I always try to choose at least one documentary at the festival each year. I live documentaries because they bring out a person, or a time, or an true event into sharper focus. Yes, they often have a point of view and most are relatively liberal in political slant, but so am I, so it doesn’t bother me much.
I admit that I am taking the coward’s way out by having a separate list of documentaries rather than coming up with an overall best list. It may be cowardly, but this is my site – I can do what I like here. That said, here are the best documentaries I’ve seen in Toronto:
7. Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) – Before “Monster” was released, documentarian Nick Broomfield showed his second film of Aileen Wornos, the woman convicted of killing numerous men in the Seattle area. Seeing the real Wornos admittedly made Charlese Theron’s Oscar winning performance in “Monster” even more incredible. But the real Wornos was a complex, confusing person, who eventually was executed. This was a hard movie to watch since Wornos didn’t make simple judgments possible. Was she guilty? Was she innocent? Was she insane in either the legal or medical way? This film won’t help you answer these questions, which is why it is so powerful.
6. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (2003) – for many years, the festival featured musical documentaries, especially rock and roll documentaries that often were in much more depth than VH1 “Behind The Music” episodes. I saw a very good one on the MC5 one year that perhaps should be added to this list, but the inside story on the proto-punk band and it’s influence on the British punk scene of the 1970s was heartbreaking and important. Produced just after the death of singer Joey Ramone; filmed just before the overdose of Dee Dee Ramone; and shown just after the death of guitarist Johnny Ramone; (and featuring the final interview with the Clash’s Joe Strummer before his death), this was a fascinating story of a band that survived despite the lead players – Joey and Johnny not speaking much to each other. Johnny had married Joey’s ex-girlfriend and the rift never ended. Watching this great band on it’s farewell tour was much sadder than normal knowing that within a year, the three main characters would all be dead.
5. Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) – this was the story of the “Funk Brothers,” the studio band that played on all of the Motown hits of the 1960s – more hits than anyone in history. The story of these now senior citizens, was more powerful in that Mary Wells was the only “star” who was interviewed. This kept the focus on the band instead of the Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder stories. The story of the men behind the music; their ups and downs, and eventually being “cut adrift” when Motown moved to L.A. in 1970 was a terrific story. Less effective was the reunion concert held in Detroit. It wasn’t that the music was bad, or didn’t hold up well; it did that and the “Funk Brothers” showed they still had their chops intact. It was the “celebrity” lead singers like Joan Osborne and Ben Harper and the interviews with them that weighed the story down a bit. We all know what the band’s legacy is – we don’t need comments from the singers who, almost all, were too young to have been alive when Motown was the number one R&B label in the world.
4. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004) – as I wrote in the “Best of” section, the Indignant Wife and I watched “Hotel Rwanda” the day after I had seen this film by myself. General Roméo Dallaire was the Canadian leader of the UN Rwandan peacekeeping force. The country’s president’s plane was shot down, which opened the floodgates of animosity between Tutsis and the Hutus, an arbitrary split devised by Belgian settlers who had ruled the region for decades prior to its independence. The result is well known: some 300,000 Tutsis were killed in a genocidal 3 month period in 1994.
Dallaire and his men did all they could to stop the bloodshed, but the UN and the Western Nations (the U.S. included) turned its back on Rwanda and the UN mission, in effect allowing for the mass murder. The General left near the end of that summer, suffering post-traumatic stress symptoms, alcoholism, depression, and had thoughts of suicide before getting therapy. The general later became a member of the Canadian government, but this powerful documentary showed his return 10 years later, and the demons that still hid in his soul. A powerful film made even more powerful by the fact that I sat in front of Dallaire and his family during the screening and next to one of his men
3. The Fog of War (2003) – Errol Morris’ film about former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary and it deserved it. McNamara’s reminiscences over the Vietnam War, how the U.S. got involved, and McNamara’s role in escalating the conflict made for a harrowing sort of death bed confession (McNamara died soon after). Showing how McNamara, with a willing President Lyndon Johnson got the country involved in a quagmire costing the lives of over 50,000 US soldiers and many thousands more Vietnamese, and Loatian soldiers and civilians was chilling. And the fact that we got into the war on false pretenses with the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the fact that we were fighting Communists when the Vietnamese were just fighting an occupying force. Losing in Vietnam didn’t start the dominoes of countries turning to Communism. All those lives; all that money lost for nothing.
2. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) – As a companion piece to “the Fog of War,” this documentary (nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar) told the story of how Daniel Ellsberg, former Marine and key defense department player in Vietnam came around to the fact that the U.S. couldn’t win in Vietnam and were there on false pretenses. So, he took a confidential history of the war, made a copy and gave it to the Washington Post. This film told that story, effectively, but it was also a love story – that or Dr. Ellsberg and his wife who helped him change his viewpoint on the war and wars in general. Unlike Mr. Morris’ film for which Mr. Morris attended by Mr. McNamara did not; the screening I attended was also attended by Dr. Ellsberg and his wife. I got a chance to meet them and I had a very long conversation with him. That made no difference to me – it’s still an awesome documentary.
1. Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (2002) – Before the making of “Downfall” (my pick for third best film I’ve seen at TIFF), I had the opportunity to see another “confession.” Traude Junge, one of Hitler’s private secretaries and the person who typed out his final orders including his will while staying in the bunker with Hitler for the final weeks of his life, kept quiet for decades, never discussing her time with the dictator. Late in her life (she died after the film was made and just before the Toronto screening), she decided to go on the record with her time in the bunker, her perceptions on Hitler and Eva Braun. She turned the recollections into a book and this documentary, a great deal of which was just Ms. Junge speaking into the camera with her story. It was very powerful.

As I’ve written above, I’ve seen far more good movies than bad ones at the Toronto International Film Festival. For one thing, most Hollywood dreck – stupid “rom coms,” sick comedies, inane films, don’t get shown in Toronto. Unfortunately, this is not to say that there aren’t some stinkers that we had to sit through. While Toronto is known as the opening of Oscar season, meaning more serious dramas, there are too many films that I have seen where very little of interest happens to characters that I don’t care about. That is a theme that runs through many of my picks for the worst films in my ten years at TIFF.
8. Ashes of Time Redux (2005) – I do see a lot of Asian films at the festival, in part because I have long been a fan of Asian culture, and of course, it doesn’t hurt that I am married to an Asian woman who also likes violent Asian films. I am a fan of director Kar Wai Wong – I have seen and own three movies he has directed: “2046,” “In The Mood For Love,” and “Chungking Express,” and though I had never seen the original “Ashes of Time,” I looked forward to seeing the remade version. Maybe it was because I was sleepy when I saw this, but it certainly didn’t help. The action took place among several martial artists in a desert, who end up fighting each other for reasons I couldn’t discern and which I soon cared little about. Now, I admit that I have enjoyed many martial arts films with little plot and bad dialogue/dubbing, but I enjoyed them anyway because the action was well done. Unfortunately, most of the fighting seemed to take place in a sandstorm, so you couldn’t really see the fight well, or even determine who was who in the battle. I was bored, rare for a Kar Wai Wong film.
7. I ? Huckabees (2004) – the wife and I figured a comedy directed by David O. Russell, who directed the terrific “Three Kings” and starring Dustin Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law,Lily tomlin, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts had to be pretty good. We were wrong. A couple play detective, but instead of solving crimes, they try to solve people’s existential problems. It tried to be wacky; it tried to be quirky; but it all ended up just being boring.
6. The Singing Detective (2003) – Former actor Keith Gordon “Christine” tried his hand at directing, trying to adapt a British television series into an American feature. The story according to IMDB: “From his hospital bed, a writer suffering from a skin disease hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots.” Starring a pre-rehab Robert Downing Jr., Robin Wright and a silly appearance by Mel Gibson, the star power could turn this into a watchable film. Like “Huckabees” what was weird, wasn’t wacky, and I didn’t care for or what happened to the characters.
5. In The Cut (2003) – Jane Campion (“The Piano”) directed Meg Ryan trying desperately to get out from under her “goodie-goodie” roles; this time playing New York writing professor, who has an erotic affair with a police detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a murder in her neighborhood of a beautiful young woman.. Was Ruffalo the murderer? Did Ryan’s character play a part in the crime? In the end, it didn’t matter. Besides trying too hard to make the usually good Ryan and Ruffako interesting, the film didn’t play fair with the audience, by making the murderer one of the lesser characters who had little screen time up to then.
4. The Company (2002) – I do appreciate the late director Robert Altman and when he was good, his films were very good. When they weren’t, they were really bad – and I’m not as big an Altman fan as many others I know. This film starred Neve Campbell as a ballerina in Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet. As I wrote in this year’s review of “Black Swan,” I think I have now banned ballerina films at TIFF. While Darren Aaronofsky’s 2010 film was marginally interesting, this slice of life film about Ms. Campbell playing a ballerina had too much of what I discussed earlier: very little happening to characters I eventually found myself not caring about. Besides, the film did not take advantage of being shot in Chicago (unlike films like “The Dark Knight”). This film was pointless.
3. Valhalla Rising (2009) – My friend Rich saw this before me and told me to try and trade my ticket for something else, but I was hardheaded (a habit of mine – see the next film) and went anyway. Danish Mads Mikkelsen, so good as the bad guy in “Casino Royale” and as a hero in “Flame and Citroen” plays “One Eye,” a powerful warrior, who at the outset, is held captive and used to fight for sport. Eventually, he kills his captor and escapes with a boy, the only person to show One Eye kindness. The fight scenes early in the movie gave the film a solid start, but they end up on a Viking vessel when they sail into a fog where various characters start dying.
None of this made any sense whatsoever. I tried to make sense of the film and what it was trying to say, but eventually I lost interest. (Funny note: the film played earlier this year in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center and the “art film” reviewer for the Chicago Tribune gave this snorefest a 3½ star review. I don’t know what meaning he got out of this, but I chuckled.)
2. The Fountain (2006) – this film had been booed at the Cannes Film Festival just before it played in Toronto, but it had Hugh (“Wolverine”) Jackman and Rachel Weisz in a science fiction film. Besides it was directed by Darren Aaronofsky, who had directed “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream.” Well, the French were right. This pretentious navel-gazing exercise had Mr. Jackman and Ms. Weisz (Mr. Aaronofsky’s significant other) playing lovers across time with Mr. Jackman trying to save Ms. Weisz in different scenarios – in the 1500s as an explorer and queen; in the present day as a doctor trying to find a cure for his wife; and in the far future with some “tree of life.” Pretentious, boring, nonsensical. Often, even if the director isn’t there, TIFF audiences will applaud a film that they like (generally a polite group are TIFF attendees), and while a very few people did applaud after this; I heard something I had never heard before – some boos. And no, they weren’t all from me.
1. eXXXorcisms (2002) – the Indignant Wife had seen an earlier film from Mexican director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo so she suggested that we see this – a story about a security guard who contacts his dead lover in a haunted mall. I admit that this was the first film I’d ever seen shot on digital video, and the images were crisp, stark, and the colors were vibrant. Until the story kicked in, that turned into several minutes of soft core male gay porn. I’m secure enough in my heterosexuality to watch a film with gay characters and even a love scene, but this whole film was little more than a set up for a boring gay sex film. This is the only movie I’ve been to where The Indignant Wife actually wanted to leave, and we were about to when the film, thankfully came to an end. We did skip the question and answer session after the film since the only question I could come up with was why his film sucked so badly.
It is amazing the way in which films stay with you; when I was trying to remember the title of this horrible film; the Indignant Wife and I did remember the film, and our reaction to it. Some films stay with you forever – unfortunately, both good and bad.
So, next year will begin my second decade at TIFF and hopefully, the Indignant Wife will be able to attend next time. Despite the bad films, the good films and the experiences make it all worthwhile.

At this time of year, with the two Chicago teams having been put out of their misery long ago, I can look at the baseball playoffs without the angst of openly rooting for anybody. In fact, since the Cubs and Sox usually don’t make the playoffs, I look over the list of remaining teams and look to who I don’t want to win.
Starting with the American League, of course, I can’t root for the Yankees. They’re from New York; arrogant; have won more titles than everyone; and spend more on talent than anyone. While I am happy to see NU alum Joe Girardi managing the Yankees, I can’t root for them to win.
A co-worker asked if I would be rooting for the Minnesota Twins, the team that seems to drive a stake into the heart of my beloved White Sox every year. “C’mon, root for the team in your division,” he said. I replied No! I am a fan of Jim Thome, and I have tons of respect for their farm system, player evaluation skills and manager Ron Gardenhire, but I don’t ever want the Twins to win; crush their spirit. If the White Sox don’t win, I certainly don’t want one of their nemeses to triumph.
That said, I like the other two teams in the AL playoffs. The Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers are a pair of teams that have never won anything. For the Rays, that history isn’t that long, but for the Rangers, who were once the Washington Senators, their wait has been nearly as long as the Cubs’. So, I would like for one of these teams to make the World Series.
Once again, I have no great feeling for or against any of the National League clubs. I do enjoy seeing former Cub manager Dusty Baker take the Cincinnati Reds back to the playoffs. Baker could always manage, but the Cubs, as usual, made some dumb personnel decisions around him and fired Baker.
The Phillies have won before, and I guess I should be rooting for another team just on that score, but they do have a good ballclub and players. The Braves are a sentimental pick to many because this is the farewell season for manager Bobby Cox. Cox has done one helluva job in Atlanta for the past two decades plus; but for all of the division titles the team won, they only won one World Series Championship. Even if Atlanta were to win this year, Cox’ tenure is one of great achievement, but will always be lacking.
The other sentimental favorite is the San Francisco Giants, who haven’t won in the 50 years since moving from New York to the West Coast. To me (old as I am), the Giants are the team of Mays and McCovey and Marichal. Unfortunately, they are also the team of Barry Bonds, and the way the fans there chose to ignore all of the allegations against Bonds made me sick. But Bonds is gone, and so, my feelings on the Giants are ambivalent.
Both of my least favorite teams are playing one another, so, I would like the see the Yankees sweep the Twins; then get swept themselves by either the Rays or Rangers. Once those two teams are at home, I don’t really care who wins.

I had a feeling that the hungry, previously underperforming New York Giants would beat the Chicago Bears last night, but many seem to be surprised at how badly the Giants made the Bears look, especially the offensive line. I’m not.
As I wrote last week, I thought that the offensive line is one of the worst in football, but so far, no one has really attacked that line. I also thought that quarterback Jay Cutler was dead meat behind such a group of stiffs, but last night was ridiculous. The Giants pinned their ears back and just wreaked havoc in the backfield, sacking Cutler 9 times in the first half.
Conveniently, the Bears stated that Cutler has a concussion, and he didn’t play in the second half. By that time, I had already gone to bed. Last Monday, I stayed up for the entire win over the Packers because it was a good game and I always love to see the Packers lose. But last night was what I foresaw during the preseason; no blocking, not allowing Cutler or the running game to get untracked.
Fortunately, the defense played well; at least until the second half when the Giants used their running game to take control. I’m personally glad that they didn’t let Eli (The Lesser Brother) Manning have a good game, but the Bears aren’t that good, and we knew it, and it showed last night. The rest of the season could be really ugly.
By the way, I did see a lot of last week’s Giants game and I really thought that Giant coach Tom Coughlin, a coach who I have little use for, was going to be fired by the end of last week’s game, Super Bowl title or no. The “G-Men” had numerous penalties especially stupid personal fouls that did nothing except show the world that the Giants are thugs. Such undisciplined play is common for Coughlin coached teams as the head coach tries to hard to be an old school hard ass. This tough guy act plays for awhile, and then the modern athlete tunes him out and he loses the team. He saved his job this week, but if the team that played last week returns, Coughlin’s seat gets much hotter. Along with Lovie Smith, Jerry Angelo, and Bear President Ted Phillips. It’s a long season and the pink slips may still be flying in Chicago.

I realize that it has been many years since I’ve been a single, dating person, and while I don’t remember having a specific rule against dating women in shootouts, I’m sure it was in there somewhere.
I mention this for Jacksonville receiver Kassim Osgood. The 30-year-old wide receiver was with a 19-year-old Jaguars cheerleader when a man walked into the woman’s parents’ house with his face covered with a plastic bag and pointed a gun at them.
The woman, Mackenzie Rae Putnal, apparently used to date 20-year-old Julian Armond Bartletto. According to police, Bartletto told Putnal “I can’t believe you’re with that guy,” then pulled her around the room by her hair and hit her with the gun and his fists before hitting Osgood in the head with the gun, according to the report.
OK, we’ve seen athletes targeted by thieves and by jealous ex-boyfriends and husbands, but here the story gets wilder. Bartletto reportedly ordered the couple to sit on the floor, but somehow. Ms. Putnal escaped downstairs and grabbed a gun. “Bonnie and Clyde” apparently shot at each other and both missed. Osgood, meanwhile, jammed a chair under the door, jumped out a second floor window to the lawn below and ran to a neighbor’s house to call police.
The Jaguars declined comment on Putnal’s status as one of the team’s 32 cheerleaders. She is listed in the 2010 media guide as a dental hygiene major, but she is no longer on the team’s website. The team has a rule forbidding cheerleaders to date players.
First, of course, the 30-year-old Osgood shouldn’t be dating a 19-year-old woman, which is against team rules anyway. Going back to her parents’ house is error number 2. For the woman to suddenly turn into Annie Oakley without the skills or aim, has to be called mistake number 3.

The story that is being talked about most in my office today is about the South Side senior citizen who shot and wounded a 12-year-old boy after weeks of being “terrorized” by the child and his friends. The boy and his friends threw bricks at her home, set her garbage can on fire and destroyed her grill.
If you haven’t heard, 68-year-old Margaret Matthews returned to her home in the 7600 block of South Coles Avenue Tuesday afternoon to find her windows broken, according to the Chicago Tribune. Ms. Matthews reportedly called police and was putting away her groceries when the boys showed up again. She walked out onto the porch and the boys began shouting obscenities and throwing bricks at her. The woman then pulled out a gun and opened fire, striking one of the boys in the shoulder, authorities said.
Neighbors told NBC Chicago that the boys have been “terrorizing” the woman for some time. “This little boy started a fire in her grill, burned out her garbage can;. he was a little terror,” a neighbor told the television station, “This has been going on for weeks.”
Another neighbor said the kids “got what they had coming.”
Police told the Tribune that the woman would not be charged, and she was acting in self-defense. Of course, the 12-year-old’s grandmother disagreed with neighbors, telling the Tribune the two kids were just walking by the home when they were shot for no reason. Of course relatives would say that these days. Of course, their “little darlings” aren’t capable of doing bad things, even though no one pays any attention to what they are doing, or where they are when not in school (if they go to school). A
nother comment came from Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell’s headline calls for “more youth services.”
Bulls#$%! Haven’t we had enough “youth services” and public money thrown down a bottomless pit? Now, I’m not a “tea partier” who wants to spend nothing and get lots of services from government in the name of “freedom,” but the problem here is much more basic. What are these parents doing?
When I was growing up, everybody in the neighborhood knew me, my friends, and my parents, and if we were up to something bad, we would have been reported and belts would have rained down on out backsides. The word of adults and teachers were taken as fact before our opinions were even solicited. That’s not to say that my parents sided with me when a nutty parent or kid tried to frame me for something, but that’s when my grandmother turned into Sherlock Holmes.
Before they died, my mother and grandmother lived not far from Ms. Matthews and fortunately, never were subjected to that type of harassment, but I knew lots of kids who didn’t like me or my folks, or were jealous and would have liked to do harm, but the other adults on our block wouldn’t allow it; just as my folks and I wouldn’t have let this happen to other senior citizens in our neighborhood.
So, yeah, the little bastards got shot at. Fortunately no one was killed. One would think that the kids would learn a lesson from this and at the very least, leave the woman alone. Unfortunately, retaliation is reality in the ‘hood; I have a feeling this isn’t over unless the parents really rein in the kid. Otherwise, someone may end up dead.

It was reported today that three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of Spain tested positive for a banned steroid in winning this year’s race and has been suspended by cycling’s governing body.
A World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab in Cologne, Germany, found a “very small concentration” of clenbuterol in Contador’s urine sample on July 21 at the Tour, according to a statement from the International Cycling Union.
Yeah, another cyclist has tested positive for a performance enhancing substance. They’re all doping; have been for years. No news.
Call me when they finally get the goods on Lance Armstrong. Or just let all of the cyclists take all the drugs they want.