My Thoughts on my 6 TIFF Movies

If you read my entry a few weeks ago about my TIFF experience this year, you know that instead of seeing around 30 films, I only got to six over two days, because of my new baby. Full reviews of each of the movies will come when they open, but for now, here are my quick thoughts on the films I saw.

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols) - Nichols’ follow up film to the incredibly underseen Shotgun Stories is this wonderful paranoid, thriller with Michael Shannon give one of the best performances of the year. He plays a regular, middle class, construction worker in rural Ohio - happily married (to Jessica Chastain, in yet another movie this year), with one daughter, who becomes increasingly paranoid about an oncoming storm he sees in his dreams. This makes him do all sort of strange things - not least of which is to fully stock and expand a storm cellar in his backyard. The film has echoes of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds - both obvious and subtle - as the movie slowly ratchets up the suspense, and plays with its visuals and sound to get the audience as paranoid as Shannon. Shannon is an actor who is best at playing men who are at least slightly unhinged (Bug, World Trade Center, Revolutionary Road), and yet this does not feel like a repeat performance from him - his character’s madness in this film is all his own. As great as Shotgun Stories was, Take Shelter marks a great leap forward for Nichols

Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine) - Writer/director Considine, best known as an actor, warned the audience in his introduction that many have said his film Tyrannosaur is one to be endured instead of enjoyed - and to prove his point, he opens the film with Peter Mullan’s violent, drunk kicking his dog to death (and that’s nothing compared to another dog in the film). And for the first little while of Tyrannosaur, you start to wonder if it is just going to best a non-stop parade of misery - as Mullan swears at everyone, and lashes out violently at nearly everyone, including the sweet shopkeeper of a Christain store, played by Olivia Colman. At first we think she’s just being nice to Mullan because she’s trying to do God’s work - and then we meet her husband (Eddie Marsan), and know she knows what it’s like to be abused. The film is certainly a tough sit - violent, bloody, disturbing. But it’s also an unflinching look at domestic abuse, in its different forms, and a study in just how long it takes before an abused animal - or person - lashes out. Mullan and Colman are brilliant in the film, who embrace their character, with all their flaws. Eddie Marsan is fine - but he’s playing the Eddie Marsan character - that of a crazy, violent sociopath, in such a pathetic little shell. Considine’s writing and directing are top - if he chooses to, he has a real career ahead of him of a director. A difficult film, and far from perfect, Tyrannosaur is still unforgettable.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky) - It’s not often that you can actually claim that a film literally saved someone’s life. But the Paradise Lost trilogy can claim that. When documentary fillmakers JoeBerlinger and Bruce Sinofsky first went to West Memphis, Arkansas in 1994, they thought they were going to make a documentary about three teenagers who murdered three 8 year old boys in a Satanic ritual. What they found instead is the story of three teenagers who were railroaded by a police force who had no evidence, and convicted in the media before the trial even started. The end result was that 18 year old Damien Echols was convicted and sentenced to death, and the mildly retarded Jessie Misskelly was sentenced to life in prison, and the 16 year old Jason Baldwin was also sentenced to life in jail. When the film came out, it generated controversy, and the so called West Memphis Three found many supporters who donated money for appeals lawyers. When the filmmakers went back in 2000 for Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, they found still more questions, and yet the 3 boys were still in jail. Now, a decade later, they return again. This story is sad beyond belief - sad that three 8 year olds were brutally murdered, and sad that three boys in their teens have sacrificed half their lives for a crime no one really believes they committed. The movie brings up even more questions, but is really just a sad statement on the justice system - for people who remember the first two films will be shocked to see what the three men, now in their 30s, look like today. Apparently, the version I saw was not the final one - they completed it on August 15, and then out of the blue on August 19, the West Memphis 3 were released. I will certainly be checking out the expanded edition - because this is one of the best documentaries of the year.

The Descendants (Alexander Payne) - It has taken Alexander Payne 7 long years to follow up his critically adored, Oscar nominated Sideways. But it was well worth the wait. While The Descendants does not have the simple perfection of that film, it is a heartfelt, poignant and hilarious film. It stars George Clooney in one of his best performances as a man whose wife ends up in a coma because of an accident, and before they take her off life support, he decides to find the man with whom she was having an affair to let him know. The beautiful Hawaii locations give the film a nice backdrop, but it is the performance by Clooney, as a man struggling with the decisions he has to make that give the film it’s soul. The supporting cast - Shailane Woodley as his oldest daughter, Matthew Lillard as the other man, Judy Greer as the other man’s wife, Robert Forrester as the gruff father in law, Beau Bridges as a stoned out cousin and Nick Krause as a surfer dude who may not be as shallow as he seems, are all wonderful. As with all of Payne’s films, the film mixes drama and comedy effortlessly, and the film makes you laugh and breaks your heart at the same time, right up it’s simple, perfect final shot. Another triumph for Payne.

Dark Horse (Todd Solondz) - I have been a longtime supporting of Todd Solondz - even after many critics abandoned him starting with Storytelling, and going through Palindromes and Life During Wartime. But his most recent film, Dark Horse, is a major disappointment. It stars Jordan Gelbar as Abe, a Jewish man, still living at home with his parents (Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow, both in incredibly stupid wigs, which is supposed to be funny I guess), who meets a girl (Selma Blair, perhaps reviving her role from Storytelling, perhaps not) and thinks he is in love. Solondz’s film are often made in response to another film, or films, and it seems to be that Solondz maybe poking fun at the recent spat of films about grown manchildren (particularly the films of Judd Apatow). But while that provide a lot of material from a great film, the film isn’t particularly funny to begin with, going through the motions of poking fun of men who spend their lives obsessed with comic books, and then goes off the rails with fantasy sequences to end. I think this is Solondz trying to tone down his provactive filmmaking for mass consumption - and he has faied.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin) - Elizabeth Olson, younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashey, proves she is one hell of an actress in this film about a young woman recruited into a cult not unlike the Manson family, and then escapes and moves in with her long lost sister (Sarah Paulson) and her husband (Hugh Dancy). She doesn’t tell them why she disappeared, or where she was, and her ways are confusing, and scary to them. The present is offset with flashbacks to her life inside the cult, led by John Hawkes in a magnetic performance, and Brady Corbet who is wonderful as well. Martha Marcy May Marlene is the feature debut of writer/director Sean Durkin, and it’s quite simply wonderfully well made, shot, written and acted. A fascinating, disturbing movie.

My (Very Much Truncated) TIFF Preview

Regular readers will know that every year, I usually take a week off and enjoy the Toronto Film Festival - taking in about 30 movies in that time, and loving every minute of it. But, as I mentioned last month, my wife just had a baby, and as such, a weeklong festival trip simply is not possible this year. Instead, I'm only going for 2 days, and a total of 6 movies, unless I pick up some tickets for those days before then. I do have a five hour break between movies on one of those days, and currently the plan is to use that time to see Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive (which is playing at the festival the first weekend - this one coming up and opens the following weekend) and perhaps Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs as well. We'll just have to see.

So, there were dozens of movies that I wanted to see this year, that I simply did not even have a chance at. Films like A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg), Melancholia (von Trier), The Artist (Hazanavicius), Moneyball (Bennett Miller), Corilanus (Fiennes), Restless (Van Sant), Le Havre (Kaurismaki), Albert Nobbs (Garcia), The Ides of March (Clooney), Into the Abyss (Herzog), I Wish (Kore-eda), The Kid with a Bike (Dardenne), Killer Joe (Friedkin), The Lady (Besson), Like Crazy (Doremus), The Moth Diaries (Harron), Michael (Schleinzer), Outside Satan (Dumont), The Oranges (Farino), Rampart (Moverman), The Skin I Live In (Almodovar), Sarah Palin - You Betcha (Broomfield), Take this Waltz (Polley), Twixt (Coppola), We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay), Wuthering Heights (Arnold) and Your Sister's Sister (Shelton) are just some of the films that in years past I may have tried to get tickets to, but this time, I'm simply going to have to wait.

But all things considered, I couldn't be much happier about the 6 films I am seeing. All of them were on my pre-festival watch list, and I am happy that by the time I got to buy tickets they were still available. So look for my thoughts on the following six films following the festival.

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols) - Critics who saw Jeff Nichols debut film, Shotgun Stories, absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, almost no one saw it. That should change with his Cannes prize winning Take Shelter, which reunites him with star Michael Shannon, in a story about a man paranoid about an upcoming apocalypse who builds a storm shelter. I cannot wait.

Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine) - Considine has been delivering great performances for years now, and now he steps behind the camera for this dark study of martial abuse. Stars Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman won acting prizes at Sundance this year, so if nothing else, it should be an acting tour de force.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky) - Like many film fans, I have followed the story of the West Memphis Three since Berlinger and Sinofsky's Paradise Lost in 1996. They are three teenagers who were convicted of murdering three younger children on almost no evidence. The pair followed up their documentary in 2000, and are back again now. Strangely, just last month, they entered Alfred pleas, which allowed them to maintain their innocence, while asserting the prosecuters had enough evidence to convict them, and were set free. So this story continues, but I am looking forward to this latest documentary.

The Descendants (Alexander Payne) - Payne made 2004's most critically acclaimed film in Sideways, and has taken a long 7 years to follow it up. I don't know much about this movie, which is how I like it, but the reviews so far suggest another winner. It stars George Clooney, who has become one of the most consistent actors out there. Here's hoping for another gem.

Dark Horse (Todd Solondz) - In 1998 following two huge successes with Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, Todd Solondz was a critics darling. His three films since - Storytelling, Palindromes and Life During Wartime - have not generated the same praise, and I am at a loss as to why. To me, Solondz continues to be among the most daring filmmakers in the world, and I will follow him anywhere. The cast of this - which includes Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow and Selma Blair (hopefully as great here as she was in Storytelling) has me excited.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin) - Durkin's debut film was a prize winner, and received rave reviews, at this year's Sundance film festival. It is the story of a young woman (Elizabeth Olson, younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley), struggling with adapting to life outside of the cult she spent years in. Word is Olson, and perhaps John Hawkes, are due Oscar nominations for this one, so I'm looking forward to it.

Final TIFF Report

So my week at the Toronto Film Festival is over. I ended up seeing 21 films in total (down from my scheduled 23 because of I got sick on Thursday and ducked out before my last two shows). You will notice that a few changed from my preview, but that’s the way these go. Since I already gave short reviews of Trust, Boxing Gym and The Conspirator I will update you on the other 18 movies I saw over the weekend.

Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
Mark Romanek’s film, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishigiro, is a beautiful, touching film that mixes an English boarding school with an alternate history that is a dystopian view of the recent past. The movie opens at Hailsham, a boarding school in the English country side. But there is something different about this school, which if you don’t already know, I won’t tell you because the movie doesn’t reveal it right away. The reviews on this one have been mixed - with many complaining that they thought the film was cold and distant - but I think the style of the film worked wonderfully well with story. Romanek is obviously inspired by Stanley Kubrick, and that style makes the film even more effective to me - the formal coldness of the boarding school is perfectly captured, and as the film progresses through its three act structure, Romanek subtley changes the color palette. The performances are great - particularly Carey Mulligan as the narrator and main character Kathy who is tremendously sympathetic and Keira Knightley as her bitchy friend, who turns out to be much more complex than we initially thought. Never Let Me Go was one of my favorite films at the festival - and one of the best films of the year.

127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
James Franco gives a great performance in this real life story of Aron Ronston, a hiker out in the desert who falls down an cavern and gets his arm stuck between a rock and a hard place. He’s out there for days on end, with no one around except his camera to talk to. Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire, uses the same hyper kinetic style of filmmaking to keep things interesting - because afterall, much of the movie really is just Franco by himself in a canyon. Boyle does use some flashbacks, and a dynamite opening sequence involving Franco and two women he meets while hiking (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn). The film is harrowing, well made and intense pretty much from beginning to end, and Franco is great in the lead role (a definite candidate for an Oscar nomination this year). I do think that Boyle may go a little over the top with the visual fireworks, and A.R. Rahman’s score (which I think is brilliant on its own) is at times a little distracting when used in the course of the movie). Still, this was a great film.

Miral (Julien Schnabel)
Perhaps my biggest disappointment of the film festival is this, the new film from director Julien Schnabel. His last film was the brilliant and visual innovative The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The reason why the subjective visuals worked in that film was because that film was about a man trapped in his own body. But Schnabel decides to use the same style in this - a far reaching study of Palestine from 1948 through 1993. The film at different times has different protagonists, and the film shifts between them telling the story of an orphanage run by Hiam Abbas, and eventually the story of one of the girls who grew up there (Frieda Pinto). The film looks great - Eric Gautier’s cinematography is sweeping, and the editing is marvelous - but it is completely and totally the wrong style for the film. The narrative is confused, and Schnabel never really provides any real perspective on anything. The film is clearly very pro-Palestinian, and even if I don’t agree 100% with its politics, that’s not why I think the film doesn’t work. It’s that Schnabel has a fascinating story, a good cast (Abbas is particularly good, and I think Pinto could have been good given the chance) but he gets so lost in the visual style that he forgets to tell the story, and let the actors build their characters. A failure from a great director, who will ubdoubtedly rebound.

Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
Like many people I was nervous when they announced plans to remake the wonderful Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In from a few years ago. But to my surprise and delight, the American remake by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) is nearly as good as its predecessor - a film that respects the original, and remains faithful to it, but isn’t a shot for shot remake either. Casting talents kids like Kodi Smit McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Grace Mortez (Kick Ass) helps. Mortez in particular changes the character from the original, and makes her vampire more naïve and even sympathetic at times. Also excellent is Richard Jenkins, playing her “father” as a painfully shy man unable to communicate on pretty much any level. Reeves captures the mood and atmosphere of film perfectly. This is easily the best American horror film I have seen this year, and as for the ending - why mess with perfection?

Beautiful Boy (Shawn Ku)
Michael Sheen and Maria Bello give great performances as parents of a teenager who shoots up his college killing 17 students and faculty before turning the gun on themselves. Shawn Ku’s debut film takes a different approach to the school shooting movie - we don’t get to know the kid at all, what his motivations were, and we never see any of the footage of the shooting itself. Instead it concentrates solely on the aftermath of the shooting from the point of view of the parents - who seem like normal, loving people who had no idea what their son was planning or why he killed so many people before killing himself. It makes it impossible to grieve normally when the entire country hates your son and by extension you. This is a powerful examination of loss and grief that doesn’t let up for a second, and contains two of the years best performances. I do have to wonder how big an audience there will be for this film, which is unrelentingly dark and depressing, but hopefully it finds its audience.

Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)
John Cameron Mitchell is one of the most daring, interesting filmmakers working right now. For the first time, he is working from someone else’s material - David Lindsay Abaire’s Broadway play that he has adapted himself. The movie stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a couple reeling after the death of their 4 year old son in an accident 8 months ago. They are dealing with their pain in different ways - and most importantly dealing with it alone. This is Kidman’s best performance in years - raw and real, both painfully honest and also darkly funny. Eckhart as well does some of his best work as her husband who is trying so hard to keep it together, but just can’t do it anymore. Diane Wiest is excellent as Kidman’s flaky mother, as are Tammy Blanchard as her immature sister and Miles Teller as a teenager whose role I will not reveal. Totally unlike Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus (Mitchell’s first two films, which it should be said are not much alike either), this film brings Mithcell into the mainstream, but still manages to be honest and real. A triumph for everyone involved.

The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Briellant)
I have always had a like hate relationship with the films of Catherine Briellant (I don’t say love hate because I don’t think I’ve ever loved any of her films), and The Sleeping Beauty certainly falls into the later category. This is perhaps the film I have disliked the most of any of the films I have ever seen at the film festival. The Sleeping Beauty is a confused, jumbled mess of a movie that makes little sense and is wildly pretentious to boot. I’m sure someone will explain why this is really a masterpiece at some point, but to me it is the same old, same old from Briellant. I mean how many times I am going to have to watch some teenage lothario seduce an innocent girl and steal her virginity in a Briellant film? I hated this film, but I guess if you are more of a fan of her work, you may have like it more.

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
Kelly Reichardt has quickly established herself as one of the most interesting filmmakers in American right now. Old Joy is a sensitive, original portrait of two middle age friends reuniting after years, and Wendy and Lucy was an even better film, a study of a poor woman on the road with her beloved dog. Meek’s Cutoff is a larger movie than Reichardt has made before - with a much larger cast - and is a period piece, about a wagon train in the 1840s across Oregon. They are led by Bruce Greenwood’s Meek, who has led other groups before, but this time his shortcut has done nothing but gotten them lost. As they wander further and further out in the middle of the desert, their food supply becomes short, and the three couples along with Meek (including Michelle Williams, excellent as always) all start coming in on Meek - debating whether or not they should hang him, and starting to trust an Native they have captured. The modern day parallels are obvious (crazy old white guy brings a bunch of people into the middle of the desert where he doesn’t know what the hell he is doing), but I admired the film on a much simpler level - it is a wagon train movie completely devoid of the normal clichés the genre brings - Reichardt even went as far as shooting the movie in 1.33:1 instead of widescreen to keep the “majestic vistas” shots to a minimum, concentrating solely on the present of these characters. A fascinating, excellent crafted, intelligent, well acted film - one of the best films of the festival, although I know some people are going to be pissed off about the ending.

The Debt (John Madden)
John Madden’s The Debt is a crackerjack thriller - and the directors best film since Shakespeare in Love more than a decade ago. Flashing back and forth in time, from the 1960s to the 1990s, the film is about three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastin, Martin Csokas and Sam Worthington in the 60s, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkison and Ciaran Hinds in the 1990s - and the mission they take in the 1960s to take down a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen) in Berlin - and how the secrets of that mission effect the agents 30 years later. The film is fast paced, and twists and turns and surprised me with each new revelation. The performances are all fine - but Helen Mirren stands out as a woman who is much more complex than we first believe and Jesper Christensen who is excellent as the evil Nazi war criminal. A fine thriller, that is also a little more morally complex than most films of its ilk.

Amigo (John Sayles)
John Sayles is one of the few truly independent filmmakers in America - he always makes precisely the films that he wants to make. His latest, Amigo, is one of his best recent efforts. The film is set in the Phillipines in 1900 when the Americans were an occupying force. Garret Dillahunt is the leader of a platoon of troops assigned to occupy a small village. At first he and his soldiers are wary of the villagers, but soon they come to like and respect them. This is bad news for Chris Cooper, who is the leader of the ground forces who hates them becoming friendly even though they are supposed to be “winning their hearts and minds”. Yes, the film is an allegory for Iraq, but it works on its own terms as well. Joel Torre is excellent as the head man of the village who is in a no win situation - if he cooperates with the Americans, the rebels will kill him, if he doesn’t the Americans will kill him. An intelligent movie that while it doesn’t quite reach greatness, still represents some of the best work Sayles has done in a decade or so.

Womb (Benedek Fliegauf)
Womb has a story idea that I thought sounded completely fascinating, Eva Green stars as a woman who falls madly in love with a man who dies in a car accident. She decides to give birth to the man’s clone, but that just makes things more complicated. In this movie, set slightly in the future, clones are common, but looked down upon by everyone as second class citizens. But what is more interesting is the relationship between the mother and child - which is confused between maternal and sexual feelings, which is even more confusing for the child because he doesn’t know he is a clone, or that anything is wrong with what he feels. The problem with the movie is nothing is ever really explored in any detail. Writer/director Benedek Fliegauf is too interested his visuals - which are often arresting - that his story suffers, and never properly develops. There are some good moments, and Eva Green is quite good, but the movie never really gels. I doubt this one will get picked up for distribution over here, but a DVD is inevitable - and they will try and sell it as a horror film. Don’t buy it, this is a pretentious film that never really takes off.

Route Irish (Ken Loach)
Ken Loach has been making his socially conscious films for almost 50 years now - and some of his films certainly work better than others. It was just a matter of time before he made a film that dealt directly with the Iraq war, and that is what Route Irish is about. It is centered on a former Irish soldier working for a private security firm in Iraq until he is killed. His best friend back in Ireland wants to get to the bottom of what really happened to his friend - what he discovers is a vast conspiracy involving money and the killing of Iraqi civilians, which causes him to go all Charles Bronson in Death Wish in the last act of the film. The film never quite comes together into a believable narrative, although the lead performance (by Mark Womack) is excellent, and as always the direction by Loach is fine. I just wish the film, which Loach has said he made because he wanted to focus on the Iraq tragedy for the civilians of Iraq, had either been more focused on the politics, thus making it is a truly political film, or less so, so that it could have been a guilty pleasure of a revenge movie. By trying to do both, Loach does justice to neither.

What’s Wrong with Virginia (Dustin Lance Black)
Dustin Lance Black’s extremely personal What’s Wrong with Virginia is a movie about schizophrenia that takes a decidedly different take on the disease - he has made essentially a comedy/satire about the subject. Jennifer Connelly gives one of her best performances as a schizeophrenic mother to a teenage son who has been having an affair with the married Sheriff (Ed Harris) of her small hometown for years. Now he is running for State Senate, and her son has his eyes on his daughter (Emma Roberts) and he needs to cut off all contact with her, or risk his sexual obsessions. The film plays like a mixture of the work of Douglas Sirk and David Lynch, by way of Todd Haynes, a bright, candy colored portrait of small time life where a lot more is going on beneath the surface than we first suspect. Academy award winning screenwriter Black (Milk) may have bitten off a little more than he can chew to make a truly great directorial debut, but he has made a very good one - a film filled with wild ambition that shows that even if this film isn’t a masterpiece, that he has one in him at some point.

Passion Play (Mitch Glazer)
I may have hated The Sleeping Beauty more than any film I saw at this year’s festival, but objectively speaking Passion Play was the worst film. It is an absolutely ridiculous fantasy about a down on his luck jazz singer (Mickey Rourke) who is taken out to the middle of the desert to be murdered, somehow escapes and ends up at a circus where he meets sideshow freak Megan Fox - a woman with wings. He uses her to get him out trouble with a gangster (Bill Murray), but then realizes that he has fallen in love with her. No matter how ridiculous that premise sounds, I guarantee you that watching the movie is 10 times worse - it is horribly written by Glazer, and the talented cast cannot save it. This is the type of work Rourke was doing before his comeback, and while it is easy to take potshots Megan Fox, no one could have saved this role. Bill Murray seems to know that the whole thing is ridiculous, and has fun with his role. It is a downright awful film, and one that should be forgotten as quickly as possible.

Casino Jack (George Hickenlooper)
Kevin Spacey gives his best performance in at least a decade as Jack Abramoff, the Washington DC super lobbyist who was at the heart of the biggest political corruption scandal since Watergate. Spacey makes Abrahmoff charming and somewhat likable - a nice guy who is undone by his own greed and ego. Nothing is ever enough for him, and he keeps spending more and more money that he doesn’t have, meaning he has to stretch the laws further and further until he has way surpassed what he is legally allowed to do. The typical movie would have portrayed him as a one note villain, but Spacey does more than that. You like the bastard despite of yourself - his easy charm, his cheesy movie impressions - until you remember just what it is he is doing. Spacey is the best reason to see the movie - the supporting performances are all fine, especially from Jon Lovitz as a sleazy mattress salesman and the late, great Maury Chaykin as a mobster - but this really is Spacey’s show, and he makes the most of this great role. At times, the movie does feel like something you could see HBO making, but since HBO often makes great movies, that isn’t really an insult. A supremely entertaining film with a great lead performance by an actor who used to be among the best in American movies - and can be again if he gets many more roles this good.

The Whistleblower (Larysa Kondraki)
Larysa Kondraki’s debut film features Rachel Weisz in a wonderful performance as a Lincoln, Nebraska cop who agrees to head off to Bosnia for 6 months to be a peacekeeper. It isn’t long before she realizes that women are treated like second class citizens, and almost nothing is being done to protect them - even by the police and the UN itself. As she digs deeper, she stumbles upon a sex trafficking ring that the UN is not only complicit with, but involved in. The film is a rather standard issue thriller, with a political motive, but it is very well made by Kondraki, and at times very difficult to watch as we see what happens to these poor girls who are smuggled into the country and used as sex slaves. Rachel Weisz is excellent in the lead role, and is provided decent support by David Striathairn, Vanessa Redgrave and Monica Bellucci among others. A very good little film that indicates that Kondraki could make an even better film at some point in the future - she has the tools to do so.

Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
The last film I saw at this year’s festival was also far and away the best. In 2007, I saw Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine because I had a hole in my schedule and was completely and totally blown away by it (that the film never got proper distribution in North America, not even on DVD, is still a source of disappointment to me). His follow-up to that film is this masterful film about a 65 year old woman (played brilliantly by Jeong-hee Yoon) who living on government assistance and what she earns as a part time maid, and has to raise her teenage grandson by herself as her daughter got divorced and moved, leaving her alone. She gets two shocking pieces of information almost at once - one is that she has early onset Alzheimers, and will slowly lose her mind, and the other being that her grandson was involved with raping a classmate of his over a span of six months that only ended when she killed herself. At the same time, she starts taking a poetry class, and finds that writing poetry is far too difficult for her. The film, like Secret Sunshine, is about a woman who is confronting an almost impossible obstacles, but this time, she has no one to lean on, and instead puts all of her faith into this poetry - as if she needs to get her thoughts out now before the Alzheimers steals her language forever. A masterful film by one of the best directors working anywhere in the world right now - and one that deserves much more attention in North America.

So there you have it, 21 movies over 6 days at the festival. I am tired, and of course I am still sick and tired. This coming week, I will be back with full length reviews of Never Let Me Go, The Town and Easy A (the last two being Festival films that I have seen since my festival ended) as well as Enter the Void, a film I saw at last year’s festival that is finally making its way into theaters this week. We are now well into the last third of the year, which means that pretty much every week between now and the end of December will bring at least one film that is vying for awards attention - it is the best time of year to watch movies.

TIFF Report #1

As always, I get off to a slow start at TIFF, not attending the first Thursday and Friday, and only one day on the weekend. So yesterday was my first day, I'm off today, then back for five straight. I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I saw yesterday. I will try to do daily reports starting Tuesday, but no guarntees.

Trust (David Schwimmer)
David Schwimmer's Trust is a throughly unplesant movie to sit through - yet given its subject matter that's more of a testament to how well it is made rather than a criticism. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener star as two suburban parents in Chicago who think they have it all. They are not concerned when their 14 year old daughter Annie (Liana Liberato) befriends someone online. After all, the boy is only 16, and is all the way in California. But unknown to them, things are getting more serious between the two of them online - and the kid isn't really 16. First he confesses he is really 20, then 25, but age doesn't matter when you're soulmates does it? He arranges to come to Chicago and meet Annie, and when he shows up, he is really at least 35. Annie is at first put off by this, but the man is good. He tells her that age doesn't matter, and that he thought she was mature enough to handle this. Then he takes her back to his motel. This part of movie works amazingly well. Liberato is great in the role of the naive Annie who believes what she wants to believe about her new friend - even after they have had sex. When the truth comes out, and the FBI becomes involved, Annie still claims she loves him. Meanwhile Clive Owen breaks down and becomes obsessed with trackig the man down and making him pay. The film is directed with sensitivity by Schwimmer - there will be no claims of feeding a pedophiles obsessions here. I admired his way with actors - getting great work from Liberato and Chris Henry Coffey, who is truly the creepiest pedophile in recent memory, because he seems so normal. I also admired the way Schwimmer shows us the sexualized society of young girls all around Annie, without ever directly commenting on it (which would have been too much) and how Owen's job may have contributed to what happened. Less effective is stuff with Owen, which to me was a little too obvious. But when Liberato is onscreen, the movie is never less the riveting. Trust is a difficult movie to watch, but it should be. It is made with skill and sensitivity, and I admired it a great deal. Currently without a distributor, I hope this finds someone to take a chance on it, because it really is worth seeing.

Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
I said in my TIFF preview that I was a little embarassed that I had never seen a Frederick Wiseman movie, and now that has been corrected. According to Wiseman (who was at the screening) Boxing Gym continues his recent investigations into institutionalized violence. The film is an observational documentary that simply sets up in a boxing gym in Austin, Texas and watches as people from all walks of life come and go and train for different reasons. The only constant presence if Rober Lords, who runs the gym, and trains everyone. What fascinated me about the movie is the care in the editing - Wiseman creates a perfect rhythm to the movie, and the sounds of the gym (people punching bags, jumping ropes, etc.) becomes almost a score in itself. The film, to be, was fascinating, but I now do understand why Wiseman is considered a master - it is impeccably well made - and why he will never be a hugely popular filmmaker - the film doesn't have the "story" many people want out of a doc. It is a fine film, and I am glad I saw it, but it hasn't really made me want to track down Wiseman's other, significantly longer films.

The Conspirator (Robert Redford)
Robert Redford's The Conspirator is the type of historical drama that Hollywood rarely makes anymore - the most recent movie I can think of to compare it to would be Steven Spielberg's Amistad all the way back in 1997. The film opens with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but is really the story of the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) who was the only woman tried as part of the conspirary. Represented by young Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) a Civil War hero for the Union, Aiken at first doesn't want the assignment, but comes to see it as vital. Redford uses this chapter in American history to comment on current issues. It is impossible not to think of the War on Terror and the treatment of terrorism suspects when the trial - which is not a civilian trial but in front of a military court with members handpicked by the Secretary of War (Kevin Kline), where Surratt is forbidden to testify in her own defense. The movie argues that even during times of war, defendants charged with the most heionous crimes deserve a fair trial in front of jury of their peers. There is a lot of talk about what the Civil War was about if not defending the Constitution, as well as fear mongering. The parallel works remarkably well for Redford, who also has a good eye for period detail, and lets the actors due some great work. If there is a problem with the movie its that other than McAvoy, the rest of the characters don't ever really get a chance to develop - they are set in their firsts scenes, and that is who they remain throughout. That doesn't mean the work of the ensemble cast - including Tom Wilkinson, Evan Rachel Wood, Justin Long, Alexis Bledel and Danny Huston alongside McAvoy, Wright and Kline - are not all great, just that I wished for more complexity in their characters, just like there was in the story. But that's a minor gripe. The Conspirator is old fashioned, Hollywood entertainment at its finest.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow I will be seeing Never Let Me Go, 127 Hours, Miral and Let Me In, so hopefully I will be back on Tuesday to let you know my thoughts.

TIFF Preview: The 23 Films I Will Be Seeing

At TIFF, you win some years and lose others. This year I lost. I ended up in Box 3, and since they drew box 9 (out of 39 total) that means mine was the 6th last box processed. What this means is that films like Black Swan, Another Year and Blue Valentine, which I had hoped to see, join the already long list of films playing at this year’s festival that I not be able to see. Oh well, it happens that way some times.

I will be seeing 23 films at this year’s festival though, and while from the outside looking in, this looks like a weaker year than normal for me, I have high hopes. I do have more what I would call “filler” titles this year than ever before – but sometimes those filler titles end up being the best of the festival. I remain hopeful. So without further ado, here are the 23 films I will be seeing, in alphabetical order.

1. Aftershock (Feng Xiaogang)
This film from China spans the 32 year gap between two epic earthquakes, focusing on the long range impact the first quake, in 1976, has on the people involved – particularly a young girl who was left by her family to die. The film is already a huge hit in China. I am not familiar with the director, but this one could be a sleeper.

2. Amigo (John Sayles)
I have nothing but respect for John Sayles, who is one of the only American directors that you can honestly call completely independent. He makes the films he wants to make no matter what. This one is set in 1900 in the Philippines during the American occupation, a mostly forgotten period in American history. Starring a host of Sayles regulars (like Chris Cooper), this one will undoubtedly tie back to the current excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sayles can be somewhat hit and miss, but I hope this one is a hit.

3. Beautiful Boy (Shawn Ku)
Regular readers will know that I have a little bit of an obsession with school shootings. So despite the fact that Shawn Ku is a newcomer, I couldn’t resist this movie, starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, as parents who are shocked to discover their son has shot up his college and then turned the gun on himself. School shooting movies can go either way, but let’s hope this is one of the good ones.

4. Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
Despite his huge reputation in the documentary world, I have to admit that I have never seen a Frederick Wiseman movie. I have no real reason why I haven’t, I just have never done it (perhaps because most of them are hugely long – this one is only 90 minutes though). So I look forward to seeing what this supposed master filmmaker is really like.

5. Casino Jack (George Hickenlooper)
George Hickenlooper is certainly a hit or miss filmmaker. His documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is perhaps the greatest “making of” doc ever made, and his feature The Man from Elysian Fields is underrated. Having said that his last major film was Factory Girl and that sucked. But here he has a seemingly can’t miss story – that of lobbyist Jack Abramoff who involved Washington in perhaps its biggest post Watergate scandal. Starring Kevin Spacey in the title role, I hope it is a return to form for both director and star.

6. Chico and Rita (Fernando Treuba & Javier Mariscal)
Having missed out on Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist at this year’s festival, I wanted to add another unorthodox animated film to my list – and I think this one set in 1948 Cuba, before moving onto to New York City, set in the world of jazz musicians and their various affairs certainly counts. I don’t know the directors, but it sounds interesting at least.

7. The Debt (John Madden)
John Madden started out his directing career wonderfully – with back to back critical hits Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love in 1997/98 – the second of which actually won the best picture Oscar. He has been trying, unsuccessfully, ever since to replicate that success. His latest film is a thriller (like the Elmore Leonard Killshot he made a few years ago that sat on the shelf for a while). This one stars Helen Mirren as a Mossad agent facing questions about her actions in the 1960s – when she and her partner supposedly tracked down and killed a notorious Nazi war criminal. This could be good – reminiscent of Spielberg’s Munich, but fine nonetheless, as the buzz has so far been positive.

8. Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
I caught some slack last year when I made up a list of the best vampire movies of all time, and put the recent Swedish film Let the Right One In as the best ever. I stand by that position to this day, so I am eagerly anticipating and also equally fearing this American remake of the film about a young boy whose only friend is a vampire. A good cast – Kodi Smith McPhee from The Road as the boy, Chloe Moretz from Kick Ass as the vampire, and Richard Jenkins as her “guardian” makes me think this one may actually be worthy of what came before it.

9. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
Kelly Reichardt’s last two films – the male bonding film Old Joy and the woman and her dog movie Wendy and Lucy – have both been small, intimate, beautiful and masterful films. So this makes Meek’s Cutoff – a more ambitious film, a period piece about a group of people on a wagon train – one of my most hotly anticipated films of the festival. Michelle Williams is back with Reichardt, and the cast includes Bruce Greenwood and Shirley Henderson for good measure. I like it when directors reach farther than in their past, so here’s hope she pulls it off.

10. Miral (Julien Schnabel)
Julien Schnabel’s Miral has received some critical smackdowns after its Venice premiere earlier this week – but I think that a director his caliber (Basquaint, Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) should be incapable of making a film completely devoid of interest – although a director with his ego (he has publicly stated that he was robbed of Oscars for his two most recent films, which in his mind were “clearly the best film of the year”) could certainly overstep and make a mess of an ambitious movie. And when you are making a pro-Palestinian movie, stretching from 1948 to the present, that would be easy. I still look forward to this one though, because I know Schnabel has a ton of talent.

11. Monsters (Gareth Edwards)
Sometimes, you have to take a chance at the film festival, and that’s what I’m doing with this film. A very low budget film about the aftermath of an alien invasion in Mexico. The film is described as Lost in Translation meets District 9 and that meant I just had to see it. Whether it will be good or not, I have no idea.

12. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
I for one quite liked director Mark Romanek’s debut film, One Hour Photo, and have been waiting for him to follow it up for a while now. He has taken one of the most celebrated novels of the past decade – written by Kazuo Ishiguro of The Remains of the Day – for his latest project, and cast Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightly and Andrew Garfield as her students at a very strange English boarding school. I won’t say more in case unlike you haven’t read the book, but I will say that the novel was a masterful blend of English school dramas and sci-fi. One of my more anticipated films of this year’s festival.

13. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)
Far and away the most energetic screening I have ever attended at the Toronto Film Festival was for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. I have never been with an audience who was more clearly loving the movie they were watching. When you combine that with the fact that I do generally like Boyle’s films, and love actor James Franco, this story about a young man who goes alone into the wilderness in Utah, and becomes trapped, was irresistible to me.

14. Peep World (Barry Blaustein)
Barry Blaustein, a long time comedy writer who made his feature directing debut with The Ringer (a film I have not seen) has assembled a great cast for this film – Michael C. Hall (of my still favorite TV show Dexter – yes, it’s better than Mad Men dammit!), Sarah Silverman, Rainn Wilson, Judy Greer, Taraji P. Hensen among others for this comedy about a dysfunctional family. I would watch most of those actors in anything, so to see them all together is making giddy with excitement.

15. Poetry (Lee Changdong)
Out of all of the films I am seeing this year, Poetry has got to be my most anticipated. In 2007, one of the best films I have ever seen at the film festival, Secret Sunshine, stunned me – especially since I saw it on a whim. That film has still not gotten a release of any kind in North America, but here’s hoping that director Lee Changdon’s follow up is as good as that film, and finally gets him the respect on this side of the ocean he deserves. It is the last film I will be seeing, so no matter how bad the festival gets, I will have something to look forward to.

16. The Poll Diaries (Chris Kraus)
If I’m being 100% honest, I have to admit that The Poll Diaries is a film that I am only seeing because I have a hole in my schedule one day, and this was pretty much the only film available to fill it. It takes place in Estonia before the outbreak of WWI. It could be good, I don’t know, but I’m not really looking forward to it that much – it just sounded better than my other options at that time, and I didn’t really want to have to kill 4 hours doing nothing.

17. Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)
John Cameron Mitchell’s first two films – Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus – were fiercely independent, and wholly original. For his third feature, he decided to adapt a Pulitizer Prize winning play, and cast stars Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman in the lead roles (not to mention Dianne Wiest and Sandra Oh for support). If it’s as good as Mitchell’s first two films, or even as good as Doubt, the last Pulitizer winning play to be adapted, I will be happy.

18. Route Irish (Ken Loach)
Ken Loach has been a hit or miss director for almost his entire career – making some of the best political films since the 1960s, and some of the most labored. Here’s hoping that he, and longtime screenwriting partner Paul Laverty’s, look at the Iraq war is one of his better efforts.

19. The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillant)
I have long since had a love hate relationship with Catherine Breillant. At times, her insistence on pushing sexual boundaries in her films borders on the absurd (Romance anyone?). But she is also capable of making gorgeous, and though provoking films (Fat Girl, The Last Mistress). So, I hope her strange, sexual take on Sleeping Beauty is more like the later (it bodes well that people are comparing it to her latest film, Red Beard, which to me sounds fascinating, even if I still have not had a chance to see it.)

20. Three (Tom Tykwer)
I will, and have, followed German director Tom Tykwer pretty much anywhere – from the raw energy of Run Lola Run, to the metaphysical The Princess and the Warrior, to the Kieslowski scripted Heaven, to the disturbing Perfume, and even his foray into big budget action filmmaking The International. So his latest – about a couple who both start having an affair with the same man behind the others back – is one that I eagerly awaiting.

21. Trust (David Schwimmer)
Former Friend David Schwimmer has been directing for a while – mostly for TV, but he did make a previous feature, Run Fatboy Run, but mostly in comedy. This time, he takes a step onto the dark side, making a movie about a teenage girl who meets a sexual predator online, and the consequences it has on her family (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener are her parents). I like dark stories like this, and I am more than willing to give Schwimmer the chance to impress me.

22. What’s Wrong with Virginia (Dustin Lance Black)
Dustin Lance Black won an Oscar for his screenplay for Milk, and is now making his directorial debut in this story of a small town Sheriff (Ed Harris) who is going to run for State Senate – and the affair he has had for years with the mentally disturbed Jennifer Connelly that threatens to destroy it. Black, who has also written for TV’s Big Love, is an expert at writing stories about the darkness that lurks beneath the surface, and the movie has been compared to the work of David Lynch, Todd Haynes and Douglas Sirk. Let’s hope he delivers.

23. Womb (Bendek Fliegauf)
Womb sounds like a fascinating idea for a movie – that could either turn out to be wonderful, or awful. Eva Green stars as a woman who loses her lover to an accident – but jumps at the chance to be impregnated with her lovers clone – meaning that when the child is born, she is conflicted in her feelings as mother and former lover. If new director Bendek Fliegauf pulls it off, it could be great.

So that’s what I will be seeing at this year’s festival. I’m sure there are some great and not so great films lurking in here somewhere, but for now, I prefer to think that I am going to see 23 great films.

TIFF 2010 Preview

Yesterday represented one of my favorite days of the year – the day I get to pick up my pre order package from TIFF and select the 20 films I will be seeing at this year’s festival (this number will most likely increase to at least 22, perhaps as many as 25). This looks like a good year at TIFF, but I had several disappointments.

The first disappointment is that they seem to have pretty much done away with 9:00 am screenings. I liked starting my day early, and ending around 9:00pm, but it looks like this year, things will start around 11 each morning, and end around 11 at night. It means I will get home later – but also that I don’t have to get up so early.

Another is that the festival seems oddly frontloaded this year. It has always been such, with most of the major films wanting to get in the first half of the festival, but this year it seems even worse. So unfortunately films like Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu’s Bituful, Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, Palme D’Or Winner Uncle Boonme Who Can See His Past Lives, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, the 3-D documentary by Werner Herzog (whose name escapes me right now) among others will almost definitely have to wait until they get released.

Having said that, I did request tickets to a lot of hopefully great movies. If I get all of my number 1 choices (which I won’t, but I am hopeful) the 20 films I selected are: Trust (David Schimmer), Film Socialism (Jean Luc Godard), Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek), Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky), 127 Hours (Danny Boyle), Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell), What’s Wrong with Virginia (Dustin Lance Black), Poetry (Lee Chang Dong), Another Year (Mike Leigh), Incendies (Dennis Villeneuve), Let Me In (Matt Reeves), The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillent), Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt), The Debt (John Madden), Amigo (John Sayles), Blue Valentine (John Clanfrance), In a Better World (Susanne Bier), Three (Tom Tykwer), It’s Kind of a Funny Story (Ryan Fleck & Anne Boden), Casino Jack (George Hickenlooper) and Aftershock (Xiaogang). Among my second choices are Miral (Julien Schnabel, which if it hadn’t had to go against Black Swan would have easily been a number 1 choice), The Trip (Michael Winterbottom), Tamara Drewe (Stephen Frears), Essential Killing (Jerzy Skolminski) and Brighton Rock (Roland Joffe) – the rest of the number 2 choices were smaller film by lesser known directors that I picked because they sounded interesting).

I like this list. It isn’t as strong as some lists have been in the past (and for the first time in three years, it does not include a Coen Brothers movie). I will find out for sure what I am seeing next week – and when I do, I will make the list official. I am not sure if I’ll do my daily updates like last year (it was rather exhausting to write them after getting home that late), or if I’ll just do one big wrap up piece when it’s all over. What I do know is that TIFF is usually by favorite week of the year (although last year it trailed behind my honeymoon, and it will have to pretty great this year to top my time in NYC). Anyway, since this is a slow week on the blog, I thought I’d share.