Sunday, March 14, 2010
Thursday, September 17, 2009
TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL, Fourth Day, Part 1
CRACKS, Jordan Scott
UK.
There are a number of films this year set an all-girls schools. This is my second one and it is not quite as clearheaded as the first, An Education. Directed by Ridley Scott's daughter, it is set in the 1930s at a remote boarding school on an even more remote island. The school seems to draw its student body from families that want to park their daughters there and basically never have to deal with them at all.
The girls are all in the thrall of the pretentious, possessive and voluptuous teacher, Miss G, played by Eva Green. She weaves dramatic accounts of her imagined past and leads the girls in adventures, literary and aquatic, the latter including diving practice and moonlight skinny dips.
Into this ordered if quirky universe comes a new girl, a Spaniard who may be a refugee from the Spanish Civil War (she is an aristocrat). She throws a wrench into Miss G's plans, at first by recognizing the literary sources of Miss G's supposedly personal history, and then by arousing Miss G's sexual ardor.
It is beautifully shot (in Ireland) and has some fine performances, especially by Juno Temple as the student "captain" whose allegiances are constantly being jerked around. But the film is unnecessarily melodramatic and overheated, best exemplified by Green's intense, twitchy performance. Its worst sin, though, is how blatantly derivative it is of so many sources -- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Lord of the Flies most of all, but at various times, The Children's Hour, Jane Eyre, and Zero for Conduct. It's a film full of promise that is misdelivered.
I rate this B.
THE TROTSKY, directed by Jacob Tierney
Canada
I think this maybe the one, the breakthrough, the discovery. It's a Canadian comedy, which is sometimes a dangerous ground, eh? This one, however, has a great premise, a sure-handed directorial style and some fine performances, anchored by a memorable turn in the title role by Jay Baruchel. Physically and emotionally Baruchel becomes a gawky, intense, more than a little demented high school student who believes that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. He sets out to re-create Trotsky's life, from fomenting revolution to getting an ice pick in his head. He starts the revolution at his father's factory, until he is exiled from there and then carries the flame of revolution to his high school. There he gathers puzzled support from the apathetic student body and encounters an opposing force in the person of the rigid principal and his "demonic concubine" vice principal.
This is a wonderfully inventive and intelligent comedy, but that very intelligence may hold it back from the widespread popularity it deserves. It's laugh-out-loud funny, and yet many of those laughs spring from an awareness of history and culture that may not be common enough for the film to appeal widely. That would be a shame.
All the other performances fit the mood and the moment ideally, especially Saul Rubinek as Leon's unaccepting father, and Colm Feore as the school principal. There are some great Russian references, from the music and the graphics to the Potemkin baby carriage scene.
This is, paradoxically, a high school comedy for sophisticated adults, and as such it may fall between those two stools. Its quirky sensibility reminded me of Juno, but this one will be harder to market. If only Oprah had come to this screening.... right.
Original, funny, fast-paced, intelligent, it's an easy A. You shouldn't miss it, that is, if you ever get the chance to see it.
MAO'S LAST DANCER, directed by Bruce Beresford
Australia
Biopics these days present great opportunities and great limitations. In the old days, they could invent whatever they wanted dramatically as long as they adhered to a few well-known facts. Today, they need some unusual hook (A Beautiful Mind) or fragmented structure (Creation) to limn a life. Bruce Beresford is a solid, straightforward filmmaker, and that is the way he tells this story.
And a fascinating story it is: a young boy is plucked from his rural Chinese village to attend ballet school in Beijing in the early 1970s; at first he fails, then pushes himself, excels, is chosen to attend a summer program at the Houston Ballet, decides to stay in the US, defects through a hasty marriage, creates an international incident, subjects his family to punishment, and ultimately reunites with them. I'm out of breath just writing about it.
The best parts are those set in the Shandong province of China. These early scenes are yet another window into a distant culture. Given the current thaw in East-West relations, I'm guessing that these scenes were shot in Shandong, or somewhere very close to it. That gives these scenes an added depth. Also, the depictions of the Cultural Revolution, politically correct Chinese ballet, and the post-Mao trials are riveting.
And then there's Houston, not as riveting as Shandong. The scenes there have a sense of artificiality, especially in contrast to those set in Shandong. Bruce Greenwood, usually cast as cops and doctors and average guys, transforms himself physically into a believable ballet master, but the rest of the Houston cast is astonishingly low budget -- false, stagy, obvious. This is especially surprising in a Beresford film. Chi Cao as Li Cunxin is impressively airborne in the dances, but flat-footed as an actor. The clichéd Chinese immigrant material doesn't help him. The other Chinese actors are much more effective, even though they too delve into numerous ethnic clichés.
The emotional payoff is telegraphed well ahead of its arrival on the screen and is not staged for its maximum teary potential.
A curious fizzle, I rate this a B-.
CRACKS, Jordan Scott
UK.
There are a number of films this year set an all-girls schools. This is my second one and it is not quite as clearheaded as the first, An Education. Directed by Ridley Scott's daughter, it is set in the 1930s at a remote boarding school on an even more remote island. The school seems to draw its student body from families that want to park their daughters there and basically never have to deal with them at all.
The girls are all in the thrall of the pretentious, possessive and voluptuous teacher, Miss G, played by Eva Green. She weaves dramatic accounts of her imagined past and leads the girls in adventures, literary and aquatic, the latter including diving practice and moonlight skinny dips.
Into this ordered if quirky universe comes a new girl, a Spaniard who may be a refugee from the Spanish Civil War (she is an aristocrat). She throws a wrench into Miss G's plans, at first by recognizing the literary sources of Miss G's supposedly personal history, and then by arousing Miss G's sexual ardor.
It is beautifully shot (in Ireland) and has some fine performances, especially by Juno Temple as the student "captain" whose allegiances are constantly being jerked around. But the film is unnecessarily melodramatic and overheated, best exemplified by Green's intense, twitchy performance. Its worst sin, though, is how blatantly derivative it is of so many sources -- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Lord of the Flies most of all, but at various times, The Children's Hour, Jane Eyre, and Zero for Conduct. It's a film full of promise that is misdelivered.
I rate this B.
THE TROTSKY, directed by Jacob Tierney
Canada
I think this maybe the one, the breakthrough, the discovery. It's a Canadian comedy, which is sometimes a dangerous ground, eh? This one, however, has a great premise, a sure-handed directorial style and some fine performances, anchored by a memorable turn in the title role by Jay Baruchel. Physically and emotionally Baruchel becomes a gawky, intense, more than a little demented high school student who believes that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. He sets out to re-create Trotsky's life, from fomenting revolution to getting an ice pick in his head. He starts the revolution at his father's factory, until he is exiled from there and then carries the flame of revolution to his high school. There he gathers puzzled support from the apathetic student body and encounters an opposing force in the person of the rigid principal and his "demonic concubine" vice principal.
This is a wonderfully inventive and intelligent comedy, but that very intelligence may hold it back from the widespread popularity it deserves. It's laugh-out-loud funny, and yet many of those laughs spring from an awareness of history and culture that may not be common enough for the film to appeal widely. That would be a shame.
All the other performances fit the mood and the moment ideally, especially Saul Rubinek as Leon's unaccepting father, and Colm Feore as the school principal. There are some great Russian references, from the music and the graphics to the Potemkin baby carriage scene.
This is, paradoxically, a high school comedy for sophisticated adults, and as such it may fall between those two stools. Its quirky sensibility reminded me of Juno, but this one will be harder to market. If only Oprah had come to this screening.... right.
Original, funny, fast-paced, intelligent, it's an easy A. You shouldn't miss it, that is, if you ever get the chance to see it.
MAO'S LAST DANCER, directed by Bruce Beresford
Australia
Biopics these days present great opportunities and great limitations. In the old days, they could invent whatever they wanted dramatically as long as they adhered to a few well-known facts. Today, they need some unusual hook (A Beautiful Mind) or fragmented structure (Creation) to limn a life. Bruce Beresford is a solid, straightforward filmmaker, and that is the way he tells this story.
And a fascinating story it is: a young boy is plucked from his rural Chinese village to attend ballet school in Beijing in the early 1970s; at first he fails, then pushes himself, excels, is chosen to attend a summer program at the Houston Ballet, decides to stay in the US, defects through a hasty marriage, creates an international incident, subjects his family to punishment, and ultimately reunites with them. I'm out of breath just writing about it.
The best parts are those set in the Shandong province of China. These early scenes are yet another window into a distant culture. Given the current thaw in East-West relations, I'm guessing that these scenes were shot in Shandong, or somewhere very close to it. That gives these scenes an added depth. Also, the depictions of the Cultural Revolution, politically correct Chinese ballet, and the post-Mao trials are riveting.
And then there's Houston, not as riveting as Shandong. The scenes there have a sense of artificiality, especially in contrast to those set in Shandong. Bruce Greenwood, usually cast as cops and doctors and average guys, transforms himself physically into a believable ballet master, but the rest of the Houston cast is astonishingly low budget -- false, stagy, obvious. This is especially surprising in a Beresford film. Chi Cao as Li Cunxin is impressively airborne in the dances, but flat-footed as an actor. The clichéd Chinese immigrant material doesn't help him. The other Chinese actors are much more effective, even though they too delve into numerous ethnic clichés.
The emotional payoff is telegraphed well ahead of its arrival on the screen and is not staged for its maximum teary potential.
A curious fizzle, I rate this a B-.
TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL, 3rd Day, Part 2
JEAN CHARLES, directed by Henrique Goldman
England/Brazil
Another earnest plea for justice from a higher profile incident than the previous day's Mexican film Backyard covered. After the Tube and bus bombings in London in 2005, police tracked and fatally shot a man they suspected of being a terrorist involved in the plot. After a brief investigation, police admitted that the man turned out to be completely unrelated to the incidents. He was a Brazilian immigrant, Jean Charles de Menezes, stalked by police because they felt he "looked like a Muslim." Police had found a backpack at the site of a failed bombing that same day which contained an address; the address was of an apartment house in which Jean Charles also had an apartment. This flimsy piece of "evidence" is revealed not in the film itself, but in a postscript just before the credits roll.
The film is shown principally from the point of view of Jean Charles, so the police suspicions, their "evidence," and any discussions they may have had are never shown in the main body of the film, just the fatal showdown. What emerges from that style is three quarters of a film that is a loosely structured portrait of Brazilians in London -- their culture, their home life, and their nightlife. It's informative, another window that the Toronto festival provides into an overlooked subculture. And it creates in the viewer the same sense of shock and puzzlement that hit the Brazilians around Jean Charles.
After that, the last quarter of the film becomes an angry denunciation of injustice, government unresponsiveness and the frustrating failure of the Brazilian community in London to obtain any satisfaction from the government. While this last quarter of the film has a sharper focus, it is very angry in its performances and its trajectory. That confers a certain power, but it doesn't drive its point home is effectively as a more tightly structured film might have.
An important message and a noble effort. I rate it a B.
JEAN CHARLES, directed by Henrique Goldman
England/Brazil
Another earnest plea for justice from a higher profile incident than the previous day's Mexican film Backyard covered. After the Tube and bus bombings in London in 2005, police tracked and fatally shot a man they suspected of being a terrorist involved in the plot. After a brief investigation, police admitted that the man turned out to be completely unrelated to the incidents. He was a Brazilian immigrant, Jean Charles de Menezes, stalked by police because they felt he "looked like a Muslim." Police had found a backpack at the site of a failed bombing that same day which contained an address; the address was of an apartment house in which Jean Charles also had an apartment. This flimsy piece of "evidence" is revealed not in the film itself, but in a postscript just before the credits roll.
The film is shown principally from the point of view of Jean Charles, so the police suspicions, their "evidence," and any discussions they may have had are never shown in the main body of the film, just the fatal showdown. What emerges from that style is three quarters of a film that is a loosely structured portrait of Brazilians in London -- their culture, their home life, and their nightlife. It's informative, another window that the Toronto festival provides into an overlooked subculture. And it creates in the viewer the same sense of shock and puzzlement that hit the Brazilians around Jean Charles.
After that, the last quarter of the film becomes an angry denunciation of injustice, government unresponsiveness and the frustrating failure of the Brazilian community in London to obtain any satisfaction from the government. While this last quarter of the film has a sharper focus, it is very angry in its performances and its trajectory. That confers a certain power, but it doesn't drive its point home is effectively as a more tightly structured film might have.
An important message and a noble effort. I rate it a B.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Toronto Film Festival, 3rd Day
UP IN THE AIR directed by Jason Reitman USA
First let me describe the circumstances of the screening. The film was being shown at the Ryerson, a 1200 seat auditorium that is part of Ryerson University in Toronto. It is the largest traditionally arranged auditorium that the festival uses. Jason Reitman pledged from the stage that it would be the site of all his first public screenings. I can understand his enthusiasm, because I have seen all three of his films of the Ryerson. And we have been a great audience to kick things off.
The red carpet area, where the media interviews and the fans scream, is awkwardly placed across the ticket line at the Ryerson. I had expected the screening to be particularly crowded with media, because George Clooney is the star of the film and he has been very much in evidence in Toronto. What I hadn't expected was the appearance of Oprah Winfrey, whose connection to the film I cannot even fathom. Her presence was enough to set off a firestorm of both media and fan enthusiasm and the consequent hubbub postponed the beginning of the show by more than half an hour. When the festival representative finally took the stage to get things going, she had to request that the front half of the auditorium to turn and face the stage and screen instead of being turned around to face Oprah in her seat. It even required Reitman to come out before he was introduced and admonish the audience to sit down and let the movie begin.
Now on to the movie itself. It is another big success for Jason Reitman. From his first film, Thank You for Smoking, through Juno, he has developed a singular visual storytelling style that is at once exhilarating and somehow classically cinematic. He once again has chosen to portray off kilter characters and the situation they inhabit. Clooney plays a kind of one man traveling corporate firing squad, crisscrossing the country to deliver termination notices to corporate workers, a task their bosses should really be doing. In the context of the film, he does the job very well. He really enjoys his life, not the firing part, but the state of being perpetually rootless. He loves flying, he loves staying in hotels, he loves driving rental cars (full size only, please).
In a hotel bar, he meets his female counterpart -- a traveling consultant who is almost always on the road. After a classic scene where they match courtesy cards, reminiscent of the brilliant death squad competition in Smoking, they fall into bed, and then they fall into the perfect rootless, commitment-free relationship.
Summoned back to HQ in Omaha, Clooney is confronted with a new corporate whiz kid who has conceived of a revolutionary, money-saving procedure for firing people via teleconferencing. This not only offends Clooney's sense of doing the job well, but it throws a major roadblock in his plan to acquire 10,000,000 miles on the American Airlines mileage plan. The whiz kid, played as an earnest, irony-free recent college graduate by the going-places Anna Kendrick, is the most formidable foe Clooney has faced in his career. The two of them are sent on the road so that she can learn a technique that she is about to adapt to the cyber world. Their scenes together -- traveling, arguing, firing people -- are the highest point in a movie that is pretty much full of high points.
Maybe it's Toronto, maybe it's the Ryerson, maybe it's Jason Reitman. But for me, he can do no wrong (so far). This is another home run for him, from traveling montages, to aerial views of American cities, to a beautifully crafted story, to incisively etched characters. Reitman has done it again, with some expert help from Clooney, Kendrick, Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman, Amy Morton, and a few dozen amazing character actors (I think they're actors) who played the poor souls Clooney and Kendrick set adrift. There's comedy, there's pathos, and there's the whole -- probably unintended -- dilemma of escalating unemployment that is all too current than all too real.
The quality of this film is no surprise, sort of like a designated hitter getting a home run. Jason Reitman is a wonderful director. I rate this film A.
First let me describe the circumstances of the screening. The film was being shown at the Ryerson, a 1200 seat auditorium that is part of Ryerson University in Toronto. It is the largest traditionally arranged auditorium that the festival uses. Jason Reitman pledged from the stage that it would be the site of all his first public screenings. I can understand his enthusiasm, because I have seen all three of his films of the Ryerson. And we have been a great audience to kick things off.
The red carpet area, where the media interviews and the fans scream, is awkwardly placed across the ticket line at the Ryerson. I had expected the screening to be particularly crowded with media, because George Clooney is the star of the film and he has been very much in evidence in Toronto. What I hadn't expected was the appearance of Oprah Winfrey, whose connection to the film I cannot even fathom. Her presence was enough to set off a firestorm of both media and fan enthusiasm and the consequent hubbub postponed the beginning of the show by more than half an hour. When the festival representative finally took the stage to get things going, she had to request that the front half of the auditorium to turn and face the stage and screen instead of being turned around to face Oprah in her seat. It even required Reitman to come out before he was introduced and admonish the audience to sit down and let the movie begin.
Now on to the movie itself. It is another big success for Jason Reitman. From his first film, Thank You for Smoking, through Juno, he has developed a singular visual storytelling style that is at once exhilarating and somehow classically cinematic. He once again has chosen to portray off kilter characters and the situation they inhabit. Clooney plays a kind of one man traveling corporate firing squad, crisscrossing the country to deliver termination notices to corporate workers, a task their bosses should really be doing. In the context of the film, he does the job very well. He really enjoys his life, not the firing part, but the state of being perpetually rootless. He loves flying, he loves staying in hotels, he loves driving rental cars (full size only, please).
In a hotel bar, he meets his female counterpart -- a traveling consultant who is almost always on the road. After a classic scene where they match courtesy cards, reminiscent of the brilliant death squad competition in Smoking, they fall into bed, and then they fall into the perfect rootless, commitment-free relationship.
Summoned back to HQ in Omaha, Clooney is confronted with a new corporate whiz kid who has conceived of a revolutionary, money-saving procedure for firing people via teleconferencing. This not only offends Clooney's sense of doing the job well, but it throws a major roadblock in his plan to acquire 10,000,000 miles on the American Airlines mileage plan. The whiz kid, played as an earnest, irony-free recent college graduate by the going-places Anna Kendrick, is the most formidable foe Clooney has faced in his career. The two of them are sent on the road so that she can learn a technique that she is about to adapt to the cyber world. Their scenes together -- traveling, arguing, firing people -- are the highest point in a movie that is pretty much full of high points.
Maybe it's Toronto, maybe it's the Ryerson, maybe it's Jason Reitman. But for me, he can do no wrong (so far). This is another home run for him, from traveling montages, to aerial views of American cities, to a beautifully crafted story, to incisively etched characters. Reitman has done it again, with some expert help from Clooney, Kendrick, Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman, Amy Morton, and a few dozen amazing character actors (I think they're actors) who played the poor souls Clooney and Kendrick set adrift. There's comedy, there's pathos, and there's the whole -- probably unintended -- dilemma of escalating unemployment that is all too current than all too real.
The quality of this film is no surprise, sort of like a designated hitter getting a home run. Jason Reitman is a wonderful director. I rate this film A.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
PERRIER'S BOUNTY directed by Ian FitzGibbon Ireland
Another Irish gangster flick -- is anyone ever really safe in Dublin? -- once again with Brendan Gleeson. But the sensibility here is not gritty, gutter reality. It's more like Guy Ritchie, or maybe Martin McDonough, with a twist of Yeats for garnish. And it features a who's who of Irish acting -- Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Conleth Hill, Gabriel Byrne, and the almost inescapable Cillian Murphy. Only Colin Farrell plays more Irish thugs.
Murphy manages again to muster more power out of his spare frame than you would ever expect. Broadbent can infuse greater meaning, humor, pathos, and pain into a shrug than most actors get out of a 2 page soliloquy. He has become my favorite actor. Gleeson can still mine fresh takes on his oft-repeated, cold-blooded, dump-'em-in-the-Liffey gangland chief; he has a way of finding offbeat humor in amoral angst.
What raises the film above a retread is the element of Irish mysticism that underlies both plot and character. It is evident throughout in the unseen Byrne's narration (which isn't fully clarified until the end of the film), and in the essence of Broadbent's character.
It's funny, grisly, observant and mystical, and it moves like a DART train through Dublin -- fast, jumpy, with more stops than you'd like, and it ultimately reaches its destination.
I rate it a B+
BACKYARD directed by Carlos Carrera Mexico
Part of why the Toronto Festival is so rewarding is that it provides a window into cultures which are little known to most Americans, certainly to me. In this case, it is a culture I know something about -- Mexican border towns -- but the film underscores how ignorant I am of that world. I am probably not alone in that ignorance.
The usual tale of Mexicans and Central Americans struggling their way north to sneak across the border into the US is turned on its head, or a least knocked on its side. Apparently, many people come north and stop short of the border to work in the bleakly bustling border towns. Ciudad Juarez, the "backyard" of El Paso, has had a particularly shocking a crisis over quite a few years in which hundreds of young women have been abducted, raped, murdered and dumped in the desert. The corrupt and ineffectual police and government turned pretty much of a blind eye to the whole situation until a front-page New York Times article blew the lid off the crisis and forced the government to take drastic action.
The film charts the effort to expose and remedy the situation (which ultimately led to the Times article), told from the viewpoints of a few fictional characters -- a young woman who migrates from Chiapas, a courageously incorruptible policewoman, a crusading free clinic doctor, a sleazy Mexican-American businessman(played by Jimmy Smits) and a few others.
The collective cast, multi-plot film is all too familiar by now, but the naturalistic acting and directing and the occasionally grisly fate that meets some of the principals make this film surprisingly effective. It is a heartfelt, well told plea for justice, an indictment of government chicanery and corporate greed, and an informative look at a world so close yet so unknown.
I rate this A-.
AN EDUCATION directed by Lone Scherfig England
60s London, before it really started to swing. Nick Hornby has taken an eight page memoir of a smart girl who yearned for something more than the boundaries of her Twickenham adolescence and expanded it to a feature length. For the most part it works; it's still her story of yearning. Along comes a 30-something man to take her well past those boundaries -- culturally, geographically, and morally. They meet cute; he offers to give her cello or ride home in the rain while she walks safely alongside the car.
But the creepiness factor grows steadily as the film progresses and as his ardor escalates. This is despite highly effective performances by Carey Mulligan, who gives her 16 year old poise and budding sophistication of one a few years older, and Peter Sarsgaard who, as he said in the Festival Q&A session, has managed to invest even rapists and murderers with a measure of charm . His British accent is a trifle sketchy, but everything else about his performance is right on the money. And money -- the lack of it, the desire for it, and what one will do to get it -- is at the heart of this story.
All the actors invest their characters with depth, even when they appear to be constructed largely of cardboard. Alfred Molina ("Tom Wilkinson turned down my role.") balances the blustery, buffoonish aspects of the father with tenderness and vulnerability. Cara Seymour walks a similar tight rope between airy suburban mom and grounded voice of reason. Olivia Williams finds unexpected depth and humanity in the stereotyped, hair-in-a-bun spinster schoolteacher. Emma Thompson's cameo is a real challenge, to make the oh-so predictable headmistress (did she really have to be anti-Semitic too?) remotely believable.
It is a morally complex tale for what is essentially a coming-of-age comedy. And once the moral crisis comes to a head, the resolution is somewhat abrupt and elliptical. Whatever its shortcomings though, it is a film that encourages analysis afterward. The slippery moral slope that 16-year-old Jenny travels is troubling. Different audiences will have different thresholds of outrage, points at which they will feel that the 16-35 affair has gone too far. For me, it was way ahead of when the characters, except the rigid or authority figures Thompson and Williams, reached that conclusion.
Here in Toronto, there is the highly prized and highly touted Oscar buzz about Mulligan's performance, comparing it to Ellen Page's breakthrough in Juno. It is undoubtedly impressive work, and Mulligan carries the film, appearing in virtually every scene. But I don't think it is going to have the widespread appeal that propelled Juno and Page to nomination country. Of course, it all depends on the competition. Carey, meet Meryl.
I rate this A-.
RABIA directed by Sebastian Cordero Spain
Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. This kind of moody, tension inducing suspense story rises and falls on maintaining the right atmosphere. Rabia does that job rather well. It's not Hitchcock-smooth, but it plays a hide and seek game of mice, mayhem and murder to great effect.
Two Central American immigrants to Spain have a casual affair, but he becomes obsessed with her, and with punishing anyone who looks at her the wrong way, or worse. When in one of his outbursts he accidentally murders his boss, he takes refuge in the attic of the house where his girlfriend is the maid. He hides there for months; even she doesn't know he is there. He scrounges his food, spies on the family she serves, and observes the progress of her pregnancy with his child.
He grows more and more obsessive, paranoid and delusional and ultimately commits another murder. Through general deprivation and his reaction to pesticides, he deteriorates drastically. Gustavo Sanchez Parra is convincing and even frightening, sustaining a DeNiro-like weight loss to portray his character's wasting away as the film progresses. Martina Garcia combines sweetness and strength as the maid.
The whole film is disturbing and very well done. The direction and camerawork are exemplary, often telling the story from his point of view, hiding in the attic, in a closet, on the stairs. The final shot of the film, an exceedingly long tracking shot that travels from the unhappy couple in the attic down through three floors of the House to the kitchen and out the door to take in the whole exterior of the house is astonishing. That shot alone may garner this film a good deal of critical attention. It should stand up to the test.
I rate this a B+.
Another Irish gangster flick -- is anyone ever really safe in Dublin? -- once again with Brendan Gleeson. But the sensibility here is not gritty, gutter reality. It's more like Guy Ritchie, or maybe Martin McDonough, with a twist of Yeats for garnish. And it features a who's who of Irish acting -- Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Conleth Hill, Gabriel Byrne, and the almost inescapable Cillian Murphy. Only Colin Farrell plays more Irish thugs.
Murphy manages again to muster more power out of his spare frame than you would ever expect. Broadbent can infuse greater meaning, humor, pathos, and pain into a shrug than most actors get out of a 2 page soliloquy. He has become my favorite actor. Gleeson can still mine fresh takes on his oft-repeated, cold-blooded, dump-'em-in-the-Liffey gangland chief; he has a way of finding offbeat humor in amoral angst.
What raises the film above a retread is the element of Irish mysticism that underlies both plot and character. It is evident throughout in the unseen Byrne's narration (which isn't fully clarified until the end of the film), and in the essence of Broadbent's character.
It's funny, grisly, observant and mystical, and it moves like a DART train through Dublin -- fast, jumpy, with more stops than you'd like, and it ultimately reaches its destination.
I rate it a B+
BACKYARD directed by Carlos Carrera Mexico
Part of why the Toronto Festival is so rewarding is that it provides a window into cultures which are little known to most Americans, certainly to me. In this case, it is a culture I know something about -- Mexican border towns -- but the film underscores how ignorant I am of that world. I am probably not alone in that ignorance.
The usual tale of Mexicans and Central Americans struggling their way north to sneak across the border into the US is turned on its head, or a least knocked on its side. Apparently, many people come north and stop short of the border to work in the bleakly bustling border towns. Ciudad Juarez, the "backyard" of El Paso, has had a particularly shocking a crisis over quite a few years in which hundreds of young women have been abducted, raped, murdered and dumped in the desert. The corrupt and ineffectual police and government turned pretty much of a blind eye to the whole situation until a front-page New York Times article blew the lid off the crisis and forced the government to take drastic action.
The film charts the effort to expose and remedy the situation (which ultimately led to the Times article), told from the viewpoints of a few fictional characters -- a young woman who migrates from Chiapas, a courageously incorruptible policewoman, a crusading free clinic doctor, a sleazy Mexican-American businessman(played by Jimmy Smits) and a few others.
The collective cast, multi-plot film is all too familiar by now, but the naturalistic acting and directing and the occasionally grisly fate that meets some of the principals make this film surprisingly effective. It is a heartfelt, well told plea for justice, an indictment of government chicanery and corporate greed, and an informative look at a world so close yet so unknown.
I rate this A-.
AN EDUCATION directed by Lone Scherfig England
60s London, before it really started to swing. Nick Hornby has taken an eight page memoir of a smart girl who yearned for something more than the boundaries of her Twickenham adolescence and expanded it to a feature length. For the most part it works; it's still her story of yearning. Along comes a 30-something man to take her well past those boundaries -- culturally, geographically, and morally. They meet cute; he offers to give her cello or ride home in the rain while she walks safely alongside the car.
But the creepiness factor grows steadily as the film progresses and as his ardor escalates. This is despite highly effective performances by Carey Mulligan, who gives her 16 year old poise and budding sophistication of one a few years older, and Peter Sarsgaard who, as he said in the Festival Q&A session, has managed to invest even rapists and murderers with a measure of charm . His British accent is a trifle sketchy, but everything else about his performance is right on the money. And money -- the lack of it, the desire for it, and what one will do to get it -- is at the heart of this story.
All the actors invest their characters with depth, even when they appear to be constructed largely of cardboard. Alfred Molina ("Tom Wilkinson turned down my role.") balances the blustery, buffoonish aspects of the father with tenderness and vulnerability. Cara Seymour walks a similar tight rope between airy suburban mom and grounded voice of reason. Olivia Williams finds unexpected depth and humanity in the stereotyped, hair-in-a-bun spinster schoolteacher. Emma Thompson's cameo is a real challenge, to make the oh-so predictable headmistress (did she really have to be anti-Semitic too?) remotely believable.
It is a morally complex tale for what is essentially a coming-of-age comedy. And once the moral crisis comes to a head, the resolution is somewhat abrupt and elliptical. Whatever its shortcomings though, it is a film that encourages analysis afterward. The slippery moral slope that 16-year-old Jenny travels is troubling. Different audiences will have different thresholds of outrage, points at which they will feel that the 16-35 affair has gone too far. For me, it was way ahead of when the characters, except the rigid or authority figures Thompson and Williams, reached that conclusion.
Here in Toronto, there is the highly prized and highly touted Oscar buzz about Mulligan's performance, comparing it to Ellen Page's breakthrough in Juno. It is undoubtedly impressive work, and Mulligan carries the film, appearing in virtually every scene. But I don't think it is going to have the widespread appeal that propelled Juno and Page to nomination country. Of course, it all depends on the competition. Carey, meet Meryl.
I rate this A-.
RABIA directed by Sebastian Cordero Spain
Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. This kind of moody, tension inducing suspense story rises and falls on maintaining the right atmosphere. Rabia does that job rather well. It's not Hitchcock-smooth, but it plays a hide and seek game of mice, mayhem and murder to great effect.
Two Central American immigrants to Spain have a casual affair, but he becomes obsessed with her, and with punishing anyone who looks at her the wrong way, or worse. When in one of his outbursts he accidentally murders his boss, he takes refuge in the attic of the house where his girlfriend is the maid. He hides there for months; even she doesn't know he is there. He scrounges his food, spies on the family she serves, and observes the progress of her pregnancy with his child.
He grows more and more obsessive, paranoid and delusional and ultimately commits another murder. Through general deprivation and his reaction to pesticides, he deteriorates drastically. Gustavo Sanchez Parra is convincing and even frightening, sustaining a DeNiro-like weight loss to portray his character's wasting away as the film progresses. Martina Garcia combines sweetness and strength as the maid.
The whole film is disturbing and very well done. The direction and camerawork are exemplary, often telling the story from his point of view, hiding in the attic, in a closet, on the stairs. The final shot of the film, an exceedingly long tracking shot that travels from the unhappy couple in the attic down through three floors of the House to the kitchen and out the door to take in the whole exterior of the house is astonishing. That shot alone may garner this film a good deal of critical attention. It should stand up to the test.
I rate this a B+.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Toronto Film Festival, Day 2
I'm still easing into the schedule; just 3 today.
CREATION, directed by Jon Amiel, England
For all the attention and intense debate that Charles Darwin has stirred and still stirs 125 years after his death, we(or at least I) don't know much about who he was. Creation may go a little way toward filling in that gap, but just a little. I hope it inspires a few articles about him that are more rational than this film.
It's not that creation is irrational. But it is an ironically romantic portrait of a man for whom reason/rationality was his principal tool. Pitted against a widespread approach to scientific issues rooted in religion and scripture -- what we now call creationism -- the film's Darwin wages a lonely battle for a more rational, observational methodology. Even his loving wife has deep religious reservations about his work. This drives them into a fevered psychosomatic physical decline, which he self-medicates with laudanum. When his oldest daughter and most faithful disciple (she's about 12) falls gravely ill, the benighted medical establishment prescribes either mercury or bleeding. He opts for experimental treatments that apparently include colonic irrigation and torrential cold showers. That treatment restores him to working order, but it can't save his daughter. That renders her a ghost, whom the film's Darwin engages in fevered debates and pursues fruitlessly down a number of twisting Victorian alleys, much like the red-clad dead child in Don't Look Now.
This ghostly presence and her influence on Darwin's intellectual productivity form the most incongruous element of an otherwise pretty impressive film. Paul Bettany maintains a remarkably focused portrayal of an extremely complex character, holding on to the human core of Darwin as the film jumps around in time and in and out of reality. Jennifer Connelly is even more impressive is Emma Darwin, devout Christian and devoted wife. She makes the conflicts of this woman quietly, painfully clear. A number of more or less familiar British character actors provide solid support. it is a beautiful production, elegantly designed and shot, with some remarkable time lapse photography, and some ickily impressive nature shots. Although these sequences magnificently illustrate "survival of the fittest", they still require the film to assure us that they did not result in any harm to the animals being photographed. That, I think, would have really puzzled Darwin. The movie might have too, as it occasionally did me. But its ambition, and the thoughtful substantive debate that it incorporates, along with with the excellent production values, make it an admirable achievement.
I rate it a B+
I'm still easing into the schedule; just 3 today.
CREATION, directed by Jon Amiel, England
For all the attention and intense debate that Charles Darwin has stirred and still stirs 125 years after his death, we(or at least I) don't know much about who he was. Creation may go a little way toward filling in that gap, but just a little. I hope it inspires a few articles about him that are more rational than this film.
It's not that creation is irrational. But it is an ironically romantic portrait of a man for whom reason/rationality was his principal tool. Pitted against a widespread approach to scientific issues rooted in religion and scripture -- what we now call creationism -- the film's Darwin wages a lonely battle for a more rational, observational methodology. Even his loving wife has deep religious reservations about his work. This drives them into a fevered psychosomatic physical decline, which he self-medicates with laudanum. When his oldest daughter and most faithful disciple (she's about 12) falls gravely ill, the benighted medical establishment prescribes either mercury or bleeding. He opts for experimental treatments that apparently include colonic irrigation and torrential cold showers. That treatment restores him to working order, but it can't save his daughter. That renders her a ghost, whom the film's Darwin engages in fevered debates and pursues fruitlessly down a number of twisting Victorian alleys, much like the red-clad dead child in Don't Look Now.
This ghostly presence and her influence on Darwin's intellectual productivity form the most incongruous element of an otherwise pretty impressive film. Paul Bettany maintains a remarkably focused portrayal of an extremely complex character, holding on to the human core of Darwin as the film jumps around in time and in and out of reality. Jennifer Connelly is even more impressive is Emma Darwin, devout Christian and devoted wife. She makes the conflicts of this woman quietly, painfully clear. A number of more or less familiar British character actors provide solid support. it is a beautiful production, elegantly designed and shot, with some remarkable time lapse photography, and some ickily impressive nature shots. Although these sequences magnificently illustrate "survival of the fittest", they still require the film to assure us that they did not result in any harm to the animals being photographed. That, I think, would have really puzzled Darwin. The movie might have too, as it occasionally did me. But its ambition, and the thoughtful substantive debate that it incorporates, along with with the excellent production values, make it an admirable achievement.
I rate it a B+
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Toronto 2009
People who love something, don't always know how to run something. The folks who run the Toronto Film Festivalreally love film, and they genuinely want to share a passion with as many of the rest of us as possible. They just haven't figured out how. Every year they try some new delivery system, but still their hallmark is monumental inefficiency.
Today I joined a queue of about 150 people who were there to pick up tickets, which they had already ordered and paid for. It took an hour and a half. And there are thousands of people who come to the festival. In previous years, they have had 15, 20, 25 staff managing this operation. Today -- 3.
Ruthless inefficiency.
The volunteers are the heart of the festival, and the muscle too. But not, unfortunately, the brain. This is not their fault at all. They have a specific assignment, which is all they know. Tonight, one volunteer was confused about which line was ticket holders and which was the rush line. Further on, another volunteer in charge of hurting two lines of ticket holders had a spotty command of English, not to mention an her puzzlement at the French title of one of her charges. Evening goals. She knew the number of the cinema where each line was headed, but who picks a film on which box it is in?
Enough rant. I am in Toronto with 300+ films to choose from, like everyone around me in line, in cinema one, on the sidewalk. We love films about as much as the Festival folks to, and we all patiently revel.
L'ENFER D'HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT directed by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea
Off to a mild start. This is a great idea for a documentary. Serge Bromberg is a film preservationist who convinced the widow of the classic French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear ) to let him use never-released footage from the 1964 film Inferno, which Clouzot had had to abandon.
It is like some other reconstructions of lost films, and the footage, featuring Romy Schneider at the height of her charm and stardom, is striking, hypnotic, unsettling. The interviews with surviving crew members, including assistant director Costa-Gavras, recount the excessive, Hollywood-funded production structure -- 3 entirely separate camera crews, including Claude Renoir on one underused unit -- the extensive visual and audio effects experiments, the endless retakes, the apparently undetermined structure of the script. While Clouzot ran further and further behind with retakes that would take William Wyler's breath away, the crews balked, Schneider yelled and a month into the shoot, the leading man walked. Then, just to seal the film's fate, Clouzot had a heart attack in the mid-take. Talk about bad karma.
There is a fascinating story to tell here, but Bromberg doesn't know how to tell it. A preservationist's mission is to save everything because it all has value; a documentarian's mission is to pair the voluminous material into a cogent, informative film. This time, the preservationist won out. While the inherently interesting, it is way too long, and way too repetitive. This is the kind of film DVRs and fast-forward were made for.
I rate it fair - a C+.
People who love something, don't always know how to run something. The folks who run the Toronto Film Festivalreally love film, and they genuinely want to share a passion with as many of the rest of us as possible. They just haven't figured out how. Every year they try some new delivery system, but still their hallmark is monumental inefficiency.
Today I joined a queue of about 150 people who were there to pick up tickets, which they had already ordered and paid for. It took an hour and a half. And there are thousands of people who come to the festival. In previous years, they have had 15, 20, 25 staff managing this operation. Today -- 3.
Ruthless inefficiency.
The volunteers are the heart of the festival, and the muscle too. But not, unfortunately, the brain. This is not their fault at all. They have a specific assignment, which is all they know. Tonight, one volunteer was confused about which line was ticket holders and which was the rush line. Further on, another volunteer in charge of hurting two lines of ticket holders had a spotty command of English, not to mention an her puzzlement at the French title of one of her charges. Evening goals. She knew the number of the cinema where each line was headed, but who picks a film on which box it is in?
Enough rant. I am in Toronto with 300+ films to choose from, like everyone around me in line, in cinema one, on the sidewalk. We love films about as much as the Festival folks to, and we all patiently revel.
L'ENFER D'HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT directed by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea
Off to a mild start. This is a great idea for a documentary. Serge Bromberg is a film preservationist who convinced the widow of the classic French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear ) to let him use never-released footage from the 1964 film Inferno, which Clouzot had had to abandon.
It is like some other reconstructions of lost films, and the footage, featuring Romy Schneider at the height of her charm and stardom, is striking, hypnotic, unsettling. The interviews with surviving crew members, including assistant director Costa-Gavras, recount the excessive, Hollywood-funded production structure -- 3 entirely separate camera crews, including Claude Renoir on one underused unit -- the extensive visual and audio effects experiments, the endless retakes, the apparently undetermined structure of the script. While Clouzot ran further and further behind with retakes that would take William Wyler's breath away, the crews balked, Schneider yelled and a month into the shoot, the leading man walked. Then, just to seal the film's fate, Clouzot had a heart attack in the mid-take. Talk about bad karma.
There is a fascinating story to tell here, but Bromberg doesn't know how to tell it. A preservationist's mission is to save everything because it all has value; a documentarian's mission is to pair the voluminous material into a cogent, informative film. This time, the preservationist won out. While the inherently interesting, it is way too long, and way too repetitive. This is the kind of film DVRs and fast-forward were made for.
I rate it fair - a C+.
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