Toronto Film Fest 2006, Day Two
Sep. 10th, 2006 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedDidn't get back from the midnight screening till 3 a.m. last night, so I'm playing catch up with the reviews.
Title: Climates
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey
P's Rating: Recommended
I picked this one on the strength of the director's previous film, Distance, and wasn't disappointed. The film follows a couple, played by the director and his actress wife, as they struggle with the ways they have grown apart and eventually break up. The virtues of Ceylan's filmmaking are his keen eye for details of behaviour and his gorgeous cinematography. And he bravely doesn't flinch from showing the less than admirable aspects of his characters.
Title: A Gravekeeper's Tale
Director: Chitra Palekar
Country: India
P's Rating: Not-so-good
A first film, and not an auspicious debut. It tells the story of Chandi, a young woman who has the hereditary job of maintaining the children's graveyard in her village, and the the young boy, Bhagirath, who discovers that the now-disgraced Chandi is actually his mother. The writing is heavy-handed, the acting is dodgy and the cinematography is functional at best. And the ending, where Bhagirath publicly acknowledges his mother after she's died a martyr's death, is laughable. There might have been a good movie in the story, but it's certainly not on the screen.
Title: The Host
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Country: South Korea
P's Rating: Recommended
Some of the best populist film today is coming out of South Korea, and The Host follows that crowd-pleasing tradition. After a prologue giving an explanation of where a giant South Korean monster might have come from (an evil American doctor on an army base was responsible, of course), the story flips to the present day. The peace of a lazy summer day in Seoul is disrupted when a mutated monster rises from the Han river and massacres a bunch of people enjoying the sun in a park. Amongst the survivors is Gang-du, who watches as the monster snatches his daughter in front of him. When he receives a cell-phone call from his daughter, Gang-du tries to convince the cops and government officials that she's still alive. When no one believes him, he and his dysfunctional family break out of quarantine and go hunting the girl. The film is an intriguing mix of comedy (Gang-du is a chronic screw-up, prone to falling asleep at the drop of a hat) and horror (the daughter is dumped in an inaccessible sewer and must search the bodies of the monster's victims, hoping to find another working cell-phone). And the cast is uniformly fine, particulary Song Kang-ho as the hapless Gang-du and the ever awesome Bae Doo-na as his archery champion sister. (You just know she's going to pull out the bow and arrows and go after the monster before the movie ends.)
Title: Climates
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey
P's Rating: Recommended
I picked this one on the strength of the director's previous film, Distance, and wasn't disappointed. The film follows a couple, played by the director and his actress wife, as they struggle with the ways they have grown apart and eventually break up. The virtues of Ceylan's filmmaking are his keen eye for details of behaviour and his gorgeous cinematography. And he bravely doesn't flinch from showing the less than admirable aspects of his characters.
Title: A Gravekeeper's Tale
Director: Chitra Palekar
Country: India
P's Rating: Not-so-good
A first film, and not an auspicious debut. It tells the story of Chandi, a young woman who has the hereditary job of maintaining the children's graveyard in her village, and the the young boy, Bhagirath, who discovers that the now-disgraced Chandi is actually his mother. The writing is heavy-handed, the acting is dodgy and the cinematography is functional at best. And the ending, where Bhagirath publicly acknowledges his mother after she's died a martyr's death, is laughable. There might have been a good movie in the story, but it's certainly not on the screen.
Title: The Host
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Country: South Korea
P's Rating: Recommended
Some of the best populist film today is coming out of South Korea, and The Host follows that crowd-pleasing tradition. After a prologue giving an explanation of where a giant South Korean monster might have come from (an evil American doctor on an army base was responsible, of course), the story flips to the present day. The peace of a lazy summer day in Seoul is disrupted when a mutated monster rises from the Han river and massacres a bunch of people enjoying the sun in a park. Amongst the survivors is Gang-du, who watches as the monster snatches his daughter in front of him. When he receives a cell-phone call from his daughter, Gang-du tries to convince the cops and government officials that she's still alive. When no one believes him, he and his dysfunctional family break out of quarantine and go hunting the girl. The film is an intriguing mix of comedy (Gang-du is a chronic screw-up, prone to falling asleep at the drop of a hat) and horror (the daughter is dumped in an inaccessible sewer and must search the bodies of the monster's victims, hoping to find another working cell-phone). And the cast is uniformly fine, particulary Song Kang-ho as the hapless Gang-du and the ever awesome Bae Doo-na as his archery champion sister. (You just know she's going to pull out the bow and arrows and go after the monster before the movie ends.)
