DRIVE
If the trailers were to believed, and they so rarely are, Winding Refn’s English debut is an offshoot of the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise. Quick cuts, slickly shot car chases and Ryan “Where the Hell Was I when this guy became the -it guy- heartthrob” Gosling all in two minutes of schlocky silliness. I knew […]
HEADHUNTERS
HEADHUNTERS (Hodejegerne in Norwegian, which just looks cooler) is a brisk, taught Scandinavian thriller of the first order. With a sleek, glossy look mixed with mud-strewn exteriors, it manages to remain compelling despite some pretty clear signals regarding the film’s eventual outcome. Roger (Aksel Hennie) is the headhunter for a group of companies, juggling a […]
PEARL JAM TWENTY
“[The Who’s] THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is fucking genius, this is just about us” – Random member of Pearl Jam midway through this doc There’s lots to like about PEARL JAM TWENTY, particularly if you’re already a fan of the band. There’s lots of performances, some behind-the-scenes stories, and oodles of photos and clips from […]
MONEYBALL
The term “inside baseball” is often bandied about as a metaphor for the appreciation of the esoteric nature of an activity, where one requires specific and expert knowledge to really “get” what’s behind the superficial nature of a given game. Stats are talked about in other sports, but it’s baseball that dove into the statistical […]
IDES OF MARCH
IDES OF MARCH joins a list of Clooney’s other throw-back films. It seems that the projects that draw him to direct (and often star in) are often drawn from the films of decades previous. His debut with CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND hinted at his talent behind the camera, and is stunning GOOD NIGHT AND […]
140 Character Reviews – 2011
THE LAST GLADIATORS has the core of an excellent doc – well produced and shot exploration of hockey enforcers, it loses steam by end #tiff11 THE BOY WHO WAS A KING, a decent if not very compelling doc that following story a man who went from child King to PM of Bulgaria #TIFF11 PAUL WILLIAMS […]
YOU’RE NEXT
For the first twenty minutes, I was completely dreading YOU’RE NEXT. Having avoided all pre-film synopsis, it seemed pretty clear to me early on that this was going to be a long, dreary slog. A piss-poor pre-credit sequence echoed the worst parts of 80s horror – shock siren effects, coitus interrupted by spooky masked men […]
THE ARTIST
Sure to capture a slew of Awards by year’s end, THE ARTIST is a pitch perfect lovestory to the era of silent filmmaking. George Valentin (played to perfection by Jean Dujardin) is a toothy star of 20s Cinema who parades through Hollywood with a swagger. Oblivious to the coming tide of the talkie, he ruins […]
THE HUNTER
There’s a decent movie in here somewhere, I swear – we’ve got wilderness, crazy locals, an unhinged leading actor and the stalking on an elusive beast. In surer hands this could be an epic man-vs-nature plight, or even a grand allegory about the diminishing wilderness. Instead, we get a pretty, if pretty plodding, ride into […]
URBANIZED
Following on his examinations of a typeface (HELVETICA) and Industrial Design (OBJECTIFIED), Director Hustwit turns his attention to urban planning. The documentary brings together planners, architects, citizens and politicians as they discuss what it takes to make a city really work. The film travels the world looking for successful strategies, from reclaimed elevated railways in […]
THE RAID
Over the last decade or so, Midnight Madness audiences have been privileged to encounter some extraordinary events. We were doled out barf bags for the screening of ICHI THE KILLER, and witnessed an unprecedented cinematic onslaught. We were there when ONG BAK took the Uptown by storm, throwing the tired martial arts genre on its […]
RESTLESS
Joining a slew of Cancer-themed films as part of this year’s TIFF-slate, RESTLESS manages quite well to balance the story of young love with the tragic undercurrent running throughout the film. Enoch is a young man who crashes funerals as part of a regular ritual, finding comfort it seems in the company of strangers gathered […]
THE LOVE WE MAKE
On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Sir Paul McCartney sat on the tarmac waiting to fly back to the UK. The pilot came over the speaker to announce that there had been an accident, and that the trade centres had been hit (viewable out the port side of the plane). As they taxied […]
KEYHOLE
It comes as no surprise that Guy Maddin’s latest film is a commission by an art gallery. KEYHOLE is equal parts startling images, incoherent moments, skewed camera angles with an oblique and barely comprehensible narrative. In other words, it’s another in a growing line of Maddin works, a contribution to his run of cinema-out-of-time oeuvres […]
A DANGEROUS METHOD
Cronenberg has spent much of his career delving into the darker depths of cinematic expression, from exploding heads to stomach vaginas, from typewriters talking out of their assholes to the fetishisation of car accidents. Over the decades, then, audiences have been conditioned as to what to expect from a Cronenberg film. What’s most interesting about […]
A FUNNY MAN
Humour is a funny thing, as it were. Too broad or slapstick, it appears childish and fatuous. Too dependent on wit and the charm can get lost in translation. A FUNNY MAN betrays its title in a number of ways. This is a high concept biopic of Dirch Passer, a celebrated post-vaudevillian that seems, in […]
AIRIRANG
I admit upfront to having a soft spot for Kim Ki Duk – ever since THE ISLE showed me things I’d never seen before (and images too brutal and beautiful to forget), I’ve followed his releases as they’ve shown up year to year at TIFF. DREAM, his most recent fiction film, was made in 2008. […]
MELANCHOLIA
In Von Trier’s latest, we’re greeted again with another luminous, cinematic prologue shaped in a similar fashion to his previous work ANTICHRIST. Sweeping, poignant scenes play out to a balletic score, with super slow motion giving and eerie, monstrous quality to many of the images. When we finally see the world consumed in a fiery […]
NEIL YOUNG – GREENDALE Q&A, TIFF2003
From the Filmfest.ca archives, this little slice of TIFF history as NY talks about his favourite album, musical film, and pirate (without cheating and picking himself for all three!), and discusses his love for the Uptown theatre where his 8mm epic played to a packed house. [Review of the film HERE]
Roger and Me
Well, the treats from TIFF10 keep coming – months after giving up, the kind person that took the shot above finally sent me the photo below, taken just after the Twitter-oriented event that Mr. Ebert was conducting wrapped up. This was not my first introduction to the man – Since the late 90s, I’d fairly […]
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector
This made-for-BBC doc is a strange beast indeed, as compelling for what it doesn’t show as for what it does. It is basically several films in one, the first a protracted and rather revealing interview with the man that more than almost anyone shaped popular music production at the heyday of Rock and Roll (Spector […]
Star Wars coming to Blu Ray
A nicely edited piece on the forthcoming release of the “Holy Hexology”, coming to Blu in September, 2011.
Douglas Trumbull at TIFF Lightbox
A video that TIFF put together of Douglas Trumbull discussing 70mm film presentations:
2001 LIGHTBOX teaser trailer
Check out the teaser trailer for the 70mm presentation of Kubrick’s sublime 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
Psycho
Even if you’ve not seen the scene as part of the film, it’s near impossible some 50 years on to not know what happens: The woman is taking a shower, a shadow forms on the other side of the curtain, she screams, a knife is raised, then STAB! CUT! SLICE! Blood is trickling down the […]
RED
If there are two genres that have been well tread in the last few decades they’re comic book movies and post-cold war Spy flicks. With RED we get a bit of both worlds, a tounge-in-cheek action flick based on graphic novel source written by Warren Ellis (I’m assured by my comic nerdy friends this is […]
Breathless
Qu’est ce que c’est “dégueulasse”? It seems almost churlish some half century later to be picking apart Breathless (À bout de souffle) If there’s a film that’s critic proof, it’s this; after all, it’s the brain child of Truffaut and Godard, esteemed critics themselves who decided to rewrite the language of cinema. These mavericks got […]
Balada Triste
With an 11th day tacked onto the end of the fest, the last Midnight Madness screening no longer provides the same sense of closure. Instead, my final film of TIFF10 was this delightful, intense, batshit crazy clown film from Spain. Set in the late 30’s, a man in full clown garb is pulled from a […]
Submarine
SUBMARINE is a Welsh coming of age film involving a precocious 15-year old who’s trying simultaneously to keep his family together and lose his virginity to his pyromaniac love interest. From first time director Ayoade, the film mixes a cool soundtrack (there are a slew of Arctic Monkeys tracks littered throughout) with the same type […]
The Conspirator
If there’s an award at this year’s TIFF for the most strained allegorical film, THE CONSPIRATOR would take the cake. Ostensibly about the trial of the conspirators who committed the Lincoln Assassination, the work focuses on Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the burdened mother of some of the key participants and former landlady to John Wilkes […]