TIFF Roundup
Back from Toronto, and here’s what I saw in no particular order.
BLINDNESS - my contender for worst movie of the year, so far. Pretentious claptrap that’s really a rape/revenge movie shot by a director who doesn’t have the guts to admit it. Notable only if you have a fetish for seeing Julianne Moore step in human feces in her bare feet so it squishes up between her toes.
DEAD GIRL - American indie about a bunch of teenagers who find a zombie lady chained up in a basement and turn her into their undead sex slave. This should have been a tasteless, over-the-top, stomach-churning tour de force but instead the directors (it took two) tried to twist it into a dramatic film about two best friends growing up. In doing so, they managed to water down their soup until it skipped “tasteless” and went right to “bland.” Note to future directors: a movie about teenagers raping zombies is not considered a “calling card” in Hollywood, so you’re probably better off not trying to make it one.
ACHILLES & THE TORTOISE - Takeshi Kitano says he’s “stuck” and in a creative slump. It shows.
GOMORRAH - imagine all three PUSHER movies, plus two more, crammed into one, sprawling picture about the modern day mafia in Naples. Then cast it with some of the funniest-looking people in Italian cinema, including a 6′1″ kid who weighs 70 pounds and has a nose the size of Rhode Island. Also: machine guns. One of the best of the fest and coming from IFC in January, 2009.
ASHES OF TIME REDUX - no longer completely off-the-wall and batshit-crazy, WKW has used a new, more mature soundtrack and a subtle, linear editing plan to transform ASHES from a surreal object of contemplation spiked with HK commercial cinema craziness into a movie that fits in well with his post IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE career. Something is lost in the process, something is gained. At least Norah Jones is missing.
DETROIT METAL CITY - the Japanese flick that settles several questions. First, when in doubt, inject more death metal, not less. Second, death metal deserves more movies. Third, Tim Burton should make those movies. Fourth, Kenichi Matsuyama (L in the DEATH NOTE movies, Sir Johannes Krauser II in DETROIT METAL CITY) is one of the best actors in Japan today.
JCVD - I’ve always thought that Jean Claude Van Damme was a better actor than he was given credit for, and I’m so happy to be proved right. He may never hit these heights again, but it’s as if his entire career to date was preparation for this movie. Is it perfect? Hell no. But I cried twice and the stuck-up audience of nerds and old fogeys at the Press and Industry screening where I saw it gave it cheers and applause at the end, something I didn’t see at any other P&I screenings.
TREELESS MOUNTAIN - if this was 1968, some exploitation distributor in America would give this Korean art film the total drive-in treatment. New title: THE BUG EATERS. Tag line: “See them eating the flaming bodies of crickets…while they’re still alive! They don’t wash their clothes! They don’t cut their hair! They wait and wait for a bus…that never comes! THE BUG EATERS!!!!!” The kind of movie that makes you want to adopt a little abused Korean child if they’re as cute as the ones onscreen.
THE BURROWERS - seeing the Lionsgate logo on the front of this film conveys instantly that this 19th Century Western monster movie is destined to go direct to the video store shelves, and that’s too bad. Its ambition outstrips its abilities, but this SEARCHERS meets TREMORS flick is smarter and better made than it has any right to be, given its low budget and its oddball, unclassifiable genre. It’s bound to disappoint action fans because it’s got more mood than monsters, but it’ll also disappoint the arthouse crowd to whom its “White people are bad” message is old hat. Resting uneasily in some twilight zone, neither fish nor fowl, it’s the kind of movie that people are going to discover for themselves on DVD and wonder, “How did this get made? Why didn’t I hear about it sooner? What kind of world do we live in where a movie this good gets less of a push than MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN?”
MARTYRS - French people are sick. That’s the only explanation I have for the rash of horror flicks coming out of the land of stinky cheese: INSIDE, FRONTIER(S) and now this. The less you know about it the better, because this movie switches gears like a hungover trucker on an uphill drive: frequently and with the scream of shredding metal and the smell of burning oil. Slated for the video store shelves courtesy of the Weinstein Company, this is the next step in horror movies - a film not content to scare you or gross you out, but wanting to make a philosophical point doing so. In the last third it’ll lose most of its audience (myself included) but then it comes back with a mind-blowing ending that sent one viewer at Midnight Madness out into the lobby, blowing chunks. Have you ever thought about god, power, life and death while heaving out your guts in the toilet bowl? After seeing MARTYRS, you will.
SKY CRAWLERS - Mamoru Oshii has made a masterful animated picture. Too bad it’s really, really boring. After turning on a massive audience of fans with GHOST IN THE SHELL, Oshii seems to be devoting the rest of his career to turning them right back off. If boring the audience to death is his intent then: mission accomplished.
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD - the surprise of the fest. A documentary about Australian exploitation movies that is one of the most entertaining movies of the year. You will come to like Quentin Tarantino. You will want to see HOWLING 3 - THE MARSUPIALS. You will learn to hate Jimmy Wang Yu. Up is down and black is white.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAGA - a commercial Thai film about a bunch of crooks who become Buddhist monks in order to infiltrate a monastery and rescue their hidden loot from a recent bank job. Being a commercial Thai film, it mixes melodrama, religious films, gangster movies, a little bit of horror and some comedy until you have a starnge mish mash that works more as a cultural curiosity and an essay on Thai Buddhism than it does as a crime film.
EDEN LOG - another French film, and one that’s bound for America via Magnolia’s Magnet imprint. It’s great to see ambitious, cerebral, HEAVY METAL-influenced low budget filmmaking especially when it’s pulled off with this much confidence, swagger and style. But when the director came out for the Q&A and asked, “Can anybody tell me where to get some cocaine?” I looked around to see if I could score, too. The operative word here is “brooding.” This movie broods like a mofo.