Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 38

TIFF 15: There Ain’t No Apocalypse Like a Yakuza Apocalypse

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Saturday September 19th.

Augh. Brain. Clumped. And. Stuck. To. Inside. Of. Skull. But can’t skip a screening and sleep in, because today’s first flick comes from the director of Borgman:

Schneider vs. Bax [Netherlands, Alex van Warmerdam, 3.5] A client assigns two assassins, one a middle-class control freak, the other a drug-snarfling novelist, to kill one other. Another enigmatic van Warmerdam fable about darkness and the bourgeiosie, this one a hitman farce of chance and mischance.

I had this pegged as a 4 throughout, but disappointingly it whiffs its ending.

Lolo [France, Julie Delpy, 4] When his fashion show organizer mom (Julie Delpy) comes home from vacation with a hopelessly uncool new boyfriend, an emotionally arrested young artist schemes to deep-six their relationship. Urbane yet raunchy comedy of Oedipal manners tips the hat to Blake Edwards.

Delpy and her co-star were present for the screening.

Yakuza Apocalypse [Japan, Takashi Miike, 4] Ordinary people start turnng into yakuza vampires, depriving actual gangster of victims to prey on. Spoof of genre-blending and fight film tropes goes beyond gonzo, with a creature wearing a moth-eaten frog mascot suit as the main villain all the other bad guys are afraid of.

Miike was present at the screening, attending TIFF for the first time in fifteen years. I even stayed to hear the Q&A. Fortunately programmer Colin Geddes runs his Q&As by asking key questions himself and leaving little room for audience members to launch into their “this is more of a comment than a question” questions. Miike’s next film will be about people who become human-insect hybrids so they can journey to Mars to fight cockroaches. You know, that old saw.

The Mind’s Eye [US, Joe Begos, 2] Psychokinetics escape a research facility whose megalomaniacal director is performing medical experiments on them. Rough-around-the-edges cover version of Scanners has all of its exploding heads but none of its subversive metaph0rical content.

Very glad to have programmed nothing in the late evening slot. Must try for eight hours sleep, as I saved some of my most anticipated titles for the final day, Sunday. But as I type this: brain. Clumped. To. Inside. Of. Skull.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF 15: When You Become a Cyborg, Your Eleven Gets Recalibrated

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Friday September 18th.

Murmur of the Hearts [Taiwan, Sylvia Chang, 5] Memories of her family's dissolution keep a painter from connecting with her equally closed-off boxer boyfriend, or seeking out the brother she hasn't seen since childhood. Accumulates emotional power through sensitively observed, authentic character moments.

Though Chang is Taiwanese, she usually works in Hong Kong, making films that reflect its hallmark style. This one on the other hand is very recognizably Taiwanese. In the good, Edward Yang way, not the boring Hou Hsiao-Hsien way.

I just wish the title didn't follow the weird Hong Kong convention of finding English-language titles by randomly grabbing one from an existing movie. It's especially odd for a serious film adopting the title of a world cinema classic and changing it just enough to seem unidiomatic. You know what's a much better title for this one? Green Island. Just call it Green Island, people!

Hardcore [Russia, Ilya Naishuller, 4] Newly awakened cyborg super-soldier shoots, punches, parkours and rail-guns his way through a legion of mooks to stop a telekinetic villain from assembling a world-conquering army. Every time you think this crazypants high-action extravaganza, shot entirely in POV, has gone up to eleven, it finds a whole new eleven.

This film clearly uses the Feng Shui rules. It set off a bidding war between distributors and sold for $10 million. It has garnered a weirdly dismissive vibe from many critics. It is perhaps not enjoyed at its best when weary and unwilling, as so many fest reviewers are. But after the dust settles this will end up in the enduring list of cult action titles for sure. And then those critics will make like they liked it all along.

It also once more makes Midnight Madness the program that reverses complaints that not enough big sales have been made at the festival this year. Notch another defining pick for MM programmer Colin Geddes.

Right Now Wrong Then [South Korea, Hong Sang-soo, 4] An encounter between a feckless film director and a young painter plays out differently in two variations. Injects a touch of extra warmth to the minimalistic stock elements Hong allows himself in each of his films: chance, embarrassment, desire and overindulgence in soju.

Honor Thy Father [Phillipines, Erik Matti, 4] Landscaper with a shady past resorts to desperate measures after the collapse of his father-in-law's evangelical pyramid scheme leaves his family facing the wrath of violent scam victims. Tough, socially informed emerging world noir.

From the director of On the Job, about day parolee hit men.

Eva Doesn’t Sleep [Argentina, Pablo Agüero, 4] Archival footage and dramatic tableaus tell the strange fate of Eva Peron's body after her death in 1955. Dramatic scenes pack a greater punch in the writing, staging and acting departments than one typically expects from an experimental essay-style feature. With Gael Garcia Bernal and Denis Lavant.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF 15: Homunculus Problems, Just a Part of Growing Up

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Thursday, September 17th.

Blood of My Blood [Italy, Marco Bellochio, 4] In the 19th century, clerics try to wring a confession of witchcraft from a nun; in the 21st, fading vampires fear encroaching bureaucracy. Thinky historical allegory given life by a series of striking images.

From the director of Fists In Pocket and Devil in the Flesh.

Full Contact [Netherlands, Thomas Verbeek, 2] French drone targeting pilot confronts the new stresses of 21st century air warfare. Dispenses with the obvious beats of a drone war story in act one, then shifts, none too compellingly, into the Antonioni zone.

The main problem with making fiction about the drone war is that it is already an overly obvious metaphor.

The Clan [Argentina, Pablo Trapero, 4] State security officer in the late days of the Argentinian dictatorship enlists his family in a kidnap-for-profit ring. Bracing true crime drama takes cues from the Scorsese style guide.

From the director of Carancho.

Baskin [Turkey, Can Evrenol, 4] Cops called for backup at an abandoned, Ottoman-era police station descend into Hell. Hypnagogic pageant of initiatory creepiness, conjured with micro-budget ingenuity Sam Raimi would be proud of.

This is what I want in a Midnight Madness title--from somewhere unexpected, working at the very edge of its ambition, crazy but knowing. And with a blood-drenched taste of political subtext, too.

So to sum up: Turkish auteur cinema, back on festival moratorium. Emerging Turkish genre cinema, the opposite of that.

Der Nachtmahr [Germany, AKIZ, 4] Teen girl is haunted by a homunculus-like creature, leading both her hard-partying friends and uptight bourgeois parents to think she’s going crazy. Delirious fable of misunderstood youth plays like the Austrian spawn of Harmony Korine and Frank Henenlotter.

With Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth fame as the girl’s English teacher.

And Austria, you’ve got to stop undercutting your fantasy and horror pics by imposing the wrong kind of logic on them. You know what I’m talking about, Austria.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

The Birds: Worse

Click here for the complete strip archive.

TIFF 15: Who Gets Lonelier, Ghosts or Androids?

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Wednesday September 16th.

An [Japan, Naomi Kawase, 5] Sad-eyed pancake stall operator gives in to the entreaties of a sweet-natured elderly woman who offers to improve his bean paste--the crucial ingredient that gives the film its name. Quiet, beautifully wrought drama starts out as a delightful food procedural on the order of Tampopo or Babette's Feast but becomes so much more.

Frenzy [Turkey, Emin Alper, 1] As Istanbul falls into police state lockdown, a parolee informing for the cops and his brother, who works for the government secretly shooting stray dogs, descend into separate paranoias. Hallmark signs of ill-wrought story construction include repeated story beats, dream sequences, idiot plotting, and the general wet cement pacing endemic to Turkish art cinema.

If you’re looking for the misnomer title of the fest, here you go. I knew this was a risk when I programmed but was misle by comparisons to Polanski and Cronenberg. But then to forgo all risk is the biggest film fest risk of all. Also it was kind of a dead slot.

Evolution [France, Lucile Hadžihalilovic, 4] Pre-pubescent boys on remote island discover that their so-called, oddly young mothers and nurses are performing weird medical experiments on them. Hypnotic tone poem suffused with horror themes and imagery.

Now this is a movie that can aptly claim to be a cutting from a Cronenbergian pseudopod. The obverse of the director's previous film, the much more lyrical weird fantasy Innocence, about girls' rites of passage.

The Whispering Star [Japan, Sion Sono, 4] An android courier delivers packages to the galaxy's few remaining humans, her only company a child-like navigational computer and her own tape recorded diary. Austere contemplation of the pleasures and perils of solitude, with the planets the protagonist visits represented by the still-abandoned streets and structures of the Fukushima quarantine zone.

Last year Takashi Miike had an austere formalist exercise that referenced genre tropes and Sono the crazypants Midnight Madness entry. This year it's the other way around.

I would not choose to see an entire day of meditatively paced titles, but one does not impose one's will on the festival. It imposes its will on you.

Journey to the Shore [Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 4] Woman goes on road trip with the very visible, quite solid ghost of her husband (Tadanobu Asano.) Seems to lack the director’s telltale unpredictable strangeness… at first.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF ‘15: It's Hard Out There For a Deep One

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, for titles seen Tuesday September 15th.

Okay, enough with the measly three-movie days. Time to get down to business.

The Promised Land [China, He Ping, 4] Dance instructor returns to her small town, recalls the love and freedom of her time in Beijing with her hockey coach boyfriend. Subtly rendered drama amplified by a keenly beautiful visual style.

This is the movie that tons of international directors are trying to make, except they lack the chops to captivate and instead only bore.

Collective Invention [South Korea, Kwon Oh-kwang, 4] Aspiring reporter finds a web of corporate corruption when he seeks out a pharmaceutical test subject who has mutated into a fish man. Engaging satire is what you might get if Frank Capra made a movie about Deep Ones.

The house was packed for this one, with not only TIFF regulars but kids from the Korean community who showed up to glimpse the pop superstar who appears in the role of the woebegone man-fish. In the film, you only see him in old photos or under an enormous piscine prosthetic.

Bleak Street [Mexico, Arturo Ripstein, 4] Fatal destiny entwines twin dwarf masked wrestlers and a pair of desperate, aging prostitutes. Deglamorizes the true crime flick in persuasively grimy B&W, with the prowling camera as omniscient eye of a jaded, judging God.

The Devil’s Candy [US, Sean Byrne, 3.5] Cool metalhead dad loses himself in painting a horrific mural psychically evoking the activities of a child murderer connected to his newly purchased home. Most examples of the current parental-terror-home-ownership-anxiety-demon-haunting cycle have nowhere to go in the third act. Add serial killer tropes? Bingo: third act

Lace Crater [US, Harrison Atkins, 2.5] Twenty-something woman develops strange symptoms after sleeping with a burlap-clad ghost on a Hamptons getaway weekend with friends. Mix of mumblecore and body horror has fun elements, such as a supernatural entity who is as tentative and hyper-verbal as the rest of the characters, but no third act.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF 15: Tom Hiddleston Gets High, JG Ballard High

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Monday September 14th.

High-Rise [UK, Ben Wheatley, 5] Reserved anatomy instructor (Tom Hiddleston) moves into a brutalist apartment tower run by its strangely intrusive architect (Jeremy Irons) just before its descent into orgiastic madness. Phantasmagorical adaptation of the classic JG Ballard conjures weird beauty from the ugliest elements of 70s design.

This feels more purely a Ballard piece than Cronenberg's Crash, which was such a quintessential Toronto movie. That opening shot of a cold morning Gardiner Expressway lays bare the weird dark heart of my beautiful city. High-Rise on the other hand keeps it British to the bone--1975 Britain to be precise. The spirit of Cronenberg isn't absent but there's a bunch of Lindsay Anderson and Python in its lineage too.

February [US, Osgood Perkins, 2] An ominous force threatens two girls left behind over winter break at a private girls' school. Slow burn horror flick uses recursive structure in attempt to complicate its thin narrative. With Keirnan Shipka and Emma Roberts.

Men & Chicken [Denmark, Anders Thomas Jensen, 4] Put-upon prof and his indignant, chronically masturbating brother (Mads Mikkelsen in his most uproarious performance) discover that they have four degenerate brothers living in the remote island redoubt of their rogue geneticist biological father. Weird, hilarious and even touching comedy of twisted family ties.

The director's first film since Adam's Apples, ten years ago.

 

 

 

 

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF15: When Your Wedding Crasher is a Dybbuk

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Sunday September 13th. I am now well into the dreamtime phase of the festival, as my brain shifts all resources to taking in movies. As opposed to, say, correctly working out the breaks I have between movies and where to best get food. Or remembering what time I need to leave the house without writing it down. Practical considerations, what are they, really? Give me another jump cut.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) [France, Eva Husson, 4] Rift between two high schoolers over a narcissistic boy triggers out of control sex parties. Dreamy dramas is subversive in depicting  extreme teenage sexuality as entirely non-apocalyptic.

This one upends expectations to such a degree that I wasn’t sure all the way through if the filmmaker had found a viewpoint on the material. Even after it ended it took me a while to fully appreciate what it was doing and decide conclusively that I liked it.

Demon [Poland, Marcin Wrona, 4] English groom meeting the bride's family for the first time at a vodka-soaked Polish wedding gets possessed by a dybbuk. Stage play adaptation adds allegory and ghost story elements to the wedding spiraling out of control sub-genre.

Veteran [South Korea, Seung-wan Ryoo, 4] Ass-kicking loose cannon cop won't let go of a case against a cocky young psycho executive. Hard action comedy hits the crowd-pleasing beats.

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF 15: Sometimes You Don't Want Patrick Stewart To Come Knocking

Capsule reviews and notes from the Toronto International Film Festival, Saturday Sept 12th.

Endless River [South Africa, Oliver Hermanus, 4] After his wife and children are murdered in a brutal home invasion, a French ex-pat finds himself drawn to a waitress, whose husband is a police suspect in the case. Layered, ambiguous noir drama evokes James M. Cain and the sweep of 50s CinemaScope.

Northern Soul [UK, Elaine Constantine, 3.5 ] Two lads in 1974 Lancashire bond over rare soul records and amphetamines. Bromantic music drama colors within the lines.

This was a replacement screening for Amazing Grace, a doc featuring late sixties footage of Aretha Franklin recording her classic gospel album of the same name. The filmmakers, using footage shot by the late Sydney Pollack, apparently decided to make a documentary about  Franklin without doing any research on her. Anyone familiar with her knows that her decades of experience in the music industry has left her extremely distrustful of business arrangements. So she got injunctions against them screening the film at Telluride and Chicago on the grounds that they were proceeding without her consent. The producers also then withdrew the title from TIFF, one hopes because they are now presenting Franklin with several of her legendary boxes full of cash.

Green Room [US, Jeremy Saulnier, 4] Punk band winds up trapped in a club surrounded by white supremacists intent on wiping them out. Violent survival thriller starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots and Alia Shawkat, with Patrick Stewart as head bad guy.

From the director of Blue Ruin, also recommended.

The Lobster [Greece, Yorgos Lanthimos, 4] Sad architect (Colin Farrell) hopes to maintain his humanity in an alternate reality dystopia where unmarrieds have 45 days to find new partners, or be transformed into animals. Alternatively funny and unsettling absurdist satire of the rules societies and individuals fight to impose on romantic love.

Other cast members include Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw.

Office [HK, Johnnie To, 4] More than the markets are melting down for everyone from the new hires to the CEO (Chow Yun-Fat) of a trading firm headed for an IPO. Musical based on a play by star Sylvia Chang finds To continuing his  experimentations with space by leaning into the artificially of 3D on a gleaming, heavily stylized set.
Office will be getting a limited theatrical run in North America from specialty distributor Well-GO USA. Look for it almost immediately if you live near a multiplex that carries films for the Chinese community.
Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.

TIFF 15: When the Lebanese Drug Dealers are the Upbeat Part of the Day

Capsule reviews and comments on films seen yesterday, Friday Sept 11th.
French Blood [French, Diastème, 4] Tightly wound racist skinhead gradually develops a conscience but finds it hard to distance himself from his old friends and National Front connections. What initially seems like another run through familiar territory slowly reveals itself as an observational story of incremental redemption.
It's hard to make a movie about neo-Nazi skinheads that neo-Nazi skinheads don't find inspiring. They just watch Romper Stomper or La Haine for the adrenaline and symbology and mentally edit out the moral content. Indeed, as they edit out the moral content of actual life. This film, about a character who instead of being sucked into a personal apocalypse faces the plain old struggles of adulthood, might actually fit that bill.
Very Big Shot [Lebanon, Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya, 4] Drug dealer who acts faster than he thinks decides to dispose of a windfall of pills by faking a film shoot, so he can avoid airport security scans by hiding the goods in sealed film canisters. Adroitly executes a difficult shift of tone and genre, from tense crime drama to moviemaking satire.
Sparrows [Iceland, Rúnar Rúnarsson, 1] When his mom leaves the country, a soulful teen has to move to a remote northern fishing village to live with his alcoholic father. I was on board this gorgeously shot look at the way a place can rob young people of agency all the way up to its ending, a truly reprehensible piece of writing (and staging.).

Have a question about my TIFF capsule reviews? It may be frequently asked. If so, I have already answered it.