Day 1: September 9

Oh, my. Day one, I'm already a wreck.

Morning films always prove to be a mighty adjustment. I'm not sure the human body was meant to wake up, go underground through transportation tunnels to emerge in a darkened theater, only to have crazy images projected off a screen. I'm sure, instead, we were built for sleeping in and drinking girly drinks on the beach while having our feet rubbed. Yeah, that's it.

I'm telling ya, you get punchy during the fest. Just you wait...

The first screening had a nice little technical glitch - instead of Cool, a tale of young dutch gangsta boys, we were treated to some crazy shaky shots, followed by a strangely manicured vagina shot, some more shaky pics, then a penis, then a black screen. As an experimental short, it was fantastic. Soooo European, man.

Ironically, it was this very film that would be my first run-in with full screening syndrome, that annual occurrence when I chose the one move that's only playing on one screen and there's a damn lineup. Oh, sure, for public screenings you can expect this, but for the industry things it's slightly more annoying, if only because you just know that there will be people leaving after a half-hour. I mean, cummon, I write for the internet. Jeez.

While public screenings tend to warm up over the first few days, the press/industry schedule is packed in the first four days. This is even more evident after, as they say in I ♥ Huckabees, that "September thing" from a couple years back. Most bigshots are here and gone by early next week, so a tonne of good screenings are lumped in early.

The loss of the Uptown is of course on the minds of many a festival patron. Yonge and Bloor is downright spooky, lacking the throngs that would line up day after day for whatever spectacle was to unfold on her massive screen. Ryerson proved to be a better compromise than, say, Varsity 8 (it's pretty huge), but it just ain't the same. Damn you, movie fates, for tearing down our palace of dreams.

Cool
Directed by: Theo van Gogh

Grade: B-

Cool delivers such a culture shock it hits you like some sort of mad ice cream headache. You watch as all the tropes of contemporary "ghetto" American culture are exhibited in the streets and alleyways of, um, Holland?! The film plays as Reservoir Dogs meets 8-Mile, and, once you relax to the sheer weirdness of this appropriation of a subset of African-American culture, it all begins to play pretty well. It's certainly an enjoyable ride, well directed and performed, but you just can't help but wondering how the boys straight out of Compton would see this sort of thing play out.

3 Iron
Directed by: Kim-Ki Duk

Grade: A+

Genius. Pure, frickin' Genius. I realize after seeing this latest film by Kim-Ki Duk that he's never, never disappointed me with his festival entries. Five years now and running, and I can always look forward to something new and magical from each of his presentations. This one is no different, beautifully staged an performed, a sly wit with the camera work, an almost silent presentation of a lovely story.

Les Revenants
Directed by: Robin Campillo

Grade: C-

Leave it to the French to take all the fun out of a Zombie flick, overly intellectualizing even the most base of cinema forms. Interesting questions about the nature of Zombification get asked in this film, but they are left hanging like so many corpses. When the sense of drama or suspense rises to the fore, it is presented slowly and contemplatively, frustrating any real attempt at a compelling presentation. Great idea, poor execution.

I ♥ Huckabees
Directed by: Robin Campillo

Grade: A-

"There is no remainder in the nothingness of infinity, there is only the blanket"

Metaphysics, madness and Mancala meet in this fun, fresh and overtly philosophical tale about, well, all kinds of things, really. What I appreciated most about the film is that its done with such a lightness and sense of fun that the deeper existential questions lack contrivance. This may not be a film for everybody, but for this former Philosophy student with my own disdain for the fact that Plato is often on the same shelf as the Celestine Prophecy, it was a revelation. Kudos to all the filmmakers, and bonus points for Dustin Hoffman's luxurious Mickey Dolenz-inspired 'do.

Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate
Directed by: Michael Epstein

Grade: B+

Making Heaven's Gate was, in the parlance of our times, a serious fuck-up. One of the most famous of Hollywood's (financial) disasters, this is a competent, if un-slick, look at the fabled production woes brought about by the creative genius/psychopathically obsessed director Cimino. I personally have a grudge against MC for producing one of the worst films I've ever seen, Sunchaser. That said, one can't help but be impressed with his dedication to detail and the richness of the tale he was telling. It's a talking head piece, but when your heads are the likes of Kristofferson and the narrator Dafoe, it all works out pretty well. Final Cut plays as a DVD extra, hardly a film in its own right but a fine addition to the (much needed) eventual special edition of HG.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Directed by: Mamoru Oshii

Grade: B-

Gone is much of the bombast of the original, as GSIT:2 takes us on an even more introspective ride through the world it has created. Post-Matrix (a film that owes, of course, much to the original) it all seems a little bit tired. Still, the visuals were great, the integration of 2- and 3-D techniques interesting, and the tale worth telling. It did not, however, provide sufficient Adrenaline-pumping fun for a Midnight Madness crowd settling into its new surroundings.