For the twelfth year, I was able to get away and attend the Toronto International Film Festival (“TIFF”), and after 14 films in 5 days, I can say that it was a very good year at the Festival unlike last year, which was rather lackluster. The weather was good (only one day of rain and even then I was watching films when it was raining), and I stayed with some very nice friends and saw lots of other old friends.
Last year, I complained about the process of selecting films because I was again unlucky and was unable to see a number of movies that I wanted. I have to say that the new online selection process was very good and much faster, and allowed you to know what you were getting almost immediately. In fact, this year the only film I was unable to see was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” but I think it was because they booked a smaller theater than they should have and there was only one showing while I was in town.
Anyway, here is my recap of this year’s films:
Friday, September 7, 2012
Despite coming into to town in the early afternoon, my first film wasn’t until 9:00 PM – the British film Wasteland. To say it was derivative is putting it lightly – it is a direct steal from “The Usual Suspects,” sometimes to the good, sometimes not. Luke Treadaway plays Harvey, who has been beaten and is sitting in a police interview room. In walks the always great Timothy Spall, who is coming in to get the story on the failed robbery that led Harvey to this place. Then the film shows Harvey’s story over the preceding months – released from jail on a set-up by local businessman (actually thug) Steven Roper. The story of him reconnecting with his friends and his girlfriend was a very good story. But Harvey has another plan – robbing Roper and exposing him for his criminal actions.
At first, it seems like the four friends are too inept to pull off anything and it appears that the robbery has been foiled, with Roper beaten nearly to death in front of the club he acts as security for. Spall’s character ends up believing the story and saying that the beating was in self-defense, but that Harvey should leave town. He does, along with his friends and girlfriend, but on the constantly running cassette in the interview room, Harvey explains that the plot is much more involved than we are led to believe, leaving Spall with a choice – leave the simpler explanation, or go after the group. It took a few minutes for me to catch up with the dialect (even though they were speaking English), but the parts with the friends were funny and the girlfriend sections were good. I felt that the “heist” was too elaborate for these four guys to put together and it was too similar to “The Usual Suspects” for you to be surprised by the big reveal. Still, it was a very good first feature by director Rowan Athale.
Saturday, September 9, 2012
I always seem to attend one big Hollywood film each year even though the film probably has a release date in the near future. Last year, it was “Moneyball;” this year it was Ben Affleck’s Argo. You probably have heard the premise – six Americans are able to escape from the American Embassy in Iran in 1979 when protesters stormed the embassy and took 55 hostages for over a year. The escapees find refuge in the Canadian Ambassador’s house and the CIA works to get them out.
Affleck plays Tony Mendez, an “extractor” whose job is to get people out of tough situations. Eventually, he convinces the CIA to back a fictitious science fiction film; the cover story is that the six Americans are actually a Canadian production crew scouting locations for the film. To do that, Affleck contacts a Hollywood special effects artist who had worked with the Agency before, played by John Goodman. Goodman is funny by himself, but the lampooning of Hollywood hits high gear when Alan Arkin enters the picture as a producer to make the film appear legit.
The shifts back and forth between tense and suspenseful and humorous works in this movie; you laugh during the LA portions and you remain concerned for the health and safety of the six Americans who are, in their own way, hostages, but without having guns pointed directly at them, and being bound and gagged. Their interaction helps sell the danger that they are in. There are some saying that this film is Oscar-worthy – I don’t know about that, but it is a very solid entertainment, and it was very nice of Mr. Affleck to show up to introduce the film.
As I mentioned, I was unable to attend “The Master,” so I had to make another choice and I ended up with Seven Psychopaths, a film in the Midnight Madness series, which is usually ultraviolent action or horror films. What sold me on this film was the director Martin McDonagh whose last film was the excellent “In Bruges;” and the cast which included In Bruges’ star Colin Farrell, along with four actors who you don’t have to explain they are psychopaths when you see them on screen: Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, and Tom Waits.
Farrell is a screenwriter in LA who has a title for a film, Seven Psychopaths, and writer’s block. Rockwell is his friend, who wants to work on the film and tries to help Farrell, but him “job” is to kidnap dogs and Walken returns the dogs and collects the rewards that the owners put up. The story gets even more bizarre when Rockwell steals a dog belonging to Harrelson, who is a gangster and is one of the title psychopaths. Harrelson and his thugs come after the dog; Waits is a psychopath who has killed people with this African-American wife who left him and now Waits wants to get her back. Rothwell and Walken are also psychopaths, and, in true Tarantino-esqe fashion, people start dying, blood starts gushing, and “hilarity ensues.”
All in all, I didn’t think it was that wacky – it was mildly humorous, and while it is always good to see Walken and Harrelson onscreen, the whole film seemed like it was trying too hard to be edgy, funny, and bloody. An OK film, but not great.
Long time readers, especially of the annual TIFF recap know that I do love Asian action films, particularly historical epics, and one of the first films that jumped out at me when I was looking at the film list for this year was Yu Chuan’s The Last Supper. His last film was the excellent “City of Life and Death” about the Nanking massacre and atrocities and was my best film at the 2009 TIFF. This film is the story of two warring generals (Emperor Liu Bang and General Xiang Yu) fighting for control of China at the end of the Qin Dynasty. Added into the mix is Counselor Han Xin who ends up siding with the Emperor over General Yu. When victory on the battlefield is achieved, General Yu wants there to not be another empire, but General Bang moves into the Qin palace and begins what we now know was the Han Dynasty that lasted for centuries.
Here is where the film breaks down for me. First, the movie spends a lot of time near the end of the Emperor’s life, and the film jumps around in time. As a result, the three main male characters, Bang, Yu and Xin, get confusing as to who is who and what time period it is. Secondly, Ye Liu who plays the emperor, was not a strong leader as a young man, which made it hard for me to believe that he could get the other two men to go along with him as Emperor, and make the potential plots later in life seem a bit ridiculous – why did they not take control earlier in life?
Finally, the Emperor’s wife is a lesser player (most times a hostage) for the first ?rds of the film, but at the end, she turns into a major player, doing the “Lady Macbeth” role in eliminating the supposed plotters against the throne. The film was beautiful, shot in castles in China that gave the film a feeling of authenticity, but there were too many problems with the film for me to recommend it.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
In most years, I pick one or two documentaries among my TIFF films, but this year, three documentaries made the list. The first one was Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, about the 1960s former hustler turned author. First, I should mention that TIFF added the Bloor Theater to its list this year and dedicated it to documentaries. It is very nice theater – one screen, cozy, with great additions like a curtain at the back of the theater, through which you could see what seats were available, and then closed before the films started. Also, the theater had its own camera that could be projected on the screen, so directors could be seen very well (although it was a bit of overkill since the theater wasn’t that large. The only drawback is that it at Bloor and Bathurst, which is not close to any of the other locations (and, since the subway doesn’t run on Sundays until 9:00 AM, it forced me to bum a ride from my hosts to make this 9:00 AM showing).
Another of the films that caught my eye right away was Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Iceberg Slim books were very popular among African-Americans. You saw them in the bookstores; at the newsstands; people reading them on the bus or train. They were, arguably, the most popular books in my experience from that time.
I was never allowed to read them – my parents forbade it; but I always wondered what the story was behind Iceberg Slim; how he became an author, and what was his story and what happened to him.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but the rappers from the last 20 years were big fans of the books, and in fact, it was Ice-T’s long time manager, Jorge Hinojosa who directed the film. It was a very interesting story of Robert Beck (Iceberg Slim); how he was raised, what led him to “the life,” what happened to make him leave; how he became an author; and his family. Of course, since Beck died in 1992, a lot of the interview footage was comprised of TV interviews from the 1970s and 80s. What was also gripping was the story of his ex-wife and kids, who show what dysfunctional family really is. There were three biological girls and one boy from his first wife’s previous relationship and the boy did not appear in the film, but as a white man who grew up in Watts in an interracial family in the 1960s, I can understand some of the problems he would have. (It should be noted that the man did not appear in the film at all – his story came out in the Q&A session with Mr. Hinojosa.)
The girls appeared in separate interviews: two together and one alone and often there were major discrepancies between their accounts of their father, and obviously some strife between them What was also interesting was the status of Slim’s first wife and that none of the children appeared with her. Also interesting were interviews with the publisher of Slim’s books, and the oft told story of a white institution taking advantage of black artists. Overall, it was an enlightening story of a black man in the 20th Century.
With “The Master” unavailable, I was forced to juggle my schedule around a bit, so another documentary that I wanted badly to see was able to make the cut. The Gatekeepers directed by Droh Moreh was the story of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security organization through the interviews of six men who headed the organization from the 1967 war to 2011.
The film would be interesting just in discussing the wins and losses that the Shin Bet experienced over the years, but the film had a bigger agenda. All six men have dealt with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and all agree that Israel should 1) negotiate with any group to bring about peace; and 2) and more controversial – the hard line right wing in the country that reneged on the Oslo Agreement and now has 220,000 Jewish settlers in the region, is the biggest hindrance to peace. The Palestinians have a right to their own country and Israel is an occupying force, a state that is detrimental to the country in terms of costs in money and people, and in international goodwill.
The film will be very controversial. In fact, at the screening, a woman asked the director a question about “showing the other side of the argument,” about what the Palestinians are doing to Israel, and Mr. Moreh said that if she really feels that way, she should go out and make her own documentary, but she’d be hard pressed to find that happening. The film has played the Jerusalem Film Festival, is scheduled to be released in Israel, and has U.S. distribution through Sony Pictures Classics. It will be very interesting indeed what the reaction will be among Jews in Israel and in my neighborhood in Skokie.
The picture in the TIFF directory of a kid with a sub-machine gun made it interesting enough for me to add the Canadian film I Declare War to my list. Aside from a couple of interesting twists, it was another in the “Lord of the Flies’/”Battle Royale” kids at war movies, attempting to ride the coattails of “The Hunger Games.”
In this film, there were no adults – the “war” was a pretend one between kids who had been chosen up like a pick-up basketball game. At times, you would see the kid with a “rifle” of a tree branch and a toilet paper roll as a sight, but imagination would make the guns real with real ammo and explosions. As a parent, what I did like was that the killing wasn’t real – if a kid was “shot” he/she could count to 10 and if not hit with a balloon filled with a red liquid portraying blood, the kid was back in the war. If the kid was hit by a blood balloon, the kid went home.
But, you had kids out to win at any cost, and the psychosis of some of these kids, along with some mild torture made me feel uncomfortable. P.K. the undefeated champion and the kid who made up the war rules, comes unglued when confronted with a choice of winning or friendship. The leader of the other group, who had been just a soldier, but became leader by turning on the original leader and “killing” him had some serious issues with P.K. and wanted to get revenge for no longer being his best friend.
The one interesting sideline was the only girl in the group, who wanted to play to get closer to the leader of who was “killed.” She used her feminine wiles (such as a young girl could manage) to have the boys jealous and ready to fight over her. However, she never makes it to the end, which would have been an interesting ending. At the end, winners are declared and friendships reevaluated, but the whole thing was a mild version of better stories.
Neil Jordan has made some very good films, and, unfortunately, some mediocre ones, but they are always interesting. Jordan returned to the vampire genre that he last covered in “Interview with the Vampire” with Byzantium. Gemma Arterton, who was in the Bond Film “Quantum of Solace” and in 2009 TIFF film “Tamara Drewe” plays one of a pair of sister vampires who are on the run from some nameless vampire hunters, all the while using her beauty to get money and occasionally blood from men around her.
The other woman is a waif, appearing to be 16-years-old, who writes about her experiences, and feasts on those about to die. They end up in a seaside Irish town, befriend a poor sod who inherited an old hotel, and they take up residence in the hotel as the hunters get near.
The film jumps between two centuries ago when the pair became vampires, to the present day, and the younger girl, Saoirse Ronan, of course, gets involved with a young man, and attends a writing class that the young man is also in. Hints that the Eleanor is either abused by her guardian (Arterton), or something else entirely leads to deaths and the hunters (led by Sam Riley, who I enjoyed in a film at TIFF in 2007 called “Control” about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis) catching up with the pair.
I admit that I think that Ms. Arterton is one of the most beautiful woman in film today, and she did not disappoint here. Ms. Ronan does bring a world-weariness to the role, and film was very good as a stylistic vampire movie. Not very scary, but stylistic.
Monday, September 10, 2012
This was a strange day in that there was a serious film followed by a much more lighthearted one. I don’t know if I did that on purpose, but it worked out alright, I think.
My final documentary was a bit of a surreal journey into the true “heart of darkness.” Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing took the filmmaker to Indonesia to show many of the people who perpetrated the 1965 killings of an estimated one million Communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals after the military coup overthrew the democratically elected government. These men, now middle-aged or senior citizens, are not only living well and openly without threat of arrest or reprisal, but are proud of their accomplishments.
The film follows Anwar Congo, one of the most brutal leaders who takes pride in showing where he committed murder and the various ways in which people were dispatched. So, he and a group of other torturers put on makeup, dress up and go about making their own film dramatizing their crimes. To them, the word “gangster” means “free man,” and what they were doing was freeing the country, and some of the scenes of dancing girls before a huge man-made fish, and a dance number to the song “Born Free” celebrating their atrocities were gripping and very strange to watch. One of the men consistently dressed in drag to a truly bizarre effect (plus, he made for a truly ugly woman).
At the last however, when Congo was placed in the position of being interrogated and put to death (most of the deaths were strangulation by metal wire tied to a metal pipe and then pulled by a person on the other end), he began to realize what it was like to have been in that position. The filmmaker reminded him however, that Congo could not truly understand how his victims felt since he was acting and knew he was going to live. Like I said, the film was most surreal. (It should also be noted that members of the Indonesian Consulate attended the screening, but they sat behind me and I was unaware until later. From what I hear, most of the delegation walked out long before the film ended.)
After decades of being in front of the camera, the legendary Dustin Hoffman took the director’s chair for Quartet, a British comedy about a retirement home for classical musicians. As you would expect, the cream of British acting, people that you’ve seen many times before, turned up. Michael Gambon (the Harry Potter movies) leads the home; Tom Courtenay (“Doctor Zhivago” “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”), Pauline Collins (“Shirley Valentine,” “Albert Hobbs”) and the always hilarious Billy Connolley are all retired opera singers who once made up a very famous quartet. All are living in the home, with Connolley quick with a quip and constantly on the make with any woman in his vicinity.
Their little world is disrupted when the fourth and most famous member of the quartet (and the Courtenay character’s ex-wife) played by Maggie Smith moves in. Courtenay is still upset over the 9 hour marriage, but in order to make enough money to save the home, they try to convince Smith’s character to participate.
The film is from a play by Ronald Harwood, and like so many English comedies, it is sharply written, humorous, and all of the actors were great. The only knock I can make is a little disappointment for this to be Mr. Hoffman’s directorial debut. The film was beautiful shot and set up, but, as someone who has seen tons of British film and television, I know that there are any 50-100 English directors could have directed this film and it would have looked almost exactly the same. I know that Hoffman is a genius actor, and maybe he wanted to start off with an easy film to direct, but still, I was hoping that we would see something that would have distinguished the film from a lot of English “chamber” comedies. Still, that’s a minor knock – I enjoyed the film; it was awesome to see Mr. Hoffman on stage to introduce the film along with Mr. Courtenay, and an absolutely hilarious Connolley. When asked if Ms. Smith would be coming to the screening, Mr. Connolley reportedly told Mr. Hoffman that she had “broken her leg and had to be put down.” Then Connolley himself came out and did a minute or two on concerns about his nasal hair growing. A riot!
As anyone who has been to TIFF can tell you, there comes a time when you have chosen the films you really want to see (or had them sold out on you) and now you have to start looking at films that fit and what “looks interesting.” I had reached that point, and so I chose a Danish film called A Hijacking and I am very glad I did.
Based on a true story, the film concerns a cargo ship on the way to India that got hijacked by Somalia pirates. The film centers on the ship’s cook, who at the start is telling his wife and young daughter that it will be a few days later before he can return. Then, the ship is hijacked and the film jumps between what is happening on the ship and the negotiations between the company CEO and the hijackers.
The film is as much the CEO’s story as certain details like the actual hijacking, when the cook may have been attacked, are shown from the company’s perspective, heightening the suspense as the audience doesn’t know any more that the company officials at that time. Of course, the strain on the company and the crew’s families is shown through brief moment’s with the cook’s family.
The hostage situation goes on for many weeks, and in that time, the hostages are abused and at times befriended; there is a hostage negotiator for the pirates named Omar who we don’t know whether he is in on the plot or just what he says he is – going along with the pirates. The CEO doesn’t take the advice of an American hostage expert hired by the firm and handles the negotiations himself, which eventually breaks him down, causing strain in his marriage and from the directors of the company who feel that he is neglecting the duties of running the film.
Another shrewd move by director Tobias Holstrom is to subtitle the film in English from the Danish, but did not translate the Somalis, so that their motivations and words were unknown to the crew and also unknown to the audience. This was a very good movie – one that you should try and find if possible.
The day ended with the film I most wanted to see: A Liar’s Autobiography – the Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. Directed by the same men who did “Monty Python: Almost The Truth – The Lawyer’s Cut;” they took audio recordings by the subject that were to be used for an audio book that had never been used, then farmed the segments to various animation studios and made a film of Chapman’s book with him as the principal narrator.
Four of the remaining Pythons – John Cleese, Michael Pailn, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam provided voices for the project and as one would expect with all the different animation studios, the film was uneven, and even dragged in spots, but in others, the film was very funny indeed. The film covered Chapman’s upbringing; college years; sex life; realization that he was homosexual; and heavy drinking. Any Python film is a pleasure at this point, and watching this, one wished that Graham Chapman hadn’t died in 1988 from throat cancer.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
My last full day in Toronto was a much mellower in terms of movies – only two compared to the four film per day marathons of the previous two days. The first film was one that was high on my must see list, and again, it didn’t disappoint. The Iceman, directed by Ariel Vroman, is the story of Richard Kuklinski, subject of two HBO interview documentaries. Kuklinski, played by the excellent Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter,” “Boardwalk Empire”) was a Mafia hit man who was able to hide his murders from his wife and kids. Shannon did an excellent job of showing tenderness on one side and sheer ruthlessness on the other.
Winona Ryder was good as Kuklinski’s wife and the other side of his life was populated with solid and recognizable actors: Ray Liotta (“Goodfellas”), James Franco (“127 Hours”), Chris Evans (“Captain America: The First Avenger,” “The Avengers”) and David Schwimmer (“Friends”).
Even though I had seen the HBO documentaries, this was a solid dramatization of Kuklinski’s story, anchored by Shannon, who is one of the best actors working today.
Unfortunately, TIFF for me ended on a lower note – my last film was Arthur Newman, played by Colin Firth as a man who is looking for a way out of his humdrum existence. A banker with a girlfriend who thinks he’s boring, an ex-wife who has moved on and a son who he would like to connect with but can’t, Wallace Avery fakes his own death and becomes a new person – Arthur Newman, who is driving to Terre Haute, Indiana to take a job as a golf teaching pro. On the way, he meets a young woman who decides that taking on another identity is easier than staying who she really is (Emily Blunt).
On their trip, they learn about each other, realize the deceptions and the reasons for them, and end up having a good time breaking into other people’s houses and pretending that they are the people who live there. They are not there to steal, just “borrow” their identities for awhile (and have sex in their beds) as they make their way to Indiana.
Meanwhile the mistress and Avery’s son try to come to terms about their feelings about the presumed dead father/lover. Blunt’s character has mental illness in her family and a twin sister in an institution that she is trying to forget; Firth eventually falls for the girl, but I thought that she was a bit too young for Wallace/Arthur. So, you have two sets of people who are attracted to each other but there is a huge age difference that didn’t play well, I thought.
There are numerous problems with the film. First, Firth is able to get rid of the British accent, but I found his voice grating. Second, a Wallace Avery wouldn’t reach out to a troubled young girl like Blunt’s character, and then their mutual breaking and entering episodes are amusing, but to me, the numerous identities and narrow escapes became tedious.
Finally, of course, the pair find that running away is not the answer to their problems, and honestly, I don’t know that I cared enough about either character to care. I cared more for the son (I had no father to speak of, and I of course couldn’t imagine life without the Indignant Women at my house) and the mistress (although there were scenes that came very close to suggesting some type of sexual relationship there that, fortunately, were unfounded, but I was uncomfortable at a couple of points).
Colin Firth is one of my favorite actors, and Emily Blunt is clearly a big talent. Unfortunately, for me, this film wasn’t a suitable display of their huge talents.
So, that does it – my exploits at TIFF 2012. I should mention that every director attended the showing that I attended, which was quite special, with of course, Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, and Billy Connolley’s appearances being the most memorable.
In previous summaries, I have always listed the films in order of preference and I will do so again. This year, as I stated at the outset, there were no “stinkers,” that is, films that were horrible and need to be forgotten for all time (but stick in my memory unfortunately – see my worst of 10 years of TIFF elsewhere on this site for the worst films I’ve seen in Toronto). The films at the bottom of the list aren’t horrible – they just didn’t appeal to me, but the films higher on the list are well worth viewing in my opinion.
1. The Gatekeepers
2. Argo
3. The Iceman
4. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
5. The Act of Killing
6. A Hijacking
7. Quartet
8. Byzantium
9. A Liar’s Autobiography: the Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman
10. Wasteland
11. Seven Psychopaths
12. The Last Supper
13. I Declare War
14. Arthur Newman
Not that that’s done – I’m geared up for next year!
