The Debt
Madden crafts a throwback thriller, this one throwing the Mossad/Nazi Hunter genre on its head. Having two sets of cast play in the respective time periods, we follow as the stories of past glories are uncovered to be less than true, with deadly ramifications taking place. There’s a fabulous cast in THE DEBT occupying both […]
Fire of Conscience
Dante Lam closes this year’s Midnight Madness slate with a slick cop drama that owes much to the gloss and energy of Michael Mann’s HEAT. The convoluted plot involves a cop trying to battle the forces that are working to stain the name of his partner, and as he pieces the clues to solve a […]
Tracker
At the turn of the 20th century, as Kiwi troops return home form the Boer War, a Maori sailor (Temuera Morrison) witnesses a murder in a barn and must flee as he’s being framed for the violence. A Boer soldier (Ray Winstone) is enlisted to help track the sailor through the wilderness, making for a […]
Ron Hynes – The Man of a Thousand Songs
It’s telling that one of the more memorable moments of this doc is a pretty sordid joke told repeatedly over the course of it by the subject of the film, Newfie folky Ron Hynes. It’s one of those groaners, chuckle-funny at first, but sad and pathetic by the end. This sentiment fits the subject as […]
Boxing Gym
It’s convenient when the title of the film gives you the entirety of the summary of the film. Granted, knowing a bit about the works of Wiseman. While he dismisses the term as pretentious, the school of verité is at least a convenient short cut to describing his work. As he dismisses those notions as […]
Make Believe
Treading the same ground as the sweet and charming SPELLBOUND (a title which would have served this film just as well), MAKE BELIEVE follows the fates of a number of participants in the Teen World Championship of Magic. We meet the pretty blonde from California, the 19 year old from the Midwest making his last […]
You Are Here
Cockburn’s YOU ARE HERE is the most engaging type of so-called “avant garde” film – sure, it’s full of crazy ideas and bizarre set pieces, but at its core, under the layers of metaphysics and audience-required detective work, it remains a lot of fun. The work is a thought experiment writ large, with strange and […]
Stake Land
Yes, yet another take on the Vampire genre, but STAKE LAND eschews the glitter and silliness that plagues TWILIGHT, and even the gothic lust of TRUE BLOOD, and instead borrows from the likes of Cormack McCarthy. Essentially an “Underground Railroad” trek, we’re thrown almost immediately into mayhem, as the entire family of our protagonist is […]
Beautiful Boy
Set in the same festival as RABBIT HOLE, this “other” film about grieving parents takes a very different tact. This film sets itself apart by setting up an enormous twist – the tragedy that has taken the life of this child was done at the hands of their child. Coming to terms with their own […]
Viva Riva!
TIFF has gone to great lengths over the years to bring us cinema from the African continent, much to its credit. We often get glimpses of rustic life, or touching and/or depressing documentaries about this or that plight, but rarely do we get films that on their face can be considered, well, good. With VIVA […]
Dao Jian Xiao (The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman)
Midnight Madness often showcases a number of crazy films originating in Asia, but BUTCHER… is somewhat unique in that it originates from Mainland China. This provides a unique aesthetic to the film, incorporating a number of elements that differ quite a bit even from ostensibly similar films coming out of Hong Kong. The story is […]
Monsters
One of the things that set JURASSIC PARK apart from other monster movies occurs early in the film, when the characters are introduced to the wonders of the animals that they’re encountering for the first time. Sure, the running/biting elements come to play later on, but it’s this sense of wonder that’s often dropped in […]
I Saw The Devil
Returning to TIFF after the gonzo fun that was THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD, Ji-woon Kim brings us a creepy, stylish, extremely impressive take on the serial killer film. Casting the “good guy” from OLD BOY, Choi Min-sik, into a child-stealing psychopath is a small bit of genius, with his cherubic face all […]
Insidious
James Wan, last here for the 2004 Midnight Madness with the first of his SAW films, returns with what amounts to a classic haunted house film. When two young parents moves into their new house, their son gets into an accident and slips into a coma. The parents then feel they have to protect him […]
127 HOURS
I’ve been craving some neologism, some German word perhaps that best describes that work of art that by all rights should be just awful, yet, amazingly, beautifully, it succeeds against all odds. Whatever word we wish to employ, this latest film by Danny Boyle fits that sentiment exactly. Stories filtered throughout TIFF of viewers becoming […]
Red Nights
Often a failure at Midnight is a film that has such a slow build that it simply can’t sustain audience interest until the inevitable payoff. Certain films (this year’s excellent COLD FISH comes to mind) fit well within the purview of this audience, yet their pacing is so deliberate that it’d be a waste as […]
Tabloid
It’s not like I’ve never seen an Errol Morris film before, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a great many of his works over the years, including many at TIFF. And yet, each and everytime, his films suck me in ’till they get to that point when, BAM, you’ve been comfortably watching one movie, and […]
Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins)
Miike has brought to TIFF some of the most flamboyantly disturbing films I’ve ever seen. To give a sense of his usual fair, the audience was handed commemorative barf bags during the 2001’s ICHI THE KILLER screening at the beloved uptown. With 13 ASSASSINS, Miike has created a far more restrained film, free from much […]
Rabbit Hole
John Cameron Mitchell absolutely knocks it out of the park with this remarkable work about coping with loss. Under the veneer of explicit sexuality and brash weirdness, it was nonetheless clear from the remarkable SHORT BUS that this was a director finely attuned to both fine performance and heart. This is a story about not […]
Chico & Rita
Spanning decades of Cuban history, CHICO & RITA is a riot of colour and sounds animated in a brisk, engaging style. A grand reminiscence, we’re shown the transition between the music of Cuba and its incorporation into the swinging Jazz scene of New York. The love story itself is fairly conventional, but the interwoven nature […]
Mavericks: Bruce Springsteen (as interviewed by Ed Norton)
As part of the TIFF Mavericks series, Ed Norton (here for STONE) was asked to interview the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Tickets were hard to come by, and they actually arranged for a spill-over room for journalists unable to attend. One guy who apparently seen Bruce 250+ times in concert lined up a day-and-a-half before to […]
Bunraku
BUNRAKU tries to be a madcap, genre bending bonzo Cowboys versus Samurai flick. There’s a slew of name actors in the film (from Woody Woody Harrelson to Demi Moore), a highly stylized look, and a large number of set and action pieces that should keep things ramblin’. Alas, even the more kinetic fights fall flat. […]
The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town
The drums clatter, the guitar strums, the organ swells and the piano hits a set of powerchords, as the E Street Band kicks into last chance overdrive. With BORN TO RUN, Springsteen becomes the Boss, and conquers the word. What comes next is the subject of this well produced documentary. With a protracted legal battle […]
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Herzog, the mad genius narrative filmmaker/documentarian, sets his sights on a miraculous little part of the world. Southern France is famous for its paleolithic cave art, dating back 10s of thousands of years and visited by many. In the mid 90s, a unique cave was found, one that was basically sealed by a rock slide […]
Whistleblower
Rachel Weisz stars in the real life story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a small-town cop who joins a contractor in order to make some money, becoming part of the private peace keeping delegations in post-war Bosnia. While there, and after secondment to the UN, she uncovers a dark secret about corruption from both the citizenry and […]
The Ward
This is John Carpenter’s much anticipated throwback to “old school” horror, trading buckets of blood and shakycam for spooky mood and loud, ear-piercing noises that help you jump out of your seat (and, presumably, into the arms of your fellow pubescent partner). Amber Heard, last seen at TIFF in the truly awful ALL THE BOYS […]
I Am Slave
I AM SLAVE traces Malia journey, a young woman from the countryside of Sudan, as she’s she is sold into modern day slavery in London, kept as a housekeeper against her will by a brutalizing master. Trapped behind the gates of her home, Malia tries in vain to gain her independence, even escaping at one […]
Three
Tom Tykwer returns to TIFF with another clever, challenging work. While his RUN LOLA RUN will probably inevitably shape expectations of his work, THREE is just weird and playful enough to generate interest. A Berlin couple after years of marriage are finding themselves growing apart. Disinterested conversations permeate their discourse, they talk at cross purposes, […]
Barney’s Version
BARNEY’S VERSION is one of Modecai Richer’s later works, a beloved book tracing the love foibles of a man who falls for a women who’s attending his (second) marriage. Richler’s works have to date not faired well in the transition to screen, where the charm and dexterous use of language, and minute glimpses into his […]
Super
Success breeds success, and when the likes of IRON MAN and a revitalized BAT MAN saw big money for the studios, more “indie” comic fare has begun to be translated to the screen. From WATCHMEN to SCOTT PILGRIM, we’ve seen some bold and adventurous films on screen that have tried to reshape the way comic […]