You are what eats you

I picked Lymelife because of the Culkins. Say what you will about parents who insist on breeding for the business, those Culkins can act. We spend the majority of our time with the younger Culkin, Rory who plays Scott, your average teenager with an overprotective mother who loves to cover his cuffs and collars with duct tape due to the recent outbreak of lyme disease. As we spend more time with Scott and his family we see what is really eating away at them is unrequited lust, infidelity and dysfunction, while the community is undergoing a growing class divide between the upper and lower middle class.

The interaction between the brothers when we meet the elder Culkin Kieran, playing Jimmy is completely naturalistic down to the mocking way the older brother openly hits on the object of Scott’s affection. Alec Baldwin continues his reign as king of the entertaining douchebags playing the father to Jill Hennessy’s manic homemaker. The cast is rounded out by an almost unrecognizable Timothy Hutton playing the walking cautionary tale of the local lyme disease victim and Cynthia Nixon playing his wife and caretaker. The ingenue is played by Emma Roberts who appears to be working on shedding the Nickelodeon image in this indie pic.

I had this film almost exactly in the middle of my week, and it woke me up and reminded that this is the kind of movie I love to see at the festival. This isn’t something that can be sold in a 10-second pitch, it’s a story that requires you appreciate the performances, the chemistry between the cast and makes you agonize along with the characters as they make similar choices to the ones we are confronted with in our regular lives.

My random thought before this movie is that the Culkins and the Fannings should breed and create a super-race of child actors with limpid eyes and rosebud lips. I hadn’t really slept the night before and this one was at the end of a 5-movie day.

Scan-tastic

Every year I end up picking at least one movie based entirely on the picture in the programme book. I know better than that by now, but something about the cool neutrals in this picture with the contrast of the two swimsuits made me stop each time I flipped through the book.

Cold Lunch

Cold Lunch, unlike some other movies with great stills in the programme book (I’m looking at you Sistagod) actually was the kind of movie that made me stop and pay attention. The movie follows several characters as they make poor choices and let life happen to them. The way the narrative weaves in and out of the lives of these loosely connected people allows the viewer to spend enough time in each story to get frustrated with the characters, but not so long that you get bored with the movie. The characters all have moments of self-awareness, where they and the audience know that they could make a change in the direction they are headed, but like most real people they don’t. Oddly compelling.

Flame and Citron was like watching a graphic novel about an action hero and his sidekick. The ethereal Flame is a sociopathic resistance fighter in WWII era Denmark and Citron is his fixer/driver turned backup hitman. Unlike many movies about resistance fighters these two aren’t hiding in the woods or tunnels, instead they roll around the city and drink at bars that also serve their Nazi opponents. I saw this film before Good, and while the Viggo Mortensen character in that film was a good earnest professor before the war, I can’t imagine that Flame or Citron would have ever been that well-adjusted whether there had been an occupation or not. What they are is entertaining, violent, passionate, heroic. Their main fault, aside from a certain cavalier attitude towards the assassinations of Nazis and collaborators is that they trust the wrong people, assuming that all of their fellow resistance fighters have motives as pure as theirs.

Accepting what I cannot change

I just bought two movies at the video store.

After seeing Burn After Reading at the theatre (not awesome-if you are looking for a quirky Coen fix you would be better served by getting yourself some vodka, Kahlúa and milk and watching the dude abide).

I can’t think about anything but watching movies. I couldn’t relax today until I was safe in a dark movie theatre again. Every year after the festival I get a bit strange, but I usually turn to tv as methadone after the festival-the timing is great with all the fall shows. But after the writers’ strike last year I don’t have the same level of television dependency. I’ve tried turning to video games-the demo for The Force Unleashed is pretty awesome, but as a form of entertainment it’s too active.

I came home sweating and I’ve hidden the movies in my bag so boyfriend won’t ask any questions. I need help.

Suburban Roulette

Depending on your point of view, American culture either peaked or hit rock bottom in the era between the end of the war in Vietnam and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. People felt a collective sense of power and liberation that spilled out all over the place. NYC in the 70′s was a true hedonist’s paradise: peepshows, Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat – the subject of the documentary feature American Swing.

Plato’s Retreat was a Manhattan swinger’s club owned and operated by one Larry “the King of Swing” Levenson. And, it was a scene, man. The hot tub. The mattress room. The free and open exchange of ideas and bodily fluids. Many of the people who frequented the club (and there were thousands – PR was once referred to as the McDonald’s of sex) recount those halcyon days. The strange thing is, it doesn’t sound that bad. Everyone respected and liked each other. “No” was the safe word and people abided by the rules. Everyone was accepted, and for a lot of people, the swinger’s scene gave them a sense of pride and self-respect. But, nothing good ever lasts. Levenson cooked the books and went to prison for 2 1/2 years. And then it was the 80′s. Cocaine was everywhere, and a newer, more reckless crowd moved into Plato’s Retreat. And then there was AIDS, and an anything-goes sex club started to seem like a bad idea.

Two things really surprised me about American Swing. First, I am stunned that such a place operated out in the open – they even advertised on television. Secondly, I am amazed that people have such fond memories of the time and the place. To see former swingers who are now in the 50′s, 60′s and maybe even 70′s talk unabashedly about their youthful indiscretions is almost sweet.

It was aiight

So Good had all the ingredients. Based on a successful stageplay, starring Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs and set in pre-WWII Germany I kept expecting the movie to make me feel something besides resignation and disappointment. Perhaps because the story was created for the stage it never seems to really move me in the way it might if I were sitting in a the same physical space as the performers.

I suppose the question I should be asking myself is if good men do nothing, then are they truly good? Instead the film just confirms how an entire nation could end up following one zealot down the road to perdition due to a combination of aggressive recruitment of sociopaths paired with corruption and apathy on the part of the good people who never really thought things would get that bad.

Overall good performances, good cinematography, good costumes, good art direction, good sound, good editing…but overall rating is just aiight.

If you have an election coming up in your country don’t forget to register to vote.

The Ties that Bind

I have to see at least one movie from New Zealand and Denmark at every TIFF. Apron Strings, a NZ entry, filled one of those slots very nicely. It’s a multi-character drama about two families (one Sikh, the other White) who have some stuff to work through.

Films like this are not plot-driven. They suceed or fail based on how well the characters connect with the audience and how authentic the onscreen relationships seem. With it’s nuanced approach to issues such as sexuality, race, gambling addiction and immigration, Apron Strings plants itself firmly in the plus column.

Feels like making love

I try not to read too many reviews before seeing a movie at the festival, but I had been exposed to some mixed reports about Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and wasn’t expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised to be entertained for the entire movie. Zack and Miri are broke best friends who decide to make a porno to make the rent. Every romcom needs a backdrop and at least this one is different and provides an organic way to bring in the usual assortment of wacky characters that help to pad the joke count.

Zack and Miri recaptures some of the sweetness of Chasing Amy with the raunch-factor we have come to expect from Mr. Smith. The titular couple really do make a porno, and the casting and production process is the most entertaining section of the film. One major critique I have for the film is that the difference between how they shot the ‘regular porn’ sex and the ‘sweet love’ sex was to do not show as much nudity and to have the characters in a very traditional missionary position. After listening to the Savage Love podcast with Dan Savage I do wish that mainstream American films would show a couple in love getting a little more freaky. A physical expression of love could have more than one position.

The really long con

The problem I have with some movies about con men is it’s difficult to get a rhythm going. A good con should be like a good magic show – you look one way while the trick is being set up. Unfortunately as a viewer you don’t get the usual cues to let you know when the movie has hit the climax, and when the story is about to wrap up. In The Brothers Bloom there is a lot of preparation, but not a lot of magic. All of the performances are better than good, but I found myself struggling to pay attention. The initial introduction to the brothers as children was the most entertaining part of the film, and I kept waiting for it to recapture the eccentric energy from the first act.

The standout performance was delivered by Rinko Kikuchi as Bang Bang, the taciturn demolitions expert. Her character silently observed the story along with us, and although she was placed in the background her performance pulled my focus to her whenever she was in a scene. I wish we could have another version of this film from her perspective.

In Hot Water

It’s day 8 of TIFF. It’s 12:02 a.m. I’ve done 9 other posts today. Ocean Flame is not good enough to keep me typing much longer.

Wang Yao is a real badass – he’s the head of a low-level Hong Kong prostitution and blackmail ring. One day he meets a beautiful waitress named Li Chuan, and does what any badass would. He seduces her and then pimps her out.

This is another in a long list of films about people enmeshed in abusive, symbiotic relationships. He treats her deplorably. She wants his love and will do anything to get it. She is the face at the end of his fist; the neck caught in his vise-like grip. There is no arc to these characters. I wasn’t invested in them in any way. When it all goes horrible wrong (as it must in a movie like this), I was nonplussed. Sigh!

Pretty Damn Large

Brian (Paul Dano) is a nice, quiet guy who works in a Manhattan mattress store. His father and older brothers are all successful, but Brian doesn’t have lofty career aspirations. All he’s wanted his whole life is to adopt a baby from China, and he’s finally on the waiting list at an agency. One day a blustery rich dude with a bad back (John Goodman) comes into the store and orders himself a bed. He sends his daughter Harriet – nicknamed Happy (Zooey Deschanel) – to the store the next day to make the arrangements. After the requisite meet cute (she falls asleep on one of the beds in the showroom) Brian and Happy begin a sweet romance. But, it’s complicated. He’s almost a dad. She’s never been in love before and she’s scared.

I really dug this movie, but not without some reservations. There are a couple of unnecessary subplots: one about a crazed man trying to kill Brian, and another involving a friend of his who is studying learned helplessness in rats. The metaphors kind of miss the mark, and the stalker storyline injects a magical realism that feels really out of place.

There is also a problem with Dano, who plays Brian as a cypher. He is so quiet and earnest that it’s hard to see in him what the vibrant and verbose Happy does (for the sake of the gods – her name is Happy!). In the end though, Gigantic is buoyed by the charm and energy of Deshanel, Goodman, Ed Asner and Jane Alexander.