TIFF, Days Nine and Ten
Sep. 18th, 2008 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedYeah, the fest ended on Saturday and it's now Thursday. What can I say. Except that doing the final midnight show when you have to be up early and looking after a toddler the next morning is, shall we say, foolish. And a sure way of making sure you're in sleep debt for the rest of the week.
Anyway, here's the last of the reviews. Alas, it seems that I saved the two that really sucked for the last day.
Title: Blind Sunflowers
Director: José Luis Cuerda
Country: Spain
P's Rating: Okay
In the wake of the Spanish civil war, Elena is trying to raise her young son. She's also hiding her communist husband in her apartment and fending off the advances of a Franco-supporting priest who's a little to interested in helping her with her son. This film mines the same territory that Guillermo del Toro has portrayed so successful, but in a more naturalistic way. And while it's a solid offering, it's not nearly as good as either Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone.
Title: Achilles and the Tortoise
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Recommended
In his previous two films, Kitano took a look at the filmmaker's art. This time out, he examines the life of a painter. But not a successful painter. The follows Machisu, an aspiring artist, from boyhood to middle age. For Machisu, painting is an overwhelming obsession. But lacking his own style, he is reduced to imitating the styles of other, more successful artists, from Miro to Lichtenstein, as his wife steadfastly supports him and his daughter drifts further away. Kitano uses his usual deadpan style, a strategy which is more successful in the first two segments, when Machisu is played by other actors. As soon as Kitano takes over as the middle-aged Machisu, things tip from being genuinely moving to a little too slapstick. It's still a fascinating film, though, with an ending that isn't entirely what you'd expect.
Title: El Greco
Director: Iannis Smaragdis
Country: Greece/Spain/Hungary
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I picked this mostly to fill a hole in my schedule, figuring it would be a middle-brow bio pic of the painter known as El Greco. Instead, it was pretty darn dreadful, one of those films where European actors (mostly Spanish and Greek) act badly in English. It doesn't help that the lines they're given are laughably clichéd. Or that the whole enterprise relies on a voice-over from El Greco that takes telling over showing to ridiculous heights. (I realized I was in trouble when on meeting the love of his life, El Greco tells the audience "It was like falling in love again, for the first time." Twice!)
Title: Sky Crawlers
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Not-so-good
This film looked fascinating: anime and fighter planes, what's not to like. But mostly, it's just a bore. The problem is that what little story there is exists at the far edges of the narrative. Most of the films interminable 122 minutes is taken up by the teenage fighter pilots who are its protagonists looking broodily into the distance. On the positive side, it looks great and the aerial dogfights are spectacular. On the negative, there aren't nearly enough dogfights, and when the biggest plot revelation comes in a short sequence that's placed after the credits, you're in trouble.
Title: Chocolate
Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Country: Thailand
P's Rating: Recommended
First off, the plot of this film--an autistic girl becomes a martial arts savant, which comes in handy when she has to hit up her mom's old gangster pals to pay for her mom's cancer treatments--is utterly dumb. Seriously dumb. But that doesn't matter too much, because the martial arts fights the dumb plot unleashes are spectacular. Directed by the same filmmaker to brough the world Tony Jaa and Ong-bak (another dumb film with spectacular martial arts), it's not going to win any points for style, but fight choreographer Panna Rittikrai and his stunt crew provide more jaw-dropping moments than even Jackie Chan at his peak.
Anyway, here's the last of the reviews. Alas, it seems that I saved the two that really sucked for the last day.
Title: Blind Sunflowers
Director: José Luis Cuerda
Country: Spain
P's Rating: Okay
In the wake of the Spanish civil war, Elena is trying to raise her young son. She's also hiding her communist husband in her apartment and fending off the advances of a Franco-supporting priest who's a little to interested in helping her with her son. This film mines the same territory that Guillermo del Toro has portrayed so successful, but in a more naturalistic way. And while it's a solid offering, it's not nearly as good as either Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone.
Title: Achilles and the Tortoise
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Recommended
In his previous two films, Kitano took a look at the filmmaker's art. This time out, he examines the life of a painter. But not a successful painter. The follows Machisu, an aspiring artist, from boyhood to middle age. For Machisu, painting is an overwhelming obsession. But lacking his own style, he is reduced to imitating the styles of other, more successful artists, from Miro to Lichtenstein, as his wife steadfastly supports him and his daughter drifts further away. Kitano uses his usual deadpan style, a strategy which is more successful in the first two segments, when Machisu is played by other actors. As soon as Kitano takes over as the middle-aged Machisu, things tip from being genuinely moving to a little too slapstick. It's still a fascinating film, though, with an ending that isn't entirely what you'd expect.
Title: El Greco
Director: Iannis Smaragdis
Country: Greece/Spain/Hungary
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I picked this mostly to fill a hole in my schedule, figuring it would be a middle-brow bio pic of the painter known as El Greco. Instead, it was pretty darn dreadful, one of those films where European actors (mostly Spanish and Greek) act badly in English. It doesn't help that the lines they're given are laughably clichéd. Or that the whole enterprise relies on a voice-over from El Greco that takes telling over showing to ridiculous heights. (I realized I was in trouble when on meeting the love of his life, El Greco tells the audience "It was like falling in love again, for the first time." Twice!)
Title: Sky Crawlers
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Country: Japan
P's Rating: Not-so-good
This film looked fascinating: anime and fighter planes, what's not to like. But mostly, it's just a bore. The problem is that what little story there is exists at the far edges of the narrative. Most of the films interminable 122 minutes is taken up by the teenage fighter pilots who are its protagonists looking broodily into the distance. On the positive side, it looks great and the aerial dogfights are spectacular. On the negative, there aren't nearly enough dogfights, and when the biggest plot revelation comes in a short sequence that's placed after the credits, you're in trouble.
Title: Chocolate
Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Country: Thailand
P's Rating: Recommended
First off, the plot of this film--an autistic girl becomes a martial arts savant, which comes in handy when she has to hit up her mom's old gangster pals to pay for her mom's cancer treatments--is utterly dumb. Seriously dumb. But that doesn't matter too much, because the martial arts fights the dumb plot unleashes are spectacular. Directed by the same filmmaker to brough the world Tony Jaa and Ong-bak (another dumb film with spectacular martial arts), it's not going to win any points for style, but fight choreographer Panna Rittikrai and his stunt crew provide more jaw-dropping moments than even Jackie Chan at his peak.
