As I write this, the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival is still in full bloom. The festival ends Sunday, but long time readers know that I go up the first weekend and watch films. Every year (this was my 18th) it seems that there are themes that run through the festival selections. Last year, it was tennis films: Battle of The Sexes and Borg vs. McEnroe. A few years ago, there were four hockey films at the festival. And there always seems to be at least one Nazi World War II drama or documentary playing. Usually, I end up seeing one of the Nazi films, and this year, there was a documentary on the then 22-year-old, inexperienced attorney who was lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. I didn’t set to see it because its only showing that fit my schedule was at the same time as the first film I watched, which was something I really wanted to see.
This year, I saw 14 films in five days, about par for the course. As usual, I am here to discuss the films and detail my adventures.
Day 1 – Friday, September 7, 2018
One of the best films of the past 10 years was David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water.” After that, given the chance to see a film written and directed by Mackenzie and staring Hell or High Water star Chris Pine, I was going to see this. For the first time in the festival (but certainly not the last), this was a film either directly financed or purchased by Netflix. At first, I asked myself whether it was worthwhile to see films that will soon be playing on my personal electronics. However, there is nothing like the full theater, big screen experience, especially for this film.
Tipping its hat to Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart,” Pine plays Robert the Bruce, one time ally of William Wallace, but in the Gibson film, he was frozen into inaction by his overly political father. Here, Pine’s Robert is also conflicted until forced to fight against the British. The character of Wallace shows up briefly in the film, but he is a dirty vagabond, far from the heroic figure in Gibson’s film. Parts of Wallace are shown after being drawn and quartered, which eventually leads the vanquished Scots to vow allegiance to Britain’s Edward I.
Eventually, Bruce brings the Scots together, but suffer loss after loss before a climactic battle between a greatly outmanned Scottish forces were able to defeat the Brits and Edward’s son Edward II. The battle was well done, but now, pales in comparison to the Game of Thrones episode “Battle of the Bastards.” Game of Thrones and “Darkest Hour” veteran Stephen Dillane was good as Edward I, but here, I found myself longing for the late great Patrick McGoohan (“The Prisoner,” “Danger Man”) who was so deliciously evil in “Braveheart.”
The biggest problem with the film in my opinion was Pine. I’ve loved him as an actor in High Water, and also the Star Trek reboots and also in Wonder Woman, but here, I just felt that he wasn’t given enough to work with. Quiet early, he suddenly turned heroic, and while these things often happen gradually, Pine’s Robert was too quiet and too nice and during the losses, too brooding for him to suddenly become a leader of men.
Still, this was a good film. Now, on to Day 2…

The first film of the day interested me because my oldest daughter read the book and I wanted to see if it would be appropriate for her to see when it is widely released. “The Hate U Give” is the story of a young, smart Black girl who comes from a poor neighborhood, but her family sends their three children to an upscale, predominantly white school. Starr (Amandla Stenberg) is caught in two worlds, a basketball player with a white boyfriend and white girlfriends at school; black friends at home.
One night, Starr runs into her oldest friend Khilil (Algie Smith) at a party. A fight breaks out, shots are fired and everyone scrambles. Starr runs with her friend, who has been dealing drugs for the local crime boss played by Anthony Mackie (The Falcon – Avengers and Captain America films). The two talk in the car and eventually they are stopped by a white police officer.
Needless to say, this encounter does not end well, and Starr is the only witness. Deciding whether to testify or remain quiet about the incident, while trying to hide this from the white school is a lot for a young person to deal with. Add to the fact that Mackie’s character King, is concerned what Starr will say about his operation on the witness stand, and he tries to intimidate her against testifying.
Of course, there is even more backstory – Starr’s Dad (an excellent Russell Hornsby) used to sell drugs for King until going off to jail. When Mav returns, King staked him to a small convenience store in the neighborhood. Making sure to cover all of the bases, Common plays Mav’s brother who is a police officer.
With all of these levels of drama, the film seems overstuffed with story. The King plotline is almost too much for the film to bear, and an acquaintance I met said that he couldn’t believe Mackie as a drug lord – he was too nice in his other roles. I didn’t have a problem with Mackie, but I was derailed by the fact that there’s nothing that Starr could have told the police that would have sent him to jail/been a huge risk. Everyone seemed to know that King was the leading the drug gang in the neighborhood; I’m sure the police knew. The events with Khalil gave no evidence about King’s operation and no drugs were exchanged. Taking that piece out of the puzzle, the film falls short, but he main plot about a young lady caught between two worlds and trying to find her way in a very difficult situation is compelling.
Speaking of being caught between two worlds, filmmaker Paul Greenglass is best known as the director of three of Matt Damon’s Bourne movies, but Greenglass is also very well known for docudramas, like the excellent “Bloody Sunday” about the event that ignited the Northern Ireland/Britain conflict. Greenglass is better known here for “United 93” the story of the passengers who fought the terrorists on 9/11 and kept their plane from flying into the Pentagon. However, both sets of films have a documentary feel to them: an active camera in which sometimes the action gets lost in the heat of the moment.
Greenglass’ latest is “22-July,” the story of the Norwegian Right Wing terrorist who blew up a car bomb at the offices of the Norwegian Prime Minister, then when to a summer camp on an island and proceeded to kill over 60 schoolkids and counselors. The first 20 minutes of the film that details the attack are harrowing, but Greenglass does a good job of keeping the focus on the shooter, Anders Behring Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie) without dwelling on the gore and the dead and wounded kids. The rest of the story follows the aftermath, primarily from the perspective of one young man Viljar (Jonas Strand Gravli) whom we pick up before the attack, then following his brother and parents, the doctors fighting for his life, his aftermath and recovery. The real Breivik chose attorney Geir Lippestad (played by Jon Olgarden in a gripping understated performance). Mr. Lie is very good, creepy and realistic as the mass murderer who tried, like more spree and serial killers do, try to manipulate everyone around them, especially the lawyers and media.
This too is a Netflix film that was better on a big screen 9although the terrorist attack may be easier to take on a smaller screen). No matter how you watch it however, it is a must see if you like this kind of thing. One of the best of the Festival.
Last on my list that day was an unusual little film called “The Dig” from Ireland. Moe Dunford plays Callahan, who returns to an abandoned and dilapidated house that he inherited from his family, long dead. When he arrives, he finds Sean MacKenna (Lorcan Cranitch) has dug and continues to dig holes on the marshy bog behind the abandoned house. It turns out that Callahan was sent to prison for killing Murphy’s oldest daughter and everyone thinks that she buried out in the bog and Murphy is determined to find her.
Callahan got drunk the evening of the murder and fought with the older daughter, but he passed out and can’t remember what happened that night. Callahan had sort of a relationship with the younger daughter Roberta (Emily Taafe), who has no life other than tending to her Dad when he’s not digging. The only way Callahan is going to get rid of this man is to help him dig, which would help him remember/atone for killing the girl. Eventually, many secrets are uncovered, and the three people and the local police chief Murphy (Francis Magee) has his own beliefs about what actually happened that night shook to the core.
A very interesting small film.

The day started with another studio film with a released date. White Roy Rick is the story of Rick Werche, Jr. (newcomer Richie Merritt, who bears a striking resemblance to my godson, T.J. Watson), a 13 year old kid at the outset who helps his Dad, Rick Sr. (Matthew McConaughey) hustle in Detroit in the 1980s. Rick Sr. buys guns at shows and sells them to whomever, mostly drug dealers and gangsters. Young Rick knows much about guns and Dad’s hustle, which helps him become tight with one of the black crime operations in Detroit. At the same time Rick Sr. is trying to keep his family together, especially daughter Dawn, played effectively by Bei Powley, a girl with a no good black boyfriend and one helluva heroin habit. Richie becomes an FBI informant, but eventually starts dealing large quantities of drugs himself through his connection from Miami (the always good but increasingly omnipresent Eddie Marsan).
McConaughey tries to keep the family together which includes nice appearances by Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie as the grandparents. Unfortunately, this story has been done many times before, and the kid seems like a likeable goof who finds ways to make money and not get into too much trouble. We have seen the rise of fall of gangsters all the way back to the early silent cinema. This is an average addition to the genre.
White Boy Rick is playing now, but you don’t need to see it in a theater. (Interesting point – they needed a dilapidated neighborhood to film the movie, but they didn’t use Detroit, where the story was set, but in Cleveland, which I took to mean that gentrification in Detroit is going pretty well.) Overall, it was a fairly standard rise and fall crime story. The young man does a decent job, but there’s not a lot of character to expose. McCanaughey plays his usual down and out poor white guy which isn’t much of a stretch.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of Jason Reitman except for “Up in the Air” and “Juno” which were alright. His latest film is a big budget docudrama that, while still a big budget Hollywood movie, takes some interesting chances. “The Front Runner” is the story of the three week period in 1987 in which Senator Gary Hart went from being the leader for the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States to an ex-candidate.
For those of you who don’t remember, Hart was a Senator from Colorado who, after losing to Walter Mondale in 1984, he was the front runner in the next campaign – intelligent, serious, decent looking. However, like many politicians, did entirely too much thinking with what’s behind his zipper. Rumors of womanizing were confirmed when he was caught in an affair with Donna Rice, a young woman who want a job with the campaign.
Like so many of these types of stories, there was a great deal of humor as the story began to come out, What made this different was that the movie doesn’t follow Hart much. He kept saying that it was no one’s business who he slept with (which is the current state of the nation); he tried to keep the story on policy when it was obvious that who he slept with all anyone wanted to talk about. Hart is played by Hugh Jackman, Wolverine, showman, singer and dancer; an actor who oozes charisma, but here, he is an enigma; not even the hero of his own story. It tells the story from various viewpoints, but not from Hart’s. J.K. Simmons and especially Vera Farmiga as Hart’s wife are particularly fine.
One person who does come out of this film is solid fashion is Donna Rice. First, there is just a shot of the yacht Monkey Business the night they were on the ship together; never was the picture of her on Hart’s lap reconstructed and shown. Ms. Rice graduated Phi Beta Kappa in biology at the University of South Carolina and the film does not show her as a mindless bimbo – she is shown as someone who’s life has been ripped wide open.
These two points make this an above average Hollywood picture.
Another theme in this year’s film festival in my opinion was farces, or at least films where people act strangely and get their comeuppance. Maybe it’s the U.S. administration, which has provided a sense of unreality and unreality to the world, but I don’t know if that’s true. The first of these movies for me was “Screwball,” this year, the only documentary I watched this year.
Billy Coben, a noted documentary filmmaker for ESPN and also features like Cocaine Cowboys, this time aims his lens at Anthony Bosch, the “doctor” who provided performance enhancing drugs through Biogenesis in Miami. His most famous client was Alex Rodriguez. Of course, many scenes needed to be recreated, but instead of using professional actors, Mr. Corben used kids, including some of his own kids to play the various parts including Bosch and Rodriguez.
The scary part of this story is how everyone involved with the exception of Bosch has been rewarded: Commissioner Bud Selig who was on watch during the entirety of the Steroid Era is retired and has been elected to the Hall of Fame; Rod Manfred, who led the investigation into Biogenesis and paid millions of dollars to uncover and sometimes cover up PED use is now commissioner. Even A-Rod is providing commentary for baseball games, is dating Jennifer Lopez, and cannot be completely counted out for his own bust in Cooperstown, despite spending big money to try and cover his tracks.
It was a very funny film, and kind of wacky, and enough to make you cynical about the sport, many of the players and the powers that be.
My final film of the day was “out of Blue” a police procedural starring Patricia Clackson as a detective who investigates the death of a professor at an observatory. The professor was played by Mamie Gjummer, the daughter of Meryl Streep and clues lead to the African-American boyfriend, and another professor payed by the always slightly creepy Toby Jones.
Ms. Clarkson, blond hair darkened, is a tortured soul, adopted as a kid but haunted by where she’s from and what happened to her mother, which she has repressed. The possibility that this was the return of an old, never captured serial killer leads to lots of secrets and an appearance by James Caan, who, as soon as he hits the screen, has to eb considered the likely bad guy.
Clarkson, in her hometown of New Orleans is as always fine, but the story kind of lets her down – not nearly as deep or compelling as Ms. Clarkson deserves. Director Carol Morley lost control of the film a bit and there were some dull spots. I would love to see Ms. Clarkson play this character again, but definitely with a stronger script.

The film I believe is the likely winner of the Grolsch People Choice Award (being announced as I post this, so I could be right or wrong) is “If Beale Street Could Talk,” the follow up of director Barry Jenkins’ Oscar Award winnung “Moonlight,” is an adaptation of a book by the great James Baldwin. Two young people also grow up together in New York in an indiscriminate late 1950s or early 1960s. Kiki Layne and Stephen James are lovers and their love is quite touching and lovely. A pregnancy occurs and the reaction of the kids’ parents is both heartwarming and very funny.
Unfortunately the young man is framed for rape despite having an alibi, but a crooked cop doesn’t like the young man. The rest of the film is a race against time to try and get the young father to be cleared in time for him to raise his coming son. The end of the film shows a lot of people hurting and making decisions that aren’t necessarily the right ones, just sad ones.
This is a very strong film and it wouldn’t surprise me to see it having several award nominations.
I am always up for seeing the latest film from Mike Leigh (“Secrets and Lies,” All or Nothing,” “Mr. Turner”) and the new film “Peterloo” is particularly apropos for the times. Showing the uprising of the people against the rich and aristocracy, leading to a peaceful gathering led by an orator played by Rory Calhoun. But the rich, call in the army and the peaceful gathering turns violence with many deaths.
Coming just a few years after Waterloo, the event was called the Peterloo Massacre. At 153 minutes, the film is much too long and talky. In addition several characters are hard to distinguish from one another. Also, I don’t think that Leigh is an “action director,” the scenes f the massacre were hard to follow and who the people who led the massacre were easy to distinguish, but I didn’t pick up on why they were more violent than even the army – and these militia were the primary antagonists in the whole situation.
It was good, but could have been tighter and better in my opinion.
Continuing the theme of farcical people and situations, “Driven” is the story of John Delorian and his neighbor/friend Jim. Played by SNL alum Jason Sedeikis, Jim is a con man and kind of a bumbling pilot who knows drug kingpins. He gets into a strange friendship with Delorian, played by Lee Pace as a vain genius – great at designing cars, but not so good as running a car company. Eventually, Delorian looks to a drug deal to save his company, but Sudaikis’s Jim sets him up, working with the FBI.
Like “Screwball” it would be hard to believe that this story and how these people acted could have been true, but they were both rather ridiculous. Very funny, unbelievable, and well done.

My final day started with “First Man” the story of NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the Moon. The film reunites “La La Land” director Damian Chazelle and star Ryan Gosling. Produced by Steve Spielberg and others, the film is a straight forward picture about Armstrong. Fortunately, Armstrong is a stoic, quiet, straight arrow type, which is perfect for Gosling, who I think could be the Keenu Reeves for the 21st Century.
Someone asked me what the purpose of this film is, and I think it is just an interesting history lesson and an interesting character study, A decent film, but not exactly a great one. There was lots of screaming when Gosling came on stage however (he is Canadian, after all).
The rest of the day I called – Asian action day. Director Zhang Yimou (“ Raise The Red Lantern,” “House of Flying Daggers,” Hero”) brings “Shadow,” another tale of medieval China to the screen. Three families have split the country, and one king plans to defeat the other two families. The Pei king has the Commander leading his forces, but the Commander has a double, the shadow of the title to help navigate the political and actual physical conflicts. Sumptuously filmed with black and white drawings in the throne room contrasting with the splendor of battle, this film was a triumph.
My last film was “Killing (Zen)” from director Shinya Tsukamoto (“Tetsuo: The Iron Man”) is a short treatise on the nature of war. A young masterless samurai is living peacefully with a farming family in ancient Japan. The samurai knows that he should be going off to Edo (now Tokyo). An elderly samurai comes to the area and recruits the young samurai to join him to go to Edo and then a journey to fight in a mission for the Shogun. Although he agrees to go, the younger samurai has become quite fond of the farmer’s daughter and is teaching the young son how to fight with wooden swords.
Unfortunately, some bandits come to the farm. At first, they are peaceful, given food and drink, but eventually, they burn the farm house, killing the parents, insulting then murdering the boy and raping the girl. Eventually, the bandits are killed by the elder samurai, leading to a climatic fight between the two men as the younger finds that he is useless since he cannot kill. An interesting little film
So it was another fun, successful TIFF for yours truly. As always, I rank the films according to my preference. This year, I’m happy to say that there were no absolute stinkers, although I think that the Hollywood films on my list this year suffer in my opinion because they were just such “studio” pictures. Still, all of these films are worth a look if you’re so inclined:

14. Out of Blue
13. White Boy Rick
12. Killing
11. Peterloo
10. First Man
9. Outlaw King
8. The Front Runner
7. The Dig
6. Screwball
5. Driven
4. The Hate U Give
3. Shadow
2. 22 July
1. If Beale Street Could Talk

For 2018, that’s a wrap. Hope to go again next year!

I don’t think there’s any doubt now that Serena Williams is the greatest women’s tennis player of all time. One short of all time Grand Slam women’s singles titles, I don’t think that there’s much doubt anymore that the younger Ms. Williams is the best of all time.
Unfortunately, tennis is historically a very classist sport. It has always been an upper crust sport; you needed to be rich to play on the courts; you needed to rich to afford lessons. If a poorer kid was to become good enough to play among the best, there was both open and subtle messages that the kid just didn’t belong. For the Williams sisters, who learned to play on the hard public outdoor courts of the rough streets of the Compton area of Los Angeles, this has always been an issue, which has often fueled Venus and Serena to excel.
Still, the powers that be have always resented and looked down at the Williams sisters in my opinion. They’re too dark, too black, too urban for tennis, but with the victories, no one dared say anything. However, in the time of Drumpf, emboldened white supremacists, anti-Semites, and misogynist troglodytes have crawled out from under the rocks they had been living under and have made their presences known. Charlottesville, continued police violence against people of color all over the country, the separation of Hispanic children from their parents at U.S. border has brought the lunatic fringe out in numbers not seen since the 1970’s.
For the tennis elite, this gives them an opportunity to harass and annoy Serena at a time when she should be celebrating: newly married, with a baby at home, and nearing tennis’ Everest, she should be taking a victory lap for the time she has left. Instead, it was reported that she is tested for PEDs more frequently than any other player on the tour not named Maria Sharapova. Then, she was told that she couldn’t play in a black catsuit at the U.S. Open while a white female was allowed to play in a white one piece suit.
The situation at last weekend’s U.S. Open women’s final was the worst yet. At a pivotal point in the second set, chair umpire Carlos Ramos charged Williams with three code violations, abruptly shifting the momentum of the match. The first violation saw Ramos warn Williams for receiving coaching; Williams contested the warning and continued playing, but the argument continued with Ms. Williams busting her racket, calling the umpire a thief and a liar, and receiving two scoring penalties. In the blink of an eye, the score went from Williams being down 4-3 to her being down 5-3 and serving to stay in the championship. Things progressed so quickly that opponent Naomi Osaka didn’t seem to realize what was happening on the other side of the court.
Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, admitted giving hand signals to Williams, but he said that he didn’t believe that Ms. Williams saw it. “I have never cheated in my life,” Williams said, taking offense to the warning and contesting it, telling Ramos that she’d rather lose than cheat. “You owe me an apology.”
Most people know that top athletes and high achievers in all walks of life are aggressive when competing, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were the poster boys for bad behavior on a tennis court. Serena has made comments that men don’t get the same treatment, but that is false. Unlike McEnroe or Connors, Ms. Williams didn’t curse at the umpire, but she was angry, which I have a feeling “tennis” feels this is “unbecoming of a woman.” Altogether, Williams committed three violations, for which she would ultimately be fined $17,000. After the match, she was officially penalized for a coaching warning ($4,000), racket abuse ($3,000), and verbal abuse ($10,000). Worst of all, cartoonists, especially one in Europe have drawn Ms. Williams as a brat and in black caricaturist fashion that has been embarrassing.
Now, there is word that umpires may effuse to work Serena matches. Talk about snowflakes – they have taken much worse from men, but now they’re acting like babies. The worst part is that Ms. Osaka, who played an excellent tournament and match, has her win in the minds of many tarnished. Also, it should be noted that Ms. Osaka has been portrayed as white, even though she is as ethnic as anyone else.
I sincerely hope that Serena Williams gets the chance and breaks Margaret Court’s all time women’s singles Grand Slam record. While tennis won’t realize it, the game will miss Serena Williams when she retires.
I also know that tennis doesn’t deserve Serena Williams.

The past few years have not been kind to NCAA schools and criminality. We had the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State, which many, myself included believe that it was the ultimate scandal in college history. Head Coach Joe Paterno was fired, wins surrendered, and members of the administration are in or still face jail for having done little or nothing about Sandusky.
Then came the Dr. Larry Nassar situation at Michigan State. Nassar , who served as a MSU team doctor, pleaded guilty to assaulting hundreds of girls and women while working at the university, including students and student-athletes at MSU and also as lead doctor for USA Gymnastics. Despite the fact that Nassar committed sexual crimes on campus, I guess the NCAA is satisfied that the school and its officials did nothing wrong.
The NCAA notified MSU that “it does not appear there is a need for further inquiry” and the review “has not substantiated violations of NCAA legislation.” In addition, the NCAA cleared the university regarding sexual assault allegations made against athletes in the football and basketball programs. The NCAA reportedly launched a second investigation in response to a report by ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” which related to how MSU handled the allegations against the players.
I do not have a copy of the NCAA rules near at hand, which is good because my home does not have room for 50 volumes of thick books. However, one has to ask what does it take to break NCAA rules when a sexual predator is loose?
Already, ESPN College Football Analyst (apologist?) Kirk Herbstreit has done the unthinkable – attacked another ESPN reporter who aggressively went after MSU administration at a press conference. It remains to be seen if Herbstreit faces any sanctions from the “Worldwide Leader.”
Unfortunately, the major scandals have hit the Big Ten. Almost forgotten in all of this is the situation that 8 Rutgers football players have been accused of fraudulently using credit card numbers they received from the “dark web.” Of course these are players, so they will be expelled and sent off to a small college if not jail. They are young, black, and they will be punished. The mostly white coaches and administrators will not.
I end with a story of someone having ethics at Ohio State. Jerry Wadswoth had been a trustee at OSU. He told The New York Times that the board’s punishment for Buckeyes football coach Urban Meyer (three game suspension and two weeks without pay) didn’t go far enough in his opinion. The decision prompted Wadsworth to resign from his post.
Wadsworth, who once chaired Ohio State’s board of trustees, told the newspaper that he was the “lone voice” advocating for a stronger punishment for Meyer, who received a three-game suspension from the board for his handling of issues surrounding spousal abuse allegations against former assistant coach Zach Smith. According to the story, Wadsworth emailed a resignation letter to university president Michael Drake and board chair Michael Gasser about an hour after suspensions for both Meyer and athletic director Gene Smith were announced on Aug. 22.
“Since I fundamentally disagree with the outcome it would be hypocritical of me to continue as a Trustee,” Wadsworth told Gasser in the resignation letter, which was released by the university yesterday. Wadsworth said that he heard enough in the meeting that day that he didn’t want “to be a party, through endorsing today’s decision or remaining on the Board, to implicitly or explicitly support current or future actions on such issues.”
Wadsworth did not disclose what he thought the proper punishment should have been but said the board’s discussion about reducing a suspension to several games was “wrong.” He left the meeting during the lunch break, telling the Times he was “in a different place” than discussing how many games Meyer should sit out. “You read the [investigators’] report,” Wadsworth told the Times, “and there’s seven or eight things about emails, memory loss, hearing things five times, and to me, that raised an issue of standards, values — not how many games someone should be suspended for. He later added: “I felt that getting into a limited number of games that was a suspension missed the point of a bigger cultural concern about, ‘What message were we sending?'”
A friend and OSU alum and fan also expressed anger over the decision. He said that former Coach Jim Tressel had been fired over some players getting haircuts and other services in return for autographs and memorabilia, but Urban Meyer covered up his assistant with obfuscation.
Is there more criminal wrongdoing in college sports today? I don’t think we can answer that conclusively. However, we can say that the attitude of win at all costs and protecting the “program” is alive and well. Unless of course, you are a young player, especially one of color,