Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 13

TIFF18: Another Zhang Yimou Martial Arts Masterpiece, and More

Capsule reviews and notes from day six of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Her Smell (US, Alex Ross Perry, 4) Fading rocker (Elizabeth Moss) rides a wave of cocaine and megalomania to an epic flame-out. Rock ‘n’ roll drama amped up by stylized dialogue, roving handheld camera, strong performances from a great cast and a score that bubbles with unease. With Eric Stoltz, Virginia Madsen, Dan Stevens and Cara Delavigne.

Shadow (China, Zhang Yimou, 5) In defiance of his king, a commoner trained to pose as a secretly wounded general prepares for deadly and politically destabilizing duel. Stately court intrigue lays the groundwork for stunningly executed, outlandish action.

Shot in color, but with grayscale sets and costumes. Which is to say that eventually it becomes black and white and red all over.

Absolutely on a par with Zhang’s previous martial arts masterpieces Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

Jinpa (Tibet, Pema Tseden, 2) Truck driver on the bleak high plateau of Tibet picks up a man with the same name, who is going to town to kill the man who murdered his father. Though this inexplicably won a best screenplay award at Venice, there’s only enough incident here for a short.

Vision (Japan, Naomi Kawase, 4) Forester (Masatoshi Nagase) working a pristine mountainside receives a visit from a French writer (Juliet Binoche) searching for Vision, a herb that cures human pain. Gorgeous and deeply enigmatic exploration of the director’s key theme of mystical communion with nature.

Usually when you think of deeply challenging films you call to mind something harsh or hard-hitting, but this is easily the calmest, loveliest mindfuck ever screened.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

TIFF18: A Haida Wildman and Families With Boundary Issues

Capsule reviews and notes from day five of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Edge of the Knife (Canada, Gwaai Edenshaw & Helen Haig-Brown, 4) After a canoeing accident. a fisherman transforms into a gaagiixiid, or wildman. Mythic storytelling recreates the material culture and rhythms of traditional life in 19th century Haida Gwai. In the endangered Haida language.

Unlike the wendigo, the gaagiixiid is a victim of spirit possession rather than a permanently monstrous devourer of human flesh.

In place of the usual production company logos, this starts with the crests of three Haida organizations, including a band council.

Kingsway (Canada, Bruce Sweeney, 4) Depressive semiotics prof whose mom and sister are wildly over-involved in his life spirals when he spots his wife’s motorbike parked outside the titular nookie motel. Sex farce of neurotic boundary trampling dispenses sharp dialogue at a near-Hawksian clip.

The Quietude (Argentina, Pablo Trapero,4) When their father’s stroke reunited two strangely intimate sisters at the family ranch, dark secrets start to spill. Particularly steamy contribution to the venerable tradition of wrapping barbed political commentary in outré melodrama.

Argentinian cinema is really on fire these days.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

#TIFF18: Borders and Boundaries

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Capsule reviews and notes from day four of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Yesterday was mostly crime dramas. Today the whims of the programming gods decree a day about borders and the conflicts that spawn them. Not the film called Border, though—that’s coming later in the week.

The Sweet Requiem (India, Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam, 3) The arrival of an activist refugee in Delhi’s Tibetan community awakens traumatic memories of a beautician’s childhood border crossing. Flashbacks of the frigid mountain journey land with greater force than the present day plot line, which waits until the third act to activate its protagonist.

Tel Aviv on Fire (Palestine/Israel, Sameh Zoabi, 4) Suddenly elevated to writer status on the titular Palestinian soap opera, erstwhile production assistant enters into an uncredited collaboration with the Israeli commander of the Ramallah checkpoint. Uses the backstage comedy genre, with writing jokes galore, to address the Occupation with neither despair nor false idealism.

Fig Tree (Ethiopia/Israel, Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian, 4) As conditions worsen in the 1989  civil war and soldiers start rounding up boys to fight, a hotheaded Ethiopian Jewish teen cares more about her boyfriend’s safety than her family’s impending emigration. Though the product of the Israeli film industry, this memoiristic drama hews in every aesthetic sense to the African cinema tradition.

The Crossing (China, Bai Xue, 4) To earn money for a trip to Japan with her rich friend, a go-getting teen who commutes from the mainland to school in Hong Kong involves herself in contraband phone smuggling. Naturalistic drama with crime in it, elevated by the director’s buoyant lightness of touch and exquisite color sense.

The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia (Cuba, Arturo Infante, 3.5) Kindly, long-suffering planetarium docent receives a special invitation from the aliens living secretly among the Cuban people to travel to their homeworld. Amiable, ramshackle comedy pokes fun at human foibles and  bureaucratic absurdity.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

TIFF18: Taiwanese Cyberpunk & A Triple-Header of Crime Sub-Genres

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Capsule reviews and notes from day three of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Accused (Argentina, Gonzalo Tobal, 4) Upper middle class family endures the pressure cooker of the college-age daughter’s media circus murder trial. Though the suspense revolves around the courtroom scenes, the family’s emotional world takes the main focus here.

As the disclaimer card at the beginning doesn’t quite say, any similarity to the Amanda Knox case is strictly coincidental.

The Wedding Guest (UK, Michael Winterbottom, 4) Kidnapper-for-hire (Dev Patel) goes to Pakistan to abduct a young woman (Radhika Apte) on the eve of a forced marriage, so she can be reunited with her Anglo-Indian boyfriend. South Asian setting finds a fresh spin on the fugitive couple sub-genre, abetted by Winterbottom’s usual flair for atmospherics.

Heartbound (Denmark, Janus Metz & Sine Plambech, 3.5) Documentary follows 10 years in the lives of Thai women who marry men in a northern Danish fishing town. Starts by showing that these relationships are more nuanced than you might want to assume, before discovering that life will get you no matter where you go.

The Factory (Russia, Yury Bykov, 4) Aggrieved workers kidnap the local oligarch after he announced the shuttering of their deteriorating factory. Knows that the key to a hostage flick is to keep changing the status quo, so it never devolves into a static situation.

To describe this as a gritty Russian crime drama would imply that there is some other variety. I know you’re not here for that kind of nonsense.

Cities of Last Things (Taiwan, Ho Wi Ding, 4) An ex-cop’s violent vengeance in a cyberpunk future is later explained by events occurring to his younger selves In our present and past.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

TIFF18: Masterful Swedish SF and more

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Capsule reviews and notes from day two of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Ulysses & Mona (France, Sébastien Betbeder, 4) Art student seeking challenge appoints herself assistant to a gruff retired artist (Eric Cantona) as he finds reason for an amends tour. Charming comedy-drama with flashes of Jarmuschian eccentricity.

Although mobile phones have ruined many movie plots, Skype has made scenes that would previously been shot as voice calls more connected and easier to shoot.

Mobile phones have also ruined many movie screenings but that’s a whole other area.

ANIARA (Sweden, Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 5) When a luxury mass transport ship taking passengers to Mars from a ravaged Earth goes off course, a mediator of computer-assisted hallucinations struggles to keep hope alive. Surprising, multi-layered, emotionally resonant SF recalls Ballard and Kubrick while maintaining its own distinctive vision.

Among the brilliant elements of this film is the obvious-in-retrospect idea that a passenger transport vehicle would look like a combination of a hotel and a modern airport, food court and all.

Mothers’ Instinct (Belgium, Olivier Masset-Depasse, 3) After her best friend’s young son dies in an accident, a 50s housewife comes to suspect that the woman has sinister designs on her family. Otherwise assured Hitchcock homage winds up breaking the thriller contract in a way Hitch would never have signed off on.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

#TIFF18: Vacation Gets Weird & Guerrilla Women vs. ISIS

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Capsule reviews and notes from day one of the Toronto International Film Festival.

After a lackluster 2017, it’s time to hurl ourselves into a brand new TIFF.  This year promises more sure-thing directors and a resurgence of titles from Asia. Will the cinema gods smile or frown? Stay tuned for ten days of capsule reviews, followed by a round-up in order of preference when it has all unspooled.

Florianópolis Dream (Argentina, Ana Katz, 4) Separated couple, both psychologists, take a Brazilian vacation with their teenage son and daughter, falling into the beach bum community of the oddball dude who rents them a house. Low-key observational comedy of a family drifting apart.

Very subtly set in the long-ago time of cassette tapes, Nirvana T-shirts and cameras as a standalone item. Though this is by no means a plot-focused film, key events wouldn’t happen in the smartphone era.

Girls of the Sun (France, Eva Husson, 4) Traumatized war correspondent (Emanuelle Bercot) covers an all-woman unit of Yazidi partisans as they fight alongside the Peshmerga to liberate a city held by their former ISIS captors. The standout set-piece of this ripped-from-the-headlines feminist war movie is the gripping extended flashback depicting the escape of the protagonist from her captors.

Bercot’s character is clearly based on Marie Colvin, also the subject of an upcoming biopic starring Rosamund Pike.

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, streaming platforms and DVD over the next year plus. If you’ve heard of a film showing at TIFF, I’m probably waiting to see it during its upcoming conventional release.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Snort the Pringles

In the latest episode of our deeply intuitive podcast, Ken and I talk incompetence in GUMSHOE, updating Nephilim, smart emotional writing, and Lincoln Park time travel.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: A Stargate in His District

In the latest episode of their satisfyingly escalating podcast, Ken and Robin talk climactic sessions, Stoker translations, fantasy films 101, and Sumerian stargates.

Finding Me at FanExpo Canada 2018

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This weekend the Toronto Convention Center will again be full to bursting with geek culture in all of its manifestations. Yes, it’s time for the massive multi-track behemoth of a show that is FanExpo Canada. Of its many tracks, the one that grows by bounds and also leaps every year is the gaming programming. Once again I’ll be talking tabletop roleplaying with the burgeoning, sometimes costumed throng.  I don’t do the booth thing at FanExpo but if you’d like to chat or get something signed, grab me at these locations before or after the panel.

Saturday 11 am ROOM 717A GUMSHOE AND MYSTERY ADVENTURES IN TABLETOP ROLE PLAYING GAMES

Saturday 3:00 pm ROOM 715B ROBIN LAWS SPOTLIGHT PANEL

Sunday 1:00 pm   ROOM 705 MASTER OF THE GAME: GAME MASTER MASTER CLASS

Sunday 3:00 pm   ROOM 717A GETTING STARTED IN TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Nobody Wants to Be a Gate

In the latest episodeof our Elder-signed podcast, Ken and I talk narrative dungeons, Free Spacer w Christoph Sapinsky, tattooing Cthulhu and Rosaleen Norton.