Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot)
Another joyful, whimsical tale from Jeunet. This one centers around a group of misfit street performers who set off to pit one arms dealer against another. Part caper, part circus performance, each frame seems to be a throwback to a different time of storytelling. Like Gilliam’s addition to this year’s fest, Jeunet’s Micmacs is hard […]
Solomon Kane
Just as Black Hole or the original Battlestar Galactica series saw the light of day after the success of Star Wars, this clearly derivative, post-Lord of the Rings meets Pirates of the Caribbean sword flick is told with so much earnestness that it all appears a bit silly. Drawn from the pages of the comic […]
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
A weird mess of a film, Herzog has taken a procedural crime drama and turned it on its head. Minutes into the film we find out that a murder has occurred. We know who did it, where they are hiding. The rest of the film is spent either in surreal flashback to ancient Greek theatrical […]
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Comprised of talking head interviews, news reports, and (somewhat clumsy) “recreations” of key events (Oooh, photocopying!) the film exposes Ellsberg rise as one of the most famous American whistleblowers of all time. Broadening its scope from simply a biography of Ellsber’s remarkable journey, the central thesis is that it was the release of the Pentagon […]
Life During Wartime
It seems, well, creepy that Todd Solondz has crafted an accessible, almost mainstream film. Sure, the familiar themes of his latest works still abound – paedophilia, and other forms of dysfunctional relationships are once again covered – but this film seems to have a lightness that Happiness and especially Palindromes lacked. This is probably as […]
Youth in Revolt
Michael Cera turns his well developed awkward adolescent character on its head in this wonderful adaptation of the novel by C.D. Payne. Cera plays Nick Twisp, a teen that finds he must create an alter ego to woo a girl he’s fallen for. Given her love of all things Belmondo, Twisp uses Francois to be […]
Vengeance
Johnny Hallyday as chef-cum-hitman, out of his element and out for revenge in this latest from icon Johnny To. A typical triad vs. triad piece, there are nonetheless moments of startling beauty. A set piece where giant cubes of garbage are incessantly rolled towards the protagonists, Katamari-style, is an image not soon forgotten. Other than […]
Atom Egoyan Masterclass
Not a film, per se, but a Q&A scheduled during the press and industry screening schedule. Local boy Atom showed up and fielded questions from the author of a book about The Adjuster. Affable, energetic, as loquacious as ever, Atom spoke for about 45 minutes, where he was interrupted by a (superfluous) clip show. Pleasingly, […]
A Single Man
A touching, heartwarming film set in the halcyon days of 60s California. Colin Firth plays a closetted man who has recently lost his long term lover, and is desperately trying to mask his misery with the rigid routine he uses to maintain order. His best friend, played by Julianne Moore, is an equally damaged yet […]
Waking Sleeping Beauty
Disney of the mid-80s was in crisis, the glory of its past reduced to infighting and the defection or retirement of the core talent that shaped it from its earliest days. Into this environment came both an executive and creative shakeup, resulting, in part, in some of the most successful films (animated or not) of […]
Bitch Slap
Silly, jiggly, Bitch Slap is a Russ Meyer-wannabe girl gang flick. The plot (do you care?) somehow involves stollen look buried out in the desert. Three girls are on the hunt. Chaos ensues. Stylistically, the film relies heavily on green screen, comic book style flashbacks (think Speed Racer, but with TV-level CGI). Produced and directed […]
Leaves of Grass
Boy, this film on paper should have rocked my world. Tim Blake Nelson, stalwart performer from the Coens’ Oh Brother…, treads into their pool, making a genre defying thriller/comedy about twin brothers. You’ve got the usually exemplary Edward Norton playing both twins, one a knockabout weed dealer who woos the other sibling, an accomplished professor […]
Moloch Tropical
A broad resetting of Sokurov’s 1999 film Moloch, replacing Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest with a castle atop a mountain in contemporary Haiti. Trading fascist Europe for a neurotic, despostic leader on a Tropical island is a bold and interesting move. The scope of the film aims for the Shakespearean, with heightened dialogue and situations, an almost […]
Chloe
Egoyan is back, this time with a film that many were surprised when it was not selected as the opening Gala, an honour that’s usually bestowed upon a Canadian film (Creation starting things off instead). Making no secret of its Toronto location, Chloe is a tale of doubt, recrimination, and humiliation. While the film doesn’t […]
Whip It
A film of infectious charm and unabashed fun, Barrymore’s Directorial debut is a supremely entertaining film.The film is pitch perfect, eschewing the Will Ferrel-style sport film to allow the inherent ridiculous of the sport of Rollerderby to shine through. But it is in the characters, completely real without the heightened “teen” dialogue that has proliferated […]
Harry Brown
Continuing along the lines of other geriatric revenge films like Gran Torino, Harry Brown is a step back from the renaissance of Michael Caine’s career. Overly earnest, this is little more than a thugs and drugs flick, complete with angry ex-Marine men looking to make a mark on the world. A trite female detective character […]
Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl
Well, gotta hand it to him – Manouel is a hundred years young, and still managing to make films. Does that alone make for a good festival experience? Alas, no. The idea was to actually see a remarkable pair of films, this latest work, and his first from from the silent era, shot some 80 […]
Capitalism: A Love Story
There’s a very telling scene towards the end of Moore’s latest screed: he’s photographed causing trouble again, wrapping crime scene tape around the buildings of Wall Street, yelling through a bright red megaphone about the injustice of the bailout. In a tired voice, he admits via voiceover that he’s getting tired of having to do […]
White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)
Haneke’s films are usually quiet ruminations about character interactions followed by explosions of violence and terror. With White Ribbon, he has crafted an almost dreamlike tale, a throwback to an older, slower, more literary cinematic form. Shot in a stunning black and white palate, this is a poetic, elegiac film without the usual pretension or […]
The Road
How does one rate a film that’s terrifically produced, well shot and directed, with great acting, yet it all seems somehow… hollow? The Road, based on the celebrated novel by Cormack McCarthy, is a cerebral, haunting tale of post-apocalyptic misery. However, through no explicit fault of the film, it all seems so straight forward, so […]
Accident (Yi Ngoi)
A film that’s in desperate need of a (better) remake, Johnny To-produced Accident manages to completely ruin a terrific start. The opening sequence is downright delightful – a group stages murders for hire, making them seem random occurrences. These “McGyvers of murder” are set loose, with the victim subtly pushed towards his doom using normal […]
Daybreakers
Yup, another Vampire flick. But this one is different – it’s smart, witty, gory, supremely well shot and produced. It has an epic feel, has noir overtones, and some fabulous performances by the likes of Willem Dafoe, Sam Neil and Ethan Hawke. It’s a world where humans are farmed for blood, but the source is […]
Under the Mountain
Last at TIFF for Midnight Madness fun “Black Sheep”, director Jonathan King has crafted a well made, post-Harry Potter teen flick with enough spooky mood and moments to keep even the most jaded genre fan happy. Improbably, the fate of the world rests in the hands of a pair of adolescent, precocious teens in Wellington, […]
The Ape
A man wakes up in a pool of blood. Quickly realizing that it’s not his own, he washes up, stumbling out the door to his job as a driver’s instructor. This opening speaks volumes of this work – little details are provided from the outset, but as the story unfolds, we are given glimpses of […]
The Informant!
Soderbergh has crafted a period piece of the weirdest kind, meshing early 90s fashion with a sublime throwback soundtrack by Marvin Hamlisch. It’s surely no coincidence that the music echose the soundtrack for the “Sting”, a film where the plans of the con are meticulously presented, each obfuscation a careful build upon the one before. […]
The Hole
Joe Dante is back, this time with another teen fright fest. Goonies fans, beware! A big selling point of this film has been its 3D projection – let me state firmly that the 3D does nothing to add to this film, as it’s used as little more than a gimmick (look, I’m throwing a ball […]
Jennifer’s Body
Riding the success of her Oscar turn with Juno and the recent bloodlust for all things vampiric, writer Diablo Cody turned her eye towards the 80s horror genre. Megan Fox is Jennifer, the curvy, bitchy pretty thing at her high school, with her best friend Amanda Seifreid. Things go awry when an out of town […]
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus
In the end, then, go see this as a modern triumph from Mr. Terry G, not merely in order to placate the posthumous fascination that one may feel for the departed Heath. This is the type of film that they simply don’t make often anymore, and if it was in Spanish and directed by some guy named Del Toro, it’d immediately jump to the top of any cineaste list.
City of Life and Death (Nanjing Nanjing)
Wildly exceeding my expectations, this Chinese produced film is an accessible, nuanced tale about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing just before the beginning of the Second World War. Shot in glorious black and white, the film has a sweeping, epic feel. Production design is impeccable, and the recreation of the action sequences is the equal […]
The Men Who Stare At Goats
A story too weird to not be true – in the 80s, the US army amassed a band of psychic warriors after the Vietnam debacle, harnessing the hippy ethic in order to hug the enemy into submission (before, if needed, slitting their throats). As part of their training of these so-called “Jedi”, goats were brought […]