Films seen in September
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01. Vanessa (1977,
West Germany) Hubert Frank -
has redeeming facet
02. Cinema Paradiso [director's-cut]
(1988, Italy) Giuseppe Tornatore -
a must see
03. Murder Party (2007, USA) Jeremy
Saulnier - a must see [B]
04.
The Zombie Diaries (2006, UK) Michael Bartlett
& Kevin Gates -
worth seeing
[C-]
05.
Companeros (1970, Italy) Sergio Corbucci -
Excellent
06.
If.... (1968, UK) Lindsay Anderson -
a must see
08. The Man
from London (2007, Hungary) Béla
Tarr - a must see [B+]
Tarr’s most minimalist
film to date is beyond gorgeous, but unfortunately a step beneath any of his
previous films. Intact are the master’s patented long takes, the hauntingly
monotonous Mihály Vig score, and László Krasznahorkai
intelligent script collaboration… Missing? The poetry that seemed to
be the raison d’etre for his brand of cinema. Tarr has managed to make
a film about boredom, like Hou he is examining the rhythms of life (mainly
exposing the monotony and tedium of it all), but all of this seems to be in
the service of something entirely different from anything he has done in the
past. Call it the bleakest film Kaurismaki never made. This forlorn feeling
could be blamed on the fact that production was bogged down in legal bullshit
for 7 years after the producer committed suicide, or we could have entered
a new, more modern phase in Tarr’s work (let’s hope another film
is not far off -- until then we will say the jury is still out). Bluntly phrased,
this is cinema served straight-up -- very dry, very simple, certainly intoxicating
but lacking that something special that makes you want to savor it.
Photos found here.
09. The Visitor
(2007, USA) Thomas McCarthy -
worth seeing [C-]
Thomas McCarthy impressed just about everyone
with his subtle directorial debut The Station Agent. Sophomoric pratfalls
intact, this film finds him abandoning all of the subtle control that made
his previous film such a success and making just about every mistake you’d
expect from a filmmaker who wants the exposure of a larger audience. Things
are fine in the first two reels where McCarthy still shows that tender touch
for unique human characters making special emotional connections, but like
the incident that occurs midway through (changing the tone of the film drastically),
McCarthy then begins to hold his audience prisoner to a more manipulative
and less palatable brand of filmmaking. Commenting on the world at large (in
this case immigration and US feelings towards Arabs) the film eventually tries
to be too big for its own good and seems hell-bent on provoking a reaction.
Expect certain audiences to love this overreaching and misguided movie that,
while entertaining, is a little too wrapped up in itself to count as anything
meaningful.
Photos found here.
10. Frontière(s)
(2007, France) Xavier Gens -
worth seeing [C+]
After the long-take approach of two masters
like Hou and Tarr, this kinetic French horror film in Cinemascope felt like
a shotgun blast to the face. It starts out like Ma 6-T va crack-er
with a group of rebellious car-torching youths on the run, but the French
countryside proves to be an even bigger bitch than the city as the film quickly
morphs into a Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake by way of cannibalistic Nazis.
Like Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects Xavier Gens seems
to have adopted that same, unapologetic Fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-horror
tone that genre fans all but eat up. The real downfall here is when the carnage
ceases, so does the film, as Gens fails to conjure up even the slightest bit
of character or broader narrative scope. This is yet another in the long line
of admirable and entertaining shock-fests that are fun to rave about for a
while but will be all but forgotten by next year's MM program.
World Premiere Screening
-- No photos taken. Director was in attendance.
11. The Mourning
Forest (2007, Japan) Naomi Kawase -
a must see [B-]
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this
years Cannes Film Festival, this is my first exposure to the work of Naomi
Kawase, a festival darling of sorts whom I’ve been reading raves about
ever since her feature debut Suzaku took the Camera D’or back
in ’97. Kawase has been compared to Ozu, and while that brand of impressionistic,
mundane style of cinema is on display here, this more closely resembles the
trend in lyrical journey films like Old Joy and the work of Joe W.
A pensive work, that shows tremendous control and maturity, this is also a
deeply spiritual film chronicling one character (Shigeki) as he embarks on
what can be read as a Buddhist rite of passage, and like his caretaker Machiko,
we are forced to take the journey ourselves. Give yourself over to it and
by the end, you just may find a little of your own soul reflected on the screen.
North American Premiere
-- No cast or crew in attendance
12. My Kid Could Paint That
(2007, USA) Amir Bar-Lev -
a must see [B]
A fascinating deconstruction of not just the
questionable nature of modern art, but of the process of documentary filmmaking,
filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev pulls off the challenging feat of drawing attention
to his process while also trying to give an accurate portrayal of his subject.
It’s the perfect film for those textbook questions that surface in just
about every film classroom around the world (subjectivity vs. objectivity,
is it possible to photograph something without in some way influencing it?
etc, etc.) The fact that Bar-Lev genuinely appears to have only wanted to
document the simple story of a little girl who was selling paintings for thousands
of dollars, and it was only in the process of filming that he was forced to
confront the morale questions he does, only adds to the genuine non-exploitive
appeal of this little gem. Like all great documentaries, this is a film that
is as much about the person behind the camera as it is the people in front
of it.
13. Ploy
(2007, Thailand) Pen-ek Ratanaruang -
a must see [B+]
I seem to be in the minority in my admiration
of this playful and understated romantic comedy from Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, the
Thai auteur who seems to specialize in these types of wry mood pieces. The
title refers to a young girl who goes by the name of Ploy (many people in
Thai culture adopt quirky shortened versions of their rather longish names),
who meets a young couple, fresh off a red eye flight from the States, in a
hotel bar. Ploy is killing time waiting for her grandmother to pick her up
in the morning, while her boyfriend is passed out stoned in the corner of
the hotel restaurant. She meets Dang, a smooth Thai professional from the
States but who is home for a funeral, he is unable to sleep and has left his
wife Dang (Lalita Panyopas star of 6ixtynin9) up in the room where
she sneaks booze and pops pills. What follows is a lucid dream of a film,
which seems to weave in and out of several characters consciousness, documenting
their fears and fantasies, leaving you to decide what is real and what is
imagined. Nothing much really happens, but like the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
this languid brand of Thai humor and bold form of narrative is something I
can’t seem to get enough of. A very special little film that imparts
that magical half-awake/half-asleep ambiance that made Lost in Translation
so affecting.
14. Chrysalis
(2007, France) Julien Leclercq - 
worthless [F]
French
cinema has a long history of emulating the Hollywood film. This was a fine
practice back when Hollywood was still making GOOD films, however in this
day and age of Blockbuster crap, biting on the recent string of Jason Statham
popcorn action entertainments seems more than a tad ridiculous. A mind numbing
Sci-Fi work that has the clinical look of late-Spielberg combined the occasional
macho wham-bam action scene; this has about 1/3rd the amount of action as
a Luc Besson production and about four times the amount of continuity errors.
How this ever got into Toronto is beyond me, but since this shares much of
the same cast and crew as Frontière(s), and the two directors are in
fact real life buds, here’s hoping that TIFF struck some sort of compromise
and let the one film in on the strength of the other.
15. George A. Romero's
Diary of the Dead (2007, USA) George A. Romero -
a must see [B+]
Ever since Day of the Dead, Romero’s
films have split audiences upon release only to pick up supporters later on
as their finer, more subtle world views come into light in all of their scathing
and hideous glories. Diary of the Dead should prove none too different in
following this paradigm. Structured as a diary/student film the “movie”
(voice-over by one female maker explains that music cues were added for dramatic
effect) is a mixed media platform of news footage, bloggers/You-Tuber accounts,
surveillance video, and amateur DV. It’s obvious that if the shit hit
the fan in today’s world (ie. Katrina), things would go down much differently
than the rundown farmhouse where Romero set his original story some 40 years
ago. We live in a state of media over-saturation, but the question is -- is
this a good thing? Is it reliable and should it be trusted? Is technology
actually empowering the people in a way that were are not even fully aware
of and is this effecting the way our government lords over us? Phrased simply,
there is a lot more than just human flesh to be chewed on in this entry in
the Zombie canon, which in addition to its sharp social undertones, also happens
to be a model of perfectly paced, gore filled, tongue-in-cheek B-movie making.
Keep 'em comin George.
16. Secret
Sunshine (2007, South Korea) Lee Chang-dong -
a must see [B-]
One of those thoughtful human dramas interested
in looking at the fragility of that dense universe of emotion housed inside
us all, this is a mature and respectful -- to both characters and the audience
alike -- bit of filmmaking that will probably leave you brooding over it long
after the credits have rolled. Director Lee Chang-dong seems to specialize
in these moral dramas, walking on the edge of sentimental sap, he chooses
to keep his camera at a reserved distance and uses narrative ellipses to keep
off-screen, numerous events that are better left imagined than shoved in our
faces. Nobody teaches us how to deal with death, and like Japanese filmmaker
Kor-eda’s Maborosi, this is a powerful and unforgettable look
at that difficult subject, all elevated to monumental heights with the lead
performance by Do-yeon Jeon (no surprise that she took Best Actress at Cannes).
Add to this some pungent commentary on organized religion and the sanctimonious
role it plays in the lives of the grieving, and you have a film whose moral
complexity is capable of addressing not just the hot-button topics of contemporary
South Korea, but the entire world.
17. Love
Songs (2007, France) Christophe Honoré -
a must see [B]
A very different film from Demy’s The
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which this is being somewhat unfairly compared
to) Christophe Honoré is becoming yet another one of those French shape-shifting
anomalies (Ozon and Chereau also falling into this category), you never can
predict what the guy will make next. Personally I find this inverted tale
of Jules and Jim, transformed into a musical as scored by some Parisian hipster
like Serge Gainsbourg, infective. It’s a major and one would hope, liberating,
step artistically for Honoré. Let’s see what his next project
brings… The fact that this has split audiences as it has, with many
rejecting it vehemently, only seems to foster the argument that this is more
than just some light entertainment, but rather one of the defining films to
come out of France this year. The term “French film” has become
somewhat of a genre unto itself, so the fact that Honoré takes these
clichés (lovers angst, sexual liberation) and exaggerates them with
an actual genre (the musical), his film privies us to a glimpse of both the
future and the past of French cinema.
18. Silent
Light (2007, Mexico) Carlos Reygadas -
worth seeing [C+]
I prefer Reygadas the bad boy, but there should
have been nothing stopping me from falling head-over-heels for this slowed
paced, poetic departure from the Mexican auteur that focuses on the timeless
story of love and death peculiarly set in a small Mennonite community, yet
here I am trying to figure out what went wrong. The cinematography is amongst
the best of the year (a Malick-esque view of nature and a mundane but unforgettable
bathing scene that should place Reygadas right up there with contemporary
Bressonians like Lucrecia Martel), it is a shame that this all adds up to
nothing more than a collection of special moments. Is Reygadas responding
to his critics by toning down his contemporary hard-edged (and deeply political)
brand of storytelling in favor of something more classical? Rather than catching
a glimpse of something truer and deeper in the faces of his non-professional
actors, Reygadas' Mennonite community only seems to distance this viewer from
the universal story which it tells, and when things suddenly depart, morphing
into an exploration of the spiritual as curbed from Dreyer, pretentiousness
was the first thing on my mind, rapture being the last…
19. The Assassination of
Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, USA) Andrew Dominik
-
a must see [B-] comments to come...
22. Forever Never Anywhere
(2007, Austria) Antonin Svoboda -
worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
24. Chaotic Ana
(2007, Spain) Julio Medem -
has redeeming facet [D] comments to come...
25. Help Me Eros
(2007, Taiwan) Lee Kang-sheng -
a must see [B] comments to come...
26. Paranoid Park (2007,
USA) Gus Van Sant -
Masterpiece [A] comments to come...
28. The Last Mistress
(2007, France) Catherine Breillat -
a must see [B+] comments
to come...
29. Redacted (2007,
USA) Brian De Palma -
has redeeming facet [D-] comments to come...
30. Mister Lonely
(2007, USA) Harmony Korine-
a must see [B-] comments to come...
31. Import Export
(2007, Austria) Ulrich Seidl -
Masterpiece [A] comments to come... [rating bumped up a notch]
32. Water Lilies (2007,
France) Céline Sciamma
-
a must see [B+] comments to come...
33. Margot at the Wedding
(2007, USA) Noah Baumbach -
worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
34. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(2007, France) Julian Schnabel -
worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
35. Smiley Face (2007,
USA) Gregg Araki - a must see
[B] comments to come...
36. I'm Not There
(2007, USA) Todd Haynes -
a must see [B-] comments to come... [rating lowered
slightly]
37.
Year of the Dog (2007, USA) Mike White
-
has redeeming facet [D]
39.
The Dentist (1996, USA) Brian Yuzna
-
worth seeing
40.
The Devil's Nightmare (1971, Belgium/Italy)
Jean Brismée
-
a must see
42.
Cashback (2006, UK) Sean Ellis
-
has redeeming facet [D]
43.
Ping Pong (2002, Japan) Fumihiko Sori
-
a must see
44.
Death Proof [Cannes Cut]
(2007, USA) Quentin Tarantino
-
Masterpiece [A]
45.
The Taste of Tea (2004, Japan) Katsuhito Ishii
-
Excellent [A-]
46.
Zero Hour! (1957, USA) Hall Bartlett
-
worth seeing
48.
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Japan) Kenji Mizoguchi
-
Masterpiece
50.
Stephanie Daley (2006, USA) Hilary Brougher
-
a must see [B-]
51.
The Vault of Horror (1973, UK) Roy Ward Baker
-
worth seeing
53.
Repast (1951, Japan) Mikio Naruse
-
Masterpiece
54.
Penny Dreadful (2005, USA) Bryan Norton
[short] - recommended
55.
Tomorrow's Bacon (2001, USA) Bryan Norton
[short]
- recommended
57.
The House on Sorority Row (1983, USA) Mark Rosman
-
a must see
58.
The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003, Japan)
Mitsuru Meike
-
a must see [B]
59.
Satan's School for Lust (2002,
USA) Terry West
-
worthless
Holy shit this was bad. I mean bad, so much
so I’m basically embarrassed to say we watched it. Thankfully when you
fast-forward through the softcore lesbian crap, it only amounts to about a
30-minute runtime.