewed only through the tank’s sights. The interiors are too cramped for anything but close-ups. It’s an extremely limiting perspective, but it does wonders to up the intensity.
The cramped location is pretty much the only innovation Lebanon offers as far as war film conventions go, though. The film’s characters fall into the usual genre stereotypes: There’s the hard-edged commander, the insubordinate underling, the newbie who’s prone to freezing up. But putting them all in close quarters and never allowing them a moment’s reprieve is enough to make you forget that some of the situations seem a little stock. I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker, so I can’t offer a valid comparison on that front, but personally, it’s the best war movie I’ve seen in years.
Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (dir. Manoel de Oliveira)
At 100 years, Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira can lay a strong claim to being the oldest working director in the world. Starting as a short documentary filmmaker in the 1930s, he made his first narrative film in 1942, so it’s more than a little impressive that he’s already working on his next project.
Eccentricities, his 48th film, feels older than it is. Everything from the rich colours to the rigid, photographic framing and the long takes that linger a few frames past their natural cutoff point all contribute to the feeling that this film belongs more in the ’70s than the new millennium — it’s actually jarring to see modern computers in the main character’s office.
The story is scant, following a young accountant as he falls for the girl across the street, a gorgeous young thing with an Asian hand-fan. Naturally, all doesn’t go smoothly, and the man’s career suffers as he pursues her (as he puts it, “commerce shuns a sentimental accountant.”) Instead of plot, the film offers luxury — decadent apartments, expensive fabrics and precious gems are all lovingly filmed. Even Oliveira’s depictions of poverty somehow come off rich despite their simplicity.
Only 64 minutes long, the film still drags in places thanks to Oliveira’s languid pacing. It’s impressive that the director can make a film feel as timeless as Eccentricities does, but it leaves more of an impression as a novelty than a movie.
TIFF Day 3: Gilliam, McCarthy and some other stuff
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, but that I think is pretty key in getting across the feeling at TIFF’s industry screenings: Unlike CIFF, press and industry attend entirely separate screenings from the general public out here, so the tone of the press & industry screenings is much more subdued than the enthusiastic public ones. At The White Ribbon screening yesterday, the film was initially shown in the wrong aspect ratio, meaning that the subtitles were cut out. Then, when they got that fixed, they accidentally started showing the wrong movie. This is the only technical glitch I’ve ever seen at a TIFF press screening, and the crowd was having none of it — people yelled “FIX IT!” and other helpful suggestions while the theatre manager got continually more frustrated. Apparently having the world’s film industry and media elite makes for a pretty unforgiving environment — I certainly felt sorry for the poor folks trying to get everything in order.
I’ll definitely have to make a point of seeing more public screenings.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (dir. Terry Gilliam)
Though it’ll likely be remembered in the public consciousness primarily as Heath Ledger’s last film, Imaginarium isn’t really his — like most of Terry Gilliam’s films, it belongs entirely to the director. Gilliam once again crafts a fable to the power of imagination and storytelling, a theme the director has plumbed many times before, and this time out he lets his creativity run wild, crafting fantastical vistas enabled by the eerie powers of the immortal eponymous doctor.
The doctor gained his immortality through a deal with the devil (a wonderfully vaudevillian Tom Waits, complete with bowler and pencil moustache), which has put the soul of his daughter at risk. With the help of an amnesiac found hanging under a bridge (Ledger in the “real” world; Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Firth in the imaginary ones), he has to beat the devil at his own game, reclaiming souls with the help of a magical mirror.
Much of the film feels like an excuse to indulge in CGI world-building, and many of those worlds are marvelous in their own right. There’s one built entirely of candy, another made of overpriced shoes and other consumerist fantasies, and they’re universally skewed in an unmistakably Gilliam-ish manner. But something in the CGI doesn’t live up to the director’s more handcrafted charms — the hand-made practical effects of his previous films had more personality, and the new computer-generated worlds never feel as inviting, or as real.
Ledger’s role doesn’t give him as much to chew as his not-at-all overrated turn as the Joker, but he easily keeps up with both Waits and Christopher Plummer as the good doctor. Verne Troyer plays Parnassus’ assistant, and not particularly well, either. Even with Gilliam’s boundless imagination, the whole thing comes off a little lacklustre.
The Ape (Apan) (dir. Jesper Ganslandt)
From overbearing fantasy to desperate realism: Swedish filmmaker Jesper Gansladt’s The Ape (Apan) opens with Krister (Olle Sari) covered waking up in a bathroom, covered in blood. As he washes himself off, it becomes clear that the blood isn’t his — whoever it is, they’re probably in pretty rough shape. As Krister goes through the rest of his days, the scene crystallizes — we see hints of his violent temper, his troubled social skills and eventually the details of the night before become readily apparent. It’s concise (just over 80 minutes) and intense, just detached enough to keep things off-kilter and just disturbing enough to keep you emotionally involved.
The Road (dir. John Hillcoat)
Despite his terse, minimalist prose, Cormac McCarthy’s novels can make for riveting cinema — just look at No Country for Old Men. With its rich post-apocalyptic setting, The Road seems like ideal movie fodder, telling the story of a father and son travelling south for the winter while foraging for food and avoiding the looters and cannibals that dominate the post-disaster world.
Visually, director Hillcoat nails it. The lifeless, ash-coloured world is perfectly bleak and eerily hushed, making the occasional encounters all the more intense. But in shifting around some of the book’s major sequences and emphasizing the moments of action over the long stretches of foraging that dominated the book, he sacrifices the uniquely doomed atmosphere of McCarthy’s story. You don’t get the sense of just how hungry the characters are, or how hopeless their quest really is. It’s closer to a typical last-man-alive scenario — still distinct, but closer.
Like the book, the movie is essentially about the triumph of hope over cynicism, but on film, the battle just isn’t as hard-fought. It’s still a grim, compelling world, it just feels like too brief of a visit.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (dirs. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith)
The trickiest thing about documentaries is separating the story from the filmmaking. The Most Dangerous Man in America has a great story in Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked 7,000 pages of classified Pentagon documents outlining the truth behind the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam. It just doesn’t present that story in a particularly compelling way — at least, at first.
Although it should be the most interesting part of the story, Ellsberg’s acquisition of the Pentagon files drags, and though he deals with some major players in the Nixon administration, the feeling of intrigue that the directors are clearly aiming at just doesn’t come through. The odd animated interstitial doesn’t do much to supplement the doc’s talking-head-based structure, either.
Once the files are actually stolen and the leak begins to hit the press and the public consciousness, things pick up. News clips and headlines from the time add an immediacy that’s sorely lacking in the first half, and as momentum builds, it’s easy to get wrapped up in a bit of revolutionary fervour. The post-script — that despite the attention they received, the stolen files didn’t inspire much in the way of actual change — is both depressing and unsurprising, but Dangerous Man should be commended for spotlighting a piece of recent history that’s already all but forgotten.
La Pivellina (dirs. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel)
It’s not often that a film can build itself around a precocious two-year-old and end up winning me over, but La Pivellina did just that. An impoverished Italian circus performer finds the titular “little one” abandoned in a park and decides to take her home to her husband to take care of her. A note inside the child’s clothing pleads for whoever finds her not to take her to the police, but to wait, and the mother will pick her up eventually.
There’s surprisingly little in the way of conventional conflict in the film. There’s worry that police might find the child and misinterpret the situation as a kidnapping, and the financial pressures of a pair of circus performers raising a child do cause some tension, but the filmmakers are more concerned with the evolving relationship between the child, the couple and another boy who lives in their trailer park. The small gestures add up, and eventually it’s impossible not to feel some attachment to the little tyke as the film builds up to the bittersweet moment when the real mother returns.
I’ll definitely have to make a point of seeing more public screenings.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (dir. Terry Gilliam)
Though it’ll likely be remembered in the public consciousness primarily as Heath Ledger’s last film, Imaginarium isn’t really his — like most of Terry Gilliam’s films, it belongs entirely to the director. Gilliam once again crafts a fable to the power of imagination and storytelling, a theme the director has plumbed many times before, and this time out he lets his creativity run wild, crafting fantastical vistas enabled by the eerie powers of the immortal eponymous doctor.
The doctor gained his immortality through a deal with the devil (a wonderfully vaudevillian Tom Waits, complete with bowler and pencil moustache), which has put the soul of his daughter at risk. With the help of an amnesiac found hanging under a bridge (Ledger in the “real” world; Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Firth in the imaginary ones), he has to beat the devil at his own game, reclaiming souls with the help of a magical mirror.
Much of the film feels like an excuse to indulge in CGI world-building, and many of those worlds are marvelous in their own right. There’s one built entirely of candy, another made of overpriced shoes and other consumerist fantasies, and they’re universally skewed in an unmistakably Gilliam-ish manner. But something in the CGI doesn’t live up to the director’s more handcrafted charms — the hand-made practical effects of his previous films had more personality, and the new computer-generated worlds never feel as inviting, or as real.
Ledger’s role doesn’t give him as much to chew as his not-at-all overrated turn as the Joker, but he easily keeps up with both Waits and Christopher Plummer as the good doctor. Verne Troyer plays Parnassus’ assistant, and not particularly well, either. Even with Gilliam’s boundless imagination, the whole thing comes off a little lacklustre.
The Ape (Apan) (dir. Jesper Ganslandt)
From overbearing fantasy to desperate realism: Swedish filmmaker Jesper Gansladt’s The Ape (Apan) opens with Krister (Olle Sari) covered waking up in a bathroom, covered in blood. As he washes himself off, it becomes clear that the blood isn’t his — whoever it is, they’re probably in pretty rough shape. As Krister goes through the rest of his days, the scene crystallizes — we see hints of his violent temper, his troubled social skills and eventually the details of the night before become readily apparent. It’s concise (just over 80 minutes) and intense, just detached enough to keep things off-kilter and just disturbing enough to keep you emotionally involved.
The Road (dir. John Hillcoat)
Despite his terse, minimalist prose, Cormac McCarthy’s novels can make for riveting cinema — just look at No Country for Old Men. With its rich post-apocalyptic setting, The Road seems like ideal movie fodder, telling the story of a father and son travelling south for the winter while foraging for food and avoiding the looters and cannibals that dominate the post-disaster world.
Visually, director Hillcoat nails it. The lifeless, ash-coloured world is perfectly bleak and eerily hushed, making the occasional encounters all the more intense. But in shifting around some of the book’s major sequences and emphasizing the moments of action over the long stretches of foraging that dominated the book, he sacrifices the uniquely doomed atmosphere of McCarthy’s story. You don’t get the sense of just how hungry the characters are, or how hopeless their quest really is. It’s closer to a typical last-man-alive scenario — still distinct, but closer.
Like the book, the movie is essentially about the triumph of hope over cynicism, but on film, the battle just isn’t as hard-fought. It’s still a grim, compelling world, it just feels like too brief of a visit.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (dirs. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith)
The trickiest thing about documentaries is separating the story from the filmmaking. The Most Dangerous Man in America has a great story in Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked 7,000 pages of classified Pentagon documents outlining the truth behind the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam. It just doesn’t present that story in a particularly compelling way — at least, at first.
Although it should be the most interesting part of the story, Ellsberg’s acquisition of the Pentagon files drags, and though he deals with some major players in the Nixon administration, the feeling of intrigue that the directors are clearly aiming at just doesn’t come through. The odd animated interstitial doesn’t do much to supplement the doc’s talking-head-based structure, either.
Once the files are actually stolen and the leak begins to hit the press and the public consciousness, things pick up. News clips and headlines from the time add an immediacy that’s sorely lacking in the first half, and as momentum builds, it’s easy to get wrapped up in a bit of revolutionary fervour. The post-script — that despite the attention they received, the stolen files didn’t inspire much in the way of actual change — is both depressing and unsurprising, but Dangerous Man should be commended for spotlighting a piece of recent history that’s already all but forgotten.
La Pivellina (dirs. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel)
It’s not often that a film can build itself around a precocious two-year-old and end up winning me over, but La Pivellina did just that. An impoverished Italian circus performer finds the titular “little one” abandoned in a park and decides to take her home to her husband to take care of her. A note inside the child’s clothing pleads for whoever finds her not to take her to the police, but to wait, and the mother will pick her up eventually.
There’s surprisingly little in the way of conventional conflict in the film. There’s worry that police might find the child and misinterpret the situation as a kidnapping, and the financial pressures of a pair of circus performers raising a child do cause some tension, but the filmmakers are more concerned with the evolving relationship between the child, the couple and another boy who lives in their trailer park. The small gestures add up, and eventually it’s impossible not to feel some attachment to the little tyke as the film builds up to the bittersweet moment when the real mother returns.
Friday, September 11, 2009
TIFF: Day 2 -- Coen Brothers, George Clooney, Michael Haneke and a ninja Puritan
Alright, so it’s actually my first day at the festival, but it’s the second day of the fest itself, and I’m always one for going along with the official rules. Missing the first day was a bit of a bummer (I’m still very curious about the new Pedro Almodovar film and Lars von Trier’s almost absurdly controversial Antichrist), but there’ll be no shortage of films to keep me occupied.
So, without further ado, the four films I watched today (and I’ll be trying to average four a day , though I’m sure that’ll fluctuate):
A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers)
It’s been one hell of a three year stretch for the Coen brothers. After giving fans a bit of a scare with the not-so-great combo of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, they’ve hit back hard, first with 2007’s nihilistic masterpiece No Country for Old Men and then with last year’s lightweight but entertaining as hell Burn After Reading. At first, A Serious Man feels closer in tone to the latter (although its starless cast is basically the opposite of Burn’s Clooney-Pitt-Malkovich dream team), but the issues it deals with are every bit as weighty as anything in No Country.
The film is essentially a meditation on faith, questioning the role of God in a chaotic world through the life of a Jewish university professor (a perpetually put-upon Michael Stuhlbarg). His wife wants a divorce, his brother is sleeping on the couch with no sign of leaving and a student is making his life miserable over a failing grade. Coincidences and omens pile up seemingly randomly, the script is loaded with references to paradoxes and religious allegories, ’60s psych rock is put on the same plane as Talmudic wisdom and the ending is every bit as off-putting as the notoriously unresolved No Country. In other words, it’s another hit from a pair of almost frighteningly consistent filmmakers (the aforementioned slump notwithstanding).
Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman)
Diablo Cody got a lot of credit and a lot of flack for her 2007 teen pregnancy hit, Juno, and it was well deserved on both counts. Oddly, though, director Jason Reitman’s name hardly came up in connection to the movie — yet he’s undoubtedly responsible for a lot of the cutesier touches, like the opening credit animations, that rubbed some folks the wrong way.
Reitman directed and co-wrote Up in the Air, so there’s no one to pass the blame onto this time. Not that it’s a terrible film — it’s a perfectly middle-of-the-road dramedy, anchored by an unsurprisingly charismatic lead performance from George Clooney as a downsizer-for-hire and a surprisingly solid turn from Vera Farmiga (Orphan, The Departed), who matches him note for note as his on-the-road love interest. Less great: Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener, the overachieving (get it?) twentysomething who’s mucking up Clooney’s frequent flyer plans by proposing to do the downsizing via teleconferences.
Despite the topical subject matter (layoffs are certainly on a lot of people’s minds lately), the movie doesn’t offer any real insight, even with a string of semi-obnoxious talking-head interviews. Instead, it settles for jokes about text messaging and — despite one clever twist on the usual grand romantic gesture — a conservative moral that doesn’t really jibe with the rest of the tone.
The White Ribbon (dir. Michael Haneke)
Austrian director Michael Haneke is known for toying with his audience. Last year’s Funny Games (an English-language remake of his own 1997 German-language film) mocked horror movie audiences for their torture-loving ways. Cache (2005) masterfully manipulated its audience — watching it was the only time I’ve heard a whole theatre gasp in unison. The White Ribbon, his Palme d’Or-winning 2009 effort, plays with the audience in an altogether different way — by trying their patience.
The film isn’t slow so much as it is methodical. Set in a small town in Austria in the year leading up to the First World War and narrated by the town’s schoolteacher, The White Ribbon is less about its individual characters than the tensions, suspicions and class conflicts that eventually lead to atrocities. Haneke has described the film as discussing “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature,” and viewed in that light, its nearly non-stop miserablism is a bit more understandable. But the slow pace, a number of reprehensible characters and Haneke’s emotionless directorial distance don’t make for an easy film to get into.
The black-and-white cinematography is gorgeous, though, and it recalls the crisp composition and stark contrast of turn-of-the-century photographs. The lack of any emotion makes it a frustrating experience, but there’s no question that it’s the work of a master director.
Solomon Kane (dir. Michael J. Bassett)
Originally conceived by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is the most deadly puritan you’ll ever come across — a badass-turned-pacifict-turned-badass. To give you an idea, at one point he gets crucified by his enemies, tears himself off the cross and kicks their asses. It’s a ridiculous moment in a ridiculous movie, and if that’s the sort of scene that’d turn you off, steer clear.
Even for b-movie fans, Kane is a bit of a slog. The plot is by the numbers, milking an unsurprising twist for the majority of its run and relying on cliched dialogue that isn’t quite over-the-top enough to be awesome. Despite a handful of memorable scenes (including an appearance by Gareth from the British version of The Office), there’s really not enough in Solomon Kane to recommend it, but it’s hard not to be at least a little impressed with a film that’s willing to crucify its main character halfway through.
So, without further ado, the four films I watched today (and I’ll be trying to average four a day , though I’m sure that’ll fluctuate):
A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers)
It’s been one hell of a three year stretch for the Coen brothers. After giving fans a bit of a scare with the not-so-great combo of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, they’ve hit back hard, first with 2007’s nihilistic masterpiece No Country for Old Men and then with last year’s lightweight but entertaining as hell Burn After Reading. At first, A Serious Man feels closer in tone to the latter (although its starless cast is basically the opposite of Burn’s Clooney-Pitt-Malkovich dream team), but the issues it deals with are every bit as weighty as anything in No Country.
The film is essentially a meditation on faith, questioning the role of God in a chaotic world through the life of a Jewish university professor (a perpetually put-upon Michael Stuhlbarg). His wife wants a divorce, his brother is sleeping on the couch with no sign of leaving and a student is making his life miserable over a failing grade. Coincidences and omens pile up seemingly randomly, the script is loaded with references to paradoxes and religious allegories, ’60s psych rock is put on the same plane as Talmudic wisdom and the ending is every bit as off-putting as the notoriously unresolved No Country. In other words, it’s another hit from a pair of almost frighteningly consistent filmmakers (the aforementioned slump notwithstanding).
Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman)
Diablo Cody got a lot of credit and a lot of flack for her 2007 teen pregnancy hit, Juno, and it was well deserved on both counts. Oddly, though, director Jason Reitman’s name hardly came up in connection to the movie — yet he’s undoubtedly responsible for a lot of the cutesier touches, like the opening credit animations, that rubbed some folks the wrong way.
Reitman directed and co-wrote Up in the Air, so there’s no one to pass the blame onto this time. Not that it’s a terrible film — it’s a perfectly middle-of-the-road dramedy, anchored by an unsurprisingly charismatic lead performance from George Clooney as a downsizer-for-hire and a surprisingly solid turn from Vera Farmiga (Orphan, The Departed), who matches him note for note as his on-the-road love interest. Less great: Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener, the overachieving (get it?) twentysomething who’s mucking up Clooney’s frequent flyer plans by proposing to do the downsizing via teleconferences.
Despite the topical subject matter (layoffs are certainly on a lot of people’s minds lately), the movie doesn’t offer any real insight, even with a string of semi-obnoxious talking-head interviews. Instead, it settles for jokes about text messaging and — despite one clever twist on the usual grand romantic gesture — a conservative moral that doesn’t really jibe with the rest of the tone.
The White Ribbon (dir. Michael Haneke)
Austrian director Michael Haneke is known for toying with his audience. Last year’s Funny Games (an English-language remake of his own 1997 German-language film) mocked horror movie audiences for their torture-loving ways. Cache (2005) masterfully manipulated its audience — watching it was the only time I’ve heard a whole theatre gasp in unison. The White Ribbon, his Palme d’Or-winning 2009 effort, plays with the audience in an altogether different way — by trying their patience.
The film isn’t slow so much as it is methodical. Set in a small town in Austria in the year leading up to the First World War and narrated by the town’s schoolteacher, The White Ribbon is less about its individual characters than the tensions, suspicions and class conflicts that eventually lead to atrocities. Haneke has described the film as discussing “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature,” and viewed in that light, its nearly non-stop miserablism is a bit more understandable. But the slow pace, a number of reprehensible characters and Haneke’s emotionless directorial distance don’t make for an easy film to get into.
The black-and-white cinematography is gorgeous, though, and it recalls the crisp composition and stark contrast of turn-of-the-century photographs. The lack of any emotion makes it a frustrating experience, but there’s no question that it’s the work of a master director.
Solomon Kane (dir. Michael J. Bassett)
Originally conceived by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is the most deadly puritan you’ll ever come across — a badass-turned-pacifict-turned-badass. To give you an idea, at one point he gets crucified by his enemies, tears himself off the cross and kicks their asses. It’s a ridiculous moment in a ridiculous movie, and if that’s the sort of scene that’d turn you off, steer clear.
Even for b-movie fans, Kane is a bit of a slog. The plot is by the numbers, milking an unsurprising twist for the majority of its run and relying on cliched dialogue that isn’t quite over-the-top enough to be awesome. Despite a handful of memorable scenes (including an appearance by Gareth from the British version of The Office), there’s really not enough in Solomon Kane to recommend it, but it’s hard not to be at least a little impressed with a film that’s willing to crucify its main character halfway through.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Corporate video games still suck
Two years ago, the Internet was abuzz with anger and indignation at the posthumous indignity facing Kurt Cobain. The grunge rock icon was to be the centrepiece of a string of ads for Dr. Martens shoes — a series that would also include late rockers Joe Strummer of The Clash, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and Joey Ramone of The Ramones. Somehow, though, those other three rockers didn’t inspire quite the same amount of backlash. People screamed about the besmirching of Cobain’s legacy. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, called it “outrageous,” saying it was done without her knowledge and that she never would have approved such a “despicable use” of Cobain’s image.
If you thought that was bad, though, wait till you see Guitar Hero 5. A YouTube clip that’s already garnered almost 200,000 hits shows Cobain’s in-game avatar dancing to Billy Idol, singing along to Bush and Bon Jovi and showing off his best gangsta swagger. Seeing the notoriously self-conscious rocker (who killed himself largely because of concerns over his fame) wearing a sweater and Daniel Johnston T-shirt and singing vacuous pop tunes just feels, well, wrong. And this time, no one can say that it was done without Cobain’s estate’s approval.
Not that Cobain is the only dead celebrity in the game. Johnny Cash has been added to the series. Jimmy Hendrix has been a part of it for some time. But there’s something about Cobain — the circumstances of his death, maybe, or his well-known distaste for most popular music — that has people riled up over his inclusion.
Handling the image of dead celebrities is always tricky business. A decade ago, Dirt Devil faced widespread criticism for a trio of commercials featuring Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum — doubly offensive for the fact that Astaire’s longtime dance partner, Ginger Rogers, was turned into an appliance. A 2006 Gap commercial starring Audrey Hepburn went over a little better, but there’s still something sketchy about posthumous endorsements. Maybe Astaire would’ve been more of a Hoover man. Then again, maybe Cobain would’ve found his Guitar Hero appearance hilarious — it’s hard to say.
Appropriately enough, Guitar Hero’s rival Rock Band series has just released their tribute to The Beatles, which has been widely regarded as an exceedingly tasteful handling of the band’s legacy. It just shows, with enough care, the inevitable backlash isn’t quite so inevitable.
If you thought that was bad, though, wait till you see Guitar Hero 5. A YouTube clip that’s already garnered almost 200,000 hits shows Cobain’s in-game avatar dancing to Billy Idol, singing along to Bush and Bon Jovi and showing off his best gangsta swagger. Seeing the notoriously self-conscious rocker (who killed himself largely because of concerns over his fame) wearing a sweater and Daniel Johnston T-shirt and singing vacuous pop tunes just feels, well, wrong. And this time, no one can say that it was done without Cobain’s estate’s approval.
Not that Cobain is the only dead celebrity in the game. Johnny Cash has been added to the series. Jimmy Hendrix has been a part of it for some time. But there’s something about Cobain — the circumstances of his death, maybe, or his well-known distaste for most popular music — that has people riled up over his inclusion.
Handling the image of dead celebrities is always tricky business. A decade ago, Dirt Devil faced widespread criticism for a trio of commercials featuring Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum — doubly offensive for the fact that Astaire’s longtime dance partner, Ginger Rogers, was turned into an appliance. A 2006 Gap commercial starring Audrey Hepburn went over a little better, but there’s still something sketchy about posthumous endorsements. Maybe Astaire would’ve been more of a Hoover man. Then again, maybe Cobain would’ve found his Guitar Hero appearance hilarious — it’s hard to say.
Appropriately enough, Guitar Hero’s rival Rock Band series has just released their tribute to The Beatles, which has been widely regarded as an exceedingly tasteful handling of the band’s legacy. It just shows, with enough care, the inevitable backlash isn’t quite so inevitable.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Flowers of Hell - Come Hell or High Water, Saved by Vinyl
If a band can be judged purely by the fans it attracts, The Flowers of Hell is a damned good band. Greg Jarvis’ pan-Atlantic space-rock symphony has performed with members of Spiritualized, Broken Social Scene, Guided By Voices — they were even specifically requested as an opening act by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields.
Don’t look to those bands as touchstones for Jarvis and company’s sound, though. Come Hell or High Water is a sprawling effort, sure, but it’s far more controlled than any of Broken Social Scene’s releases. It’s grandiose, but the gospel elements (and self-loathing) of Spiritualized are almost entirely absent. And while the band will burst into overdrive on occasion, it relies less on MBV-style effects and more on the band’s sheer scale.
Jarvis borrows from Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s slow-build esthetic, but there are more than enough twists to keep The Flowers from sounding derivative. “Blümchen” takes a full four-and-a-half minutes of spacious horns, dreamy theremin and German narration before its electronic pulse and fuzzed-out guitars emerge. “Forest of Noise” and “The Invocation” both feel more like amalgams of movements than actual songs, the former a nightmare landscape of scraped strings, the latter a clanking clatter of industrial noise that resolves itself into a peaceful glade, complete with birdsong. There’s nary a pop hook to be found, but it’s still clear how Jarvis has found himself in such good company.
Don’t look to those bands as touchstones for Jarvis and company’s sound, though. Come Hell or High Water is a sprawling effort, sure, but it’s far more controlled than any of Broken Social Scene’s releases. It’s grandiose, but the gospel elements (and self-loathing) of Spiritualized are almost entirely absent. And while the band will burst into overdrive on occasion, it relies less on MBV-style effects and more on the band’s sheer scale.
Jarvis borrows from Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s slow-build esthetic, but there are more than enough twists to keep The Flowers from sounding derivative. “Blümchen” takes a full four-and-a-half minutes of spacious horns, dreamy theremin and German narration before its electronic pulse and fuzzed-out guitars emerge. “Forest of Noise” and “The Invocation” both feel more like amalgams of movements than actual songs, the former a nightmare landscape of scraped strings, the latter a clanking clatter of industrial noise that resolves itself into a peaceful glade, complete with birdsong. There’s nary a pop hook to be found, but it’s still clear how Jarvis has found himself in such good company.
Share - Slumping in Your Murals
Share’s Slumping in Your Murals is just low-key enough to catch you off guard. Early on, it feels like one of those albums that’ll be easy to like but next to impossible to love. Singer-songwriter Andrew Fisk clearly knows his way around a folk-rock tune and the spacious production perfectly complements the music, but there’s nothing that immediately makes you go “Wow.” From Fisk’s vocals to the band’s musicianship, Slumping proudly announces itself as a competent release, inviting faint praise.
Then the little moments start to add up. The whale song intro and cathartic climax to “Awake at Dawn.” The welcome touch of musical aggression in “Fish Out of Water.” The triumphant outro of “KC,” which could easily be the last minute of an unreleased Do Make Say Think epic. They’re little things, but they’re persuasive.
By the time the album wraps up (it’s concise at 10 songs and just over a half-hour) it’s near impossible to resist its charms. There’s not much flash to the disc, but sometimes substance can win over style.
Then the little moments start to add up. The whale song intro and cathartic climax to “Awake at Dawn.” The welcome touch of musical aggression in “Fish Out of Water.” The triumphant outro of “KC,” which could easily be the last minute of an unreleased Do Make Say Think epic. They’re little things, but they’re persuasive.
By the time the album wraps up (it’s concise at 10 songs and just over a half-hour) it’s near impossible to resist its charms. There’s not much flash to the disc, but sometimes substance can win over style.
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