Tiffn-A

The Flight of the Red Balloon (2007, France) Hou Hsiao-Hsien -

a must see [B]
A prime example of a master filmmaker who is not personally invested in his subject matter, I’ve sort of been at a loss to come up with anything meaningful to say about this film. On the commentary front, Hou decides not to use the character of Song Fang to make a deeper statement about social displacement. You can all but forget about calling this an ode to France (Juliette Binoche’s apartment feels Asian actually), and the flights of fantasy with the titular balloon never really coalesce into anything beyond brief whimsy. All of this is not to say that the film is without merits -- Hou structures this as a series of 10 minute long takes in which the actors improvise, combined with the graceful camera, it captures the subtle rhythms of everyday life in a way that is sheer poetry -- it’s only when we consider this film in the sense of the larger Hou canon that this comes across as a minor work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 (Katrina anyone?), things would go down different from the farmhouse that Romero set his original story in 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 are not even fully aware and is this effecting the way our government’s lord over us? Phrased simply, there is a lot more than just human flesh to be chewed on in this entry, which in addition to it’s sharp social undertones, also happens to be a model of perfectly paced, gore filled and tongue-in-cheek B-movie making. Keep 'em comin George.

World Premiere Screening -- Photos and Audio of Q&A found here.

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.

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.

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. 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 the 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…
Photo found here.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik) -

a must see [B-] comments to come...
Juno (Jason Reitman) -

a must see [B] comments to come...
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog) -

Excellent [A-] comments to come...
Forever Never Anywhere (Antonin Svoboda) -

worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
Stuck (Stuart Gordon) -

a must see [B+] comments to come...
Chaotic Ana (Julio Medem) -

has redeeming facet [D] comments to come...
Help Me Eros (Lee Kang-sheng) -

a must see [B] comments to come...
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant) -

Masterpiece [A] FINALLY! comments to come...
SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (Takashi Miike) -

has redeeming facet [D] comments to come...
The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat) -

a must see [B+] comments to come...
Redacted (Brian De Palma) -

has redeeming facet [D-] comments to come...
Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine) -

a must see [B-] comments to come...
Import Export (Ulrich Seidl) -

Excellent [A-] comments to come...
Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma) -

a must see [B+] comments to come...
Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach) -

worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel) -

worth seeing [C+] comments to come...
Smiley Face (Gregg Araki) -

a must see [B-] comments to come...
I'm Not There (Todd Haynes) -

a must see [B] comments to come...