TIFF Originals

The Torontonian Reviews: The Paperboy

t’s understood that exceptionally bad movies will attract an audience of camp enthusiasts, but Lee Daniels’ third directing credit is not a “trashterpiece” or “so bad it’s good” or “there’s nothing else on television, honey”. No, it’s just trash: garbage that has been pissed on by raccoons or crocodiles or whatever animal your locale attracts and glossed with the veneer of star power and intriguing trailers. Stay away. Let it die. Just let it shrivel up and die.

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The Torontonian Reviews: The Silver Linings Playbook

The film will assuredly please crowds and win hearts in the end—perhaps even Oscar’s—but audiences interested in something more complex should probably look elsewhere.

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TIFF12 Review: The Act of Killing

As Anwar and company tell their story about their lives as gangsters it becomes quickly evident that what they have in mind isn’t a thoughtful, introspective reflection on their history, but a glorious, bedazzled, trumped up showcase of themselves positioned as the heroes of this bloody tale of horror, augmented with dancing girls in fancy costumes, the rotund, hairy Herman, dressed in makeup and a sparkly turquoise mermaid dress, gleefully bloody re-enactments of the murders they committed, and a giant concrete fish. It’s a truly bizarre perspective on the slaughter of millions and the role this men had in it, so much so that at times, it’s even a little funny, the sheer audacity and absurdity of it all. Until it’s not.

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TIFF12 Review: Ginger & Rosa

The leftist bent of the characters and some heavy-handed nuclear symbolism might seem to imply that director Sally Potter’s reaching for a bigger message here, but really, this is a heavily character-driven story about these two young girls whose lifetime friendship grows threatened as they grow in separate directions, and, especially, a coming-of-age story about Ginger, who learns things along the way that force her to reassess all the things she thought she knew, about her parents, about friendship, and about life.

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The View From After TIFF

Good morning, Movienam! I thought I’d start boxing the TIFF experience this morning. It’s a weird time for film festivals. Not just TIFF. But especially at TIFF this year. Literally every single journalist or publicist I talked to – and this year, I ended up spending more time with publicists than journalists, which can be…

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The Torontonian Reviews: Comrade Kim Goes Flying

According to Comrade Kim Goes Flying, North Korea is a happy place; a utopia where everything is possible, everything is colorful, and everything is great. Of course, as our uncensored Google searches reveal, this is an expectedly false representation of the totalitarian state: the regime has a horrifically poor record on human rights, and the hardships endured are very real and very awful. In other words, to see this dystopia depicted so positively makes for some extremely bizarre cinema.

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TIFF12 Review: Pieta

Much of the first half of the film is so disturbing as to be almost unwatchable, at least by Western audiences – even those who love arthouse cinema and therefore have a higher tolerance than your average film-goer for brutality taken to its most absurd extremes. But if you can tough it out past the pinnacle of debasement and suffering at the midpoint or so of the film, where it’s at its absolute worst, the film gradually heads from that point to a payoff that does make it worthwhile to stick around for.

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TIFF12 Review: Middle of Nowhere

Middle of Nowhere, Ava DuVernay’s quiet, reflective film, starts out with an interesting premise and builds from there with some strong performances and thoughtful cinematography that effectively evokes the desperation and sorrow of its protagonist, a young woman with a promising future who puts her life on hold when her husband is sent to prison….

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TIFF12 Review: Love is All You Need

Susanne Bier’s latest film, Love is All You Need, takes an accessible, easy-to-digest premise – at their children’s wedding, a man who’s closed himself off to love meets a sympathetic woman whose marriage is falling apart – and makes of it a much better film than it sounds on paper, thanks in no small part…

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TIFF12 Review: To the Wonder

To the Wonder is like cinematic church, like receiving the communion wafer Bardem’s priest delivers to his faithful parishioners and to the tongues of men trapped in the steel cages of prison. We are the ones encased in the prisons of our own expectations and understanding of what cinema as a medium can be, and Malick is pushing and challenging those expectations, offering up through his films a different way to see and think about the life and beauty that surrounds us.

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The Torontonian Reviews: To The Wonder

To the Wonder was filmed in Oklahoma, but the suburban neighbourhood seen here is astonishingly close to what an updated 1950’s Waco, Texas might be. The subject matter is not exactly a drastic change, either: themes of love and family inform both of the films inherently. It’s generous to call this type of cinema “innovative” now, but at least in The Tree of Life audiences were treated to a veritable smorgasbord of beautiful music.

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TIFF12 Review: At Any Price

Bahrani’s films are studies in character and heavy on symbolism: the former Pakistani rock star who’s selling coffee from a Manhattan push cart, moving his cart around the city in an endless sisyphean cycle in Man Push Cart; the Latino street orphan laboring in the rough-and-tumble grind of a questionable auto-repair/chop shop in the Iron Triangle area of New York City, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium in Chop Shop; the old man who’s decided to commit suicide, who tries to persuade a friendly cab driver to drive him to the mountain from which he intends to leap to his death in Goodbye Solo. Here, Bahrani’s clearly worked to open his storytelling up to paint on a broader canvas, but he’s still using the meticulous brushstrokes that have always defined his films.

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The Torontonian Reviews: End of Watch

It’s a good thing the chemistry between Peña and Gyllenhaal is excellent, as the two are side-by-side on screen for the film’s entire duration. When the stakes are low, Taylor and Z crack jokes (mostly racial) and recount chestnuts (mostly graphic) with each other. But when lives are on the line, the pair command attention with their laissez-faire police tactics and level-headed cool. On the road, between these ups and downs, the two also wax poetic about life: working with the LAPD, their relationships at home, and the prospects of the future. These police cruiser conversations are engaging and thoughtful; at times bordering on profundity.

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The Torontonian Reviews: Storm Surfers 3D

Storm Surfers was shot natively in 3D, and for once a film is better for it. The added dimension instills a greater sense of scale, reminding us of the inherent danger to this thrilling sport. Thankfully, none of this ever feels shoehorned: water spits at the screen like it would while boating; waves in the foreground seem touchable. This isn’t a gimmick, because the filmmakers have used the medium with legitimate intentions.

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TIFF12 Interview: Tamara Podemski

Five years ago, Tamara Podemski got heaps of notice and won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her terrific performance in Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind. A graduate of Toronto’s prestigious and highly competitive Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts (Sarah Polley was a classmate), Pademski’s strikingly lovely and multi-talented; with her Sundance breakthrough, she seemed on the verge of the sort of breakthrough that can happen for a young actress when she gets noticed at Sundance.

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TIFF12: First Weekend In Telegraphese and Pictures

Monday afternoon: #TIFF12 Ah, autumn sun’s sweet mixed messages in sprint from venue to meet to venue #Toronto

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The Torontonian Reviews: Imogene

Bridesmaids went far last year, going the distance with many awards and cementing itself on plenty of Top-10 lists—mine included. More importantly, Bridesmaids made Imogene an easy sell in terms of anticipation: the world wants more Wiig, and I can’t imagine anyone is particularly upset to see her gaining more feature roles. Though her cameo career has been rather priceless thus far, Wiig is too good to be relegated to the sidelines.

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TIFF12 Review: Rust and Bone

One of my favorite films of the first few days of TIFF this year is Rust and Bone, the masterfully executed drama by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) about the relationship between Ali (Bullhead‘s Matthias Schoenaerts), a rough-and-tumble backstreet boxer, and Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), an aloof trainer of killer whales. The pair meet when Ali rescues…

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The Torontonian Reviews: The Place Beyond the Pines

Derek Cianfrance’s direction is confident, on par with contemporary filmmakers who have been working for decades. But the writing of Pines is really the star of the show. How I wish I could spin such natural webs of dialogue! Cianfrance makes it look effortless, with not a single line sounding forced or out of place.

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TIFF12 Review: Seven Psychopaths

While Martin McDonagh’s highly anticipated Seven Psychopaths, starring an impressive cast including Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell and Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson, lacks somewhat the depth of character that defined McDonagh’s 2008 standout In Bruges, it’s a mostly fun and entertaining romp through the lighter side of darkness — or at least, dark comedy. So…

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Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon