The worst film I saw at TIFF 2015 would be in the running for the worst
film I have ever seen at TIFF in 11 years. That would be Dito Montiel’s Man Down a heavy handed movie dealing
with an Afghan war veteran (Shia LaBeouf). Two things make the films at
least watchable – the first being LaBeouf’s very committed
(though not necessary good) performance in the lead role. This is ACTING and it’s
never boring, at least. The other is that the structure of the movie is so
needlessly complex – jumping all over the place in terms of time periods – from
LaBeouf in Afghanistan, to his days in basic training, to his pre-war
relationship with his wife (Kate Mara) and their son, to him being interviewed
by an army shrink (Gary Oldman) about an “incident” to some sort of dark future, where America has been destroyed and
LaBeouf and his best friend (Jai Courtney)
try and find his wife and son. Montiel forces you to pay attention,
because if you don’t, you’ll have no idea what the hell is happening. The bad
part is that nothing that is happening is all that interesting – and all the
actors who are not LaBeouf seem bored (to be fair, Jai Courtney always seems bored, so that’s
just his thing). What Oldman or Mara’s excuses are, I don’t know, but part of it
could be the horrible roles they have. Worse yet, the movie is one of those
with a “shocking twist ending” – which isn’t all that shocking except in how
heavy handed it is – plus the fact that after the twist is revealed, the movie
just keeps on going for far too long. If for some reason, all this still sounds
interesting to you, don’t worry – I’m sure you’ll be able to find Man Down
where you find most of Montiel’s films –heading straight to VOD and your local
Wal-Mart’s bargain bin.
Nowhere near as bad as Man Down, but still not very good was the
Canadian mockumentary No Men Beyond This
Point directed by Marc Sawers, which imagines a world that, starting in the
1950s, women started to be able to become pregnant without the aid of men – in
fact could not get pregnant by men at all – and only gave birth to girls. Now,
in 2015, the film tells the story of how this happened – and of the youngest
man in the world, now in his mid-30s. There are some amusing lines in the film,
and its never that painful to watch, but Sawers never really does anything the
least bit unexpected in the film – and some of the things he suggests would
happen in a world like this are quite simply laughably stupid (and not in the
way Sawers intends). There is a seed of a good idea here – but unfortunately,
the movie does nothing to exploit it, taking the easiest path possible
throughout. Again, I cannot imagine this one is coming to a theater near
anyone, anytime soon.
Another film that undoubtedly won’t be heading to too many theaters,
outside of film festivals, but for entirely reasons would be Tsai Ming-liang’s Afternoon. The celebrated Malaysian
born, Taiwan based filmmaker had said he was going to retire after his last
films – 2013’s Stray Dogs – even though he’s still in his 50s, and while he
Afternoon is a new film just two years later, he still may well be retired. This
isn’t a film like his others – but rather is a filmed conversation with his
leading man Kang-sheng
Lee. Tsai, who has always loved long, unbroken shots, outdoes himself here –
the entire movie is made up of 4 identical shots – with Tsai and Lee in chairs
near the top of the house in the mountains they now share – with two large
windows taking up much of the frame, as the trees from outside creep inside,
and you see mountains in the background. All of this probably sounds kind of
dull – and admittedly, it can be. And those looking for insights into the many
films this pair have made together will likely be disappointed – many of their
films are mentioned, but none are really discussed. Instead it’s a film about
their friendship and collaboration on a more personal level. To be honest, most
people probably won’t care about this film – even at TIFF, the screening I
attended was maybe half full – and it does play more like something that will
wind up as a special feature on a Criterion Collection DVD than a film unto
itself, but I found the film calming, beautiful and serene, and really kind of
fascinating. Like I said, it likely will not be seen in theaters outside of
film festivals – but if you like Tsai, it is certainly worth seeing.
Another sparsely attended
of my screenings was for Sergey Losnitsa’s The
Event which is a documentary entirely made up of archival footage from
Leningrad from August 1991, when a group of Soviet elites tried a coup d’état,
and Russians took to the street to protest. The film is meant as a companion
piece to last year’s Maidan (a film I didn’t see) about protests in the Ukraine
over Putin’s acts of aggression. Putin shows up in the footage here as well –
as a young KGB agent – but the protests are much different than the ones in the
Ukraine – calmer, less angry. The ultimate point may well be that the more
things change, the more they stay the same – there is a sense of hope among the
protesters in the film – and it is true that less than 6 months later, the
Soviet Union would collapse. Things didn’t get much better however, which is
why there are still protests and anger. The film doesn’t provide much in the
way of context for the events – but I found it wasn’t completely necessary –
although the film will certainly be of more interest to Russian audiences (if
they can see it) or those more versed in Russian history than I.
You may think that there would be little interest in a movie about
Icelandic goat herders, but Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams was packed at TIFF, and the audience really seemed to enjoy
the film, right up until the ambiguous ending, where there was an audible
collective groan (personally, I like it when movies end like Rams does, but
many audiences don’t seem to agree with me). Winner of the Un Certain Regard
Prize at Cannes this year, Rams is about two brothers who can literally see
each other’s houses from their own kitchens, but haven’t spoken in decades (we
will eventually find out why). The two both raise goat – like many in their
small valley community – and they are the only two with the type raised by
their father – but an outbreak of scrapple means all the animals have to be
slaughtered – but both brothers are too stubborn to allow that to happen
without a fight. The film is thoughtful and gently comedic, and ends in an
emotional maelstrom that you really do not expect in a movie about Icelandic
goat herders. I wonder if the subject matter will keep general audiences away
when the film is released – but hopefully not. While I don’t think the film
ever rises to the level of greatness, it is solid throughout – and is more of a
crowd pleaser than you may think.
Mad Canadian genius Guy Maddin was back at TIFF with not just one but
two movies. The more official of the two was The Forbidden Room – which he co-directed with Evan Johnson, and
apparently has been trimmed a little since its premiere at Sundance in January.
Now just a shade under two hours, The Forbidden Room is a visually stunning
film, in the usual Guy Maddin way but even more so, with a narrative layered
inside of narratives – all apparently based on the plot of lost silent films,
which is, of course, the type of thing Maddin would do. The film has a
collection of Canadian and French stars – as it spins from one narrative to the
next and back again, it’s all perhaps a little too complicated and complex, and
yes, confusing. Still, there isn’t a frame of this film that isn’t full of
visual invention – and the film is frequently hilarious in that typical Maddin
way. I don’t think The Forbidden Room quite rises to the level of Maddin’s best
work – like My Winnipeg, The Heart of the World or The Saddest Music in the
World – but it’s certainly a must see for fans of Maddin. The other Guy Maddin
film at TIFF – also co-directed by Evan Johnson, as well as Gaelen Johnson –
only played on a flat screen TV in the corner of the Bell Lightbox Lobby on a
continuous loop throughout the festival. Bring
Me the Head of Tim Horton is more Maddin madness, but this time I think it
really is one of the best things Maddin has ever made, and one can only hope
that the film will be available in some form or another after the festival.
Somehow Maddin was able to convince the “Great Canadian Populist” Paul Gross to
allow him on the set of his Afghan war film Hyena Road to do a “making of”
documentary of the film. Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton starts out with Maddin
definitely throwing shade at Gross (that is where the Great Canadian Populist
line comes from) as Maddin laments the fact that his own production is dragging
on, and he’s out of money, while Gross gets a budget many times his own. This
part of the film is hilarious, but then the film takes a more serious turn –
and becomes less about Gross and his movie, and more about the nature of war
movies in general, which Maddin describes as a “funeral without a body”, and
wonders if there is a way to do a war movie that forces the audience to
confront the reality of war rather than to try and recreate it faithfully, and
then goes ahead and tries that – but taking footage from the Gross’s film, and
playing with it – turning one sequence into a silly laser fight, with a with
high contrast, and ending with footage from the set with a soundtrack of Guy
LaFleaur reading from his own book scoring. Maddin’s films, of course, have
always been steeped in cinema history – and this is one of his most interesting
looks at it, forcing the viewer to see war movies in a new light. You may not
necessarily agree with everything Maddin says in the film – I don’t – but it’s
fascinating to think about, and Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton really is one
of the best films Maddin has made. I really hope more people get a chance to
see the film – which I have to doubt, since few outside of Canada will care
about Paul Gross, and there won’t be many even in Canada who will (watching the
film in the corner of the Lightbox lobby, I was surrounded by others – but most
people seemed to be there for the benches, not the film). I had very little
desire to see Hyena Road – and the reviews out of TIFF, where the film played,
have basically confirmed my fears about the jingoistic seeming film (with some
saying that a better name for the film would be “Canada, Fuck Yeah!”) – but I
have to say, I just may see the film when it opens next month, if for no other
reason than to actually see how Gross choses to show the same scenes Maddin
does in this film. If you get to see this film – please do so.
Italian master Marco Bellocchio celebrates the 50th
Anniversary of his first film – the masterpiece Fists in the Pocket – with a
new film, set once again in his hometown of Bobbio, Blood of My Blood. Bellocchio has never seemed to quite get the
attention his films deserve – and I include myself here, as I haven’t seen as
many of his films as I probably should – and Blood of My Blood will likely also
not quite get the attention it deserves. It is a beautiful, confounding film –
the type that demands conversation afterwards, and perhaps a second viewing as
well. The film is split into two – the first taking place a couple hundred
years ago, as a rich outsider arrives in Bobbio, and along with Church
Officials, are trying to get a beautiful young woman to “confess” to being in
league with the devil, to clear the name of her lover, a priest, who recently
committed suicide. The second part, set in the present day, also has a rich
outsider arriving in Bobbio – this time it`s a Russian billionaire who wants to
buy the prison – the same one from the first section – and the efforts made by
the elderly vampire who calls it his home, and has power in the community, to
stop him. How the two halves relate to each other is never made quite clearly –
although there are certainly echoes of each part in the other. It’s the type of
film that drew me into its web, and afterwards sent me scrambling to read some
reviews that would hopefully help explain its complexities – although as the film
had just premiered at the Venice film festival the previous week, and the
consensus there seemed to be much like mine – a beautiful, intricate film that
will demand repeat viewings to fully comprehend – they didn’t much help. Still,
here’s hoping that Bellocchios film gets the attention it deserves in the
coming months.
If Bellocchio is a confirmed Italian master, than Paolo Sorrentino is a
more modern Italian director whose work is divisive, with many thinking he is a
new master, and others not being quite so sure. His latest film, Youth, is his second in English, and
his follow-up to the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film, The Great Beauty - that many liked much
more than I – I found it to be a hollow, repetitive Fellini clone that was
basically a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. You could say the same
thing about Youth – which stars Michael Caine as a famous composer and conductor,
now retired, and on vacation in Switzerland, along with his old friend – a
director played by Harvey Keitel, working on a new film, and his daughter
(Rachel Weisz) who is going through a divorce, and still bitter about some
things from her childhood. The film is basically about aging and death – of
course – but doesn’t really have much of interest to say about either subject.
Still, it is much better than The Great Beauty, if for no other reason than its
shorter and less repetitive, so Sorrentino’s flashy style doesn’t wear itself
out (and at times is genuinely stunning) and because the performances by Caine,
Keitel, Paul Dano (as a young actor) and especially Weisz (who is typically
guarded throughout, but has one stunning scene) and especially Jane Fonda – in
what basically amounts to a cameo (although a brilliant one, clearly the best
work she has done since returning to acting a decade ago) is typically top
notch. Perhaps, I am willing to concede, that I’m too young for Youth to truly
speak to me - the mainly older audience at the Princess of Wales seemed really
into it. I liked Youth quite a bit – although I’m still not convinced
Sorrentino is a great director, and I’m still waiting for him to top Il Divo.
Making somewhat of a
comeback was Michael Moore, with his first film in 6 years, and in his best in
more than decade, with Where to Invade
Next. Like all of Moore’s films, there are certainly areas that you can
nitpick – and I’m sure when the film is released there will be a lot of that –
but overall the film really is more optimistic than anything Moore has ever
made, and is basically about how America should, and could, do better than it
currently does in terms of serving its own citizenry. Moore takes a tour of
countries around the world (mostly in Europe) to see how they do things
differently, and to take those ideas make to America to improve things there.
He heads to Italy to find out about their vacation policies, to France to talk
about school lunches, Finland for education policy, to Slovenia for free
university education, to Iceland for female equality, etc. The film is fun,
entertaining and very funny – the packed house at the Ryerson was certainly in
the bag for the film from the start – and really does showcase the best and
worst of Moore throughout. I found the film endlessly fascinating, fun and
entertaining. Sure, you can pick a lot of nits here, but I think it’s hard to
argue with Moore’s overarching point here.
A director on a current hot streak who kept it
going was Denis Villeneuve who was at TIFF with his drug war, epic action film Sicario, which really is the best of
its kind since Steven Soderberg's Traffic way back in 2000. The film stars
Emily Blunt as a FBI agent who joins a task force going after a Mexican drug
cartel, who has no idea what she is getting herself into. The film is intense
from the start, and becomes increasingly bloody, brutal and violent, and
although one can complain that the movie gradually leaves Blunt behind to focus
on another character – a brilliantly cold and calculated Benicio Del Toro –
that’s also kind of the point of the movie – that Blunt is used by those around
her, in part because she is a woman and feel they can control her. Brilliantly
shot by Roger Deakins, with great performances throughout, Sicario is one of
the most intense films you will see this year – a thriller with a brain, that
also manages to remain pure entertainment. Don’t miss this later this fall.
There were also new discoveries to be made – at least by me – and two of
the best films I saw at TIFF were by filmmaker unknown to me until now. The
first is Victoria directed by
Sebastian Schipper, which focuses on the title character, brilliantly played by
Laia Costa, a young Spanish living in Berlin, who meets a group of four Berlin
party boys at a club, and stupidly decides to hang out with them afterwards. It
isn’t stupid for the reasons you would expect – but for different reasons, as
the night of fun and partying eventually turns into an ill-advised bank robbery
and its aftermath, with the group of not exactly master criminals, do
everything they shouldn’t do if they want to get away with it. You may have
heard of the film – which won a prize at the Berlin film festival earlier this
year – in part because of its formal gambit – the whole film, all 2 hours and
15 minutes of it, is done entirely in one take. There is no doubt that this is
a gimmick – but it’s a brilliantly handled one by Schipper, who makes the films
into a propulsive and energetic entertainment. There is nothing new here to be
sure, but the film works as pure entertainment – which is never a bad thing.
The challenge for Schipper will be to find a follow-up where he can do
something this entertaining without falling back on a gimmick, as it would get
old fast. For this time though the film works – brilliantly.
There was also
Sundance sensation The Witch by
first time director Robert Eggers which really does join the ranks of recent
films like The Babadook and It Follows, as genuinely unsettling and scary
horror movies, that actually elevate the genre somewhat. Set in the 1600s in
New England, The Witch follows a very devote family – thrown out of their
community, who try and make a go of farming and (mostly) self-destruct in a
paranoia spiral. Yes, there is an actual witch in the film, but the family is
still responsible for most of their own downfall – right up to the stunning final
moments. It’s probably best to see The Witch knowing as little as possible
about it – so I won’t say much more. I will say that the only demerit in the
film is some rather poor acting by the children in the film (not including
lead, Ana Taylor-Joy who plays the eldest daughter in a stunning performance)
but the film is one of those horror movies that get under your skin, and stays
there long after it ends.
As much as I loved Sicario, The Witch and Victoria, there was only one
film I saw at TIFF that I would say is a genuine masterpiece – and that would
be Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s Anomalisa
a stop motion animated film, that it quite simply one of the best films of the
year, and worthy of being the long awaited follow-up to Kaufman’s directorial
debut, Synecdoche, New York way back in 2008 – which was one of my absolute
favorite films of that decade. Like all of Kaufman’s films as a writer, you can
summarize the film quickly, but that won’t give you a sense of what the film is
actually about – but I’ll stick to a brief summary, The film is about an author
and speaker (brilliantly voiced by David Thewlis) in Cincinnati for a speech.
Unhappy with his life, he reaches out for something more – first reaching back
to his past in an effort to recapture something that is long gone, and then
reaching for something new that briefly seems like it could be his salvation.
The other voice work – but Jennifer Jason Leigh as a new woman in his life, and
by Tom Noonan who does the voice of everyone else in the film is also
brilliant. The animation is brilliant – and the precise right choice for this
material (the bizarre criticism by some the films detractors that the film
wouldn’t work if not for the animation is something I don’t get – would
Fantasia work as a live action film? Would The Godfather work as animation?)
The film is further proof that not enough people use animation to do
brilliantly original, adult films – and like all of Kaufman’s films is quietly
profound. This is a film that will be talked about for a long time to come.
So that’s it for TIFF for another year. The general consensus was that it was an off year for the festival – which isn’t a surprise, considering everything from Sundance to Cannes to Venice to Telluride has also been considered somewhat disappointing this year, and TIFF will always have an element of its roots as The Festival of Festivals – which gathers the best films of all the other festivals in a given year. It would be ridiculous of me – who only saw 14 films of the hundreds playing at the festival, to pass judgement on it. What I will say is that out of those 14 films, only two were bad, and the rest were at the very least were good and all of them were interesting. And any festival that gives me a chance to see a film as brilliant as Anomalisa is worth it in my book. There is no doubt about it – I’ll be back again next year.
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