Film: This is the end

Here are the final five review from the Toronto Experience. This second last day began later than usual, at midday, as opposed to nine thirty or so, like most others. Sleep in!

The whole day also took place at the Ryerson theatre, which was my favourite venue. It was just at a university in downtown Toronto (funnily enough called Ryerson University) so there wasn't a candy bar, but it had a nine number of seats- a little over twelve hundred- but it even at the furthest back you got a decent view. The best place to sit was either right at the front of the verandah area, ot halfway down the lower part, if you actually want to get decent photos of the Q and A sessions.

Something I learnt far too late.

Black Book

You know those films where you have a protagonist is a really nice soul, and they just want to survive and do good in this world, and then they get kicked, and then kicked again, and then just when you want to walk out of the cinema almost just so you don’t have to see this person suffer anymore and then they get kicked once more? Black Book is one of those!

Carice Van Houten plays Rachel Steinn, a Jewish woman from Nazi-occupied Denmark at the end of the Second World War, who loses her family in a failed escape attempt. She disguises her Jewish heritage with bleaches hair, then joins a group of freedom fighters, and seduces a high ranking Gestapo officer for the cause.

Director Paul Verhoven is known for the sex and violence in his films, and Black Book is no exception. But this is a spy movie, and a thriller, and a tragic drama. It’s also pretty good, if occasionally melodramatic. Van Houten gives a pretty great performance, and the plot goes to many unpredictable places. In fact, almost a little too much- it becomes sort of difficult to keep track of exactly who is double crossing who. On top of this, it does too go on a little too long.

And despite these flaws, it is wholly absorbing. You do really feel the sadness, especially towards Rachel’s final challenges. It’s also at times pretty thrilling. The war genre too is one I don’t often like, so Black Book really does stand out and suck you in.

8/10

The Fountain

To be honest, really, I have no idea.

I’ve missed Darren Aronofsky’s first film Pi- it’s difficult to come by in this country- but adore Requiem for a Dream. I understand that Pi has some similarities to Requiem, but The Fountain shares pretty much nothing with that film, beyond being weird. I haven’t seen Requiem in a while, so maybe there were some that I didn’t notice.

Anyway, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz married couple Tom and Izzi. Respectively, obviously. Izzi is an author dying of cancer, and Tom is a doctor or researcher or something trying to find her a cure. We also see two other timeframes: Jackman as a Spanish conquistador searching for the tree of life, with Weisz his queen, and Jackman as a space traveller travelling to save a dying tree in a bubble-like spaceship, who frequently gets visions of the modern-day Weisz. Yeah, I know.

The easy stuff out of the way first. The film is gorgeous to look at. Really, obscenely pretty, in lighting, design and composition. If nothing else, The Fountain has this. The music too is great; Aronofsky has brought back Clint Mansell for this. Jackman and Weisz both serve the film well, although Jackman gets a little melodramatic towards the end, although he’s supposed to.

So, technically, very good. Film is story, though, and I’m not sure about the story here. I don’t mean I’m not sure as in it’s a bad story, I just really don’t know. The past-story is pretty much, in the film, supposed to be the book Izzi is trying to finish. The future-story may be part of this book too, or in the imagination of Tom, or it may just exist on a purely symbolic level, or it may be a combination of all of these things. On occasion I even doubted the reality of the present story. This movie is almost pure symbolism. It’s so arty it could be a museum installation, although those generally don’t contain A-list stars and budgets of this size. The symbolism will help in repeat viewings, although I don’t know that the rest of the story will. The overt artistry of this film was certainly distancing, and the story of a man grieving for his dying wife was never for me as sad as it should be. And Aronofsky, that man can do sad.

But it’s pretty impossibly to judge this film on a first viewing. I’d definitely recommend seeing it to all people open to non-mainstream cinema, and it’s a sad fact that this doesn’t mean everyone. Even then I think this will cause frustration for many people, although there will also be many people who immediately adore it. It is a film I’ll need to see again, and I do want to see it again, which is something in its favour. Although I don’t know if Aronofsky has sacrificed character for art and meaning. Give it a few more viewings. For now, though, I really don’t think I can give this one anything. See it.

?/10

Severance

The final night of Midnight Madness did not in any way disappoint. Severance has been described as “The Office meets Deliverance” and that’s not far off. A mostly British team of workers for a huge American defence corporation are in the Hungarian countryside for a team building getaway. A fallen tree blocks the road, leading the team down the wrong path, without their bus or its angry driver. They are soon at what is clearly at the wrong lodge, and are soon set upon by its tenant: a survivalist with many weapons and booby-traps and the skills to use them.

And it’s funny. Really funny, and impressively suspenseful. This is another horror film with characters you like who could, for the most part, die in any order. We have the bored and possibly anorexic Maggie, played by the ever-reliable Canadian actress Laura Harris (who was fantastic in Dead Like Me and delivered the finest moment of 24 in the entire run of that series), the hilarious drugfucked Steve, played by Danny Dyer, and the boss’s pet Gordon, played by Andy Nyman, who’s very Nick Frost-esque, among others. All characters have something to like about them, even the useless team leader played by Tim McInnerny.

The blend of comedy and horror here is near-perfect. It’s been compared to Shaun of the Dead, a comparison it deserves, despite not quite reaching those heights -if only because I hold Shaun is such high regard, considering it to be not only hilarious but heartbreaking and one of the most perfectly paced films I’ve ever seen. There is certainly a bigger focus on horror here, though, managing to be scarier than Shaun of the Dead on many occasions.

Really, the only thing I didn’t like about this film is its over-reliance of loud sound effects to produce scares. It’s something that really annoys me in a lot of films, but here I could look past it; for whatever reason it didn’t feel as cheap, I guess because the horror actually feels like a threat. Severance is good at being scary, and good at being funny, and I pray for cult status, because it’s deserved.

9/10

And then the last day arrives at last, with just two movies. I know, but the plane was at give, so we had to leave. And interesting choice of movies, both pretty slow movies, but both in their own unique ways.

Day Night Day Night

This was possibly the most intriguing movie I saw at the festival, and it’s not clear why it didn’t get more attention. The lead character here is never named, but she’s played brilliantly by Luisa Williams. The time we spend with her is a day, a night, a day, and a night.

This movie is a very slow moving one, but it’s captivating from the start. The woman arrives at a bus station and then is taken to a hotel. It is there she waits, for what we don’t know. All we do know is that at the opening of the movie, the woman whispers to herself that she has chosen exactly when and how she will die. The second half of the movie takes place in Times Square, and it becomes some very suspenseful cinema. It’s a strange experience which almost borders of being numbing.

Day Night Day Night takes who could have been a faceless plot device in another film and places her front and centre. We have no idea what her purposes are at the start, but as they become clearer, we are continue to be fascinated by her both despite and because of her actions. They whole movie rests on Luisa’s performance, which is fantastic, especially for a first time actress, but director Julia Loktev should also be commended for the engaging subtlety of her film. Also remarkable are the Times Square scenes, apparently filmed with real people rather than hired extras walking around a closed off section pretending to be real. This adds a heightened realism which makes these scenes even more intense. I don’t know what the market for this film will be, if it will be seen in many theatres, but it certainly deserves to be, if only to expose Loktev and Williams to the world.

8/10

As The Shadow

As the Shadow is an Italian film about a woman who works as a travel agent by day and studies Russian by night. She doesn’t have much in her life, until she grows closer with her teacher and eventually forms a relationship with him. He then asks her to let his distant cousin from Ukraine stay with her for a few days, which she reluctantly agrees to.

Thrilling, huh? That above paragraph is a little more than half an hour of screen time. What an ordinary film could have done in perhaps fifteen minutes, or less, is padded out with scenes of our protagonist washing her hands and walking around, and then shots of the Ukrainian cousin walking around, and then the woman and the cousin sitting having dinner and practising Russian. It’s sort of a slow film.

And slow can be good, I know. It can be dreamlike or surreal or just slowly pull you into the film. You can gently get to know a character in a slow film, learning their quirks and growing to love them. Or maybe the film is just plain pretty, and a joy to look at. But As the Shadow is just dull. Painfully, alarmingly, stunningly, irredeemably fucking boring.

There’s nothing here to make you like any of these characters. They’re not awful people, there’s just absolutely nothing interesting about them. The story isn’t a hugely interesting one. Claudia, the lead, begins to grow suspicious of Olga, the cousin. Is she really a cousin, or is she more? But there’s no intrigue for the viewer because you don’t care because you don’t like any of these people and you just want to be away from their depressing little lives. And the film is no joy to look at. The Italy presented here is sort of ugly, but not in any sort of gritty way. Just, once again, boring. Characters are occasionally shot through glass, with a reflection in front of them. That might have been director Marina Spada trying to be deep or symbolic or something. I was minorly impressed that there was no camera reflected in the glass, but that’s about all. Kudos for that. Spada didn’t write the pointless script, Daniele Maggioni did, but Spada willingly shot the thing, so she deserves punishment too.

After about forty minutes the prospect of dealing with any of this for an hour or so more was too much, and so my final film of the festival was also my first walkout. So who knows, the movie might have picked up, but its first half was unforgivably dull. Maybe there was some huge character revelations or twists or some sort of thrilling car chase followed by a lesbian orgy. Maybe there was a cream pie fight, that might have been vaguely amusing. I don’t know, nor do I really care. And since it was a walkout, feel free to disregard my rating. But if you do ever get the chance to see this, and then you take that chance, and then you are awake for the duration of the film, assuming you didn’t give up partway through because you are clearly stronger than me, don’t say you weren’t warned, because you were. Skip it.

1/10

So, certainly an anticlimactic end to the festival, but a great festival it was nonetheless. Mext up will be the festival round up, with photos and my picks of the fest and all that shit. I'm currently watching Sheitan, which was the final Midnight Madness film, which was missed at the festival, but is already on DVD here. Weird.

It's also shaping up to be one of the most fucked up movies of all of Toronto! Always a bonus. I think I'm going to have to watch a festival of entirely G-rated films just to clense my soul after all of these.

TV: That remote in your hand is a crack pipe!

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Wow. Never watched enough West Wing to get into it- badly scheduled here- and Sports Night fared even worse. But this, this is good. The speech? Fantastic. That could become a classic TV moment. It felt like you were watching it actually go down, like this is a show that had been on air for years and now someone is tearing it down. So many characters are winners. I don't think we've seen enough of the Big Three to get a feel for them yet, but the rest are immediately great. With so many shows, even great shows, you need several episodes to really get into its characters, but here it was immediate. This one's going to be a keeper.

And I mainly posted this to say one thing:

Aaron Sorkin, you are a beast.

Every episode. Every episode! He's writing the whole season! The whole of many seasons, I guess, if it continues, which it will, because wow. Like what tends to happen with heaps of British shows, except those tend to have seasons about eight episodes long. And this is just the norm for him! Oh my Christ. Beast.

Film: Bestiality (hilarious!) and men with video cameras (terrifying!)

Here are the second-to-last lot of reviews. The final five shall be coming soon, and my Festival round-up and awards. The Torontonies? I don't know.

There were supposed to be photos, too, but Blogger was decided to be a fuckwit, so whatever. Picture them in your mind.

...maybe try not to picture too much from Sleeping Dogs Lie.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack

This is a likable little Spanish movie about family and loyalty and decisions. Jorge is a business school graduate with a brother in prison and a father with dementia he must care for. At the same time that a childhood sweetheart returns from travelling, his temporarily sterile brother sets him the task of impregnating his also incarcerated girlfriend so she can move to the prison’s relatively luxurious and safe maternity ward. Meanwhile, Jorge’s best friend Israel begins to question his father’s and his own sexuality upon spying his father getting an erotic massage from a man.

This is sometimes sad, sometimes sexy, sometimes funny, and, as mentioned, just plain likable. I questioned some of the character motivations, and it won’t change lives, but it pretty much won me over. Recommended.

8/10

Pan’s Labyrinth

I can’t say a lot about this movie, if only for the fact that I was in the front row, and the screen was approximately thirty centimetres from my face. A bad situation, worsened by the enormous size of the screen, worsened still by the subtitles, which proved to be stunningly difficult to read. This is a sleight against the design of the theatre, not the film or the subtitles. I’ll have to re-view this one to fully appreciate it.

What I got what was that the film is stunningly designed, on all levels. Guillermo del Toro is quite a visionary. The only film I’ve seen of his is Hellboy, which was okay, but I didn’t fall in love with it, although apparently (obviously, really) his indie films are better, and will now be sought out. The film takes place in civil war era Spain, telling the story of young Ophelia (Ivana Baquero, very impressive) as she deals with her new fascist army captain stepfather, terrorising everyone he can, the impending birth of her half brother, and a new (possibly imaginary) fantastical world she keeps being taken into to do increasingly difficult tasks. Both the real and the fantasy worlds are given fairly equal weight in the film, and both provide fear and fascination.

I’ll need to see it again, and perhaps familiarise myself with del Toro’s work as well beforehand. This was a very well made film, which I look forward to enjoying more than a did this time around in the future.

8/10

Guillermo del Toro, by the way, is a funny bastard. His Q&A answers were long and informative and funny, and really seemed to make the Festival worker mediating the session. He seems to have had a very odd childhood, both in reality and in imagination. He’s also pretty self deprecating, having a crack at his 1997 film Mimic.

Sleeping Dogs Lie

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Sleeping Dogs Lie is about a woman who blows her dog. It’s also a smart, sweet, moving and funny relationship comedy.

Amy, played by Melinda Page Hamilton, is the woman. The incident happened years before the events of the movie, in an apparently uncontrollable fit of boredom. Her boyfriend John (Bryce Johnson), upon proposing, decides he wants complete honesty, the disclosure of their deepest secrets to one another. She is unwilling to tell him at first, but then does while they are staying with her parents. Unfortunately, he doesn’t react well. Even more unfortunately, her drugfucked brother overhears her confession.

The films deals surprisingly honestly with emotional issues of truth in relationships, and if our stupid past acts really say anything about us. It’s also very funny, often in an extremely cringeworthy manner. At times it reminded me of Meet the Parents, if Meet the Parents was more than a cheap vehicle for the humiliation of Ben Stiller, and if the relationship in that movie was one that an audience could actually care about. It helps that Melinda Page Hamilton is almost alarmingly adorable and innocent looking, and that Amy and John’s relationship, before the revelation, is really sweet.

The film was shot on a microscopic budget, and this is apparent when watching it. The music is at times annoying. Filmmaker Bob Goldthwait is a better writer than he is a director, although he is adept at both. I think a bigger budget and longer shoot could have him producing even better films. All in all, this is probably the sweetest dog blowjob movie you’ll ever see.

8/10

S&MAN

S&MAN (pronounced “Sandman” or maybe “Sampersandman”) is a study in fear. Literally: it’s a documentary about horror movies, and why people like them, why people willingly allow themselves to be scared or disgusted like this. Rather than focusing on popular horror movies- although these are touched upon- the subject of S&MAN are fake-snuff producers August Films, microbudget horror/porn hybrid filmmaker Bill Zebub, and the make of the S&MAN series, Erik Rost. Also thrown in are interviews of Carol J. Clover, author of “Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in Modern Horror Films”, as well as a married couple, one a sexologist, the other a forensic psychiatrist.

The three profiled filmmakers all provide interest. The kids behind August Films are surprisingly friendly considering the subject matter of their films. Also of note is the fact that their fans always write to them asking to appear in their movies- as the victims, not the villains. Bill Zebub is just a character. He looks every bit the death metal freak, with a strange fixation on Christian imagery. His films seem to consist entirely of naked girls on crucifixes.

Erik Rost, however, is the standout of the documentary. His movies consist of him holding a camera, stalking women, whom he eventually “murders” on camera. He claims to audition these girls at first without their knowledge, and is completely unwilling to let director JT Petty interview or even meet any of these girls. It seems at first that he is just continuing his S&MAN persona for the documentary, using it as promotion, but as it deepens, you start to question things, thinking there’s something infinitely more sinister going on.

This documentary is both eye-opening in its discussion of the subject matter, and increasingly disturbing in the subject matter itself, to the extent that it moves from a documentary on horror films to a horror film itself. Absolutely fascinating.

9/10

This is the final run, people. Oh, plus I've seen another movie since I got back- one that was playing at the Festival, funnily enough: The Book of Revelation. That should get a write up too, at some stage. Although I really should be doing uni work.

...

Hahahaha.

Being home!

I survived the trip, even though I was surrounded by seventeen(ish) babies on the plane, one of whom was crying before the plane began to taxi. So that was awful, and an exercise in restraint. John C Reilly and Will Ferrell were on my plane! Not just to promote Talladega Nights, but also to do some (I assume, I didn't watch it) horrible Channel Seven special on fifty years of TV in Australia, featuring, like, Dancing With The Stars fuckers dancing and It Takes Two fuckers singing and so apparently the purpose of the thing was to highlight the fact that Australian TV is pretty much made up of cheap to produce reality bullshit which simultaneously gives famewhores an extra few minutes of undeserved spotlight and fulfils the legal quota of Australian content that must appear on our screens. Network executives could promote new talent creating something great or keep old talent in the industry working on something with, you know, meaning or value.

Or they could just keep the cheap glitz going. Whatever.

Although it should be pointed out that the number one show right now- and not just the number one Australian produced show, but the number one overall- isn't about glitz and glamour, although it is reality TV. It's called Border Security, although I call it "Get the Fuck Out of Our Fucking Country, You Fucking Foreigners!" It chronicles the work of customs officers as they try valiently to keep Australia free of undesirable things and people, and the public laps it right up. Fantastic.

This wasn't supposed to be a rant. Whoops.

So anyway, reviews are forthcoming. I've written a few, having just finished a really scathing one. Those are fun to write! I'm also going to give my own little awards to the films I saw in Toronto, as well as the festival itself, and to some of my experiences of the actual city of Toronto. Watch out, Least Favourite Canadian!

On the plane I saw Friends With Money, which was pretty decent, although probably not quite as decent as its fantastic cast deserved, and Before Sunset, which I've seen a few times before and I will see a few times again, because it's fantastic, and apparently there is a romantic hiding in me somewhere.

Going home...

The festival has ended for me, meaning I'm missing out on a few more movies including the final two Midnight Madness ones, but it's still been a fantastic run.

I've got nine (I think?) more movies to write up, including a rival to Shaun of the Dead, and! my first walkout of the festival! WHICH MOVIE PISSED ME OFF?

Film: Who Wants Twelve Reviews?

So, yeah. There are a lot. Three days worth of viewing, in fact, and one of those days was five movies. I've been busy, as you can see. Since so many reviews are here, they're all shorted than usual. Many are just a paragraph! I might expand some of the ones I really liked (or hated!) later, though.

Suburban Mayhem

Emily Barclay plays Katrina Skinner, who is the devil. Not damaged, not crying for help or attention, just evil. At the beginning we discover her father has been killed, although we don't know who did it. We then go ten days before his death, when Katrina, a nineteen year old girl with a child she leaves with the boyfriend she frequently cheats on, decides her dad must die so she can sell their house to get a good lawyer to get her murderer brother out of prison. Nice girl.



This is a black comedy that delivers both darkness and laughs. It's not perfect- frequently the story is interrupted with interviews of the people surrounding Mr. Skinner about his death, an element that almost takes away from the darkness somehow, and that could have been cut. But the film fits together very well in the end. Alice Bell's pretty fantastic script is directed well by Paul Goldman, and Emily Barclay is going to be big, or at least she deserves to be. For those who like their humour black, the film goes to dark places, and hints at places that are even darker.

8/10

Paris, Je T'aime

Sixteen short films from about twenty directors, all about love in one form or another, and all set in modern day Paris. The word here is "awwwwww!" This film is really heartwarming, except when it wants to be heartbreaking. There's not a dud among these, although, of course, some stand out more than others. Gurinda Chadra's, The Coen Brothers', and Alexander Payne's stand out for me. That's right. I liked the Bend it Like Beckham director's one. And I really dislike Bend it Like Beckham! The cast, too numerous to name, so just IMDb it, is amazing as well. Fantastic.

9/10

Black Sheep

As an Australian, I'm legally required to make jokes about New Zealanders fucking sheep. And now they're doing it themselves! The release of a genetically mutated sheep leads to an infection that takes over hundreds of sheep on a farm belonging to arguing brothers, that go crazy and start eating people. The people who survive, in turn, also become ravenous after a time. At first the film seems like it's going to take itself seriously, but soon reveals otherwise, and is very funny, and very gory. It's not as heartfelt as other horror-comedies such as Shaun of the Dead, nor is it as splatter-tastic as early Peter Jackson like Braindead, but it's very, very entertaining. Well deserved cult status awaits this one.

8/10

The next day...

Ghosts of Cite Soliel

This one's a documentary about Cite Soliel in Haiti in 2004, and two brothers who are gang leaders, working for the president. The most amazing thing here was how the crew managed to film in such dangerous circumstances. The characters are all really interesting, skating a moral boundary a lot of the time, but we generally like them despite their willingness to commit violence. The story is an interesting and tragic one, too.

8/10

For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest movies are always fun, but A Mighty Wind seemed more feel-good than funny, so I didn't dig it as much as his other stuff. For Your Consideration is a return to form. Catherine O'Hara plays an aging Hollywood actress who catches wind of her name being thrown around for an Oscar nomination. The usual crew appear, the standout probably being Fred Willard as the host of an Entertainment Tonight type show with Jane Lynch, who plays off him well. Ricky Gervais appears briefly as a studio executive and, while funny, sort of stands out, his style of comedy is fairly different from the rest of them.



This movie could have taken a torch to Hollywood, and it does a bit, but most of the humour just comes from insane characters. Jennifer Coolidge is particularly nutty here. And it might just be the atmosphere- the audience being lovers of Christopher Guest- but I had a fantastic time with this one. It's not up there with Best in Show, but it won't disappoint fans, and hopefully newcomers, at all.

9/10

Ten Items or Less

Morgan Freeman essentially plays himself here: an actor (credited only as "Him") from "that Ashley Judd movie" is left stranded at a supermarket in a poor area of LA when he goes there to research a movie set in the location. He meets Paz Vega's surly and sassy checkout chick who agrees to drive him home, after a few errands are run. This is very Lost in Translation, although more of a broad comedy, from Lemony Snicket director Brad Siberling. It's gentle, funny and sweet.

8/10

I missed the start of the next one, even though it started half an hour late, because of what I assume to be security reasons. I was one of the last ones let in from the rush line, and so I missed both the introduction by director Todd Field and stars Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, and the first few minutes. I know!

Little Children

Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson play suburbanites Sarah and Brad, who meet at a park looking after their children, both being stay-at-home parents, and find themselves increasingly attracted to one another. Meanwhile, a former cop played by Noah Emmerich from The Truman show bullies a local pervert, once jailed for exposing himself to a child.

This is a really odd film, and I mean that in a good way. It feels small and low key, but there is an ever-increasing feeling of dread throughout the film. Performances are all top notch, of course, and the music is by Thomas Newman, so that is as well. There's also a really strange narration, a sort of voice-of-God thing that must have been taken directly from the novel the film is based on, making the experience of watching it feel similar to reading a good book. I'll have to see it again when I've seen the start and so have my bearings to judge it properly, but it's definitely very good.

8/10

It started late, so as such, it finished late; about twenty minute before Midnight Madness, which doesn't happen in a cinema near where I was. So I had to dash out, missing the Q&A just as I missed the introduction. And it might have even been worth it were the next film not my least favourite of the festival so far...

The Abandoned

Rated MA15+ for loud noises. Here a woman travels to Russia to go to the property of her deceased birth mother, whom she had never met. There she meets her brother, the undead version of her brother and herself, and a whole lot of loud noises. A sort of neat premise and some decent atmosphere are ruined by how dreary the whole affair is, and it's not dreary in a good way. Another major problem is that the woman is the lone character for about half the total running time, and she's not that interesting a character, so you never care. Not even a few decent scares save this one.

3/10

And then the day after...

Short Cuts Canada 5

This was a number of Canadian shorts. Some were faily dull and wanktastic, others were better. The standout by far was Ninth Street Chronicles, a coming of age tale seemingly set in the mid nineties about a young girl who keeps accidentely causing trouble. It was funny and unpretentious. Also interesting were Patterns 2 and Patterns 3. The story was a little weird but the production design was pretty spectacular and they were shot pretty strikingly.

Cashback

This is a chick flick disguised as an edgy piece of cinema. Sean Biggerstaff plays an art student dumped by his girlfriend who develops insomnia and gets a night job at a supermarket. He passes the time by fantasising about stopping time, leading to some impressive scenes of him walking through a frozen world, but the film ends up being about him falling for a checkout chick, and then it all gets very formulaic. There is also far, far, far, far (far!) too much narration in native Scotsman Biggerstaff's fairly awkward English accent that grates more and more. The supporting characters provide relief, though, because they're actually interesting and funny. This also serves to highlight how dull the lead is, though. Visually impressive and often funny, but ultimately too cliched.

6/10

The next screening was pretty nuts, because the director was there, and he's been getting these fun little death threats. So security was there to check our backs, and stayed throughout the screening to make sure no one pulled out a weapon, I guess.

Death of a President

This is a documentary about George W. Bush's assassination in October 2007. It's very impressively put together, using both existing footage and specially shot scenes with actors (we have fake interviews, mocked up CCTV, and even actors digitally inserted into real news footage) , to create a documentary that feels almost real, and very scary. The film is impressively centrist in its view- it portrays George Bush not as a monster but also presenting protestor's very valid views of him. I thought it was going to focus more on the international ramifications of his death (Dick Cheney replaces him- uh oh) but looks mainly at the investigation into who is responsible. An extremely interesting concept presented as a rather good piece of cinema.

8/10

Trapped Ashes

Six people, most strangers to each other get trapped in an old house on a Hollywood studio, and to escape, they have to tell real stories of terror. This one had five directors (four horror stories are told, and another director did the 'wrap-around' segments), including Joe Dante, of The Howling, and Sean Cunningham, who did Friday the 13th. This is essentially and excuse to salute B-horror, and it would have worked better if more than one of the stories told here were worth watching. The first, "The Girl With The Golden Breasts", by Ken Russell, is hilariously over the top and just a lot of fun, and the rest of them range from average to something of a chore to watch. I appreciate the homage, though, and the copious nudity.

5/10

And then three more movies today. And then another in about an hour. This is getting tiring!

Film: Everyone should love Mandy Lane

In a way this was my first Midnight Madness movie. The first one, of course, crashed so surreally. The second was skipped to see the first one, again, only in full this time. But this is the first full length one seen at the right location- the Elgin, where Borat screened, is gorgeous but way too classy for this stuff. Ryerson University feels like home for Midnight Madness, especially last night.

Before the film, in the line, a guy in his thirties or forties and an older woman approached everyone in the line, asking why they chose to see this movie. The guy I think must be a producer, and the woman, as it turned out, is the screenwriter’s mother. I asked her if she’d seen the film before; she hadn’t. I also asked what she thinks of her son writing a horror movie like this. She said she didn’t expect such a thing to happen. I really want to know what she thought of it. Hopefully they’ll whack her on a commentary track.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the boys do love Mandy Lane. She’s beautiful (Amber Heard, who plays her, really is), and effortlessly so. She’s sweet, but switched on as well. Rather than hanging with the jocks and cheerleaders like they expect her to, however, she hangs with a cynical emo kid. At a jock’s house at the end of summer, though, tragedy strikes. Due to this, nine months later, Mandy has moved on to ‘cooler’ friends, and the now-blonde best friend is ignored and hated by her.

Her and her new friends, who all at a superficial level seem to be stereotypes, head to an isolated ranch for a weekend of debauchery to celebrate the end of their second-last year of school. And then, wouldn’t you know it, bad shit goes down, because it seems someone loves Mandy Lane a little too much.

The brief description I’d read had me interested in this, but it came as a real surprise. It’s a slasher flick at heart, although that’s what so deceptive here. Halfway through, you realise things aren’t happening in the right order. Slasher flicks are often so formulaic, even many of the most highly regarded ones you know, to an extent, what’s going to happen. Factors are interchangeable, but so much of it remains the same. Here, that’s not the case, so you realise you’re completely lost, and you don’t know where it’s going to go next. It seems such an obvious thing to do; I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before.

The film also features a pretty likable bunch of fodder. The reason I liked Wolf Creek so much was because of how much you grew to like the kids before the carnage began, and it’s a similar deal here. We don’t have a forty five minute set up like in Wolf Creek, but you care about them a lot more than in most other movies of this sort. Many of the kids in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane are deeper than they initially seem, the film dealing with body issues, peer pressure and other things faced by teengs

Another element is how frank these kids are. They really are heading off for a weekend of debauchery, with sex, drinking and drugs. These elements aren’t superfluous to the plot, though; characters actually act drunk, and the sex actually effects the plot.

While it’s not the scariest movie in the world, although the unpredictability does lend it a certain atmosphere and it is pretty frightening at times. You really don’t know who is going to die, and when. The horror itself is very impressive. This is not PG-13 horror, thank God, and there’s no way to edit it down into that horrible state. Nor is it torture-porn, where the violence often becomes so much that it kind of mutes itself out. The gore, it is good. On top of this, it allows itself to be subtle at certain times. I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t actually notice the first time the killer appears.

Writer Jacob Forman and director Jonathan Levine are ones to look out for. Forman created something surprising and memorable, and Levine seems remarkably young but has a great eye. He's given the film a really desaturated look, but the darks are too dark, and the lights are too light, making the look suitably uncomfortable. He's also chosen a really fantastic soundtrack.

I was extremely impressed and surprised by this movie. I don’t know when it will be out, the sooner the better, because there is a lot more to say about it. This is going to be a pretty big cult flick, I think, and it really, truly deserves it. Mandy Lane has managed to be my favourite film of the festival so far.

10/10

There was a brief Q&A after. The film hasn’t been picked up yet by any distributors, but hopefully this will happen soon. The whole cast bar Mandy herself and one other guy (Anson Mount, who played the ranch hand Garth) were present, and it was the first time they’d seen the film. They all seemed really into the project, if a little distanced because it was filmed more than a year ago. The director really is excitable and clearly has a passion for horror, which a horror director really needs to have. I really want to see this one again.

Today I saw Suburban Mayhem and Paris, je t’aime, both of which impressed. And now, it’s time for the Kiwi horror film, Black Sheep. It’s about zombie sheep! A ram-zom-com?

Film: You crazy zombie!

I've just realised I'm less than twenty four hours from seeing Christopher Guest and the crew in action, now with added Ricky Gervais.

Sweet.

Yesterday, there was Ten Canoes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Fido, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. That is to say, Australian Indigenous, angry Irish, Canadian zombies, doomed American teenagers.

Ten Canoes

I'd missed this one back home, and it had been recommended to me enough to make it seem worth more than just DVD.

Director Rolf de Heer has managed to film a really authentic feeling tale of Australian Aboriginals, before their (pretty devastating, for them) contact with the Western world. The tale opens with a man, played by David Gulpilil, narrating in English a tale of his ancestors as they make canoes to hunt geese. In turn, one of these men tells a tale to his brother of a long time ago, a tale of love, and revenge. All dialogue in the film is spoken in a native tongue.

This is a pretty remarkable achievement. The film is in black and white for the first story, and colour for the flashback. The colour is good, but the black and white feels really old, intentionally, and this works to great effect. The acting, largely by unprofessionals, is good, and the whole thing is pretty funny.

So, while it was well done, I wasn't blown away. Once again, I think it was me, but the narration felt overused, and I wasn't completely drawn into the story. Not to an extent that I wouldn't watch it again, and the narration was done with purpose; it almost felt like being told the story around a campfire. So while not something I could call a fault, really, just something I'm not used to. It's well made, though, and more than that, it was good that it was made. Hopefully it'll lead to films made in a similar vein.

6/10

I had to skip the Q&A I cross the city for The Wind that Shakes the Barley. It's won the Palm d'Or, if I have my capitalisations correct there, and gets a good write-up, but it's a period drama, which is a genre (like historical epics) that I often can't get into. So, how did it fare?

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Ken Loach loves the social commentary. Not that I've seen a Ken Loach film, other than twenty minutes of Sweet Sixteen when it was on TV, but, you know. I've heard things.

The film tells the story of two Irish brothers in Ireland's post WW1 war against England for independence. Cillian Murphy's Damien is to be a doctor in England until he decides to stay in Ireland to join with his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney) in fighting the English army. We then follow their ups and downs (downs, mostly) through the next few years of Ireland's history.

All the acting is pretty top notch. Cillian Murphy continues to go from strength to strength. The history explores a story ripe for telling, as well. The best thing about the film is how currently significant it is; it's about people fighting off an invading power; the leading power of the world. There are some great small moments, like when an imprisoned Damien talks to a British soldier, who isn't an army, just someone following orders. Really interesting things are explored. The final few moments of the film, too, are heartbreaking.

And yet I sat largely bored. A lot of this was my unfamiliarity with the material, but I just couldn't connect emotionally with it very much, as tragic as the whole thing is.

If there was a larger focus on the relationship of the brothers, the emotional core of the film, I would have connected more, but this would have taken the focus off the social issues being explored. It also didn't help that we're physically kept at middle distance the whole time; Loach seems to have decided to avoid close-ups, making it a somewhat chilly experience at times. But it's a skillful production exploring pertinent issues, and that's worth a lot.

6/10

We were then to see Deliver Us from Evil, but I chose that before realising there was a Canadian zombie comedy starring Carrie-Ann Moss (who I love for her Memento work rather than that big trilogy thing she was a part of) and... and... Billy Connelly... as a zombie.

I had to see Fido.

Fido

Fido has a really interesting premise. We're in an alternative past, a version of the Pleasantville-style fifties, where zombie uprising (Romero style, of course) had occurred in the twenties. The world has adapted. The zombies still rise- if someone dies, they become one, but a collar has been created that tames them, takes away their craving for flesh. This has created a new purpose for them: slaves.

Our story concerns Timmy (K'Sun Ray), an unpopular ten year old boy. His parents Helen and Bill, played by Carrie-Ann Moss and Dylan Baker (really, really, really, really creepy in Happiness) are the only people on their street to not own a zombie. This becomes embarrassing for Helen when the head of security for ZomCom- the government-like corporation that created the collars, as well as many other items for better living in a world of zombies- moves in across the street. So she caves in, and buys a zombie, who Timmy befriends and names Fido- Billy Connelly, silent here except for moans. The problem is, the collars don't always work as well as they should.

The premise here is pretty great. Fifties suburbia is always ripe for parody, and here we get current satire thrown in as well- ZomCom always reminds citizens that they need them for safety; anything bad within the neighbourhood is quickly covered up so no one finds out that ZomCom if fallible. The satire is mostly spot on, too, although the script seemed a little uncertain on whether the collars that kept the zombies in slavery were a good or a bad thing.

It is a horror comedy, though. The film is funny, although it’s far from being Shaun of the Dead. There are a few pacing issues, although the insanity of the premise always keeps things at least amusing. The horror is never scary, nor is it intended to be. It does keep the humour nicely dark, though- throwing zombies into Pleasantville always would be, though. The darkest element is possibly Tammy, the zombie a neighbour uses as a sex slave. And even that, somehow, in Fido’s own twisted way, turns out to be sweet. Somehow. And while the film doesn’t build to absolute carnage, as fun as that would have been, that may have made things too similar to Braindead. Moss plays the kooky fifties mother capably, Connelly is very good despite his silence, and Baker does uptight and repressed really well.

It’s not the funniest horror-comedy, although the characters have enough heart to make up for this. It won’t set the world on fire, going down in horror history. In a word, it’s cute. Yes, I just called a zombie movie cute.

7/10

The Q&A revealed that this one won’t be out until early-to-mid next year, but it seems its going to get some decent marketing.

The final film of the night was All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. This is too long already, though, so like I did last night, in a fit of geekery, I’m going to give that its own post.

One quick thing...

ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE.

Film: And now I need to bleach my eyes...

The third movie I saw today was 2:37, which I've already reviewed. Although, now I think I'll give it an eight, not a nine. Eight's still good, mind you, it's just a bit too flawed to be a nine. Before that, Taxidermia, from Hungary, and before that, Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love: Juvenile A.

Then the night ended with either Borat, or The Host. WHICH DID I CHOOSE?

Anyway, when the Miike film is the least disturbing one, you know there's trouble.

Big Bang Love: Juvenile A

I thought I was familiar with director Takashi Miike, but then I realised that I've only seen a few of his seventy eight thousand (...ish) movies.

The ones I have seen have largely been his typical super-violent ones, although One Missed Call was more his take on J-Horror and his Three... Extremes segment Box was a very low key emotional horror.

Big Bang Love isn't horror at all, though: it's full-on arthouse territory here. Seriously, he even goes all Dogville for one shot.



It's about these two teenage boys in juvenile prison, and at the start, one of them is strangling the other with his hands. As detectives investigate, we flash back through style and striking visuals to see what led up to this (depressing pasts and homosexuality) and if the boy found strangling really is the killer.

This was just too arty for my taste, so I appreciate it a lot more than I actually like it. Like I said, visuals are pretty stunning, the ideas here are really interesting, about the past, and the future: next the prison is a pyramid and a rocket. Like I said, it's arty. Also, it's the future.

So, it's well done, and intruiging, but I couldn't get into it. I can't call the movie flawed, nor can I give it a high mark. Sorry, Miike, but it's not you, it's me.

5/10

Taxidermia

Believe me when I tell you what I'm about to say shouldn't be taken as a throwaway line. I've seen a lot of movies. I dig on horror, and black comedy, so I've seen some pretty gross stuff. I haven't yet seen those low budget late seventies zombie/cannibal ones that are banned in a bunch of places, nor that Miike one Ichi the Killer where in the trailer someone gets their nipples sliced off, so maybe you should keep that in mind. But...

Taxidermia is the grossest movie I've ever seen.

Move over, Eli Roth and your torture-porn pals. Step aside, early-era Peter Jackson. You, the chick from Audition, put those needles away. Taxidermia is here.



And, okay, this maybe wasn't more psychologically troubling than, say, Mysterious Skin or the works of Todd Solondz, but on a visual (and aural) level it was something else, to such a degree that it was almost on those films' level, if not right there with them.

I talk so much of the gross not only because that's all I remember, but because that's pretty much all there is here. It's just grossness. That's the point. There is regular blood and guts here (although it's not a horror film), but there's also vomit, blubber, erections, a money shot, extreme close-up nudity, AND necrophelic-bestiality!

The film can be divided into three parts, one for each man in three successive generations of one family. One, a chronic masturbator, the next, a speed eater, and then, the taxidermist who gives the film its title. We are given glimpses into their lives, through covered eyes a lot of the time, and I think we're supposed to laugh, and like them in their own weird ways.

I'm pretty sure that there's a point to the movie. I can't figure it out, but it was making a comment on something. It had to be, otherwise it's not offering much. It had some genius camera-work, like the revolving shot of the bath, and a sort of sense of whimsy to it that made me think it was like the really, really, really, really, very, extremely disturbing version of Amelie. And it is occasionally funny, and often very inventive. Which makes me think it must have been more than just shock for the sake of shock.

Although I can't figure out how. And I mostly didn't enjoy it. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets banned in Australia, and that would suck, although I can't think of anyone I would recommend this to, because it is unpleasant. Even if I am conflicted because it's not without merit. So, while I never plan of seeing it again, I'm sort of kind of glad I have, because it's an experience, and at least that's something.

4/10

Then there was 2:37, with another Q&A, and Thalluri briefly mentioned those little accusations being made against him, although his reception here was really positive. Then hours passed, until the decision had to me made: which midnight movie to see? Both starting at midnight, of course they clash. Neither screening was either film's last at the festival, although all other screenings of both films clash with other choices, so the one not chosen won't be seen until my return to Australia.

Fortunately, one cinema in Sydney has The Host right now, and should still be showing it when I return.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Believe me when I tell you what I'm about to say shouldn't be taken as a throwaway line. I've seen a lot of movies. I dig on comedies of most kinds, as long as they don't feature Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence. We're talking from both sides of the Atlantic, foreign language, Australian stuff when we get it right (which is more not than often). From not and from the past, although I haven't seen as many screwball comedies as I could have. But...

Borat is the funniest movie I've ever seen.

(Maybe.)

Comedies often take the approach of throwing so many jokes in that even thought they hit and they miss, they are so numerous that you forget about the misses. Borat is like that, only with very, very few misses, and some that hit so hard they hurt.



Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's creation (coming after Ali G, who I don't mind but am not a huge fan of) travels from Kazakhstan to America with his producer Azamat in order to learn cutural lessons in order to improve his homeland. He begins his quest, but is soon sidetracked when he decides to travel cross-country to meet and wed Pamela Anderson.

If you've seen Borat's shows, you know what's happening here. He sets up interviews with people unaware of what's coming to them, and either frustrates the hell out of them or reveals how horrible they are. There's also a lot of Borat in public, terrifying innocent civilians, to hilarious effect, and scenes of Borat planning and discussing with Azamat.

To tell of all the funny would be time consuming and largely redundant. If you like Borat, you'll love this, and if you don't, there's a good chance you'll love it anyway. A lot of it is pretty cruel, but some of it's angry, exposing some people for the bigots they are, and leaving them completely unaware of what they've just done, right there on camera. Although the funniest scene is one that is planned; a fight, halfway through the film, which is absolutely and completely insane and brilliant.

Although a lot of it may have been the atmosphere. Being surrounded by fifteen hundred people all there because they know they're going to have a good time can lead to bias. It's also pure comedy, and while it is comic genius, it's light on story, which seems like a stupid complaint, but in my previous funniest-of-the-year, Little Miss Sunshine, had a huge emotional core which lacks here. Finally, the biggest test will be if it stands up to repeat viewings. It'll remain great, I'm sure, but how much of the humour relies on that shock of first time viewing?

For now, though, I love it, and I want it to go down as a classic, and I want everyone to see it. Cinematically, perhaps it's imperfect, but comedically, it just might be.

9/10

Today, I've seen Ten Canoes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and skipped Deliver Us From Evil to catch Fido. Later on tonight, I'll find out why All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Stupid White Man can't save movie

So, the line for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a few hundred metres long. Borat himself is there, with a donkey. I was too far down the line but I think he actually rode the donkey.

And then the movie plays. The theatre seats 1200, and it's full. Two sections, ground and verandah, and we're on the verandha. The Midnight Madness dude does his intro, then Borat appears to much applause and does his, and then the movie starts.

And then the movie stops, twenty minutes later. Twenty really, really fucking funny minutes later. But the projector didn't like it, so it stopped.

Nobody's happy, and then Borat reappears to appease everyone, and it works. That's down the bottom section, where the verandah crew can't see. Shortly after he's left again, on my section, Michael Moore walks past. Michael Moore and an entourage including who I thought was a rabbi, and they go into the projector booth.

And then Michael Moore starts trying to fix the projector.

This goes on for a while and everyone is chanting and taking photos. The projecter, by the way, is behind a big sheet of plastic. It's not just the lens poking out of a hole at the back of the theatre, you can see the whole room from the theatre.

After a while he fails, and walks back out again. A minute later, he appears on stage, with the rabbi. Only he's not a rabbi, he's the director, Larry Charles. So Moore and Charles start doing a Q&A while the projector is being fixed, and they're both pretty funny. Then the Midnight Madness dude keeps giving updates, white are "one more minute", then "five more minutes", then "it may have to be rescheduled".

Moore and Charles also point out Jay Roach, who produced, and who directed the Austin Powers movies, and, unfortunately, the Meet the Parents movies. Also pointed out is the agent who was the basis for Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage.

Michael Moore doesn't get any boos for his politics, or for being a loudmouth. Although he does cop some for asking everyone to leave Tom Cruise alone.

Then Borat reappears and starts to do his Q&A, and also asks a girl in the audience "how much?"

The film, in the end, doesn't work, and will be repeated tomorrow at midnight. But hopefully there will be more than one repeat, because I have The Host at that time. I'm sure they'll take into account how many people have midnight madness passes, though.

So, only got twenty minutes of a movie, but it was the nuttiest movie screening I've ever been to. Thanks, Toronto.

Film: I Want a Third Pill

The festival begins.



The Pervert's Guide to Cinema: Parts 1, 2 and 3

That title's a mouthful, and the movie itself, if this were a real word, is a brainful.

What we have here is documentary filmmaker Sophie Fiennes taking us through the thoughts of psychologist (or pschyo-analyst, or guy way smarter than me, or something) Slavoj Zizek as he talks about the meaning behind some of his favourite films, and of cinema as a whole. We watch him talk about The Birds, Vertigo, Psycho, Fight Club, all the films of David Lynch, Three Colours: Blue, a couple of Charlie Chaplin films, and a lot more. And if that sounds too dry, he talks from within the films he talks about. He discusses Psycho from Norman Bates' cellar, Blue Velvet from Dennis Hopper's den of creepy sex, The Birds from Tippi Hedren's speedboat.

It's all fascinating stuff, and Fiennes puts it together fantastically. She matches some scenes perfectly to the original, like Vertigo, sitting in Scotty's apartment. Other times production values show, with what I assume is MiniDV footage not standing up next to the film segments we watch, but it's not at all jarring, just understandable. Fiennes occasionally gives us candid glimpses of Zizek as well, making him more likable. Not that he wasn't already.

So, style is good. What about substance?

Zizek is, as mentioned, way totally smart, but he's also funny. As he boats to the island of The Birds as Tippi Hedren did, he says "I know what you're thinking: I want to fuck Mitch.". After showing the scene from The Conversation where blood rises from the toilet, he likens the black of a cinema screen before the feature begins to a toilet bowl, and viewers waiting for something to rise from it. "Basically, we are all watching shit!"

I occasionally find psychological analysis of films to be jarring- I encountered some real wank about Alien last semester at uni. Here, though, what Zizeg says is never too implausible, even if it isn't my favourite type of film theory.

Although the film is too long. It's two and a half hours, three parts put together. I think it was intended to be on TV (although now the hardcore pornography that appears in part two would prevent that on most channels), which would suit it better, because there's so much in it you feel weighed down (in a good way) by the end out part one. It's all pretty interesting stuff, it's just tiring.

It's definitely worth a watch, but aim for DVD rather than at a cinema, if it makes it to a cinema near you. It was fantastic to watch some classic scenes on the big screen, but a pause button would have been a pleasure.

8/10

Next, I'm seeing Borat. Apparently it's so funny it hurts. Sweet.

These films have been modified to fit your screen. Also they suck.

Am I aloud to review movies I saw on the plane, even if I only saw two minutes of them, just because they're shit?

Okay, I won't. But seriously, The Da Vinci Code, shut the fuck up.

Tom Hanks: Maybe the letters are out of order, just like the numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence!
Amelie: An ANAGRAM?!?

Stunning dialogue there. Doesn't stand out at all like you're trying to clarify things for the audience. It felt like a big screen CSI, for fuck's sake.

To be fair, my powerful hatred of the book makes me somewhat biased. Okay, the 140 pages I read, I hated. The prose, dialogue and characterisation were so poor I don't care if it reveals the meaning of life wrapped up in the most unpredictable plot twist imaginable, I couldn't handle it.

And Ron Howard, he executive produces Arrested Development. How could he display such terrible taste here?

Anyway, whatever. Jihad on Dan Brown!

That was the flight from Australia to LA, where economy class has those little screens, so The Da Vinci Code could be clicked away from. The flight from LA to Toronto, there were no such options.

Just My Luck.

Morbid curiosity got the better of me here, so I caught about twenty scattered minutes of this on. We're supposed to like Lindsay Lohan's horrible character in this movie while she glides through life, and then sympathise with her when she gets all unlucky. She kisses some unlucky guy and their luck switches, or whatever. It's as clever as it sounds. And one of the pieces bad luck that befalls her? She eats scraps of bacon off a stranger's plate at a diner. She just... picks it up... and eats it. There's a difference between being unlucky and being a fucking moron.

And the unlucky guy, he's the manager of the band McFly, and also he works at a bowling alley. I don't know. And McFly are a real band, apparently. Imagine a pop-punk band... except even WORSE than that. At least they're not pretending to have street cred, though, because if they were, appearing in a Lohan movie would be... wow.

Anyway, it was pretty stunningly ordinary.

Tomorrow, however... Tomorrow begins the movie run of awesomity. Get ready.

Toronto: The List

Go here to find out more about these bastards!

10 Items or Less

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

As the Shadow

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

Black Book

Black Sheep

Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Cashback

D.O.A.P.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack

Day Night Day Night

Deliver Us From Evil

Fiction

For Your Consideration

Ghosts of Cite Soleil

Pan's Labyrinth

Paris, Je T'aime

Princess

S&MAN

Short Cuts Canada 1

Shot in the Dark

Sleeping Dogs Lie

Suburban Mayhem

Summercamp!

Taxidermia

Ten Canoes

The Abandoned

The Fountain

The Host

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Severance

Sheitan

Trapped Ashes

2:37

Maybe I'll come back later and add links to these things, but, effort! I have to get up at 4am. Leave me be.

Anyway, I may miss a couple because I'm leaving before the last day of the festival, unless plans change... But Jeebus, my eyes will be square by the end of it. Awesome. People who go overseas to explore foreign lands are suckers, man.

Film: Films Set On Planes

Tomorrow, far too early in the morning, I board the first of three planes for a commute that will feel three years long. So, fittingly, the last two cinema visits before these flights were Snakes on a Plane and United 93. You know, those movies with bad shit going down on planes?

Whoops.

Snakes on a Plane

If you're thinking "that looks SO stupid", don't see it. If you're thinking "this looks REALLY scary and cool!", don't see it. And also go sterilise yourself. If you're thinking "this looks like so much motherfucking fun, motherfucker!", you've got the right state of mind, and you may enter.

Here, you pretty much know what you're in for. The hype has told you, the trailers have told you, more than anything, the motherfucking title tells you: Snakes on a Plane. It's stupid, it's nonsensical, it's fun.



A serious review of the movie would point out how ludicrous the story is. Nathan Phillips from Wolf Creek and his horrible American accent witness a mob hit while on a surfing trip in Hawaii. The mob somehow track him down, but so do the FBI, who whisk him away to LA, accompanied by Samuel L Jackson and some cracker. Even with a decoy plane in play, the gangsters figure out what plane he's on... and put snakes on it. Bad snakes! Angry snakes.

Stupid, yes? Also stupid is the attempt to give many many minor characters their own subplots. Films can juggle a lot of characters- look at Short Cuts, or if we're sticking with the action genre, Battle Royale- but in a film with screenwriting this lazy, the subtle-as-a-jackhammer exposition and revations of character come off as laughable. And when the internet hype kicked in it seems that they supplemented these moments via reshoots with over-the-top violence and sex and swears. A reshoot included a moment so awesome I'm giving it its own paragraph.

Snake on a tit.

So despite deep, occasionally intentional flaws, this was some of the most fun I've had in a cinema this year. I saw it with a group of friends- I wouldn't advise doing otherwise- and we laughed and high-fived when the snakes arrived, and high-fived more when Sam Jackson finally said that line you already know by now. It was just a pure good time. And yet...

There is something really inorganic going on. This was designed to be a cult picture like The Chumscrubber was, and that was pretty ordinary. And it's not even the best bad-fun movie out there- I was reminded of Deep Blue Sea, that movie with the super-smart sharks, a premise that seems subtle and clever compared with a snake-ridden plane, which was more fun and less up itself. Although the most fun I've ever had with a bad movie was Uwe Boll's House of the Dead, although that was because of the remarkable level of ineptness at all levels of that movie. Please do seek it out, if you haven't already, and don't turn it off too early, or you'll miss the bit where Boll splices shots from the video game into the middle of action sequences. Spectacular.

So, it's hard to rate. Overall the existance of a movie named Snakes on a Plane is more fun than the actual experience of watching it, but watching it is a good time as well. It's too manufactured, for sure, but seriously...

...snake on a tit.

6/10

United 93

It's a hard watch. That really goes without saying. But it's an amazingly done hard watch, and that's what's important. And it's probably also a movie that I'm not mature enough to review well, so I apologise in advance.

You know what it's about, so I needn't repeat that. It spans just the morning of September 11 intersplicing people boarding the flight bound for San Fransisco that would only make it as far as Pennsylvania with those working in various air traffic control centres. As the situation worsens, we focus more and more on the passengers of the flight until the tragic, intense and bloody end.



Writer/director Paul Greengrass here has created something more realistic than any "dramitization" in a documentary has ever been. This is not just due to the unknown cast- in some cases, air traffic controllers are playing themselves- but also because of the style of the film. Dialogue was worked out through improvisation in rehearsals. Here we have no protagonist, no character arcs, no big characters, no witty dialogue. That morning on that plane was just normal people trying to fly across the country without engaging with anyone around them, and that's what we're given.

The movie is intense all the way through, and not just everyone knows what happened. There's a sense of foreboding that builds and builds. When it reaches its climax, we're not given a clean version of bravery, of people standing up for their country. It's people who don't want to die lashing out, and it's raw and painful. And it's acted subtly and very well.

Although it might be too soon.

United 93 handles the situation, from both sides, with as much sensitivity as possible. I believe the families of victims were involved, and, as mentioned, people involved on the day were present as actors. But I can see this movie, its mere existence, being painful for both families of the victims, as well as for Muslims. We can never discount how many people will be dickheads who miss the message of the film and abuse innocent people.

A question worth asking is whether or not we needed this movie. It's not a story that has to be told- everyone is familiar with the events. I can't see else this story could have been made, though. Big actors and increased characterisation would probably just make this movie really tacky. I guess I'll find out how that works when I see World Trade Center, although no one can accuse me of being an Oliver Stone fan, so I might be biased there.

So while it may be too soon, it's good that this was the first cab of the rank. It's a very well made movie without any feeling of cashing in to it. If you're willing to sit through the experience, it's highly recommended.

9/10

So there are my last two reviews before heading to Toronto. If I die on the way there, kill every snake you can. I want to be avenged.

TV: Bring Us Colbert!

Since I have three assessments for uni due in the next two days, I've been looking up The Daily Show on YouTube, because I'm a lazy prick.

We only just got The Daily Show here this year, what with Australia sucking and all. It's on TheComedyChannel which is like Comedy Central only with added really, really awful Australian skit shows. The Wedge isn't on there yet, thank God, but it's still got SkitHouse. And that's something no one should have to suffer through.

Anyway! A while ago the free-to-air channel SBS had a weekly edition of The Daily Show but now we get the real thing, and only a day or so after its US air, including the bit at the end where he crosses to The Colbert Report. But no Colbert Report! It's the definition of travesty.

The point is, here's a bunch or reminders of Stephen Colbert's and Jon Stewart's awesome!

Meanwhile, can someone give Samantha Bee her own show?

(fin)