Toronto Film Fest, Day the Last
Sep. 18th, 2005 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
przedIt's over for another year. The screenings on the last day were a mixed lot--okay to bad--and I bailed on the final midnight screening after hearing from multiple people, including the friend who programmed it, that the ick factor was rather higher that I like in my movies. (I can take gore, but only if it's funny gore.)
But I've survived without my back packing it in and without my brain leaking out my ears (it's just feeling a trifle squishy) so I consider it a successful fest. Which is good, since chances are slim I'll get to more than one or two screenings next year. It's the end of an era for me. I've been attending the fest religiously since I was eighteen, with two years off when I was living in the States attending, ironically, film school. That's nineteen fests attended; not a bad run.
Title: Runaway
Director: Tim McCann
Country: U.S.
P's Rating: Okay
Michael is a young man with a secret. By day he's working at a convenience store at the outskirts of a small town, but in the evenings he goes home to the cheap motel room he shares with his little brother. Michael has kidnapped his brother to escape the abuse he suffered for years at the hands of his father, and which he hopes to save the younger boy from. But Michael has more than one secret to hide. Directed by cinematographer and director of the series Homicide: Life on the Streets, and starring two Homicide alumni, Peter Gerety and Melissa Leo, in minor roles, this is an interesting film. We get flashbacks both to Michael's home life and his weekly sessions with a therapist which gradually fill in his background and start calling into question his reliability as a narrator. Aaron Stanford is quite appealing as Michael, giving the character a vulnerability and essential decency. And McCann is an able director, investing even simple shots with a quiet beauty. The film does fall down a bit in its final resolution--we all pretty much called the ending ahead of time and all of us had thought of a more interesting twist that the one the film provides--but that doesn't negate everything that went before.
Title: Harsh Times
Director: David Ayer
Country: U.S.
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I really should have known better with this one, but there wasn't anything else that fit this time slot. The film is written and directed by the guy who wrote Training Day, which I dislike, U-571, which I watched five minutes of on a plane before turning it off due to the hilarity of the dialogue and the annoyance of the Americans yet again taking credit for something they didn't do, and The Fast and the Furious, which I liked better when it was called Point Break. The story follows a discharged soldier trying to get into the LAPD as he drinks and drives his way around the city, getting himself and his best friend into increasingly dire trouble. It is exactly full of the kind of macho bullshit that I feared. (Don't get me wrong, I'm fascinated by macho bullshit, but it's got to be done smart. Like in Rescue Me, say.) On top of which, the plot turns are entirely predictable. The only thing that's saving this one from an outright Crap rating is the fearless performance Christian Bale delivers as the lead. But even Bale can't save a misconceived project.
Title: Wah-Wah
Director: Richard E. Grant
Country:
P's Rating: Okay
Grant's first film as a director is a semi-autobiographical piece about a boy growing up in Swaziland at the end of its time as a British colony. And it probably illuminates both why the actor is a teetotaler and how he was able to play one of the all-time great cinematic drunks in Withnail and I. Grant's alter ego, Ralph, is sideswiped when his mother runs off with another local British civil servant and his father takes even more to the drink. When he returns from boarding school to find his father remarried, it's an even greater blow. But his new stepmother, a breezy American played by Emily Watson, turns out to be one of his greatest allies. There's nothing groundbreaking in this film, but it's a fascinating look at the end of British colonialism by someone who grew up inside it. And apart from Watson, it's full of great performances, including Gabriel Byrne as Ralph's sodden though loving father, and Nicholas Hoult (previously brilliant in About a Boy) as the teenaged Ralph.
But I've survived without my back packing it in and without my brain leaking out my ears (it's just feeling a trifle squishy) so I consider it a successful fest. Which is good, since chances are slim I'll get to more than one or two screenings next year. It's the end of an era for me. I've been attending the fest religiously since I was eighteen, with two years off when I was living in the States attending, ironically, film school. That's nineteen fests attended; not a bad run.
Title: Runaway
Director: Tim McCann
Country: U.S.
P's Rating: Okay
Michael is a young man with a secret. By day he's working at a convenience store at the outskirts of a small town, but in the evenings he goes home to the cheap motel room he shares with his little brother. Michael has kidnapped his brother to escape the abuse he suffered for years at the hands of his father, and which he hopes to save the younger boy from. But Michael has more than one secret to hide. Directed by cinematographer and director of the series Homicide: Life on the Streets, and starring two Homicide alumni, Peter Gerety and Melissa Leo, in minor roles, this is an interesting film. We get flashbacks both to Michael's home life and his weekly sessions with a therapist which gradually fill in his background and start calling into question his reliability as a narrator. Aaron Stanford is quite appealing as Michael, giving the character a vulnerability and essential decency. And McCann is an able director, investing even simple shots with a quiet beauty. The film does fall down a bit in its final resolution--we all pretty much called the ending ahead of time and all of us had thought of a more interesting twist that the one the film provides--but that doesn't negate everything that went before.
Title: Harsh Times
Director: David Ayer
Country: U.S.
P's Rating: Not-so-good
I really should have known better with this one, but there wasn't anything else that fit this time slot. The film is written and directed by the guy who wrote Training Day, which I dislike, U-571, which I watched five minutes of on a plane before turning it off due to the hilarity of the dialogue and the annoyance of the Americans yet again taking credit for something they didn't do, and The Fast and the Furious, which I liked better when it was called Point Break. The story follows a discharged soldier trying to get into the LAPD as he drinks and drives his way around the city, getting himself and his best friend into increasingly dire trouble. It is exactly full of the kind of macho bullshit that I feared. (Don't get me wrong, I'm fascinated by macho bullshit, but it's got to be done smart. Like in Rescue Me, say.) On top of which, the plot turns are entirely predictable. The only thing that's saving this one from an outright Crap rating is the fearless performance Christian Bale delivers as the lead. But even Bale can't save a misconceived project.
Title: Wah-Wah
Director: Richard E. Grant
Country:
P's Rating: Okay
Grant's first film as a director is a semi-autobiographical piece about a boy growing up in Swaziland at the end of its time as a British colony. And it probably illuminates both why the actor is a teetotaler and how he was able to play one of the all-time great cinematic drunks in Withnail and I. Grant's alter ego, Ralph, is sideswiped when his mother runs off with another local British civil servant and his father takes even more to the drink. When he returns from boarding school to find his father remarried, it's an even greater blow. But his new stepmother, a breezy American played by Emily Watson, turns out to be one of his greatest allies. There's nothing groundbreaking in this film, but it's a fascinating look at the end of British colonialism by someone who grew up inside it. And apart from Watson, it's full of great performances, including Gabriel Byrne as Ralph's sodden though loving father, and Nicholas Hoult (previously brilliant in About a Boy) as the teenaged Ralph.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-18 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-18 09:25 am (UTC)And according to the big guy, the film had a serious ick factor, but was also pretty darn funny. So bah to those who told me it was lacking in humour.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 07:05 pm (UTC)