September 20, 2005
It was a particularly good year for me at the Toronto International Film Festival despite being in the third-last box for the ticket lottery. With few exceptions film after film was enjoyable, even those at the bottom of the pile did not measure “down” to the historical lows. And while it’s hard to rank them all, here they are, somewhat ranked, best at the top of each list:
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
It can be really easy to mix up a well-made documentary with a merely well-intentioned one whose message you believe in. That said, I enjoyed all the docs I saw, and I think they all passed the not-just-well-intentioned test. Do I want to see them again though? Here’s the summary:
NANOOK OF THE NORTH • The first documentary ever, a 1922 classic set on Quebec’s Hudson Bay coast, concerning the Innu way of life.
Fantastic to see with live accompaniment, especially Inuit throat singers.
WHY WE FIGHT • the American Military-Industrial complex, in all its wretchedness.
Scary, good, very important. I hope this gets a reasonably wide release - it will certainly stir up some controversy.
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY • Frank Gehry’s architectural career is analyzed.
I’d see this again in a flash.
ZIZEK! • Slovenian Lacanian-Marxist philosopher trying to make a mark in this world.
Entertaining, but will whizz over many heads. Worth a second look.
THE GIANT BUDDHAS • the destruction of the Giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban.
I had to leave before the end, but what I saw was quite compelling.
THE WELL • piecing together Orson Welles’ life in Spain and how it affected him and his work.
The only other film I was a bit sleepy during parts, it provides a lot of information on Welles.
OVERCOMING • Denmark’s CSC cycling team at the 2004 Tour de France.
Fun to get a more intimate look at the Tour than mere race coverage, but the editing is a little too flashy for 100-minutes worth.
CONCERT FILMS
Despite being grouped here, these two are very different, and both very differently enjoyable.
LIZA WITH A Z • A great 1972 Broadway song and dance show restored.
Minnelli was surprisingly captivating in both the movie and the Q&A that followed the screening.
SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC • A stand up act out to slaughter all sacred cows.
Very funny, but in the end you wonder if it was all a bit much.
ANIMATED FEATURES
The three I saw this year were all really good (unlike last year when I foolishly subjected myself to A SHARK TALE, which, if anyone needs to be reminded again, is crap).
WALLACE AND GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT • English town pushed to the brink by a big rabbit out for a big veggie dinner.
Brilliantly insane, laugh-out-loud crazy, bring the whole family nuts. How long must we wait for the next labour-intensive installment? Five years again? Noooooooo!
TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE • Fish merchant heir marries the wrong girl, she’s too dead.
Whimsical, gorgeous, funny, and not too scary for kids.
THE DISTRICT • Not for the kids (or the stuffy) Eastern Block South Park, uniquely visionary animation.
Definitely underground, but lots of fun. Seriously, no kids.
LIVE-ACTION ANIMATED FEATURE
This is definitely in a category of its own:
PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES • Soprano is kidnapped by a mad scientist who squirrels her away on a menacing island.
Dreamy, ethereal, often difficult to comprehend, unique. ERASERHEAD for the opera crowd.
BEST FEATURES
I plan to see all of these again.
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED • Jewish New Yorker goes to the Ukraine to look for his ancestral home.
Standout performance: Eugene Hutz as Alex, the tour guide.
Very funny, rather moving.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE • A diner owner is thrust into the spotlight when he kills two hostage takers in self defense.
Standout performance: William Hurt as a Philadelphia mobster
An occasionally violent, sometimes scary, very taught thriller, with a brilliant ending. Excellent performances.
OLIVER TWIST • Orphan Oliver makes his way in Victorian England escaping from one bad situation to land in another - before things look up.
Standout performance: Sir Ben Kingsley as Fagin
Dickens’ classic novel comes to life, a little darkly, but so engrossingly. A bit gruesome for younger kids.
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING • Tobacco spokesman Nick Naylor comes to a crisis point in this satire on all things spun.
Standout performances: Aaron Eckhart and Rob Lowe
Occasional misfires, but mostly a terrific comedy actually written for adults.
KISS KISS BANG BANG • New York thief mistaken for being an actor learns to play a detective while helping with an odd L.A. case.
Standout performance: Val Kilmer plays a wisecracking gay detective
Total fluff, totally entertaining
BROTHERS OF THE HEAD • Mockumentary about a 70s Brit punk band fronted by conjoined twins.
Standout performance: Unknown Treadaway twins are an incredible find, perfect for this double role.
Not for everyone, but a terrific evocation of the punk era - drugs, desperation, music, physicality - it’s all there
TRANSAMERICA • Pre-op transsexual finds he sired a son long ago and must deal with his past before he’s a she.
Standout performance: Felicity Huffman playing a man on the way to becoming a woman. Wow.
Totally contrived, but handled so well that all disbelief is happily suspended for a quite funny, kinda moving film.
WHOLE NEW THING • 13 year-old Emerson develops a crush on his English teacher, and developments surprise everybody.
Standout performance: Aaron Webber as the gifted and determined Emerson.
Clever writing propels this inexpensively made coming-of-age movie. Controversial bits likely mean other 13-year olds won’t be allowed to see it.
DEAR WENDY • Outsiders start a club for gun-loving pacifists in a dying American mining town in this brilliant satire.
Standout performance: Jamie Bell, who was great as Billy Elliot, is unbelievably good as the founder of the gun club.
Director Thomas Vinterberg (CELEBRATION) crafts a Lars Von Trier screenplay into a film that is simultaneously subtle and caustic, and fun.
GOOD FEATURES
I wouldn’t mind seeing these again.
FESTIVAL • Performers from all over converge on Edinburgh for the annual fringe festival and compete for audiences.
Funny. Lampoons include a Canadian experimental theatre troop.
THE WHITE MASSAI • Swiss woman follows a Masai warrior into the Kenyan bush to start a new life together.
Exotic. Fascinating cultural study eclipses story, but that’s fine.
SIXTH OF MAY • Mystery concerning the events surrounding the death of Dutch right-winger Pim Fortuyn in 2002.
Intriguing political thriller. Made me want to know a lot more about the real story it’s based on.
LE TEMPS QUI RESTE • A 31-year old Frenchman comes to terms with an inoperable cancer diagnosis.
Bittersweet, bitterfunny: a tragedy that is ultimately uplifting.
VERS LE SUD • Three women descend on a Haitian beach resort in the 1970s looking for love.
It’s not everyday you get a look at Haiti, and I’ve never seen this subject matter in a similar context before. All that equals interesting.
L’ENFANT • Young and unemployed parents deal with the birth of their first child in a grimy industrial city in Belgium.
Tough, but feels so realistic.
NEVERWAS • Son of a troubled children’s book author tries to better understand the demons that destroyed his father.
Good but flawed, weirdly flawed.
OKAY FEATURES
I don’t care if I ever see these again.
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES • 50s comedy duo come under suspicion in the death of a hotel room-service girl.
Colin Firth is especially good, the film holds interest, buuuuuuuuut I don’t care about any of it subsequently.
THE NOTORIOUS BETTE PAGE • Pin-up Queen of the Universe turns out to be wide-eyed innocent.
Interesting, but pretty simple. No second viewing required.
GENTILLE • Flighty french anesthetist can’t decide whether or not to marry her boyfriend
Cute, but once was enough.
SOMEONE ELSE’S HAPPINESS • Belgian gripped by hit-and-run accident.
Really well made, and provocative, but dark, and I get it.
LITTLE FISH • Aussie tries to improve her life after she got waylaid by drugs a while back.
Well done and all, but too desperate and dark to make me want to see it again.
THE GRÖNHOLM METHOD • Seven applicants vie for a management position at a large Madrid company.
Not too desperate and dark, but too melodramatic for me to care much.
THE MASSEUR • Father dies while son works in a Philippine massage parlour.
Whatever.
NOT SO GOOD FEATURES
I will avoid seeing these again.
SORRY, HATERS • New Yorker traumatized by 9/11 acts out because of feelings of powerlessness.
Not a bad film, but a very difficult one to watch. May be too hot to distribute.
TAKESHIS’ • Circuitous plot about famous Japanese actor and his loser alter ego double.
A few cool scenes, but way too long, and ultimately without substance.
50 WAYS OF SAYING FABULOUS • Adolescent New Zealand outsiders deal with ostracism, bullying, and name-calling.
Well intentioned, but amateurish filmmaking fails to produce more than 1 way of saying fabulous.
OPA! • Hyper-cliched “comedy” set on Greek island. Eyeball roller. Groaner. Induced frantic squirming. Should end Matthew Modine’s career.
Much of the audience enjoyed it, but much of the audience were complete morons. Destined to become cult favourite of the easily pleased.
ATTENTE • Filmmaker looks for actors to join the Palestinian National Theatre.
Incompetent. Well-intentioned but total failure. How did it make it into the festival? Political balance? Too bad to joke about it.
SHORTS
Sorry, What little I remember of them is slipping away quickly. Some were a total waste of time, some were entertaining, but they rarely surface again, so that’s that.
Another year, and I missed all of the prize winners again: they weren’t even amongst the first choices that I missed getting. I don’t know much about them, but if you’re interested, check out www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2005/mediaCentre_releaseItem.asp?id=184.
I say it every year - with so many films and nowhere near enough time available to see all of them, the festival is a different experience for each attendee - but this year, this does seem to be some agreement in the press that this was an exceptional festival. Here’s hoping next year will be exceptional too.
Meanwhile, it’s been two days since my last film, and I miss those cinemas. I’ll have to get back out to them soon!
Signing off until next year,
Craig James White
Toronto - see you in the dark!
Bacon number: 2
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September 18, 2005
Ah, Saturday morning cartoons - remember those joyous hours spent in front of the tv drinking in the wisdom of Josie and the Pussycats, the brilliance of Scooby Doo before Scrappy Doo hijacked a ride to stardom, and when the current zeitgeist was served up to you on a platter by the Banana Splits?
Well times have changed for the better, because this Saturday morning started with the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit movie, THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT! I gotta tell you, that’s a dandy of a cartoon, that one. Director Nick Park and Aardman Animations scored a winning feature length stop-animation film with CHICKEN RUN five years ago, so with plastercine comrades W & G having starred in three half-hour length shorts before, two of them Best Animated Short Oscar Winners, Wallace and Gromit were due for the promotion.
WERE-RABBIT is pure insanity, a warren of jokes of both verbal and visual origin, and a huge crowd-pleaser. This time out for our heroes, terribly clever creator Nick Park has Wallace and Gromit saving their town from a giant rabbit that is making mulch out of the townsfolk’s gardens right before the annual Vegetable Fair. Coming to the aid of Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter - it’s a very talkative year for her cinematically), Wallace thinks he’s got the perfect solution in a giant rabbit vacuum contraption he’s invented. Not everything goes exactly as expected however, so the future hinges on the ability of Gromit, the dog, and the more even-keeled of the two, to sort things out. This will be out in time for Canadian Thanksgiving - see it right after you go to CORPSE BRIDE and have a very stop-action animated Fall!
THE SIXTH OF MAY, or 06/05 [site], was the last film made by Dutch writer/director Theo Van Gogh before he was murdered last November. Van Gogh was murdered for a short documentary film he made about the mistreatment of women under Sharia law. Somewhat ironically 06/05 is about another murder, that of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn on May sixth, 2002. Fortuyn was leading the polls three weeks before the election running on a xenophobic platform in the post 9/11 world.
This film fictionalizes some of the events leading up to and following the event, and serves to air a conspiracy theory about how the murder came to happen. With lots of intrigue about ethnicity and racism and state control of the press in modern day Holland, it’s a film that will leave you wanting to know a lot more about the situation…
…and wishing you had had time to stay for the Q&A, which I hadn’t. I don’t know if 06/05 will sell here. I would program it at an art house, it’s certainly good enough, but I suspect distributors will not expect enough interest in Dutch politics within North america to make it worth their while. Maybe the Independent Film Channel on digital cable will get it. I’ll have to look into that some more…
L’ENFANT was this year’s Cannes film festival Palme d’Or winner. Directed by the Dardenne Brothers, L’ENFANT tells the story of a few days following the birth of a son to a young unemployed mother and petty-thief father in a grimy industrial Belgian city. The Dardennes like realism, and try to make their movies as unmovie-like as possible, with strictly location shooting and no soundtrack. Certainly not a happy story, L’ENFANT shows what it’s like to be poor and feeling trapped in a situation when an opportunity comes along to make some serious money in a not so above-board way. It’s not always easy to like a tough movie like this, but I appreciate films that strive to be realistic and succeed through believable situation and which don’t stoop to complex contrivances. L’ENFANT was grim but real.
And then there was ATTENTE, which was simply really grim. Hampered by bad writing, bad acting, and bad directing, the film had a certian, uh, bad quality to it. ATTENTE tells the story of a filmmaker who lives in Gaza but is fed up with the hell that is daily life there and wants to leave. He is persuaded by the founder of the Palestinian National Theatre to stay for one more job however: find Palestinian actors now living in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and have them come home to be a part of the resident theatre company.
The good part of the film was getting to see some of Amman Jordan, Damascus Syria, and somewhere in Lebanon. The bad part was the 90% of the film that stitches the travelogue together with the contrived sequences that L’ENFANT completely avoided. As the low-quality of the filmmaking was pretty evenly maintained throughout, it’s hard to pick out good examples of its underachievements, but one characteristic of the film that’s worth noting is that not once in the film does anyone talk over anyone else’s lines: every actor waits for a prior line of dialogue to be delivered (badly), then allows for a brief pause, then responds with their line. It’s the most rehearsed looking thing I’ve seen in years.
And then there’s the character of the Palestinian news anchor who comes along for the audition trip. You pick news anchors because they can calmly read news about the daily atrocity with some objectivity, but this woman couldn’t possibly keep a straight face as I’ve never seen an actress screw up or roll her eyes, mash her eyebrows together, and wrinkle her forehead more in the cause of over-acting. It was either that from her or no acting at all, just walking around awkwardly on camera when she didn’t have a line to over-deliver.
Oooo, then there’s the mind-numbing repetition in this film. Auditions go on and on
and on. The director character refuses to direct. The news anchor repeatedly tells him he’s mean. The camera man can never work-under-these-conditions. No one learns a thing in this Allahforsaken work.
Too bad the real cameraman did work under these conditions. Beirut-al.
That was screening number 41, but this is it folks, screening number 42, the last of the festival: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is a debut feature directing job for Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman of GHOSTBUSTERS and a million other movies fame. It stars Aaron Eckhart (remember him, the boyfriend from ERIN BROKOVICH that starred in NEVERWAS earlier in the festival?) in a very effective role as the spokesman for Big Tobacco in the United States in the 90s. Eckhart is on his way to becoming a real star.
Very funny, with lots of caustic humour, SMOKING takes aim at lobbyists, at the news media, at the entertainment industry, at the government, at the commercialization of health, and at the lobby groups themselves - guns, alcohol, and of course, especially tobacco - and hits them all with its scattershot. No-one is hit lethally here, but they all get winged, and it’s a lot of fun to watch.
Strong supporting performances come from Maria Bello (get to know her in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE out later this month) and David Koechner (check out how much 2005 and 2006 work this Saturday Night Live alumnus has on the go on the imdb) as two more lobbyists, Robert Duvall as Big Tobacco’s Big Chief, J.K. Simmons as Big Tobacco’s Little Chief, Sam Elliott as the Marlboro Man, William H. Macy as a US Senator, and as a Hollywood dealmaker, Rob Lowe in an especially hilarious bit.
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING also stars Katie Holmes. Don’t let that bit of toxicity scare you though: from the great opening credits onwards SMOKING will hook you.
So, there you go. It’s over. And I feel like a glutton for wanting more, but it’s been a very good year, and there were a lot of films that I wanted to see but could not schedule. The upcoming fall and winter release schedule is looking pretty good, with many promising films that I didn’t catch coming soon (PROOF, CAPOTE, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ELIZABETHTOWN, SHOPGIRL, NORTH COUNTRY, the list goes on and on) and lots that I did see that I may want to catch again too. You can browse what’s-coming-out-when at a few sites on the internet; I like to rely on www.boxofficemojo.com/schedule .
One more post to wrap things up is coming your way. Cheers!
Craig James White
Toronto - see you in the dark!
Bacon number: 2
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September 18, 2005
THE WHITE MASAI [site] is based on the autobiography of Corinne Hofmann, a Swiss woman who left her boyfriend at the end of a trip to Kenya to follow into the bush a handsome traditionally-garbed Maasai warrior who had fascinated her. In the movie Corinne is Carola, and she’s certain that from the moment she sees Lemalian that she has seen her destiny.
Lemalian is taken with her too, and after Carola’s protracted search for him, Lemailian brings her to his very primitive village. How will Carola survive in the Kenyan bush? You’ll have to see THE WHITE MASAI to find out I suppose, and it won’t disappoint. The film features beautiful cinematography of everything from sweeping vistas of the exotic landscape, to the rough and bustling cities and towns of Kenya, and to the intimate setting of Barsaloi, the little mud-hut village that Carola learns to call home. German actress Nina Hoss is quite good as Carola, but it was Burkina-Fasso born actor Jacky Ido who plays Lemalian that had the mostly female audience fully ready to follow him into any bush at all.
I’m not sure if THE WHITE MASAI has found a North American distributor yet, but everyone that I talked with that had seen were very positive about it, so there’s a good chance that you’ll see MASAI out on the art house circuit.
GENTILLE tells the story of Fontaine Leglou, a rather flighty Parisian anesthetist, who just can’t decide if she should marry her boyfriend of two years. That’s the whole plot. Cute, quirky situations unspool. Actors act. It was more like a French pastry than a French film: surprisingly light.
There aren’t many Hollywood screen legends (actually enigma would be a better term) who seem more interesting than Orson Welles, and yet I don’t know more about him than what I have gleaned from some of his movies including THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, A TOUCH OF EVIL, and most notably of course, one of the greatest films ever made, CITIZEN KANE. I was happy to see a that a documentary on part of his life - time that he spent in Spain - was a part of the festival this year. Too bad I didn’t get a coffee beforehand.
In THE WELL Swedish filmmaker Kristian Petri travels around Spain following Orson Welles‘ footsteps there. Welles loved the country so much he spent the best part of two decades there, and he is buried there now, his ashes at the bottom of a well on the estate of a famous bullfighter. Petri wants to learn why, and documents what is known of Welles‘ time in Spain by filming interviews with Welles‘ former girlfriend and several colleagues, and includes many clips of Welles‘ personally shot but unfinished films from his time in Spain.
I lost about a third of this film to general doziness, so I can’t say if overall this was a great documentary, but it was solid, and I did learn a lot more about Welles, so for those who are interested in him, it will be worth their while to look out for this film.
TRANSAMERICA sounds pretty odd when summarized, and I was expecting it to be just as odd to watch. It was however both quite funny and rather affecting. The film stars Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives) as pre-operative Bree, who is transitioning from being Stanley, as she prepares for sex-reassignment surgery. Bree’s psychological preparation for the operation has been drawn-out and intense, and just when surgery has finally been given the final go-ahead, Bree gets a telephone call from a son that Stanley never knew he had. Toby is in custody in New York for hustling, and Bree’s therapist insists that she deal with this surprise from her past before the surgery can proceed. All of that set-up felt totally contrived, but what followed was so well handled that the audience was ready to embrace the movie fully.
First off, the film, while a bit amateurishly edited, is very well written. Emotional at times, it never dips into sickly sentimentality, and while serious at the core, it’s very funny: Bree has a great knack for zingers. Secondly, Felicity Huffman is simply great as Bree: I would not have believed a woman playing a man who’s on his way to becoming a woman could be so convincing. The audience agreed, and Huffman received a prolonged standing ovation at the end.
A good bit of that ovation was likely directed towards Kevin Zegers too. Zegers, a Woodstock, Ontario boy in his first big role as Toby, does a great job as the disadvantaged delinquent with an attitude. In TRANSAMERICA you wonder if you’re seeing the beginnings of stardom for this guy.
Every year since 2000 the festival has retrieved a silent film from a vault somewhere and presented it with a live with live musical accompaniment. This year they dug up a film I’ve heard references to again and again over the years, and I’m thrilled I finally got to see it tonight. 
NANOOK OF THE NORTH is a 1922 black and white classic, part documentary, part dramatization, of what life was like for the Inuit of the Ungava Peninsula. That’s northern Quebec for those without a handy MapArt Canada map, and Nanook and his family lived there along the eastern edge of Hudson Bay.
A surprise hit in New York when it debuted, (and subsequently internationally), NANOOK was the only real exposure many people had to the vanishing “Eskimo” way of life for many years. Tonight we were priviledged to experience it with an ensemble of musicians and singers including Inuit throat singers, debuting a new score by Montréal composer Gabriel Thibaudeau.
The film is pretty amazing. Essentially we are presented with the day-to-day existence of a nomadic Inuit family grouping both in summer and winter time. Scenes include seal and walrus hunts, ice-jam running, fishing and igloo building, all of which is now long relegated to the past, and all of which was pretty mesmerizing. The musical accompaniment - especially the throat singing - was just amazing, and was met with a standing ovation at the end.
While the screening felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment, it’s also one that every Canadian should get the opportunity of experiencing. I don’t know what the chances are of this film being available on DVD with this new soundtrack, but one would assume that new music like this is not written for a one-night-only performance. If you ever hear of a similar performance - GO! NANOOK was great.
Craig James White
Toronto - see you in the dark!
Bacon number: 2
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