Review: 13 Assassins

This is a two hour samurai movie directed by Takashi Miike. That would normally be enough information for most people who like this type of film to pick this movie. Miike does not take his audience for granted and gives us a entertaining characters, beautiful sets and costumes, lush exteriors and a decent motive for the massively bloody and violent last act.
Kôji Yakusho has the perfect demeanor for the old master recruiting a group of samurai to take out a corrupt leader. He is charismatic and strong, and yet while we know his character does long for the days of battle we do not see that he takes the matter of taking a life lightly. What I love about his performance here-much like his turn as the depressed accountant in Shall We Dance-is the way he can watch others and use his face and reactions to set the emotional tone for the audience.
If you don’t care about performance or story just watch the last 45 minutes for the awesome fiery and bloody showdown. And remember if you lose your sword, use a stick. If you lose your stick, use a rock. Or you can blow stuff up.

Review: Beautiful Boy

This is another film that relies almost entirely on the performances of the two leads to keep you engaged. Luckily for Shawn Ku he had Michael Sheen and Maria Bello as the grieving parents in this remarkable story about the aftermath of losing a child.
There are a lot of quiet moments in this film where all we have is the facial expressions of the leads to let us know what is happening. More than once we have the point of view of an outsider, looking over a shoulder or through an open door-which helps to reinforce that while we can try to empathize with their characters we can never really understand what is going on in their heads.
The animosity between the parents when they are fighting about the appropriate reaction to their loss, and the chemistry when they hide away from the reality for a while shows both sides of how shared pain can either drive a couple apart or bring them closer together.

Review: Dirty Girl

I’ve seen Juno Temple in Atonement, Cracks, Mr. Nobody, Kaboom and now Dirty Girl-and this may be her best performance that I’ve seen. We first see her character Danielle climb out of the backseat of her Mustang and glide across the parking lot in broad daylight. According to the director, Abe Sylvia that was an homage to the “dirty” girl in his high school in Oklahoma who streaked the school and looked so happy and free while everyone else around her seemed repressed and miserable.
The movies starts with Clarke (played by the charming and adorable Jeremy Dozier) watching Danielle rock the backseat from across the lot. The two are paired up in a school project and the we see the contrast between Danielle’s openness with her body and sexuality and the way Clarke hides behind his layers of clothing. Her status as the school bike and his as a dude who likes dudes are known by all, but while Danielle can embrace her otherness, Clarke only lets loose safely behind his closed bedroom door.
Their relationship helps both characters deal with their Daddy issues and their self-image and along the way we are rewarded a great supporting cast. Dwight Yoakam, Tim McGraw, Mary Steenburgen and Milla Jovovich all put in solid, authentic performances.

Review: The First Grader

I tend to cry during the festival. Movies that might normally get a sniffle or induce a slight redness of the eyes under normal circumstances at TIFF have me bawling uncontrollably. I don’t know if it the energy of the crowd, or just the festival-induced fatigue that lowers my emotional walls to the point where I’m getting weeping along with the battle-scarred directors in Every Little Step watching Jason Tam’s audition.

So I thought I was ready heading in to The First Grader – at least I thought I knew what to expect. The ten-second summary is “an 84 year old man enrolls in primary school after the Kenyan government announces there will be free education for all”. So I figured that I would see some adorable children, a lovable earnest teacher and some flashbacks to the war-torn past that would culminate in an uplifting story of how the human spirit can overcome adversity. We get all of that, but we also get so much more. I can barely write this as some of the images from the film continue to haunt me – as they should. In the film over and over again we hear the argument repeated that children are the future and precious resources should not be wasted on an old man’s education – but the story of the old man is a vital missing piece in the curriculum. In an effort to move past the tribalism and retribution they turned away from learning about the history that shaped what their nation had become.

Two performances stand out – Lwanda Jawar as the young Maruge has almost no dialogue but in the flashbacks he is so intense you don’t need to hear him speak at all. The love for his wife and family, his dedication to his oath and ultimately his pain during his captivity is clearly visible in a gaze that burns through the lens. Oliver Litondo as the older Maruge gives the best performance I have seen in years. I can’t compare it to anything I have seen-I can only say that it was amazing, and in the screening I saw more than half of the crowd got to it’s feet as Litondo came to the stage.

If you have a chance to see this movie, do it. Bring Kleenex, but do it.

Review: Easy Money

Easy Money is a two hour noir / action film from Sweden. Putting this in my schedule at 9 AM on the first Sunday knowing full well it was likely I would be suffering from overindulgence, lack of sleep and the beginnings of festival knee was one of my sketchier moves this year. Luckily this gamble paid off with this fantastic film.

Easy Money follows three main characters, Jorge the recently escaped prisoner, Mrado the Serbian enforcer and JW the taxi driver / student. While Jorge and Mrado are the “real” criminals I find JW the most suspect as he is constantly re-creating himself, layering lies on top of truth to the point where we never really know what kind of person he was, is or could be. We get a pretty decent amount of character development for all three outside of the world of crime. Unlike a movie like Heat where I was screaming inside for a re-edit to cut the detail of the backstory of every, especially once they started in on Dennis Haysbert’s diner cook (seriously just get to a shootout already) Easy Money keeps it moving between the live, the crime and the connection points between the characters. According to the director most of the supporting roles were not played by trained actors, and the realism shows, especially when the Chilean and Serbian cast members are speaking in their mother tongue. The authenticity in the way the untrained actors interact adds another dimension to an already good film, making me very excited to see the sequels that are allegedly scheduled to be filmed and released over the next few years.

Much less excited to see the North American remake that will allegedly start Zac Efron.

Review: Love Crime & Our Day Will Come

Here’s the thing – the first French movie I ever watched at TIFF was Brotherhood of the Wolf and for the entire movie I sat there with my mouth agape thinking that it was the coolest freaking thing I had ever seen. I left convinced that France was some kind of secret stronghold for movie awesomeness and vowed to continue to leverage my late-start French Immersion by choosing as many French movies as I could fit in the schedule. I remember wondering why our teachers only took us to see Jean de Florette and Manon des Source when there was kickassy goodness like this coming from France.

So fast forward to my next two festivals where I select a handful of French movies both years and they all manage to suck. Everything from the story, pacing, performances, even the sound in a couple were just really bad. The lighting was always very good – consistently flattering and appropriate to mood.

So I banned French films from my TIFF schedule going forward, with exceptions only for one Canadian IF it looked interesting, or France-French with Daniel Auteueil.  I did get to enjoy beautiful gems like My Best Friend and C.R.A.Z.Y but most of the time if I saw that the primary language of the film was French I flipped the page and never looked back.

Gradually over the years French movies have wormed their way back into my schedule. This year I have three, the two I’ll talk about in this post, and L’amour fou later in the week.

First the good – Love Crime with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, directed by (sadly recently deceased) Alain Corneau. I saw Thomas in Partir last year, and I pretty much picked Love Crime because it was French – but with her in it. The story of the two leads battling it out for dominance in the workplace was paced well, and all of the supporting roles were well cast with good performances throughout the film. While I think we are supposed to empathize more with the up-and-comer Isabelle portrayed by the lovely Ludivine (at times she resembled Blake Lively a bit too much, especially with her hair down) I found myself perversely rooting for Christine the mentally abusive boss. But that’s probably a personal bit of baggage I was bringing in with me.

Moving on.

So heading into Our Day Will Come this afternoon I was cautiously optimistic even though my other festival friends kept giving me the WTF (what, THAT film?) face when I showed them my schedule. After all it had Vincent Cassel – he of the Brotherhood so how could I go wrong?

I was wrong. Others enjoyed it – the woman in front of me in the theatre seemed to really get it – however I did not. At all. What I learned today is that I need to go back to my default method of evaluation by looking for hints in the programme book (see the archives here,  here, and here) for all movies, whether they are French or not. My challenge with the film wasn’t the violence, the seemingly gratuitous sex scene (actually watching M. Cassel roll around with a handful of half-clad nubile young things was pretty entertaining) or anything else – and once again the lighting work was competent. I just wasn’t able to connect with the story or the characters in the slightest. I found the direction a bit disjointed at times, but now knowing that Romain Gavras used to direct music videos I can understand the style – just not the movie.

Review: The Pipe

The story of the town of Rossport vs Shell E&P Ireland is an all too familiar one. A big company wants to extract resources from an area and they use small cash incentives, a loose interpretation of the law, and a lot of brute force to move in, despite the objections of the inhabitants.

The documentary was directed by Risteard Ó Domhnaill. In the Q&A he told the attendees that as he lived in the area the protesters and police all knew him and you can feel the way he managed to blend into the background as you get to observe fairly unfiltered conversations throughout the film. I personally enjoy this style of documentary much more – where you get to observe the action as it happens, as opposed to the talking head interview format. The risk with the second is always that your subjects won’t be as entertaining or comfortable in front of the camera, and you are always aware that you are hearing their best recollection of events. With The Pipe you get to suffer and rejoice with the inhabitants of Rossport as they are fighting the construction of the pipe on land and at sea.

The intimacy the director/cinematographer has is reflected (at times uncomfortably and also hilariously) in the relationship the local authorities. The protesters and the enforcers of Shell’s debated right to build an inland pipe were previously close friends and neighbours, now forced to be on opposite sides of a divisive issue. Watching them fight is like watching the crumbling of a family – and we do get to see first hand that the fighting also extends to the different groups of protesters in Rossport. The battle between Shell and Rossport continues…I hope Risteard Ó Domhnaill still has his camera handy.

Review: Wasted on the Young

Another great pick from Jane Schoettle, Wasted on the Young opens with a moment of stillness from the emotionally bankrupt and perpetually charismatic Zack. From the very beginning you are asking yourself what happened to these kids. The chilling and depressing answer is that at every decision point popular opinion is what drives the outcome of the story, not what is right, wrong, true or false.

The very talented cast brings a realistic portrayal of self-involved teens at an exclusive private school to life in a surreal and over-saturated canvas. The school, the pools, the parties are just the green-screen environment for the kids-their “reality” is defined by what happens on their computers and cell phones. Who you are and what you may or may not have done is decided by popular vote via text message and wall postings. If the wisdom of the crowds decides you are a trusted source, you can get away with anything.
Great casting for every role (although they aren’t all entirely believable as teenagers, but the average age gap is no worse than that for the cast of original and new 90210). Great editing, chilling story, and overall an amazing film.

Review: Legend of the Fist

Donnie Yen is absolutely at the top of his game in this period piece directed by Andrew Lau. It’s a continuation of the story of Chen Zhen previously portrayed by Bruce Lee on the big screen and Donnie Yen on the small screen.
You don’t need to know any of the background going in-I didn’t even read the full summary in the programme book. I picked it because of the title and the flying kick picture in the book. The movie was amazing-especially the first 15 minutes. The final showdown *spoiler alert* had one of the best Inigo Montoya moments since Mandy himself picked up his bloody sword and kept fighting. The second act was a bit slow, but the art direction, costumes and camera work was so good I was more than happy to have such a visually pleasing break between fight scenes.

Canteen – Didn’t Suck

Ok, it was lovely, such a lovely experience in fact that I may be willing to forgo my informal ban on solids at the O & B family of restos.

I had a bad experience. Moving on.

I thought that the last thing the overcrowded strip between Simcoe and Peter on King needed was another place to eat, which may still be true – but what we didn’t have in that strip was enough seating where you could eat like a civilized person without having to wait for service. If you try to go to one of the sit down restaurants you better have at least a 2-3 hour gap between films. If you go to one of the more casual spots you don’t have the same selection, they usually aren’t licensed. One of the only places with lots of seating is z-teca – and no matter how far away from the kitchen you sit you will leave smelling like grilled meat and cilantro.

Canteen had welcoming, efficient staff (I hope they still do come September 20th, but if anything can beat the nice out of you it’s festival goers sans caffeine – just ask the kids at Scotiabank). The bacon butty I had for breakfast after the pickup was divine. Of course adding bacon – back or any other format – automatically kicks up the awesome factor on a meal, but this was just the perfect little smackerel of something to have with a bottomless cup of coffee, all for under $8 (not including tip). The next day I went for one of the lunch sandwiches – a chicken club (yes again with the bacon) and it was equally yummy. The salads I bought for a healthy, tiny friend were according to her, great, and she consumed her mixed green salad and italian couscous with much enthusiasm.

The salads were a bit of a higher price point, but since I will be sticking mainly to foodstuffs that include bacon in one format or another I’m not too concerned.