TIFF 2016 - Reviews Part 1
Sep. 27th, 2016 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedI've finally had a bit of free time, so I've begun tackling reviews of the films I saw at TIFF. I'm going to divide them into more (or less) logical chunks, starting with...
Free Fire, dir. Ben Wheatley
Brie Larson and Armie Hammer are fixers who've brokered a weapons deal between a couple of IRA men (Cillian Murphy and Michael Smiley) and a slightly unhinged weapons dealer (Sharlto Copley). Both sides have less than reliable underlings to haul the weapons concerned, so of course everything goes to hell when the meet happens in an abandoned Boston warehouse. Armie Hammer steals the show as a villain so chill that he takes a break from bullets firing to smoke some weed. And Brie Larson gets in the best line when introducing Copley's character: "He was misdiagnosed as a child genius, and has never recovered." The film drags a bit in the middle, where there's a lot of wounded people dragging themselves around the warehouse, but overall it's a fun ride.
Handsome Devil, dir. John Butler
Butler directed The Stag, one of my favourite films from the 2013 film fest, so I had hopes for this one. I was not disappointed. This time he takes on a coming of age film in a rugby-mad Irish boarding school. Ned is the designated school outsider, bullied by the rugby team and coasting by in school by being the smartest person in the room. But then he gets assigned a new member of the rugby team as a roommate, is finally challenged to do better by a new English teacher, and things get interesting. An unlikely friendship forms, someone comes out, and it's all funny and touching and a joy to watch. The casting nicely undermines stereotypes, too, with Andrew Scott (Sherlock's Moriarity), playing the fundamentally decent English teacher, and Michael McElhatton (Game of Thrones' Roose Bolton) playing a surprisingly compassionate headmaster.
Their Finest, Lone Sherfig
This is about the creation of a British propaganda film in the midst of the Blitz. Catrin (Gemma Arterton) stumbles into a job as a screenwriter for the Ministry of Information. She's assigned to produce the "slop", the female perspective, for a prickly screenwriter (Sam Claflin), and slowly befriends a long-in-the-tooth actor (Bill Nighy) who realizes she can write him a role that will give him a chance at a comeback. It's a solid film, though not completely brilliant, but it gives a good sense of what it was like to work in London during the Blitz, when you never knew if your home was going to be knocked flat in a bombing raid or if someone you knew was going to be killed, but you had to keep soldiering on. And I have to admit that I'm rather fond of Sam Claflin, though I didn't always buy the budding romance between his character and Arterton's. But the heart-breaking but simultaneously rousing ending makes it all.
Two Lovers and a Bear, dir. Kim Nguyen
The first of two movies I saw this fest set in the far north, and the better one by far. Lucy (Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany) and Roman (Dane DeHaan) live in a small northern fly-in community in Nunavut. They have a turbulent relationship and both are carrying emotional baggage we can only guess at. But when Lucy gets a scholarship to study biology, it tears a hole between them that only seems to mend when they take off in a quixotic bid to drive their snowmobiles all the way south. The film is more concerned with the psychology of the characters than a realistic plot, and it's aided by gorgeous cinematography and great acting. Not to mention touches of magical realism, like Canadian treasure Gordon Pinsent showing up to voice a polar bear who seems to be Roman's only friend. Which is less twee than it sounds because you're never sure if the bear is going to eat Roman.
ARQ, dir. Tony Elliot
An ingenious little time travel story. A man wakes up beside a woman, only to have a group of armed masked men break into his bedroom, tie them up and kill him. And then he wakes up and does it all again and again, but every time he gets a little further before dying, and he learns a bit more about the situation he's found himself in. But then, other people start realizing they're in a time loop as well, and things get really interesting. ARQ sometimes shows it's low budget (it's all set inside a single house, re-created in a warehouse in Toronto's west end), and it has a large case of infodumpitis at the beginning, but it manages to be engaging enough.
Maliglutit, dir. Zacharias Kunuk
Representation matters, which is why it's heartening to see this story of the northern Inuk people. But I also wish this could have been a bit better made. Based on John Ford's The Searchers, an Inuk hunter goes on a quest to track down the renegade Inuk men who've kidnapped his wife and daughter. The film benefits from the beauty of the far north, but it all seems a bit artless, mostly a bunch of people in sealskin snowsuits chasing each other down and engaging in not-at-all choreographed fights. Though I did appreciate that at the end, the hunter's wife saves her husband and manages to finally rescue herself.
The British Isles Contingent
Free Fire, dir. Ben Wheatley
Brie Larson and Armie Hammer are fixers who've brokered a weapons deal between a couple of IRA men (Cillian Murphy and Michael Smiley) and a slightly unhinged weapons dealer (Sharlto Copley). Both sides have less than reliable underlings to haul the weapons concerned, so of course everything goes to hell when the meet happens in an abandoned Boston warehouse. Armie Hammer steals the show as a villain so chill that he takes a break from bullets firing to smoke some weed. And Brie Larson gets in the best line when introducing Copley's character: "He was misdiagnosed as a child genius, and has never recovered." The film drags a bit in the middle, where there's a lot of wounded people dragging themselves around the warehouse, but overall it's a fun ride.
Handsome Devil, dir. John Butler
Butler directed The Stag, one of my favourite films from the 2013 film fest, so I had hopes for this one. I was not disappointed. This time he takes on a coming of age film in a rugby-mad Irish boarding school. Ned is the designated school outsider, bullied by the rugby team and coasting by in school by being the smartest person in the room. But then he gets assigned a new member of the rugby team as a roommate, is finally challenged to do better by a new English teacher, and things get interesting. An unlikely friendship forms, someone comes out, and it's all funny and touching and a joy to watch. The casting nicely undermines stereotypes, too, with Andrew Scott (Sherlock's Moriarity), playing the fundamentally decent English teacher, and Michael McElhatton (Game of Thrones' Roose Bolton) playing a surprisingly compassionate headmaster.
Their Finest, Lone Sherfig
This is about the creation of a British propaganda film in the midst of the Blitz. Catrin (Gemma Arterton) stumbles into a job as a screenwriter for the Ministry of Information. She's assigned to produce the "slop", the female perspective, for a prickly screenwriter (Sam Claflin), and slowly befriends a long-in-the-tooth actor (Bill Nighy) who realizes she can write him a role that will give him a chance at a comeback. It's a solid film, though not completely brilliant, but it gives a good sense of what it was like to work in London during the Blitz, when you never knew if your home was going to be knocked flat in a bombing raid or if someone you knew was going to be killed, but you had to keep soldiering on. And I have to admit that I'm rather fond of Sam Claflin, though I didn't always buy the budding romance between his character and Arterton's. But the heart-breaking but simultaneously rousing ending makes it all.
Canadian Content
Two Lovers and a Bear, dir. Kim Nguyen
The first of two movies I saw this fest set in the far north, and the better one by far. Lucy (Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany) and Roman (Dane DeHaan) live in a small northern fly-in community in Nunavut. They have a turbulent relationship and both are carrying emotional baggage we can only guess at. But when Lucy gets a scholarship to study biology, it tears a hole between them that only seems to mend when they take off in a quixotic bid to drive their snowmobiles all the way south. The film is more concerned with the psychology of the characters than a realistic plot, and it's aided by gorgeous cinematography and great acting. Not to mention touches of magical realism, like Canadian treasure Gordon Pinsent showing up to voice a polar bear who seems to be Roman's only friend. Which is less twee than it sounds because you're never sure if the bear is going to eat Roman.
ARQ, dir. Tony Elliot
An ingenious little time travel story. A man wakes up beside a woman, only to have a group of armed masked men break into his bedroom, tie them up and kill him. And then he wakes up and does it all again and again, but every time he gets a little further before dying, and he learns a bit more about the situation he's found himself in. But then, other people start realizing they're in a time loop as well, and things get really interesting. ARQ sometimes shows it's low budget (it's all set inside a single house, re-created in a warehouse in Toronto's west end), and it has a large case of infodumpitis at the beginning, but it manages to be engaging enough.
Maliglutit, dir. Zacharias Kunuk
Representation matters, which is why it's heartening to see this story of the northern Inuk people. But I also wish this could have been a bit better made. Based on John Ford's The Searchers, an Inuk hunter goes on a quest to track down the renegade Inuk men who've kidnapped his wife and daughter. The film benefits from the beauty of the far north, but it all seems a bit artless, mostly a bunch of people in sealskin snowsuits chasing each other down and engaging in not-at-all choreographed fights. Though I did appreciate that at the end, the hunter's wife saves her husband and manages to finally rescue herself.
