Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 71

Jennisodes

I do the guest thing (and explain your dreams to you) in this week's exciting episode of Jennisodes.

TIFF Day Eleven (and Out)

Road North [Finland, Mika Kaurismaki, 2.5] Aging ne'er-do-well imposes a surprise road trip on the tightly-wound concert pianist son he abandoned as an infant. Workmanlike comedy-drama hints only fleetingly at the personal style that first brought the director to prominence.

Room 237 [US, Rodney Ascher, 4] Five amateur theorists share their varying, obsessive interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Hypnotic exploration of the dissolve point where critique enters the frozen hedge maze of overthinking.

Dreams For Sale [Japan, Miwa Nishikawa, 2.5] Discovering her husband's sad sack appeal to vulnerable women, a wronged wife puts him to work swindling them. Could be quite affecting if trimmed of 30-40 minutes of superfluous sub-plotting.

In Another Country [South Korea, Hong Sang-soo, 4] Film student writes three similar-but-different vignettes inspired by a French woman she met in passing at an off-season beach resort. Isabelle Huppert adds left-field star wattage to the auteur's hallmark minimalist comedy of soju-soaked social misadventure.

The Deep [Iceland, Baltasar Kormakur, 4] Fisherman defies the odds when his ship goes down in the frigid North Atlantic. Dramatization of unbelievable real incident breaks the structural rules with surprising authority.

TIFF Day Ten

Key of Life [Japan, Kenji Uchida, 4] Unemployed actor steals the identity of an amnesiac hitman. Clever, charming comedy of selfhood, isolation and belonging.

Satellite Boy [Australia, Catriona McKenzie, 2] Young boy and pal go on an unintended walkabout when he tries to retrieve his mom from the city. Tale of truth to aboriginal roots is too sweet-natured to ever let us fear a negative outcome for its kid hero--which is death to compelling narrative.

Painless [Spain, Juan Carlos Medina, 4] Surgeon's quest for a bone marrow donor leads him to a strange case from the 30s, when a group of children were institutionalized due to a disorder rendering them immune to pain. Horror-tinged mystery takes the political themes of Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth a step further.

Shanghai [India, Dibakar Banerjee, 4] Official shows more diligence than his bosses expect when they assign him a token enquiry into an assassination attempt on a famous activist. Crackling, vibrant political thriller represents a big step forward for Indian indie cinema.

Outrage Beyond [Japan, Takeshi Kitano, 4] Oily cop connives to curb a yakuza gang by springing from prison a supposedly dead former nemesis (Beat Takeshi), who is getting too old for this shit. Slow burn, followed by stoic ultraviolence.

TIFF Day Nine

Night Across the Street [France/Chile, Raul Ruiz, 3] Aging shipping clerk recalls his childhood and waits to be assassinated. Adaptation of magic realist novel misses the transporting quality of the director's key works.

Burn It Up Djassa [Ivory Coast, Lonesome Solo, 3] A young man's plunge into street crime is seen both through the bravado of a neighborhood storyteller and the bitter reality of direct experience. Your basic naturalistic developing world crime drama.

It does not need to be said that, among directors with work appearing at this year’s festival, Lonesome Solo hands-down wins the award for best name.

Pieta [South Korea, Kim Ki-duk, 4] Brutal debt collector loses his psychopathic equilibrium when a woman shows up claiming to be the mother who abandoned him at birth. Kim recovers from a dry spell by returning to the ultra-nastiness of the films that first made his name on the festival circuit.

The Thieves [South Korea, Choi Dong-hoon, 4] Heisters from Korea and Hong Kong uneasily ally to steal a diamond from a Macao casino. Cracking entertainment presents a fresh take on the genre by focusing on plots and betrayals among the gang--then throws in killer action sequences and Simon Yam, to boot!

This is now South Korea's top box office grosser.

TIFF Day Eight

I know what you’re thinking. Only three movies today? Is Robin punking out? Know this: the last film of the day is actually a four-and-a-half hour TV miniseries.

Sightseers [UK, Ben Wheatley, 4] Put-upon new couple turn their caravan holiday into a killing spree. Character-driven black comedy plays like early Mike Leigh with grisly murders.

Caught in the Web [China, Chen Kaige, 4] Journalists make a national scandal of a young woman who refuses to give up her bus seat to an elderly man, unaware that she just received a fatal cancer diagnosis. Satirical ensemble drama serves up gloss, social critique and pathos.

Penance [Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 4] A cruel promise, extracted by the mother of a murdered child from her four playmates, reverberates in all of their lives fifteen years later. Interlinked tales of fate, betrayal and murder unfold with cryptic power.

TIFF Day Seven

Day Seven is one-word title day.

Blondie [Sweden, Jesper Gaslandt, 4] Fraught relations between control freak matriarch and her three daughters come to a head when they return home to help run her 70th birthday bash. Places the expected meltdown at the first act break, then follows the aftermath.

Mushrooming [Estonia, Toomas Hussar, 4] Resentful parliamentarian's Sunday forage in the woods goes spectacularly awry. Barbed comedy of errors.

Thale [Norway, Aleksander Nordaas, 3] Guys abating a death scene find a feral woman in a basement lab. Folkloric creature feature invests loads of atmosphere in a rudimentary storyline.

Motorway [HK, Soi Cheang, 4] Two traffic patrolmen, a young hotshot (Shawn Yue) and a savvy vet counting the days till retirement (Anthony Wong) pursue a cop-killing robber and his ace getaway driver. Leans into its police movie cliches as it reconfigures the car chase set piece for Hong Kong's confined spaces.

Sign o' the times: of all the films I've seen so far at this year's festival, this was the first projected on celluloid. They had to stop a couple of times to fix the focus.

TIFF Day Six

So far my schedule has been weighted toward the serious side of world and indie cinema. Today took a swerve into genre territory, with vampires, demons, and a werewolf. Okay, there's a Detroit gas station in here too.

Byzantium [UK, Neil Jordan, 4] Vampires on the run (Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan) take refuge in a seaside resort town. Mood-driven contemporary gothic tips the hat to the Hammer tradition.

Detroit Unleaded [US, Rola Nashef, 4] Young man stuck managing the family gas station/convenience mart falls for gorgeous girl in similar boat at phone store--but they're Arab-American, which is all the complication you need.Vibrant indie comedy buzzes with social observation.

Here Comes the Devil [Mexico, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, 3.5] Strained couple confronts weirdness after their son and daughter disappear overnight on a hill said to be haunted by ancient entities. Replaces the usual religious imagery of the demonic possession flick with domestic and sexual hysteria.

A Werewolf Boy [South Korea, Jo Sung-hee, 4] Sickly girl and her family take in and tame a feral teen who is more than he seems. Funny, romantic crowdpleaser.

TIFF Day Five

Act of Killing [Denmark, Joshua Oppenheimer & Christine Cynn & Anonymous, 5] Gangsters who acted as death squad leaders during the 1965-66 Indonesian military coup comply enthusiastically with a project to self-document their war crimes on film--complete with drag roles and a musical number. Documentary exploration of an evil that is everything but banal, and still very much in power, drops one's jaw from start to finish.

Because the killers are still in command in Indonesia, every local crew member, as a protective measure, is anonymously credited.

Fitzgerald Family Christmas [US, Edward Burns, 4] Large, fractious Irish-American family experiences experiences an uptick in its Yuletide crisis quotient when the father who abandoned them twenty years ago wants to come to the big dinner. Well-written comedy drama delivered by a skilled ensemble.

Fin (The End) [Spain, Jose Torregrossa, 4] A once-tight group of friends reunites at a mountain cottage for the first time in two decades, scarcely suspecting that they're about to number among the last people left on Earth. Although I'm guessing this omits a layer or two from the best-selling novel it adapts, this is still an engaging entry in the quiet apocalypse sub-genre.

A Hijacking [Denmark, Tobias Lindholm, 4] When Somali pirates hijack one of his firm's freighters, a CEO disregards his expert's advice to conduct the negotiation himself. Gritty ticktock focuses on authenticity over thrills.

No One Lives [US, Ryuhei Kitamura, 3.5] Ordinary criminal gang get more than they bargain for when their resident psychokiller waylays a super-psychokiller who has his own kidnap victim stashed in his trunk. Inventive gore thriller features heightened dialogue few of its actors are able to convincingly deliver.

TIFF Day Four

Something in the Air [France, Olivier Assayas, 4] High school student navigates the contradictions of art, politics, and love in early the early 70s. Evocative autobiographical drama sticks to matter-of-fact approach, resisting the usual urges to either romanticize the era, or send it up.

The Last Supper [China, Lu Chuan, 4] Shaky memories and revised histories intermingle as the dying first Han emperor recalls the betrayals that allowed his rise from street rat status. Uses the resources of the historical epic to present a fragmented political allegory.

The Land of Hope [Japan, Sion Sono, 5] After Fukushima repeats itself at another nuke plant, a farm family on the literal edge of the evacuation zone struggles with the aftermath. Sweetly drawn--and therefore, all the more harrowing.

7 Boxes [Paraguay, Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schembori, 4] Delivery kid's assignment to transport the titular containers in his wheelbarrow leads to pursuit, danger and death across a sprawling market. Sharp, fast-paced action thriller from an unexpected quarter.

Dust [Guatemala, Julio Hernandez Cordon, 4] Suicidal busker searches for the remains of his father, disappeared by the death squads, while pursuing a vendetta against the man who denounced him. Strikes an elusive tone mixing quotidian naturalism, incongruous humor, and blunted pathos.

Tiff Day Three

Out in the Dark [Israel, Michael Mayer, 4] The security fence between Ramallah and Tel Aviv becomes a barrier in the budding romance between an out Israeli lawyer and a Palestinian student for whom the closet is a matter of life and death. Taut political melodrama.

That Thing I Always Say: in the digital era, out-of-sync subtitles are the new film burning in the gate.

The End of Time [Canada, Peter Mettler, 4] Disorientingly beautiful images of the natural and man made worlds comprise a meditation on accelerated particles, island volcanism
and urban decay. Unlike many documentaries, this consciousness-altering essay piece demands to be seen on the big screen.

The Color of the Chameleon [Bulgaria, Emil Christov, 3.5] Oddball loner, fired from
his job as a student infiltrator, forms his own rogue secret police operation. Absurdist satire of the informant state would be even funnier if it picked up the pace a bit.

Everyday [UK, Michael Winterbottom, 4] A five-year sentence turns a man's (John Simm) relationship with his wife (Shirley Henderson) and four kids into a series of prison visits. The strength of this generous slice-of-life piece lies in the honesty of the script and performances.

The film was shot in segments over the course of five years, so you see the child actors age in the time frame the story covers.

The director, kid actors and Shirley Henderson were present to introduce the screening. She stood on tiptoes to reach the podium mic.

Tai Chi 0 [China, Stephen Fung, 3] One-horned martial arts prodigy seeks fighting secrets from insular village, placing him in the path of steampunk railway developers. As the numeral in the title implies, this knowing and hyper-stylized fu romp doesn't bother to stand on its own, but instead stops on a series-establishing cliffhanger.

With action direction by Sammo Hung, and a healthy dollop of Scott Pilgrim influence.