Brand Upon the Brain!
A unique, surreal TIFF experience – Guy Maddin, iconoclastic Canadian filmmaker, has created a live cinematic performance. His 1920s style silent film was presented with a live orchestra, three-piece Foley artist group, live narration, and faux Castrato singer to interject some vocalizations to the proceedings. The film is a bizarre mess of monster movie, teen […]
Stranger Than Fiction
A literate, literary film with a Hollywood high-concept hitch: a man starts hearing voices, then realizes it’s actually the narration of his own life, whereupon he learns about his impending death. Often cute premises like these (think Click from this year) end up become trite extremely quickly. To this film’s credit, the conceit never wears […]
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
There is little that is subtle about the Borat film – it’s a “make sex on your face” kind of experience, an onslaught of Jew, Gay, “foreign”, Baptist and Texan jokes. It’s also very, very funny. The film, part road movie, part SNL-style skit fest, holds together as a narrative quite well. Borat travels across […]
Ten Canoes
Ten Canoes is a deep, flowing tale, elegiac in its pacing, beautifully shot. The narrator begins with “A long time ago, in a place far, far away…”, then cracks into laughter, saying it’s not “your story, but my story…”, a different, but just as good tale handed down from his ancestors. The story flows with […]
King and the Clown
Admittedly, this was my first Korean clown-and-king epic with a dash of gay subtext, but King and Clown is, to my mind at least, a baffling mess of a film. There are moments of great beauty and fun, with acrobat scenes shot with aplomb, beautiful colours and costumes floating across the screen. At other times, […]
After the Wedding
Another Danish family drama, this one involving a Billionaire, his wife and family, and an idealistic teacher of orphans living in the slums of Bombay. Plot-wise, this is a predictable mish mash of tragic situations, deceit, powerplays and reconciliation. The film’s actors, however, bring such raw, powerful performances that the story limitations are for the […]
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Lots of my favourite war films (Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, etc.) start with a tremendous flourish, lots of ambivalence and confusion that eventually settles down into a somewhat traditional playing out of war film thematics. Loach’s film about Northern Ireland plays in exactly the opposite way. The first hour is so stark, so […]
Mon Meilleur Ami (My Best Friend)
This is perhaps what passes for puff-piece, light-comedic adult films in France, which is saying something quite positive about contemporary French pop cinema. A man (Daniel Auteuil) finds out that he actually has no friends (only acquaintances and colleagues) and sets out to find a friend in order to settle a bet with his co-worker […]
When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
Spike Lee (with the help, according to the credits, of a number of NYU Film school interns) has crafted a lengthy, quite compelling look at Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Mixing news footage with talking-head interviews with survivors and those in power, this “Film Document” does an admirable job of detailing many of the key […]
NO DIRECTION HOME
Simply astounding, an absolute masterpiece, NO DIRECTION HOME is certainly the best Dylan (if not music) doc ever made. It is remarkable that the time has finally come for Dylan to be reflective upon his transition from folk troubadour to electric innovator. Tracing the time from his youth in Minnesota to his bike accident that […]
RASPBERRY REICH
It’s best described as a Maoist gay porn flick. Still interested? Impossible to grade by any common standard, RASPBERRY REICH just didn’t do it for me. It’s not sly enough to amuse, not sexy enough to be erotic, nor inquisitive enough to live up to its ambitions towards erudition. I have to hand it to […]
GREENDALE
Neil Young’s latest album is part diatribe, part folk tale. He grabbed a super-8 camera and shot a bunch of flannel-wearing Youngalikes as they lipsynched to the libretto. It’s strangely compelling, particularly on the Uptown screen where the grain was the size of a Volkswagon (say, the Jetta, as opposed to the Campervan or something). […]
SEOM (THE ISLE)
In the (genius) Coen Brother’s film THE BIG LEBOWSKI, Julianne Moore’s character Maude is an avant garde artist who describes her painting as “strongly vaginal.” Until THE ISLE, I thought that was simply a funny joke upon the traditionally phalocentric world of art. Nay, for few films are as vaginal as the Thai film THE […]
Goddess of ’67
I get the sense that if this film really clicks with you, it is something that you’d really love and hold dear. I, on the other hand, just couldn’t get into the film. The Goddess refers to a particular model of Citroen, leading a Japanese man into the wilds of Australia. I was reminded of […]
George Washington
David Gordon Green, the young director of George Washington, has done a truly remarkable thing — he has created a film of rare beauty and power that never for a second lets on the fact that its an independent film made for an extremely low budget. The film plays like the work of a mature […]
Tell Me Something
A good example of a film that would have been far better during the day – it was just too complicated and too wordy to keep me awake at 2am. A stylish serial killer film, there nonetheless was too much talk and not enough madness.
Brother
A vital, stylish Yakuza pic, Kitano crafts a new world/old world, brother against brother epic battle straddling both sides of the Pacific. Some excellent action sequences and strong performances lead to a truly interesting retake on the genre. Mafia vs. Yakuza warmly reminded of Simpsons episode without detracting from the power of the film.
101 Reykjavik
101 Reykjavik is a slacker tale from the capital of Iceland. Hlynur, the 30 year old living with his mother, doesn’t do much other than live off the dole, watch porn on Satellite and get drunk in his local pub. His is the classic case of a total lack of ambition. Hlynur hates rural Iceland, […]
Chopper
Chopper explores the charismatic side of the brutal criminal, the strange fascination that many (especially filmgoers) feel for the interesting bad-guy. So often, the exaggerated, over-the-top character of criminals provide the impetus for dramatic tales. In this film, the tale is twisted, as the real life Mark “Chopper” Read’s tale is heightened and exaggerated to […]
In God We Trust
A short 16 minute film that played before Chopper, In God We Trust takes as its basis a simple conceit – while we are here on Earth, our actions are given a score – positive things create positive marks, while negative or evil things subtract from your total. Within seconds of the film’s start, a […]
Diary – Day 3
I’m getting sleepy. It’s not even halfway there yet. Got…to…pace…myself…. This morning started really well – woke up with 3 hours sleep to go meet the cast of Best in Show. I’m a humungous Spinal Tap fan, and managed to dig up my Tap concert shirt from the early 90s when they played north of […]
Dairy – Day 2
I am going to get exhausted really, really quickly. It’s hovering somewhere around 3:15am, and I’m just getting back from 6 films. The day started at 7:30am, and hasn’t quit since then. In the end a lot of time is just spent sitting, but it still can take its toll. I’d like to see the […]
Diary – Day 1
My lord, it’s fest time again I couldn’t help but spend some time today thinking that, if I could swing it, I’d spend all my days like I did today. I woke up at about 10am, got on a subway, and watched a movie. Then I watched another… and another… and another…. well, you get […]
Clay Pigeons
I hate films that rest upon one mistake that could readily be rectified. In the first five minutes, with a little bit of forensic investigation, the whole downfall-into-chaos could be averted. Once things get rolling, however, CLAY PIGEONS does pick up a bit of speed. In the end, however, I’m afraid that it just rests […]
Happiness
New Jersey has seen the emergence of two extremely quirky filmmakers – Kevin Smith, auteur of such films as CLERKS and CHASING AMY, and Todd Solondz, bespectacled brain behind WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. His latest film, HAPPINESS, is a challenging, messed up film about finding happiness in even the most depressing or depraved of places. […]
Diary 5
Don’t lend out your pens. This is my advice to fellow journalists. I’ve lost maybe 15 pens in the last four days. The worst part is that I keep seeing the people I lent them too. Particularly with a name tag showing your press affiliation, it’s not such a good idea to bring up the […]
Diary 4
The Sunday of the festival is always reserved for the mammoth bar-b-que held by Norman Jewison at his Canadian Film Center. Hundred of people gathered around drink tables and skewered meat and shrimp as they mingled in the beautiful sunshine. It was my first Industry picnic, and I lucked into my invite by finding someone […]
Diary 3
I wrote last year about how the Midnight Madness screenings are a fantastic tradition of this festival. As I predicted, seeing the films that get screened late night simply aren’t the same with a room full of industry and press people. Many simply go to the Madness screenings, avoiding the rest of the fest all […]
Diary 2
Few days have been more psychotic. My introduction to the press conference scene, the day has been memorable. I started with a morning talk by the makers of the wonderful RED VIOLIN. I’ve long been a fan of Don McKeller (who has no less then 6 films showing this year that he’s either written, starred […]
Diary 1
Another year, another festival. Ten days of feeling that you are missing films rather then seeing them- there’s just too many, and you are bound to miss the big new discovery while you sit through a terrible, mundane screening. I’m blessed this year with a press pass – no mean feat, I assure you. For […]