Film Fest 2008 Reviews...a few days before TIFF 2009 starts :P

Posted By: Shagz
Date:

So, I never did get around to posting my reviews from TIFF 2008, and the 2009 edition is right around the corner. I'm ashamed. I think I explicitly promised that I would write more frequently last year, get the reviews out of my head soon after watching the flicks instead of waiting until after the festival. But no luck, not with a packed schedule of 15 movies (a new record for me),

So, here's my quick, off the cuff reviews of the 2008 Toronto Film Festival.

Soul Power
World Premiere
Rating (out of 5): ****

Awesome, classic performances abound in this concert film pulled together from footage that's been sitting in limbo for decades. Financiers put some money together to film the "Rumble in the Jungle, the famous boxing match between Ali and George Foreman in 1974, but money run out and the film sat in storage for decades. The rights were secured a few years ago and editors pulled together When We Were Kings.

Soul Power is pulled together from the same archive but contains another story from that time, focusing on a big music festival that was supposed to coincide with the fight. (Schedule and logistic snafus screwed things up and the festival ended up happening before the fight by a week or two, I believe)

This is a beautiful piece of archival movie making, marrying together the beautiful sound and visual recording techniques of the past with the digital mastering technology of today. The music just pops off the screen and the performances by the likes of James Brown, Celia Cruz and Bill Withers are electrifying. It's a really rare chance to see these artists performing at the top of their game, in their prime, at a time when black music was empowering black voices.

The audio for the concerts wasn't recorded and mixed down into a stereo signal but was instead recorded with a full 24 tracks of individual sound sources, which was audio gold for the film makers. The depth of the dynamics and stereo field attests to the quality of the original recordings.

The music isn't the only thing to enjoy here. You'll also get some pointed, choice quotes from Muhammed Ali as he dances and entrances the media that follows him around as he visits the locals in Africa. The juxtaposition is quite striking: black americans coming "home" to a place that, whether they admit it or not, is utterly and completely foreign to them, thanks to generations of cultural evolution in different parts of the world.

An excellent archival concert film. If you like the funk - and who doesn't!? - this is essential viewing.

Waltz with Bashir
North American Premiere
Rating: **** 1/2

Visually arresting, rotoscoped animated film about the mental damage caused by warfare and documenting one of Israel's greatest shames. The film is mostly biographical - the main character is the director, Ari Folman, who is a veteran of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and is currently suffering from reoccurring nightmares. He can't remember anything from the war - his brain has blocked out the horror of what happened - so he visits with several of his friends from his platoon to try and recover his memory.

The film is animated, as there really was no other way for the film to be made. Very little footage remains of the 1982 war and what happened in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and Ari's internal mental narrative and post-traumatic stress distorted memories could not have been visualized properly. The result is part Waking Life, part Platoon.

This is a striking film, both in its artistic and political ambitions, and I'm really glad I got to see it. It was beautiful and disturbing to watch, but I'm also glad I got to learn a bit more about the history of the Middle East and the conflict between Israel and everybody else.

Edison & Leo
World Premiere
Rating: *1/2

This film represents a first in Canadian animated history. It's the longest stop-motion animated film ever made! Too bad it wasn't better.

From a technical perspective, the movie is pretty cool, if a little bit retro. In this day and age, is there still an audience for clay-based stop-motion? Tim Burton would say yes, but he's Tim Burton, he can do whatever he wants and it still looks cool. Edison and Leo does look cool, but the plot and the dark, childish humour overshadows much of the entertainment.

I'm not really sure what they were trying to achieve with this movie. Well...no, I do. The humour is definitely adult in nature, and yet at the same time contains a lot of childish "poo poo" kinds of jokes. On top of that, the film is actually kind of violent, which may have been pretty cool if it weren't set up so childishly with stupid jokes.

Dark comedy is always a tough sell, I think. If you want it to work, I think you have to really go over the top. Edison and Leo just doesn't go far enough.

Ghost
North American Premiere
Rating: ***1/2

A piece of gritty, thrilling film noir from...Russia? Yup! And a very cool, taught thriller this is.

The main character is an author who writes popular spy/hit man novels. He's struggling through a bought of writer's block and a failing marriage, and through a twist of fate, he meets a real life assassin who could have walked right off the page into his life. The author becomes enthralled in his research as he partners with the hit man. His obsession becomes dangerous though and the "fun and games" become all too serious.

The plot points might be familiar, but the setting, for me, was wholly unique. It was neat to see a genre film not only done really well, but done in a part of the world I've never seen or had any exposure too. It was like seeing something really really familiar, but filtered through some other lens that makes it all together strange and new at the same time.

Beautifully shot, well acted, perhaps not as tense as an American would have done it, but still a cool little story. If you check it, though expect Hollywood. Recommended if you've never seen a Russian movie before.

The Real Shaolin
World Premiere
Rating: ****

A really great documentary about kung fu dreams and kung fu reality. It follows 4 potential students - 2 chinese, 2 foreigners - as they try to find a place in the kung fu world. I learned a lot about the history of "real" kung fu thanks to this film, finding out about where the art came from, how it was almost destroyed by The Cultural Revolution and how kung fu lives on today in its modern incarnations, the acrobatic but mostly "for show" form, Wu Shu, and the more combative, brutal, hard hitting form, Sanshou (or Sanda).

Of the four subjects, I found the American, who is a serious practitioner of the martial arts but has come to china to study too "late" in his career, and the Chinese Sanda fighter, who is staking pretty much his entire future on one fight in a tournament, the most interesting. The other two - the little orphan who is being tutored by a monk is perhaps the closest to the real kung fu as we'll get today, and the young french man who dreams of becoming Jet Li but doesn't have the patience to commit the years of practice - are also really great but they both seem to have "endings". The American and the Sanda fighter's stories are kind of left a little "unfinished" and I wanted to know more about what happened to them after the film.

If you're interested in kung fu, or the lines between fact and fiction, legend and truth, this is a really great documentary to check out.

Not Quite Hollywood
Canadian Premiere
Rating: ***

Really over the top documentary about genre film from Australia. Pretty interesting and funny to hear all these starlets, stunt men and bizzaro directors talk about the wild wild down under of Aussie film in the 70's and 80's, and if you like boobies, car crashes, freaks and gore, you'll get plenty of that here.

However, by the hour 'n a half mark, the documentary starts to wear you down. The film has a super awesome (at first) over the top graphical style and the soundtrack is bumping and loud and rowdy, like the films they highlight. But the problem is that it never lets up and gives you time to breath and take some of it in, so after a while you climatize to the noise and it doesn't work on you anymore. Then again, I saw this film at midnight after watching one or two other films, so maybe I was just tired. All the same, I had just been to Australia that year, so it was interesting to see these movies play out in Aussie history and how they interacted and flaunted morals of the time.

Oh, and nobody knows how to make a muscle car look sexier than the Aussies.

If you like genre films, or you like Australia, check it out. It's fun and crazy, and Jamie Lee Curtis is in it. Otherwise, it's not really a general interest flick.

Toronto Stories
World Premiere
Rating: *** 1/2

It's hard for me, as a Torontonian, to rate this film fairly, but I'll try. It's an anthology film, so your enjoyment of the flick may vary as wildly as the themes and styles presented by the 4 different directors. I guess you'd say this is another one of those "I love this city" movies like Paris Je T'aime and the like. And why shouldn't we have our own movie about our own city, right?! Damn straight.

The end result is...ok. You get a pseudo-coming of age story, a former-criminal-trying-to-make-good story, a relationship story, and, the strongest IMO, a homeless story.

The homeless story struck the biggest chord with me. The main character in this story, like many homeless on the streets, is suffering from mental illness and depression. The character is someone who used to be on top of the world but, as we find out, a tragic incident in his life sent him spiralling out of control. Another character in the film gives him a chance at redemption. For me, it was a really heart wrenching story beautifully acted by Gil Bellows (I think, maybe). Heart wrenching because I see the homeless situation in Toronto as one of those problems that many ignore, many more try to solve, and yet it continues to fester and exist and never really goes away.

At a homeless training session I went to once, I asked the organizer if things were getting better or worse or staying the same. His answer was that they were basically staying the same, that for every person they get off the street, and another broken soul falls onto it, and the only way to cure it is to cure every single family disturbance and disagreement that's ever occurred.

Anyways, a pretty good anthology, but more for the locals than for anybody. Still, I encourage you to see, if only for the last two stories in the film.

Medicine for Melancholy
Canadian Premiere
Rating: **** 1/2 - Pick of the Fest

This is a really charming, sexy, funny & bittersweet urban romance between two people who have a one night stand at a party. The film picks up during the awkward moments of the morning after, with the guy doing his damnedest to win the girl over, despite the weirdness of the moment. Through sheer will and tenacity, he manages to convince the girl to go to breakfast with him. She reluctantly agrees and then gives him the brush off, only to forget her purse in the cab. What follows is a romantic, in-the-moment, day-in-the-life of these two would be lovers as they navigate the tides and currents of this non-relationship.

I really love the actors in this film, they're so spot on, so charming and easy on the eyes. The interesting dialogue that they have to work with goes a long way too of course, and it's all very winningly delivered. I could hang out with these people for at least another week, watching the guy chase, the girl evade and tease.

The soundtrack is also really awesome, filled with indie rock from the San Francisco music scene, and the look of the film is great. Everything was shot on digital video, but then desaturated a fair bit, to the point where the images are almost black and white.

And it's not just about sex and love either; sprinkled throughout are little tidbits about race and culture and gentrification and the poor and the rich. There's a fair bit of food for thought here.

This is a romantic comedy...sorta. It's romantic. And it's funny. But I suppose that's where the similarities end. Highly recommended viewing.

Tears for Sale
North American Premiere
Rating: **** 1/2 - Pick of the Fest

Bawdy, naughty, sexy, foreign, silly, inventive, unique, original, poignant...are all adjectives you could use to describe the Serbo-Croatian wonder Tears for Sale. It's a rawkus story of two sisters (professional mourners) who accidentally kill the only man left alive in their village. In order to save themselves from being killed by the rest of the village women, they set out into the wide world, promising to return with a new one.

The movie set up is an allegory for a time in Serbia/Crotia's past where all able bodied men were conscripted into the armies and sent off to war, where many of them died. (You'll have to forgive me, I don't know my serb-croat history enough to say exactly which war this was :/) From this serious theme, director Uros Stojanovic launches into a decided un-serious road adventure as he follows the two very different sisters as they try to full fill their mission, save their mother's soul and find love.

There's a lot of like here, what with some really great special effects (this is Croatia's most expensive movie ever made), silly and hilarious script, and really interesting concepts that were either invented or totally real things, like the peach tree where the fruit is already growing inside the vodka bottles.

Uros was a very slippery interviewee, very charming and funny, and it was very hard to tell whether he was being serious or pulling the foreigners' legs about some of these things. :)

The movie is probably impossible to see, unless you download it or have a very discerning selector at your local art house video store. Highly recommended viewing if you like Time Bandits, Monty Python or anything light-hearted that Terry Gilliam ever made.

Uncertainty
Canadian Premiere
Rating: ****

A very strong, small American film with a pair of very, very easy on the eye leads. (You'll recognize Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Third Rock from the Sun) The film follows the main couple on two different stories based on whether they decide to stay in the city for the weekend of visit Kate's (Lynn Collins) parents in Brooklyn.

I really liked how the film jumped back and forth between the two stories and somehow, I never felt lost. They did an excellent job of controlling the pacing, occasionally leaving you at cliff hangers in the more thrilling tale to advance the quieter family drama storyline to its own kind of cliff hangers. Really neat to see how the two stories spun around and sometimes mirrored each other. I can felt like I got to see two movies for the price of one, which was probably the writer's intent. :)

Great little flick, I really enjoyed it.

In The Shadow of the Naga
North American Premiere
Rating: ***

An interesting morality tale from Thailand, a country that has begun to find its cinematic voice and legs on the world stage in the past decade. Produced by the guy who brought you Ong Bak, this is a very different story about 3 criminals who stash their bank heist treasure in a Buddhist monastery, and then must pretend to be monks in order to lie low, case the place and dig up their booty.

It's an interesting story about what makes people go bad, or why good people do bad things and the penance they must pay for it later. It's not going to win any oscars, but it was nice to see something from Thailand that didn't involve martial arts. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they produce!

The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
North American Premiere
Rating: ****

I'll say one thing for this film: it made me want to become a vegetarian. :P

This is a great documentary about what goes into the running of the world's largest chinese restaurant (it can see 5000 people) as well as a bit about the changing face of china and the rise of its middle class. A little long in parts but a mostly fascinating look into chinese culture. The movie mostly seeks to entertain than educate, although their are moments where the rise of materialism is called into question and criticized.

Most memorable for me was the chef speed cooking contest: live snakes were chopped and prepared to the judges, which the results still squirming on the plate! Yeeeuuuck!

Skycrawlers
North American Premiere
Rating: **

Ugh. This has asian flu written all over. Asian flu means "look beautiful, super stylish, but ultimately boring."

It's got some neat ideas, but some simply stunning, jaw dropping animation. The first big dog fight sequence was stunning to watch on the big screen, it actually made my stomach drop out a couple of times! But the story is bogged down way too much by a lot of silent moments where characters get all emo, stare off in the space, and don't say a heck of a lot about anything, until suddenly, out of nowhere, right about 3/4s of the way through, one character has a massive soliloquy that explains the "big idea" in the movie. I hate that!

My Mother, My Bride and I
North American Premiere
Rating: *** 1/2

This film was beautiful to look at it at times, and had a pretty cool soundtrack. And it had a pretty good story too. The whole film had this light-bathed, autumnal sunset kind of look to it with beams bouncing and refracting off of empty glass, and features lo-fi beats from Beck and the like. The story's mileage with you may vary, depending on your tolerance for "sad sack lonely man gets saved by flamboyant, vivacious woman" kind of stories, but stick it out. It's a good story about growing up (even when it appears to have been too late), cutting ties, change, trust and getting older.

Chocolate
North American Premiere
Rating: *** 1/2

"I don't know karate but I know crazy!"

Thus said James Brown, which is an excellent quote to end the festival on seeing as that's where we started.

Chocolate is from the director of Ong Bak and this out, he tries to add a little depth and a little equal opportunity to his martial arts mayhem by casting a female lead as an autistic child who seeks to help our her ailing mother by doing what she does best: kicking the crap out of gangs that owe her family money.

I really, *really* wanted to like this movie...and I did in the end, but I totally killed it with my own anticipation for the film I think. The female lead, JeeJa Yanin, definitely has some skills in the martial arts department...unfortunately, she's no Tony Jaa, which was what I was hoping for. :/ She's lithe and fast, but it didn't look or feel like she was *hitting* very hard.

All the same, like any good martial arts flick, there are a few stand out set pieces, in particular the "crazy vs. krazy" fight between JeeJa and another autistic martial arts expert, a body rocking, pop locking bboy. (Hey, it's a thai martial arts flick, you can only break one stereotype at a time!) And the final sequence, fighting on the side of an apartment building, is bone-crunchingly painful to watch.

Good stuff, just modify your expectations before going in!

Whew! That's it...now I can take a break before I have to do it all over again for TIFF 2009!

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