Toronto Film Fest, Days One and Two
Sep. 7th, 2003 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedI'm going to try and post reviews for the films I've seen as the fest proceeds. Sleep deprivation allowing of course. (Got in at 3:30 last night, or rather this morning, after seeing a kick-ass Thai martial arts film.
Turkish alienation...
Title: Distant
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey
P's Rating: Recommended
An exquisite film in which not much necessarily happens. Mahmut is a photographer living in Istanbul. Yusuf is his younger relative, staying with him while looking for work. The two of them wander around Istanbul, trying to figure out their very different lives, and get on each other's nerves as they share a living space. What makes it special is not only the beautiful composition of the shots and the unexpected humour, but the perfect way in which their lives are observed.
Japanese order meets Thai chaos and Canadian dystopic scifi...
Title: Last Life in the Universe
Director: Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Country: Thailand
P's Rating: Recommended
Tadanobu Asano plays Kenji, a suicidal Japanese man, living an quietly ordered life in Bangkok. Then two things happen: he witnesses the hit and run death of a Thai girl who had been fighting with her sister, and his yakuza brother shows up with a colleague and sparks violence that leaves two bodies in his apartment. He flees his obsessively neat life to hook up with the dead girl's unbelievably chaotic sister. The film is not only full of perfect, small moments and some truly funny moments (Ratanaruang's second film, 69, got a lot of humour out of a young woman's predicament as people keep being killed in her apartment over some missing drug money) but it's also utterly gorgeous to look at. Which is as it should be, since it was shot by Wong Kar Wai's favourite cinematographer, Christopher Doyle.
Title: Cypher
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Country: Canada
P's Rating: Not-So-Good
A dystopic film, set in a future where, stop me if you've heard this before, corporations rule everyone's lives. Jeremy Northam plays a nebbish of a man who is recruited by a large corporation to become a corporate spy. Or so he thinks. He's actually being brainwashed to become a real spy. And there are even more layers to the conspiracy. Cypher is disappointing because it could have been so much better. The premise isn't exactly original, but Northam definitely sells his role as a little guy who suddenly has a chance to add some excitement to his life. The problem is, the film loses it's way in the last act. Instead of the grand acts of rebellion one expects in this genre, the final twist of the conspiracy comes off as disappointingly, well, ordinary. Equilibrium mined a similar territory so much better.
Turkish alienation...
Title: Distant
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey
P's Rating: Recommended
An exquisite film in which not much necessarily happens. Mahmut is a photographer living in Istanbul. Yusuf is his younger relative, staying with him while looking for work. The two of them wander around Istanbul, trying to figure out their very different lives, and get on each other's nerves as they share a living space. What makes it special is not only the beautiful composition of the shots and the unexpected humour, but the perfect way in which their lives are observed.
Japanese order meets Thai chaos and Canadian dystopic scifi...
Title: Last Life in the Universe
Director: Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Country: Thailand
P's Rating: Recommended
Tadanobu Asano plays Kenji, a suicidal Japanese man, living an quietly ordered life in Bangkok. Then two things happen: he witnesses the hit and run death of a Thai girl who had been fighting with her sister, and his yakuza brother shows up with a colleague and sparks violence that leaves two bodies in his apartment. He flees his obsessively neat life to hook up with the dead girl's unbelievably chaotic sister. The film is not only full of perfect, small moments and some truly funny moments (Ratanaruang's second film, 69, got a lot of humour out of a young woman's predicament as people keep being killed in her apartment over some missing drug money) but it's also utterly gorgeous to look at. Which is as it should be, since it was shot by Wong Kar Wai's favourite cinematographer, Christopher Doyle.
Title: Cypher
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Country: Canada
P's Rating: Not-So-Good
A dystopic film, set in a future where, stop me if you've heard this before, corporations rule everyone's lives. Jeremy Northam plays a nebbish of a man who is recruited by a large corporation to become a corporate spy. Or so he thinks. He's actually being brainwashed to become a real spy. And there are even more layers to the conspiracy. Cypher is disappointing because it could have been so much better. The premise isn't exactly original, but Northam definitely sells his role as a little guy who suddenly has a chance to add some excitement to his life. The problem is, the film loses it's way in the last act. Instead of the grand acts of rebellion one expects in this genre, the final twist of the conspiracy comes off as disappointingly, well, ordinary. Equilibrium mined a similar territory so much better.
