http://news.moviefone.com The Moviefone Blog is the place for movie lists, trailers, trivia, interviews and features on movies out in theaters and coming soon. http://news.moviefone.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://news.moviefone.com en-us Copyright 2013 Blogsmith, LLC. The contents of this headlines and excerpts feed are available for limited commercial distribution. You may repost this feed to your site provided you link back to the original story, do not edit the material, and do not remove this copyright notice. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/ 713930 Early this afternoon, Tribeca and ESPN answered my prayers by announcing a multi-year collaboration, the result of which is The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, a "showcase for independent sports films," debuting at Tribeca in 2007. Woo hoo, sports and movies! At the same time! Could anything be better? I think not. Though no specific content details are yet available, the project will feature premieres of sports films (both narrative and documentary), online content, and a series of "community events" aimed at the huddled masses of film nerds who also dig sports.

Based on the sports content at last year's festival -- including Once in a Lifetime (aka hands-down Martha's favorite documentary of the year) and Freedom's Fury, a fascinating Cold War water polo (!) doc -- I have a lot of hope for this project. It's a great opportunity for those making sports films to be the focus at a festival for once, and hopefully will bring more quality to Tribeca as a whole. After all, it's not as if the sports films get a pass -- they have to be submitted just like everything else, and will be judged by the same standards. As long as there isn't a sports quota, the quality should be reasonably high. Fingers crossed. ]]> 2006-12-06T16:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/12/06/tribeca-announces-collaboration-with-espn/ 703294

The Aura, the second feature from Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky, is so strange and lovely that his recent death at the young age of 47 seems even more tragic for all it has denied the world of cinema. Bielinsky's final work is a film that relishes distance and isolation, glorying in the experiences of a man who lives apart from the world around him. Like its main character, The Aura exists in a sort of suspended animation: It offers no backstory, and there is no future suggested by its ending. It simply exists, a work of such power and grace that its needs no external support.

The film centers on an unnamed taxidermist (the note-perfect Ricardo Darín) who, like the film, exists in a vacuum. We know he is epileptic because the movie opens with him on the ground, after a seizure. He rarely acknowledges his condition, but it dominates his life and is a source of both frustration and perverse joy. We know he has a wife because she leaves him, but we see her only once, fleetingly, though a pebbled glass window. And we have no idea why she left, or what their relationship was like. (At one point, the taxidermist makes a general attack on abusive husbands and, though at the time his words seem aimed at another, there's a such an odd, personal depth to his loathing that one wonders -- fleetingly, but the question is there -- if, perhaps, we've just been told exactly why his wife left.) Apart from his wife, the taxidermist seems to know a single other person: A big, loud colleague of whom he's clearly not very fond. They are forced into a certain camaraderie because of their shared profession, but it's an obvious effort for the taxidermist to even engage in basic social niceties. When his colleague asks how he's been, and what he brought to the museum at which they meet, the taxidermist answers him, and then falls silent. It's not until several seconds later that he remembers something is expected of him, and offers an awkward "And you?"

The taxidermist is happiest in his workshop, alone. There, buoyed by Vivaldi's Presto -- turned up so loud it renders everything else inaudible -- he immerses himself in the glorious precision required to turn skin and bone back into something that's almost alive. He looks completely at peace, breathing in a quiet rhythm as he gracefully turns lumps of clay into muscle, hides small tacks under flaps of skin, and chooses the right glass eyes to bring each creature back to life. Away from the pressures of the world, he is safe in the knowledge that his choices here neither hurt nor disappoint anyone. Here, he is free.

Though many isolated characters in film seem to ache for human contact, the taxidermist suffers no such desires. (He is so content alone that one wonders what led him to get married -- just one of the many questions Bielinsky chose not to answer.) When he's not working, the taxidermist is soaking up the world around him. He notices and remembers everything he sees, filing it away in case it's needed later. His spatial memory is such that he's never lost, but he also retains details like registration numbers, and scribbled notes in the margins of strange notebooks. In his mind, he uses these details to concoct perfect crimes. Everywhere he goes, he instinctively puts imagines the details of a successful robbery: He knows how to enter and leave the space, how many men would be needed, and how long they would have before the police arrived. Far too shy and passive to ever dream of putting his plans into action, the taxidermist is nevertheless absolutely confident they would succeed.

No matter how detached he is, however, when his wife leaves, the taxidermist falls into the cliché of shaking things up: Almost out of spite, he agrees to join his colleague on a hunting trip that is a disaster from the word go. The two men have nothing apart from their profession in common and the taxidermist hates killing living things. Their discomfort is greatly increased by their inability to find lodging -- they end up in an isolated cabin run by a young woman and her brother -- and a strange, pervasive air of danger than pervades every setting and interaction. And then there is an accident, and things explode -- gradually, beautifully, unpredictably -- out of control.

The Aura is packed with excitement -- love and death; murder and suspense -- but the excitement is executed with such loving grace that it's like nothing you've ever seen before. There are few suspense films that unfold this slowly, and with so little regard for audience comfort. Like the taxidermist, we spend most of the movie completely lost (indeed, The Aura's weakest moments come after the big reveal -- once we understand, the movie's hold on us slackens a bit), unable to catch up with what's happening around us. But still, the movie works. It's assembled with such confidence and poise that it's hard not to feel a little awe as you watch it unfold. The editing is often unconventional, counterintuitive and backwards, and yet, again and again, it's exactly right. The taxidermist's passivity should be infuriating and off-putting, but it's not. We understand him completely somehow, and stand by his side, watching with childlike curiosity as life passes by. Dogs should never, ever be effective, profound plot elements. And yet one is. And it's perfect. Bielinsky's final film is so full of grace that, in the end, we feel lucky just to have seen it, and glad, glib though it sounds, that he was around long enough to leave it behind.]]> 2006-11-17T11:30:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/11/17/review-the-aura/ 698681

Steve Anderson's feature-length documentary Fuck sports an impressive, wildly diverse cast: Thanks to the magic of editing, Pat Boone appears alongside Chuck D and Billy Connolly, and Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher, Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy -- among copious others -- also make appearances. All are on hand, presumably, because they speak from a position of authority on the film's title word. In addition to the actors, newsmen, comics, porn stars and politics, the film also features a handful of "cunning linguists," who provide periodic infusions of what passes for academic commentary. Token academics aside, however, the film is little more than a flimsy excuse -- an entertaining excuse, mind you, but an excuse nevertheless -- to shout "FUCK!" in a crowded movie theater, and to mock the conservatives Anderson knows won't see his movie.

Less focused than its title and press would have us believe, Fuck is a superficial examination of obscenity in America. It revolves around the word in question, but branches out generously into subjects like FCC regulation, the impact of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, and the horror of Janet Jackson's dreaded right boob. Most of the movie is made up of sound-bite friendly talking heads interviews which, because they take place against a black background, can create the weak illusion that all the subjects are in the same room. Thus, Anderson can cleverly edit his interviews with Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy into one another, vaguely suggesting at one point that she's been driven from the room by the power of his dirty words. (Nothing of the sort happened, of course, but it's always fun to mock Miss Manners, right? And oh, that naughty Ron Jeremy!)

Intercut with the interview segments are cartoon by Oscar-nominated animator and cartoonist Bill Plympton, illustrating things like the various grammatical uses of the word "fuck" (How no one thought to compare it to "smurfy" over the film's achingly long 93 minutes is a mystery to me.) and punching up otherwise less-jazzy segments. The presence of Plympton's work, impressive as it is, gives a real indication of Fuck's main goal: Anderson wants his film to titilate and entertain first, with education and enlightenment a very distant second. The director seems much more interested in getting a good quote out of Hunter S. Thompson than he is in teaching the audience about his ostensible subject; more interested in feeding liberal rage with the injustice of fining Bono for using "fuck" as an adjective on TV than really examining the history of the word in the media. And, really, it's hard to blame Anderson for aiming squarely at the obvious -- audiences are more like to spend their money on a movie that features Biohazard's Evan Seinfeld and his porn star wife talking about their preferred sex positions than one offering a thoughtful, considered analysis of the word "fuck" in popular culture.

What's frustrating, though, is that the thoughtful movie is there, too, waiting in the wings. Garofalo, Donaldson, Chuck D, Alanis Morisette, Kevin Smith and Ben Bradlee and all have measured, interesting things to say not only about "fuck," but also freedom of speech, obscenity and censorship in this country. Unfortunately, we only hear from them in fits and starts. The great majority of screen time is given over to flashier, more incendiary figures like Ice-T, porn stars and Steven Bochco, as well as those who can be presented as patently absurd (Boone, Alan Keyes, Janet LaRue). In this context, at least, a good sound bite featuring the word "fuck" (preferably in a sexual context) is much better than anything offering thought or any degree of complexity.

That said, however, there's one person in the film who almost singlehandedly makes the film enlightening and enjoyable: Scottish comedian Billy Connolly is so filled with life, intelligence and passion that it's impossible to not to be riveted every time he's on screen. Though he's not onscreen anywhere near enough, Connolly is simultaneously thoughtful and glib; brilliant and gleefully lewd. No matter what country you're in, he says, if you look at someone and say "You! FUCK OFF!" they know exactly what you mean. Furthermore, Connolly claims, the word is so perfectly expressive that "there is no English equivalent" -- it's utterly undefinable and untranslatable. You can see in his eyes when he's suddenly realized where the latest outrageous riff is going and can hardly wait to take us there; in his scenes are found the joy and sincerity that's sorely lacking from most of the film.

For a film that aspires to such exuberance, Fuck is, at its core, profoundly depressing. Though they are present less to provide balance than as targets of ridicule, the far-right figures in the movie -- from Pat Boone to Alan Keyes to Janet LaRue -- have worldviews diametrically opposed to those held by the film's likely audience. And, while it's fun to laugh when Pat Boone advocates using his last name as a replacement curse word (Ice-T, at least, is onboard with the plan), the deeply conservative ideas he and others on his side of the political spectrum enunciate are merely reminders of how deep the divide in this country truly is. Eventually, Fuck becomes simply a microcosm of almost every moral conflict at work in the U.S.: Each side spits out the cliches which they already believe, both sides assume the other is made up entirely of fools, and nothing changes.]]> 2006-11-09T10:00:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/11/09/review-f-ck/ 691980 Note: This review originally ran during the Tribeca Film Festival. It's being rerun now, because the film is opening this weekend. - ed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Miami grew from a sleepy, retirement community into the glittering, money-filled metropolis it is today. During that time, the city also became cocaine center of the US, as well as the country's murder capital; in 1981, things were so bad that a Time Magazine cover story dubbed Miami "Paradise Lost," and suggested that Americans traveling there might be putting their lives in danger. After meeting Jon Roberts, a former dealer who lived through Miami's heyday (and did time for his involvement), the team of director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman decided to make a movie about those days, and Cocaine Cowboys is the result.

Clocking in at just under two hours, Corben and Spellman's film has a very strange tone. Ostensibly a serious exploration of how cocaine affected Miami during the 1970s and 1980s, the movie devotes an awful lot of time to watching Roberts crow about his accomplishments and brag about his money. Also prominently featured with Roberts is Mickey Munday, a less flashy, fellow ex-con whose involvement in the cocaine trade was in transportation rather than distribution. The two men carefully lay out the structure though which cocaine was produced, brought into the US and sold, with the filmmakers eating up every word. Later, when the movie shifts to the financial impact the drug had on Miami -- despite the downturn the rest of the country was experiencing, the cash being spent by those involved in the cocaine trade made the city virtually recession-proof -- the two men again dominate the screen, detailing their spending habits, and telling gleeful anecdotes about being on first-name terms with the guy at the Mercedes dealership, and owning dozens of racehorses.

While it's understandable that those who benefited from it might be enamored by the fruits of the cocaine trade, it's difficult to ignore the fact that the filmmakers seem just as entranced as their subjects. There's an unsettling air of "This is so cool!" that pervades the film, from its quick-cut editing to the ever-present Jan Hammer (the composer of the Miami Vice TV theme) score. Even in the third segment of Cocaine Cowboys, when Roberts and Munday disappear from the screen, and are replaced by law enforcement officials, medical examiners, and reporters, the film feels like it's rubbernecking at the excitment rather than bearing witness, horrified by the violence and bloodshed of the drug wars. Watching TV images of bodies flash by, accomplished by Hammer's 80s action movie-style score, feels a lot more like a celebration of excess than it is a lamentation of tragic consequences.

In addition to its uncomfortably fawning attitude towards its subject, the movie's seriousness is further damaged by a visual style that is sometimes painfully dated. Instead of choosing to simply combine talking heads interviews with interesting, unusual archival footage and images, the film's creators felt the need to punch up stills with techniques rarely seen today outside of old television documentaries. Perhaps guided by their perception that the film had to be fast and attention-getting -- in the press material, Corben proudly announces that audiences have told him "It feels like you're on cocaine watching this movie!" -- still images are often broken up into foreground and background, and the foreground figures are brought forward (accompanied, as always, by Hammer's eager score). The technique feels more than a little overdone to anyone who regularly watches documentaries, and does nothing to enhance the film's standing as a serious project. Furthermore, the movie's editing is often fast just for the sake of being fast, rather than because speed enhances the film. Nothing is gained from hearing three different voices marvel in rapid succession at Dade County's murder totals -- apart from a deeper impression that Cocaine Cowboys in reality, is celebrating what it set out to simply document.]]> 2006-10-27T14:01:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/10/27/review-cocaine-cowboys/ 687516

December, 1560. Gonzalo Pizarro leads his band of explorers-cum-treasure-hunters-cum-soldiers out of the Peruvian Andes. Weighed down by the out of place trappings of modern warfare and ludicrous luxury items, the tiny band is dwarfed by its surroundings and chillingly out of place. On the fringes of the group stands a man wearing an incongruous bright pink shirt, a battered helmet, and a strange set of armor that seems to consist entirely of studded leather straps. When he moves, he leans backwards and walks stiffly, his body clearly ravaged by a difficult, violent life. Mostly, though, he watches, his enormous green eyes taking in the fear, malleability and desperation around him, while his impossibly broad, feminine lips embrace their permanent sneer. Like he does, we knew immediately that his time will come.

This man is Don Lope de Aguirre, the title character of what is arguably Werner Herzog's greatest film. Played by the inimitable Klaus Kinski, Aguirre dominates the film in every way, effortlessly manipulating the men around him by quietly turning his own ambitions into theirs. Despite Kinski's wild eyes and the character's eventual eruption, there's a surprising subtlety and intelligence to Aguirre, who grows in complexity with each viewing. Though at first he appears to be nothing but a terrifying, ambitious madman (the film's title, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, comes from Aguirre's own description of himself), repeated viewings reveal much more about the character, and shed further light on his companions.

When Pizarro realizes his entire team -- complete with multiple cannon, a horse, and sedan chairs for the two woman they've brought along -- will never make it down river together, he decides to send a smaller group ahead to explore and report back (oddly, he sends both women, the sedan chairs, and the horse ahead as well). Ostensibly led by the dignified, almost entirely silent Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), the advance team falls under Aguirre's sway in the first moment of conflict: When their rafts are washed away by a rapidly rising river, Aguirre takes action and has the men gather material for replacements before Ursua is even aware the rafts are gone. When Ursua attempts to assert himself, Aguirre violently resists, imprisoning the commander and killing one of his supporters. Not pausing to look back, Aguirre then spearheads the election of the "largest" (and only) noble on hand -- the rotund Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling) -- to the position of Emperor, and has the church's representative draw up a document declaring the little band not only in open rebellion against the Spanish throne, but also at the head of a growing empire, in possession of all the land around them.

All of this is done in virtual silence, with an eerie serenity. The rest of the men say not a word as Aguirre initiates his own mutiny, and they are persuaded to join the unanimous election of an emperor by just a look. No one objects or reacts, they simply wait. Herzog, meanwhile, keeps his camera mostly still, staring: Faces, trees or water fill the screen, accompanied only by ambient noise, or Popol Vuh's sparse, ethereal score. The effect of this pervasive emotional silence is twofold: First, it serves to amplify the character of Aguirre. As the only figure on screen to express ambition, thought and personality, he's immediately different -- and, in this almost Stepfordian environment, dangerous. Second, it gives the film a sometimes terrifyingly surreal air. Watching the film, one often gets the sense that the characters -- apart from Aguirre -- are spectators too, watching their lives take place. They express no interest in or reaction to anything that happens around them, and seem free of even the most basic instinct towards self-preservation. As a result, it comes as no surprise when they passively accept eating a few grains of corn while their emperor enjoys feasts of fish and fruit, or react not at all to the periodic storms of arrows that shower their raft from unseen assailants on the shore.

Whatever his environment, Klaus Kinski was an actor who never struggled to assert himself on screen; Aguirre is no exception. Set against a backdrop of passive, frightened men, Aguirre is almost godlike is his power to mold minds and force action, and he quickly turns the entire mission into a vehicle for his desperate need for fame and power. But he's not simply mad: Instead, he's an intelligent, driven man whose ambition has gotten the best of him; much like the men around him are powerless to resist Aguirre, Aguirre himself has lost control over his own desire. As is frequently the case in Herzog's films, however, this lack of normal rationality is not a weakness. Instead, it enables Aguirre to go further than the men around him, and to inch closer to his goal. At the film's end, when the raft is full of men nearly dead from hunger, Aguirre has the strength to stride ferociously between the bodies, still shouting to the heavens about his plans for the future, and still utterly dominating his world. The scene might be comical were it not for the surreal, quiet cocoon Herzog has created -- within Aguirre, this now-mad man is a riveting, fearsome, truly awesome figure. He's many things, but funny and pathetic are not among them.

Originally released in 1972, Aguirre has long been available on a solid Anchor Bay DVD. And, starting Friday, October 19, it begins a short a theatrical run at New York's Film Forum. While this is good news in and of itself, the fact that the print is brand new makes missing this rare chance practically inexcusable. As a huge fan of both Herzog and Aguirre, I've seen the film at least a dozen times, sometimes in 35mm, and I was stunned by the Film Forum's flawless print. The power of the film's physical beauty is so striking that, in a very real way, to experience it in this format, with this print, is almost like seeing it again for the first time -- utterly overwhelming. And, for those who have never seen Aguirre before, it will never be better than it is right now.]]> 2006-10-20T11:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/10/20/review-aguirre-the-wrath-of-god/ 676279

As the cynics no doubt expected, there are a lot of problem with The Guardian. So, let's address those right up front. First, at nearly 140 minutes, it's way too long, a flaw made even more galling by the fact that the movie blows by a perfect, melancholy close about 20 minutes from its ultimate ending. Second, most of the effects are awful. Since at this point CGI technology remains unable to convincingly portray mass, giant open-ocean waves are not terrifying, but distractingly awkward. Third, the movie is lousy with cliches. From the rookie with a troubled past who rises to greatness to the grizzled veteran with problems of his own who gives the kid a hard time to force him to grow, we've seen all these characters before and we know them very, very well. Apart from the movie's Coast Guard setting, there's very little original to be found inside it. Got all that? Good. Because despite these obvious, sometimes major flaws, The Guardian is a winning, well-made film, the quality and pace of which come as a great relief in the sea of violent, cynical, explosion-laden nonsense that big studios generally sell.

The Guardian's troubled youngster is Jake Fischer, furiously played by Ashton Kutcher. As you might expect, the details of his past are not revealed until late in the film, but the questions are there from the outset: A highly recruited swimmer when he left high school, Fischer refused every prestigious scholarship offer and disappeared, only to surface at a Coast Guard training facility. Not lacking in confidence, Fischer nevertheless shrugs off questions about his past, preferring to focus on proving himself in this new world, and living up to the impossibly high standards set by Master Chief Ben Randall (Kevin Costner), the man tasked with turning the (vaguely diverse, appropriately motley) group of enlistees into elite rescue swimmers.

Cosnter's Ben Randall, meanwhile, is the movie's other comfortably familiar character. Reduced to a teaching role after a mid-rescue disaster stripped him of both his best friend and his confidence, and recently separated from his wife Helen (Sela Ward, who gives the Ben-Helen scenes a quiet gravity), he's depressed, frustrated and haunted. He also, as we've come to expect from such characters, has little interest in following the rules, and puts Fischer and his fellow trainees through a nontraditional training regiments so tough that both his subordinates and superiors question its utility on an almost daily basis.

So, there we have the set up: Troubled older man who's been through it all meets a golden boy with secrets. Needless to say, bonding ensues. And, perhaps surprisingly, this is where The Guardian really shines. Apart from a desperately misjudged sequence in which a swimming challenge is turned into a bad music video, the training section of the movie is immediately appealing, filled with winning characters (two-dimensional though most of the non-Fischer trainees are) and constructed with entirely convincing tension. The constant, confused back-and-forth between Fischer and Randall is confidently written and well-acted, and the ever-present subplots about Fischer's companions are well-paced and effectively handled. Simply put, director Andrew Davis (a former cinematographer who, in addition to several stinkers, also directed The Fugitive) and screenwriter Ron L. Brinkerhoff do things right. And, when graduation occurs, we're almost sorry, because we know it means we'll have to go back to the water; back to those horrible, fake waves.

And yes, we go back in the ocean (though, happily, much of the drama is played out in enclosed spaces, which limits the use of obvious CGI). There are arguments, rescues, several deaths and a completely over-the-top ending. But the movie, somehow, survives, largely on the strength of its two central performances. It feels odd to praise the inescapable Ashton Kutcher for his acting, but he's an undeniably magnetic presence here. Jake Fischer is a strange character of undetermined age -- sometimes he's portrayed as fresh out of high school, but more often he's an adult: Jaded and guarded, and almost paternal towards the trainees around him who need support. He's a bundle of emotions, too, leaping from blinding confidence to innocent confusion in the blink of an eye. And, in some ways, his erratic behavior can be reasonably traced to that murky, troubled past, and his resulting efforts to protect himself from getting too close. Kutcher, however, throws himself into every emotion with complete commitment, a decision that makes each change of mood and behavior entirely true, rather than constructed, or dishonest. The resulting character is weird and schizophrenic, but also totally irresistible. He possesses both an incredible, easy masculinity and an uncommon way of putting others at ease that are rarely seen in people so young -- and I'm talking here about both Fischer and Kutcher. Wildly erratic though it is, there's something thrilling about the eagerness of Kutcher's performance, as well as a suggestion there might be a lot more to him as an actor than he's previously let on.

Cast opposite the handsome, youthful Kutcher, Costner is perfect as Ben Randall. Settling into his age as an actor, he's clearly thrilled be playing someone, finally, who doesn't have to be sexy, or to get the girl. (There's a scene in which he climbs out of an ice-filled tub, unashamedly displaying scrawny, old-man legs that feels like a wonderful sort of confession, and a casting-off of all those old, looks-based roles.) Instead, his Randall is plagued by such bad back pain that he can hardly get up in the morning. He's alienated his wife and has no idea what he's doing with his life -- and the people around him don't even bother to hide their doubts about his competence. Weariness and self-doubt have always been in Costner, but here he gets to set them free: He's wisely low-key and subdued most of the time, convincingly portraying an unhappy, inward-looking man. What makes the performance a success, though, is the occasional unleashing of his familiar charms -- when he bonds with Fischer over beer and a bar fight, Randall's sudden impish, child-like glee is not jarring as it ought to be, but completely convincing because Costner wears it so well. In those fleeting moments, we get a glimpse of Bull Durham's Crash Davis, and Fischer sees, for an instant, who his instructor might have been just a few decades ago. The scene is effective on unexpected levels, and more moving that it probably ought to be. Like The Guardian itself, though, it works. Shut down the I'm-smarter-than-Hollywood part of your brain for a few hours, and just let yourself enjoy it.]]> 2006-09-29T11:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/29/review-the-guardian/ 670352

Being both far too old and nowhere near hip enough to do things like attending midnight screenings and go to cool parties, I arrived home from Toronto last night in much better physical shape than my hipper, younger (at heart) colleagues. Mentally, though, I'm pretty drained -- clearly I'm soft in more ways than one. I did, however, have a great time at the festival -- despite the daily grind of screenings, the little thrill of WAITING IN LINES to see obscure films from Eastern Europe never wore off. I mean, who are these people? Not only do they get excited about the debut feature from some Romanian guy no one has heard of, but they actually take time off from work, buy passes, and see four and five movies a day, aided by intricate, color-coded schedules that let them know what each friend is seeing at every minute. I can't tell you how many women in their 60s I saw taking sandwiches out of their purses and eating in line, because those were their only free minutes for the next 12 hours -- if I'm doing that when I'm 65, my grandkids damn well better realize how kickass their grandma is.

Despite persistent, jaded mutterings that TIFF 2006 wasn't as good as the festival has been in the past, I was really impressed by the quality of the slate, at least as far as it was reflected in the 20-something films I saw. As the designated viewer of foreign movies no one has ever heard of, I was privileged to see some amazing films -- most of which, sadly, are highly unlikely to ever be released on these shores (What distributor is going to buy the rights to a movie about a talk show in Romania?). In addition, though, I also saw a handful of big(ish)-name releases, only one of which managed to meet and surpass my (obviously too high) expectations. Anyway, what follows is a loose, how-I-feel-today list of my five favorite films of the festival -- for the more obscure ones, just hope the programmers of your local festivals see fit to bring them to town. Otherwise, a region-free DVD player is probably your only hope.

• The Lives of Others: Probably the highest profile film I saw, this award-winning thriller about an East German Stasi officer surpassed my expectations by roughly 400 miles. As I said in my review, it's awesome (in the old-school sense, which has nothing to do with the word "dude") in every way: The performances are stellar, the direction confident and tight, and the story full of both suspense and unabashed sentiment. The skill behind the film is just as impressive as its story, perhaps even more so -- and, unbelievably, it's the feature debut from writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Happily, Sony Pictures Classics bought the rights to this one last spring; it should hit US theaters this winter.

• Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait: One of the most powerful, moving films I've ever seen. In a completely nontraditional way, it manages to capture the grace and majesty of a sport by simply spending one game with a single, great player. Much, much more than a sports film or simple documentary, it's totally overwhelming. That said, if you don't love soccer, avoid it like the plague.

• The Way I Spent the End of the World: Just a lovely, passionate film. Set in a small Romanian town during the final year of Ceausescu's regime, it features a core group of wonderful, real characters who are brought to life so vividly, we're drawn into their world from the movie's first frame. Another first feature, directed with incredible confidence and poise.

• As the Shadow: Apart from Zidane, this was probably the most difficult film I saw in Toronto. The second feature from Italian director Marina Spada, it's slow and visually bland and very vague -- there's little dialogue, and we know almost nothing about the lives of the characters we're watching. But unlike other films that fit that description, it's in no way aggressively Artistic or intentionally Obscure -- and it doesn't have that awful, masturbatory feel that comes from many films that refuse to embrace their audience. (You know, that whole "Look at me, aren't I deep and smart? If you're not getting this, it's your fault, not mine -- I'm a genius!" thing.) Instead, it's studied, determined and, somehow, burrows its way under your skin. The non-story becomes weirdly thrilling, and you're left filled with respect for Spada's steadfast refusal to compromise her vision, non-welcoming though it initially is. My single greatest regret of the festival is that I had to leave for another movie, and missed hearing Spada talk about her film in the post-screening Q&A.

• DarkBlueAlmostBlack: This one grew on me, and I'm still not sure why I liked it so much. The first feature from long-time screenwriter Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, it's a deceptively small story about a young man struggling to break out of the rut his life has become and, oh yeah, trying to impregnate his brother's jailbird girlfriend in his free time. With tremendous subtlety, Arévalo slowly expands his reach, adding characters and addressing issues of increasing significance. And, by the film is over, we find we're thinking not about sex and growing up, but about things as weighty as human weakness and family and obligations. Deeply impressive.
  

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In Nanni Moretti's eagerly awaited The Caiman, there are all of four different Silvio Berlusconis. Though three of them are fictional and therefore subject to the whims and manipulations of Moretti's screenplay, the most frightening of the group is easily the real Berlusconi, seen in newsreel footage so completely outrageous that one can only chuckle in dismay. The media mogul/former Prime Minister is an obvious, easy target for any filmmaker as proficient and political as Moretti, so it's disappointing that his film is less a scathing indict of the Berlusconi regime than a resuscitation of his well-known violations and offenses.

The three fictional Berlusconis are all actors playing the starring role in a movie being made within Moretti's film, also entitled The Caiman ("Il Caimano" is a common media nickname for the former Prime Minister), and also planned as a crushing blow on its target. Schlock horror producer Bruno Bonomo (Silvio Orlando), who hasn't made a movie in a decade, falls into the film entirely by accident, and by default it becomes his comeback feature. The screenplay was written by Theresa (Jasmine Trinca) and, despite major concerns on the part of the only producer who doesn't run from the project because of its political nature, she's hired to make her directorial debut with the film. There are, needless to say, endless problems with the production, and in the end there's only enough money to shoot a single day in the life of the Caiman.

Interwoven with the story of Theresa's movie is the other side of Bruno's life: His disintegrating marriage. He and his wife Paola (Margherita Buy) separated six months earlier (though they only just told their young sons, who thought Dad wasn't sleeping at home because he was shooting a movie at night), and he's so far proved incapable of accepting that the marriage is over. While Bruno is initially quite sympathetic -- the scenes of him telling the boys bedtime stories as bloody as his films have a sweet, disarming charm -- his reactions to Paola's attempts to move on with her life are so aggressive and disruptive that they build an insurmountable wall between him and the audience. From that point on, we're unable to feel any sympathy for Bruno, and the scenes of his suffering become tiresome rather than affecting. Additionally, Moretti's portrayal of the lonely, despondent Bruno is uncharacteristically heavy-handed, executed largely with long, isolating shots and loud, sad music. Surely Moretti is capable of delving further into the character and explaining why we should care, rather than trying to drag us along through simple aural manipulation.

Despite the presence of the always magnificent Michele Placido as the most interesting of the sometime-Berlusconis, the film sadly fails to capture either our attention or our emotions. The final fate of the fictional Berlusconi is chilling in the way it pushes the man's possibilities to an extreme, but a solid last two minutes do not make a persuasive film; in the end, The Caiman is a huge disappointment. Saddled with admittedly huge expectations, the movie is ordinary in every way. Though anyone who dares to attack Berlusconi in his home country (he was Prime Minister when the movie was made and released, and continues to control much of the country's media) deserves our respect, one would have thought a man of Moretti's talent would have done so with more dynamism and spark.]]> 2006-09-18T09:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/18/tiff-review-the-caiman/ 670159 Despite the slot reserved for it in my personal (and beloved) "depressing Eastern European films" file, 12:08 East to Bucharest was in fact the funniest movie I saw in Toronto. The first feature from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, it contains moments so hilarious they not only hurt when you experience them for the first time, but also keep the theater alive with laughter for the few minutes that follow, as everyone around you replays the scenes in their heads and finds themselves captivated again by the memories. At times, the laughter was so loud and so long that I was glad the film was in Romanian and had subtitles, because the dialogue was entirely inaudible.

Set in a small town outside of Bucharest on December 22, 2005 -- the 16th anniversary of the fall of Ceausescu -- the movie documents the efforts of Jderescu (Teodor Corban), a textile engineer/TV station owner, to assemble a panel for a live TV show on the revolution, and then to keep that show in order, once it goes on-air. When he's let down by the "prestigious" panel he'd originally lined up, Jderescu, out of desperation, digs up two last-minute guests: Manescu (Ion Sapdaru), a weary college professor who claims to have spear-headed the town's "revolution" in 1989, and Old Man Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu) who gets the call, it appears, mostly because he's old, and Jderescu happens to see a picture of him the morning of the show.

Dryly funny throughout its first half, the film truly comes to life in its final 45 minutes, after the TV show begins. The movie moves inside the television cameras, and the helpless amateurism of the photography combines with the banality of the show to create some truly hilarious moments. The focus slips in and out, the frame either eliminates panelists entirely or cuts them in half, and close-ups come apparently without rhyme or reason. In front of the camera, meanwhile, the host recaps the rewards of his morning mythological research, spewing incomprehensible nonsense comparing the Romanian revolution to Plato's The Cave, among other things, while his guests drink, fall into despair, or built paper boats to pass the time. The boat-building, in particular, is beyond wonderful, and the constant, nervous motion of the camera is the sort of thing that makes you laugh out loud over and over again.

12:08 East of Bucharest is not entirely a comedy, however, and it sometimes seems that its uproarious moments weaken the film's final impact by deceasing audience willingness to fully embrace its melancholy tone. In fact, throughout the often farcical television show, there's a great seriousness to Manescu, and a sobriety in his tone as he discusses the fall of Ceausescu. In the face of endless opposition from viewers (who call in and abuse him), he steadfastly maintains that he and three colleagues were in the town square 16 years before, voicing opposition -- and thus creating their own, tiny revolution --- to Ceausescu even before 12:08PM, when the Leader fled in a helicopter and the rest of the town emerged to celebrate his fall. Piscoci, meanwhile, paper boat-building and exasperated mutterings aside, tells a deeply poignant story of how he experience than long-ago day. Because of the humor of the rest of the television sequence, however, the audience isn't tuned to the depth of the feelings before them, nor to the quiet profundity of Piscoci's resigned, tired suggestion that people make any revolution they can. In his mind, timing and location are unimportant -- what matters is what happens inside, even in tiny towns, miles east of Bucharest.]]> 2006-09-17T19:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/17/tiff-review-12-08-east-of-bucharest/ 669850 Late in Time, a character suddenly looks into the camera wearing a life-sized mask of her own face, complete with eye shadow and lipstick. Had the movie worked to that point, the moment would have been chilling, reducing the audience to a stunned silence. As it is, however, the scene is greeted by shouts of incredulous laughter; for viewers like myself, it's the point at which we realize there's no redemption ahead, and we're never going to make the emotional connection director Kim Ki-duk seems certain he's created.

Based on a fascinating topic -- the allure of plastic surgery, not for enhancement but for renewal -- Time is a story loaded with potential. As the film opens, Seh-hee (Park Ji-Yeon) and Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo) have a terrible fight that stems from him having the temerity to lay his eyes on another woman. Later in bed, Seh-hee apologizes over and over for always having the "same boring face," and begs him to imagine one of the women they fought over as they make love. The next day, she's gone, ending a two-year relationship without a word.

Though it takes Ji-woo a while to catch up, we know from the beginning that Seh-hee has disappeared to undergo major plastic surgery. She doesn't want to look prettier, she tells the doctor, just different. In the wake of her surgery, she and Ji-woo suffer together and separately as they try to sort out their own lives, and their feelings for one another and themselves.

The problem with Time is that every character in the film is so fundamentally repulsive it's impossible to care about any of them. As a result, we find ourselves simply waiting for the movie to end rather than aching for Seh-hee as her bizarre agony mounts. From the moment we meet her, Seh-hee is pushy, high-strung and irrational. That's putting it nicely -- a less polite way to describe her would be "completely insane," and in such an off-putting, aggressive way we can't even sympathize with her. Ji-woo, meanwhile, is painfully bland and, like every man in the film apart from the plastic surgeon, frighteningly sexually aggressive. He, all of his friends, and the strangers Seh-hee meets seem to think that any woman who spends a few minutes talking to them is doing so because she wants to have sex, and the men find it quite reasonable to hold the women against their will and force unwanted kisses (at the very least) upon them. It gives the film a very uncomfortable atmosphere, and since there's virtually no exception to the rule of aggression, one is left to wonder what, exactly, Kim is telling us about young people in modern-day South Korea.

Despite the total absence of likable characters, Time remains visually arresting. The film returns again and again to an island park (despite being a ferry ride away, Ji-woo and Seh-hee somehow manage to get there at all hours of the day and night) filled with bizarre and thrilling sculptures. The familiarity of their strange shapes gives Kim's work the touchstone its ever-changing faces refuse to provide, but it's not enough to rescue his film from its laughable self-indulgence. By the time the movie arrives at its trite end, it's become a task to even sit through; we don't care at all about Seh-hee, Ji-woo or their relationship, and are simply waiting for the story to end so the lights will go up, and we can go home.
]]> 2006-09-17T13:03:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/17/tiff-review-time/ 669834 As the Shadow's main character is Claudia (impressive newcomer Anita Kravos) a drifting, unfocused woman in her late thirties. She works at a travel agency in Milan, and is taking Russian in an apparent effort to improve her usefulness at work. Despite keeping her in frame for virtually the entire film, director Marina Spada refuses to let us get to know Claudia, holding us at a distance both physically and emotionally. On the rare occasions that we are allowed to see her interacting with her friends or spending time with a very casual boyfriend, we are always watching from across the street, through a window, or around a closed door. We can see their affection, but hear nothing. And when Claudia talks to her sister, it's clear they're close, but the words they exchange give us very little sense of what Claudia is like inside, apart from a bit cynical about the world around her (a trait she likely shares with much of her generation).

Out of boredom as much as anything else, she attempts to initiate a relationship with her Russian professor (Boris, played by Paolo Pierobon), a native of Ukraine who claims to have once taught Italian at a university in Kiev. Despite -- or, more like, because of -- his refusal to get involved with her (he is, he says, her professor, and it wouldn't be appropriate), the two nevertheless retain an indistinct closeness, and during the summer holidays Boris visits, seemingly interested in rekindling their nascent relationship. It turns out, however, that he wants something from Claudia: His distant cousin Olga (Karolina Dafne Porcari) is coming to visit and needs somewhere to stay for a few days. Utterly unpersuaded by Boris' embarrassingly transparent attempt at seduction, Claudia nevertheless agrees to take Olga in, mostly out of the idle hope that something interesting might happen as a result.

When Olga arrives, she and Claudia fall into a quick, if tentative, friendship. They share an uncommon openness, and each clearly appreciates the other's straightforward ways -- both are sick of guessing what the people around them really want. In many ways, Olga's and Claudia's refusal to be obtuse is reflected in Spada's style. She, too, isn't very interested in misleading, or in creating a pretty façade to obscure the truth. Instead, she sets her camera up and films what goes on before it, rarely bothering to even adjust the framing, no matter what happens with the shot. Often, seated figures appear in very odd proportions, filling only the bottom half of the frame, with just their heads and shoulders visible. It's not until they stand up and move to the back of the frame that we understand why the camera is at that odd angle -- without any adjustments, the original setup has the standing figures perfectly in frame. Despite the film's visual simplicity and total lack of flourish, it is a meticulously detailed piece of work. Just as each shot is carefully planned and laid out from a technical standpoint, every time we're pushed away emotionally, it happens as a result of Spada's insight, and her quiet manipulation.

One might say Spada is obsessed with framing: Her film is full of vertical lines, and rarely a shot goes by that doesn't contain at least one off-center door frame, often with Claudia confined to a corner of the image, carefully enclosed. Most of As the Shadow is made up of medium long shots, a distance that allows Spada to both achieve her crucial emotional distance and enclose Claudia in countless boxes, photographing her through the filters of multiple windows, frames and mirrors. The resulting film is aggressively impersonal, requiring the audience -- as with the films of Spada's countryman Michelangelo Antonioni -- to either accept the distance or contribute our own emotional content.

Perhaps in the end it's Spada's distance that finally draws us in -- knowing so little about the main character makes us desperately curious for clues about her existence, but we're seduced by the film's hypnotic rhythm into simply accepting what passes before us. Somehow all our urgency falls away, and watching the film becomes simply a strange, meditative experience. Even as As the Shadow turns into the lowest-key thriller of all time, the slow pace remains firmly in place. And, eventually, it dawns on us that the answers we want will never come; to Spada's great credit, we find ourselves OK with that.]]> 2006-09-16T09:03:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/16/tiff-review-as-the-shadow/ 669225 During the final scene of Shane Meadows' This Is England, I heard someone in the audience let out a violent, wrenching sob. The scene itself is actually quite lovely -- a young boy is standing in a field of green sea grass next to a rowboat, long-ago stranded by the tide; he's holding the St. George's Cross, the flag of England -- but it's infused with an almost inconceivable suffering and pain. Like most of Meadows' impressively accomplished film, the closing combines lush beauty -- the colors and compositions are often breathtaking -- with an incredible emotional punch, breaking our hearts with the inevitable tragedy of what we're seeing on screen.

Originally based on his own childhood, Meadows' screenplay underwent a metamorphosis after he met Thomas Turgoose, his young star. Combining his own childhood experiences with what Turgoose was going through nearly a quarter-century later, he revised his script and ended up with a heartfelt, tragic story of a boy desperate to belong. Set in the England of 1983, the movie is centered on Shaun, a 12-year-old boy whose father was recently killed in the Falkland Islands War. His pain over the loss of his dad is distancing him from his well-intentioned mother, and he doesn't fit in with the kids at school, all of whom are divided into distinct camps of fashion and ideology. Clad in bell-bottomed corduroys and a knitted sweater decorated with what look like squirrels, Shaun sticks out like a sore thumb. His inner agony gives him a hair trigger, and his explosive reactions immediately make him a target for the bullies at school -- they know they'll get a response, so they can hardly wait to wind him up.

Leaving school in misery after a horrible last day of term, Shaun stumbles upon a group of skinheads near his home. Though they try their hardest to look and act like hard men, they're really just kids themselves, and Shaun's misery earns him the pity of Woody (Joseph Gilgun), the group's eager, charismatic leader. Persuading the boy to sit with them for five minutes, Woody immediately charms Shaun by simply paying him a bit of attention and making him laugh. Despite the frustration of Gadget (Andrew Ellis), the group's designated whipping-boy, at the addition of a child whose status is above his own, Shaun quickly becomes part of the gang, complete with shaved head, rolled-up jeans and Doc Martens boots.

At first, Shaun's new life a great one. He's truly loved -- there's tremendous physical affection in Woody's gang, and no one is ashamed of giving the boy a hug, or rubbing his head when he's pleased them -- and the people around him seem to be entirely without the traits our casual assumptions often associate with skinheads, like violence and racism (indeed, one of their members, Milky, is Jamaican). Instead, the gang hangs together in search of the same things they're offering Shaun: Affection, comfort and family. The idyllic scene is thrown asunder, though, when Woody's old mentor Combo (Stephen Graham) gets out of prison and rejoins his old mates. In the three-and-a-half years they've been apart, Combo has adopted more stereotypical skinhead beliefs, primary among them a virulent racism disguised as an innocent opposition to those who arrive in the country and take jobs from "true Englishmen". Explaining his views in an impassioned, semi-impromptu speech, Combo wins over most of the men in Woody's gang -- as well as Shaun.

Apart from its sharp screenplay, This is England derives its power from a pair of extraordinary performances. As Shaun, Turgoose is all loss, ego and cocky desperation. His tiny, pinched mouth and close together eyes give his face a strikingly urgent expression, and despite appearing on film for the first time here, he's remarkably effective at conveying the wide range of emotions Shaun experiences. Opposite Turgoose is a deeply impressive Stephen Graham. As Combo, he calls to mind the young Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper, offering a similar charm, wrought with as much of sincerity as natural charisma, and possessed by the same barely contained desperation to be part of something important.

That Combo is committed to the loosely defined skinhead cause is never in doubt, but it's clearly not enough for him. He's being torn apart by conflicting emotions -- desire, fear, jealousy -- and has no idea how to handle his confusion. He can't show weakness before his "troops", and has no one else in the world he can talk to. As a result, Combo is trapped inside his own head, and from the moment we meet him we know violence -- his only form of expression and release -- is inevitable. When that explosion finally comes, it's undeniably bloody and horrific. But it's also tragic and useless, and the tears in Combo's eyes are as heartbreaking as those in Shaun's.]]> 2006-09-15T15:31:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/15/tiff-review-this-is-england/ 669235 Shot with a handheld camera, Prague is a film of faces. The majority of images are extreme close-ups of such intimacy that only parts of the faces are visible. Eyes and a nose, perhaps. Or a mouth and chin. Sometimes just eyes -- worn, exhausted eyes. The story of a disintegrating marriage, Prague pays such relentless attention to every look exchanged and each breath taken by the husband and wife that we, too, find ourselves seeking out meaning in the smallest actions and most insignificant exchanges. The film is one of those raw, heart-breaking stories of loss that we watch half-hoping it will fail and leave us emotionally whole. Thanks to the efforts of director Ole Christian Madsen and his cast, though, the searingly powerful Prague succeeds magnificently.

As the film opens, Christoffer (convincingly portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen) and his wife Maja (Stine Stengade) travel from their home in Denmark to Prague, to sign the papers required to get Christoffer's recently deceased father's body released from the morgue, and to arrange for the coffin to be sent back to Denmark to be buried in the family plot. The 42-year-old Christoffer has seen his father once since he left the family thirty years before, and is matter-of-factly disgusted by what he sees as the man's willful neglect. He goes through the motions of claiming the body without emotion, and is intent on getting the necessary paperwork filled out as quickly as possible.

Above and beyond the stress of being in a foreign land in which no one understands them (which leads to hilarious deadpan moments, like getting an ironing board instead of an electrical adapter, and endless transpositions of coffee and beer), it's clear things are not right between Christoffer and Maja. Their interactions, while not unpleasant, are prickly and strange, and feel more like the negotiations of vaguely flirtatious strangers than the conversations of a couple with nearly 15 years of marriage behind them. Looks of undisguised longing pass between the two, but there is an emotional distance they can't seem to bridge no matter what happens physically.

The great bulk of Prague takes place on the faces of Christoffer and Maja, the camera so close that you feel like an intruder and want to look away from something so painfully personal. Madsen has said he feels comfortable only with close-ups and extreme wide shots because they convey emotion best, and Mikkelsen's exotic face is the perfect tool for a filmmaker who works at close range. Bordered by jarringly high cheekbones, his face is smooth and unusually flat, as if everything can be taken in at a single glance. His eyes are narrow and close together, and his mouth is both immobile and aggressively sensuous; there's a strange malleability to the whole, and a change in his eyes can affect how his entire body looks.

Playing the emotionally distant Christoffer, Mikkelsen's eyes are often hard and cold, not out of hatred or dislike, but simply because it's the only way he knows how to be. Over and over in the movie, he's give chances to reach out -- to his wife, his father's lover, the Czech housekeeper who lives with his father -- and over and over again, he pulls back, unable to open up and risk getting hurt. When he sleeps, though, the tension and suspicion in Christoffer's hard face vanish, and there's an almost angelic quality to its sudden flawlessness. The contrast between his waking and sleeping expressions is devastating, and an impossible-to-miss sign of how difficult things must have become for the outwardly accepting Maja over the past decade.

There's virtually no personal growth in Prague, and nobody makes any sudden life changes. And, oddly, that fact is one of the most rewarding things about the film. In a movie this unrelenting and dark, it's gratifying to see the director take the story to its logical conclusion rather than trying to cheer the audience up with a hopeful, encouraging ending. Too painful to be exactly rewarding, Madsen's film is nevertheless powerfully directed and compellingly acted -- just the sort of thing we all go to film festivals to see. No one enters a theater thinking "I want some deep emotional pain today, please", but when we accidentally stumble upon something emotionally demanding, the brilliant brutality of Prague is exactly what we hope to encounter.]]> 2006-09-15T14:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/15/tiff-review-prague/ 668892

There is a majesty to soccer that fans of the sport can find in all but the most pedestrian games; a grace and dignity to the flow and shape of the game, the discovery of which can spark a life-long obsession. Within the sport itself, there are certain players who embody those traits, through their styles of play and the way they carry themselves. These are not necessarily the greatest players -- as great as they are, Luis Figo, Andrei Shevchenko and Ronaldinho don't have the presence I'm talking about -- but when you see them play, you recognize the spark immediately. Italian icon Paolo Maldini has it. And, French god Zinédine Zidane, despite -- or maybe because of -- his ever-present temper -- has it too. There's an economy to his movements and an easy, natural poise to the way he watches the pitch that sets him apart from others, and makes it impossible to keep your eyes off him, despite his deceptively simple style of play.

In April, 2005, video artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno went a step further, training 17 cameras on Zidane for the length of a single La Liga game. The cameras were scattered all over the stadium, and recorded images ranging from intimate close-ups to beautiful long shots that take in the whole pitch; from unfocused collections of colors to more traditional, television-style action shots. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is the 90-minute compilation of those images and, for lovers of the game, it's awe-inspiring. More an art film that a sports documentary, Zidane is something that must be experienced on the big screen.

The movie is difficult to describe, because it's a feeling as much as anything else. Compiled from a dizzying array of cameras, angles and footage sources, the movie's only constant is that, during the game, Zidane is always on screen. The only exceptions are a few replays, but for the most part he is our focus, not the game. So when the action is taking place in the Real Madrid end, we stay with Zidane. He wipes his face, taps his toes, stalks the pitch. Away from the ball, he's relaxed, but not really -- there's a coiled strength in him, always, and when he explodes into action it takes your breath away. Even at the end of his career, Zidane's power and pace are breath-taking, particularly when we've been isolated with him, watching, away from the speed of the game.

Even when Zidane is the not the exclusive focus of what we see, there's something about him that has always drawn the eye. He's brutishly, powerfully handsome, and his low brows give his already intense eyes an added, intimidating power. And even seen from afar, when he's nothing more than a white jersey and a mostly bald head, we can pick him out with ease. Unlike everyone around him, Zidane plays with his back straight, and his shoulders back. His posture sets him apart, as does the simplicity of his movements. When he runs, there's a relief and joy to it, as if his body has finally been released to serve its true purpose. Other players -- David Beckham, for example, and Wayne Rooney -- run with a strange, barely contained fury; there's a sense that they're battling not only those around them, but their bodies as well. With Zidane, there's an almost laughable peace that comes when he's finally allowed to run; the ease of his pace and efficiency of his movements make us instantly aware that we're watching something special.

In Zidane, all of these glorious moments are held together by a carefully wrought, virtually perfect soundtrack. The audio in the film is a combination of diegetic sound -- crowd nose, shoes on grass, shouts, the impact of bodies -- and a phenomenal, hypnotic score, created by the Scottish band Mogwai. Though the on-pitch sounds were all created after shooting, they remain utterly realistic, and it's strangely moving to hear the level and clarity of the sounds change as Zidane himself moves in and out of the game. At times, there's total, pure silence; at others, the noise of 80,000 fans is almost deafening. As the game progress and Zidane's focus increases, the score begins to rise, suggesting the player's growing distance from the world around him. There's a wonderful, melancholy feel to Mogwai's dreamy music that adds to the film's emotional impact; there's no doubt the work as a whole would be less coherent without their contribution.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait washes over the audience in a combination of light, sound and emotion, somehow encapsulating everything that is great about soccer into a single man, in a single game. If you don't love the game, stay far away. If, however, you're one of the people for whom soccer is a fact of life, do everything you can to see this movie: It's both a revelation and a simple confirmation of everything you've ever believed, and an incredibly powerful, deeply emotional experience.]]> 2006-09-14T14:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/14/tiff-review-zidane-a-21st-century-portrait/ 668413

There's an impressive, careful complexity to DarkBlueAlmostBlack that belies the inexperience of first-time director Daniel Sánchez Arévalo. When one learns that he's been a screenwriter for 15 years, however, the unassuming detail of his film becomes less of a surprise. In his debut feature, Arévalo takes a story -- an impotent prison inmate enlists his bother to impregnate his girlfriend, a fellow prisoner desperate for a maternity ward move -- ripe for obvious humor and unsubtle sex jokes and turns it into a subtle, rewarding exploration of family, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive.

The ostensible star of Arévalo's film is Jorge (Quim Gutiérrez), a lonely, ambitious 20-something who has spent the last seven years working as a janitor and caring for his invalid father. Going to school part-time since his father's stroke, Jorge managed to get a degree in business administration, but the seven years in school and his unmanageable home situation conspire to get him nothing but rejection in his frequent, desperate job interviews. By turns resigned and resentful, Jorge simultaneously hates his father for trapping him and is plagued by guilt because the two were fighting when the stroke hit all those years ago.

Jorge's only other family is Antonio, who can't help with their father because he's in prison. We're never told what crime he committed but, as played by Antonio de la Torre (one of the few experienced actors in the film), Antonio is an unsophisticated, fundamentally good person who lives with an uncommon honesty and openness. A sign of the complexity of Arévalo's screenplay is that Antonio's openness in no way makes him saintly or simple. Instead, he's portrayed with a surprising magnetism and a human unpredictability; like everyone else in the film, he fights every day to overcome impulses to flee or lie -- anything to make life less of a struggle.

When Antonio discovers he has circulatory problems that make it impossible for him to get his girlfriend Paula (Marta Etura) pregnant, he pressures his brother into playing stud horse for them, but warns him away from emotional attachments. (Needless to say, the warnings don't stick.) At first just focused on Jorge, Antonio and Paula, the movie expands as it goes along, adding layers and characters, all of whom are carefully developed and generously written; each of them, no matter how small the part, is crucial to the path of Arévalo's film. Also mixed up in the story are Natalia (Eva Pallarés), Jorge's sometime girlfriend and longtime crush, and his best friend Sean (Raúl Arévalo), who has recently decided that he might be gay.

As is appropriate for such an intimate story, the film features an unusually large number of closeups. Mixed with occasional surveillance-style long shots, the closeups connect us even further with Arévalo's characters, and only serve to enhance the feeling that we're all part of something very small and personal. Additionally, the film plays a bit loose with time, a hypnotic touch that reinforces that sense of being inside a closed world. The story being told is of very little consequence to the world at large -- there are no broad statements here, nor attention-getting political gestures -- but it's told in such a way that we're entirely persuaded of its importance. Somewhere in its last half hour, DarkBlueAlmostBlack morphs from an interesting, forgettable debut into a unshakable emotion -- one, as absurd as it sounds, we feel honored to have been invited to feel.]]> 2006-09-13T16:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/13/tiff-review-darkbluealmostblack/ 667881

Based upon the evidence I've seen so far in Toronto -- the Romanian drama The Way I Spent the End of the World and Beauty in Trouble, the very accomplished new feature from Czech director Jan Hrebejk and his frequent collaborator, writer Petr Jarchovský -- the recent resurgence of cinema in Eastern Europe continues unabated. Different in every way from the truly awesome The Way I Spent the End of the World, Beauty in Trouble nevertheless shares with that film a combination of attention to detail and confidence of vision, and is also impressive, albeit in a smaller way.

A complex look at the power and changeability of intimate relationships, Beauty in Trouble comes disguised as a sweet, simple love story. After the devastating Prague floods of August 2002, Jarda (Roman Luknár) and Marcela (Anna Geislerová) find themselves in dire financial straits: Their home suffered severe water damage and, lacking insurance, they have no way to pay for repairs. With two kids, Jarda's mother to feed and the added pressure of unrelenting mortgage payments, they're desperate; to put food on the table Jarda joins a ring of car thieves, and works cutting the cars down into salable parts. Though she knows they need the money, Marcela is unable to handle the fact that her husband is a criminal and leaves him, taking the kids and moving in with her mother and abrasive step-father.

Through a comical series of circumstances involving prison and a stolen car, Marcela meets Evzen Benes (Josef Abrhám, whose easy natural dignity is perfect for the role), a dapper, much older man who left Czechoslovakia for Italy more than 25 years before (his parents fled when he was a child; he was eventually allowed to join them a decade later). He now owns a large estate in Italy, but has never quite shaken his attachment to his Czech homeland. Thanks to Evzen's fundamental kindness and Marcela's curiosity and openness, the two develop a surprising friendship that eventually morphs into something more. It is to Hrebejk's great credit that there's never a sense Evzen is using his money to take advantage of a younger woman or, indeed, that Marcela is engaging in a sexual relationship in exchange for financial security. In fact, the relationship is depicted with a respectful innocence, particularly when compared to the intensely sexual passion between Marcela and Jarda. Everything physical between Evzen and Marcela happens in dignified privacy, behind closed doors, whereas Jarda and Marcela have noisy, angry on-screen sex but are incapable of any other form of communication.

What's most impressive about Beauty in Trouble is its nuance. Every character is carefully shaded, making it impossible to dismiss anyone as all evil, or embrace anyone as entirely good. Even Risa (Jirí Schmitzer), Marcela's often unbearable step-father, is granted moments of sympathy, so that even when he's mistreating his step-daughter and her children, it's impossible to dismiss him completely. Similarly, there's tremendous complexity to Marcela's and Jarda's relationship. Though we rarely see Jarda (he's in prison most of the time), and Marcela is determined from the start to get a divorce, they nevertheless share an overwhelming physical attraction, the power of which impacts Marcela's entire existence.

Even when their story veers towards sentimentality, Hrebejk and Jarchovský know just how to bring it back to earth. The film mixes humor and sorrow to great effect, and even the frequent montages -- set to pop music, no less -- are infused with enough seriousness and reality to keep them from turing into Hollywood schmaltz. There's something very reassuring about such a cliché-free, nuanced film about relationships -- it's a nice distraction from life, sure, but also a thoughtful look at the forces that drive all of our lives, and how even the most final decisions aren't necessarily final.]]> 2006-09-13T15:31:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/13/tiff-review-beauty-in-trouble/ 668149

As advertised, there's a whole lotta sex in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus. Men with men, women with women, women with men and all possible multiplications and permutations thereof. Which really shouldn't be surprising, since the film is quite aggressively about sex. Unlike the great majority of cinematic sex scenes -- most of which are blocked and scored so carefully that they're more like choreographed, showy dances than anything else -- those in Shortbus are no mere window dressing, and nor are they present as excuses to get pretty people to take their clothes off (and then be artfully covered by that old Hollywood favorite, the L-shaped sheet). Instead, they're crucial to the plot, and to the development of the characters in the film. And they're also a whole lot of fun, much of the time. Mitchell and his cast very successfully avoid both the falseness of mainstream sex scenes and the bow-chick-a-bow-bow absurdity of straight-up porn, arriving instead in a place of realism, where actual people have actual sex. Sweaty, awkward, joyous, sad sex that's not always either pretty or sexy.

Based on a story created by Mitchell and his cast in workshops before filming began, the film focuses on a small group of post-9/11 New Yorkers. Like all of us, they're fully-formed individuals with imperfect lives: We meet Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm (she calls herself "pre-orgasmic"); James and Jamie (Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy) "the perfect couple" who, after five years together, are considering opening their relationship up; and Severin (Lindsay Beamish) a miserable dominatrix who has lots of orgasms but is almost incapable of intimate, human interaction. Over the course of Shortbus, all four acknowledge the deep, profound holes in their lives and, rather than continuing to paper them over like so many of us do, with the help of those around them they struggle through the agony of unblinking personal examination, hoping to come out intact on the other side.

Despite its undeniably melancholy undertones -- the movie darkens as it goes along, and the ostensibly joyous final scene is haunted by a terrible feeling of loss -- there's great warmth and humor to Shortbus. Several scenes (including that patriotic threesome you've heard so much about) are laugh-out-loud funny, and the mostly amateur cast acquits itself well. Lee, a Canadian music/media personality (who, by the way, went back to her day job with CBC Radio yesterday -- it's hard to imagine a public face of any American media organization not being fired after engaging in unsimulated on-screen sex and masturbation), is particularly impressive as Sophia. Smart enough to know she's a mess, Sophia is used to quickly solving problems; when she can't fix herself, her frustration is explosive, and Lee gleefully inhabits the character in all her jagged, aggressive, vulnerable glory.

As impressive as it sometimes is, Shortbus is not without its flaws. Alongside all the wit and fire, there are also moments of dreadful triteness (Oh look, a smart, deep, suicidal depressive!) and unintentional absurdity (Sex with your stalker? Brilliant!) in the movie, and they can't help but mar its overall effect. Despite those failings, however, Mitchell's film remains both admirable and moving. It's easy, after all, to make a movie about sex -- throw some naked bodies in front of the camera, and you're pretty much there. But it's something else entirely to make a movie about sex that has warmth and depth, and offers more than just physical arousal; Mitchell should be applauded for achieving the nearly impossible task of making a sex-laden film that stimulates our minds above all else.]]> 2006-09-13T12:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/13/tiff-review-shortbus/ 667846

Film festivals, even those as prestigious as Toronto, are lousy with first features. Most of the time the best you can hope from them are a few films that, while not necessarily great, hint at a bright future for their creators. More often than not, the most impressive debuts (like Manolo Nieto's The Dog Pound, for example) reveal enough vision and ability that the weaknesses in the films are easy to overlook, and you're left eager to see the director's sophomore effort. On rare occasions, however, you see a film so confident and effective that it's almost frightening to consider what the director will produce once he or she gets some experience; The Way I Spent the End of the World from first-time writer-director Catalin Mitulescu is one of those revelations.

From the first shot of the film, we're drawn into a world of tremendous vitality and warmth, so powerful and convincing that everyone we see on screen is instantly a fully formed individual and fundamentally real. Set in Romania towards the end of the Ceausescu regime, The Way I Spent the End of the World depicts a few months in the life of one family as they deal with universal struggles like raising kids, finding work, and abiding by societal expectations. Daughter Eva (a forceful, magnetic Doroteea Petre) is the heart of the family: Wise and passionate, she possesses an intelligence so fierce it renders her dark beauty almost over powering. Poised on the cusp of adulthood, she expresses herself through questioning -- not necessarily because she disagrees, but as a way of spreading her wings, and exploring her impact on the world. One person Eva never questions, though, is her adored little brother Lalalilu. Ferociously played by Timotei Duma, Lalalilu is a marvelous character, filled with rambunctious, six-year-old energy and tough and perceptive beyond his years. (Duma gives such a convincing, natural performance in the role that one strongly suspects he's simply playing himself.)

The family is part of a tight-knit, working-class town in which everyone knows everyone else, and everyone thinks they know how the others should live. Though there are fundamental disagreements between neighbors and friends, there's also an undeniable closeness among them, and some of the most magical scenes in the movie show the whole town swept away in moments of shared, childish joy. The total lack of contrivance in these moments is one of the many signs of Mitulescu's abundant talents; done differently, they would have been cloying and unbearable, but in his hands they're imbued with a wonderful, impossible innocence.

When Eva's boyfriend Alex accidentally-on-purpose smashes a bust of Ceausescu at school, her presence in the room when it happened is enough to get her kicked out of the school's Communist Youth Group, and she's sent to a trade school -- the last resort for kids who don't properly conform. Targeted by her new classmates for both harassment and lust, Eva never blinks. She responds to the aggression and awkward flirtation with smiles and offhand rejection, and learns to enjoy her new, refreshingly heterogeneous environment. In particular, she becomes close to Andrei, a new neighbor whose parents are widely rumored to have publicly opposed the government (leading, the town assumes, to their sudden appearance in the little town, and Andrei's presence at the trade school).

Though Ceausescu and his government are constants in The Way I Spent the End of the World, they're not its point. The movie is not about life under a communist regime, it's about a family that just happens to live under one -- a small distinction but an important one, because it allows Mitulescu to focus on his story rather than constantly reminding us how difficult life in pre-revolution Romania was for the working classes. Not interested in political proselytizing, Mitulescu is free to explore his characters, exposing them to problems with which we can all identify in spite of the fundamental foreignness of their world.

Just the latest truly great film to come out of Eastern Europe (following in the footsteps of Romania's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, and the remarkable Czech feature, Something Like Happiness) in the last few years, The Way I Spend the End of the World is an astonishingly accomplished piece of filmmaking. As a debut feature, it's every bit as powerful and perceptive as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's widely praised thriller The Lives of Others, but is unlikely to get the North American exposure Sony Pictures Classics will give the latter film. The unfortunate reality is that, like Something Like Happiness, the narrow, personal focus and unfamiliar setting of The Way I Spent the End of the World make it unlikely to get American distribution, regardless of its incredibly high quality.]]> 2006-09-12T20:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/12/tiff-review-the-way-i-spend-the-end-of-the-world/ 667189

There's a shot late in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn that is on par with anything the master has ever produced. An emaciated, bewildered Christian Bale stands slightly to the right of center-screen. The top half of his torso is visible, and he's wearing a tattered flight suit, rendered grey by the dirt and grit of months of imprisonment. Behind Bale, almost filling the screen, is the Laotian jungle, an impenetrable curtain of giant leaves and dense shadow. Bale is slightly out of focus and the jungle behind him more-so; as we gaze upon it, the shot morphs from a recognizable image into a flood of colors and emotion -- there must be 20 different shades of green on display, and everything looks a little too bright to be real. It's a magical, breathtaking moment, and the kind of thing fans of Herzog have come to expect from his films. The problem is that there are no more like it in Rescue Dawn, a disappointingly by-the-numbers effort from a filmmaker of rare and true genius.

Based upon the experiences of Dieter Dengler, an American whose time as a POW in Viet Nam Herzog told in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Rescue Dawn stars Bale as Dengler, a gung-ho pilot shot down during his first mission, a bombing run over Laos. Quickly captured by communist soldiers and eventually handed over to the Viet Cong, Dengler finds himself one of six American and Vietnamese inmates (including Steve Zahn and a terrifyingly thin Jeremy Davies) of a small prison camp somewhere in Laos. Conditions in the camp are dreadful and, based on its skeletal occupants, they've been that way for a while. There is almost no food, and the prisoners are often bound in a row on their backs, their feet in stocks and their arms crossed across their chests, wrists cuffed to their neighbors'.

The story of life in the camp and Dengler's subsequent escape is a much more narrative-heavy tale than those depicted in Herzog's best films, and the focus on story severely handcuffs the director. Herzog is great in part because he's unconventional: Unfettered by traditional expectations, he creates films out of atmosphere and tone, not story. His truly great efforts -- Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Lessons of Darkness -- are all about feel. They tell interesting stories, yes, but they're powerful because they create hypnotic, all-encompassing emotional worlds that engulf the viewer, not because they feature engaging dialogue or clever twists. Furthermore, Herzog's best characters are madmen; dreamers. Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, Stroszek and Kaspar Hauser don't share our world -- they can exist only within the heightened realities of Herzog's films, where anything is possible and the mad sometimes achieve the impossible.

Rescue Dawn offers none of these things. Instead of the wild-eyed, all-seeing Fitzcarraldo, we have Dengler, played by Bale as a cocksure, all-American boy -- he's the kind of movie hero who's always right, and offers comfort to his companions when they're weak. He can do more on no food that anyone around him, and never tires or loses hope. There's nothing individual or interesting about him and, by the end of the film, we're aching to be free of his bland, exhaustingly positive company. And Bale doesn't help his director any by delivering most of his lines in a flatly accented shout -- the only wrinkle he throws in is that sometimes the shouts are hoarse whispers, while at other times they're delivered in full voice.

Visually, Herzog as a filmmaker is at home in the jungle. In his hands, nature is always both awesome and threatening, and the Laotian wilderness in Rescue Dawn is no exception. Based on the periodic, unmotivated shots of trees and underbrush, one gets the distinct impression that the director would prefer to leave the tedious POW story behind in favor of something far more interesting that now only lurks in the background. It's sad to see these stabs at atmosphere, because his own screenplay doesn't allow Herzog the room he needs to flex his muscles as a filmmaker.

Instead of spinning another haunting new world for us to enter, Herzog is reduced to the role of technician, working in service of a flat, uninteresting story. Rescue Dawn is a terrible waste of a brilliantly talented man's skills, and a profound disappointment as a result.]]> 2006-09-12T13:33:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/12/tiff-review-rescue-dawn/ 667193 When people who despise what they call the pretensions of foreign films try to explain their hatred, the loathed films of their collective imagination are inevitably French, and full of brazenly nude, nubile youths. More often than not, the lines the youths deliver are artfully philosophical and hilariously unrealistic -- things like "Only a body can know another body," and "What we did with our bodies was very subtle." Essentially, these people are thinking of Chacun sa nuit, a wildly pretentious, laughably self-indulgent new film from French directors Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr that just had its world premiere in Toronto.

As has become de rigeur for Enlightened Sex Dramas -- a genre on which the French have effortlessly cornered the market -- Chacun sa nuit has a cast full of pouty, mostly dark beauties; in this case they consist of Lucie (Lizzie Brocheré), her brother Pierre (Arthur Dupont) and their soul mates Sébastien (Pierre Perrier), Nicolas (Guillaume Baché) and Baptiste (Nicolas Nollet). The five seem to have grown up together and, even though Pierre is now in college, the group remains inseparable. Lucie has dated two of the boys, and the bisexual Pierre is engaged in a secret affair with the third. Even among those who aren't having sex, there's an aggressively casual attitude about nudity and physical contact, so the group does things like skinny dipping, and sunbathing nude together. Lucie, in particular, likes to lounge around naked -- she is, you see, a Sexual Being.

Pierre too, is a Sexual Being, and his prowess and magnetism in that department put his sister's to shame. Everyone, we are told, wants to touch Pierre, to be with him. As is often the case with such characters, it's never really clear what makes Pierre so appealing -- yes, he's brutally handsome, but the only time he shows any personality is when he's on stage, singing and playing guitar in the group's not-bad rock band. In these moments, we understand why he's so in demand. Off-stage, however, there's very little to him beyond the spouting of painfully trite ideas about knowledge and relationships; one wonders if anyone could actually stand to be around him for very long. Conveniently for those who want him, though, Pierre is proudly focused on his body and open to all forms of sexual experimentation, including sex-for-pay and participation in pansexual orgies organized by one of his johns. But he reserves his greatest affection -- emotional and otherwise -- for his sister. Though Lucie goes to great pains to assure her psychiatrist that she and Pierre never had penetrative sex, she nevertheless assures him that her brother's body knew hers very well.

Pierre's knowledge of Lucie is presented in the past tense because the film takes place after his sudden disappearance. We learn about Pierre and his relationships through flashbacks and Lucie's narration; the story we hear comes from a memoir of sorts that she's creating for her shrink, part of the treatment for the unspecified disorder that landed her in a mental institution some time after her brother vanished. In the aftermath of her brother's disappearance, Lucie only becomes more selfish (when, late in the film, someone finally calls her and Pierre on their utter lack of concern for anyone but themselves, you want to stand up and cheer), delighting in her new license to pout, threaten suicide, and manipulate those around her.

If the characters of Lucie and Pierre were less loathsome, the absurdity of Chacun sa nuit would be easier to take. As it is, however, the film takes its characters so seriously, and so willingly endorses their ludicrous behavior that the urge to get up and flee is almost overwhelming. Additionally, the movie is not done any favors by a cast whose hiring, it quickly becomes clear, was based on looks, not talent. Particularly guilty is this regard is Lizzie Brocheré, who plays Lucie for 100 minutes with a grand total of three expressions: Pout A, pout B and the old, reliable, thoughtful lip-bite. Her performance is a sadly fitting representation of the entire film: Deeply sincere, laughably misjudged, and insultingly shallow.]]> 2006-09-12T11:31:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/12/tiff-review-chacun-sa-nuit/ 666749

The Bothersome Man is a dark, nasty little movie that's never quite as deep or as clever as it imagines itself to be. Based on a Norwegian radio play, the film tells the story of Andreas (Trond Fausa Aurvaag), an office worker who throws himself under a subway train seconds after the film opens. The next time we see him, he's the lone passenger on a battered bus to the middle of nowhere. Stepping out of the bus, Andreas finds himself standing on a wide plain, with dark mountains in the distance. Nearby is the only building as far as the eye can see, an old gas station sporting a makeshift "WELCOME" sign. The station's solicitous attendant drives Andreas to "his" apartment in a large, modern city, and tells him where to go to work in the morning.

This, then, is the afterlife. And, in director Jens Lien's new film, the afterlife looks a whole lot like western Europe today, complete with glass-clad skyscrapers, classical facades, and an old town full of winding streets and elderly people who look like they've lived there for 50 years. Everyone is well-dressed and friendly, albeit it in a superficial way. Marriage is encouraged because it looks good; what goes on inside the home or within the heart is of no consequence. No one actually forms emotional attachments, but the appearance of closeness and happiness is in place, and that's what's important. Food has no taste, alcohol no kick, and it's impossible to die, but hey, those are the breaks.

In a none-too-subtle way, Lien is drawing a parallel between Andreas' existence is that distant, sterile world, and the slick, polish lives the upper classes live in first world nations today. (In fact, given the afterlife's obsession with furniture and fixtures, there's a good chance the place is actually located in a creepy, alternate Sweden.) And there are things here that are potentially interesting: Is survival possible in a world in which superficial happiness is the ultimate goal, and deep, personal connections are impossible? Where do all the unhappy people go? And who, exactly, is in charge of keeping order in this place? Unfortunately, however, Lien seems more interested in his own cleverness than anything else, and often loses focus on his story's initial depth in favor of sadistic, gross-out horror and obvious, tired relationship jokes. He comes across as immensely pleased with himself for comparing the modern world with a hellishly impersonal afterlife, but not very interesting in actually exploring that idea. He'd rather, for example, let us see and hear Andreas repeatedly run over by a train than examine the existential questions his film asks.

Despite these disappointments, however, The Bothersome Man is far from a complete loss. It never looks less than fantastic, and Aurvaag's tired, pale face provides a perfect contrast to the sharp edges and gleaming surfaces around him. There's also a ceiling entirely covered by light bulbs hanging from long cords, the wonder and wit of which almost make the film worth seeing on their own. Additionally, the fact that the film was based on a radio play (and was written by Per Schreiner, the author of that play) results in a movie uncommonly focused on sounds. It's not that the effects in the film are particularly subtle or carefully layered, but simply that they're foregrounded much more than is generally the case. Long sequences are dominated by sound effects, from footsteps, to creaking signs, to the loud and gory (and probably not remotely realistic) sounds of human flesh being demolished by a hurling train. In fact, the plot's central mystery revolves not around a person or event, but rather around a haunting, siren-like sound. Overall, though, the film is a good-looking, rather unpleasant trifle that seems to simultaneously take itself too seriously and not seriously enough, preferring to hide behind its impressive, clever packaging instead of investigating actual philosophical questions.]]> 2006-09-11T17:31:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/11/tiff-review-the-bothersome-man/ 666746 When a movie's credit sequence is based around endless photographs of a blissful family, it's not hard to guess that the family will be ripped asunder before too long. And if that family is outrageously good-looking, disaster is practically assured. Both are true of Born and Bred, an Argentine film packed full of pain and suffering that nevertheless fails utterly to connect with its audience.

In reality, the most powerful moments of the film are the pre-crisis scenes. While there's nothing inherently interesting about watching a happy family interact in an outrageously adorable manner, or in seeing the man (Santiago, played by Guillermo Pfening) and wife (Martina Gusman as Milli) having great sex (If the perfection of their union was ever in doubt, those simultaneous orgasms cleared things right up.), the fact that we know something awful is about to happen infuses these everyday sequences with a wonderful, itchy tension. On several occasions the entire family is offscreen, communicating through friendly shouts from different parts of their gorgeous home. Suddenly realizing the unnamed horror might be heard and not seen, you're holding your breath in wicked anticipation, both praying everyone will walk safely back into shot, and secretly hoping for the scream of terror or pain that means the wait is at an end.

Disappointingly, the film and its director, Pablo Trapero, lose their tight control after the accident finally comes. We know Santiago survived because we see him, newly bearded, hunting in the snow with a new friend, but beyond that we have no idea what's happened. Santiago seems physically healthy, but mentally he's a wreck, tormented by terrible dreams and seized with periodic fears that he's on fire, or being followed. In a clear effort to escape the unmentioned aftermath of the accident, he's left his old life behind and moved to Patagonia to work physically demanding jobs with tough, rough men. Santiago is deeply unhappy and obviously hopes the desperate cold, unfamiliar company, and ever-flowing liquor will dull his pain, or at least help him forget it. Needless to say, nothing works.

The jarring, unannounced change of location from upper-class Buenos Aires to stark, windswept Patagonia is gripping and visually impressive, but it doesn't help the viewer identify with Santiago's misery. We watch him suffer in traditional, cliched ways -- he drinks a lot, refuses to open up to his friends, and periodically bursts into tears -- but we never really care about him. In reality, Santiago's new coworkers and friends (particularly Cacique, played with tremendous natural charm by Tomás Lipan) are much more likable than he. Whereas Santiago's appeal is built entirely upon his good looks and the fact that he love(s/ed) his family, his Patagonian coworkers are fully formed men with distinct, complex personalities; next to them, Santiago almost disappears.

It's rare to see such a solidly acted, visually arresting film fall so completely flat, but even a big emotional ending can't save Born and Bred. Obviously intended to have audiences sobbing as the credits roll, the film's conclusion in fact only diminishes its impact further, eliminating what little respect we had for Santiago and significantly decreasing the merit of his entire Patagonian sojourn. The problem, ultimately, is that the movie is so consumed by Santiago's showy suffering that it forgets to extend a hand to the audience; we're left totally outside the film's self-conscious emotional orbit and, as a result, don't care all about what's happening inside it.]]> 2006-09-11T14:34:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/11/tiff-review-born-and-bred/ 666757 At first glance, Ho Yuhang's Rain Dogs is a beautifully shot, meandering story about a young man's struggle to become an adult. The film follows 19-year-old Dong (newcomer Kuan Choon Wai) from Kuala Lumpur to his mother's home in a small Malaysian town; from there to the home of his cousins several towns away, and finally back to his mother. Early in his journey, Dong loses his beloved older brother Hong (Cheung Wing-Hong) in a bar brawl and, though he never outwardly grieves for Hong, his death unconsciously becomes the primary driving force in Dong's life.

Already distant, Dong's relationship with his single mother gets worse in the wake of the loss of Hong. Neither of them acknowledges their suffering to the other, and when Dong's mother takes the side of her deadbeat boyfriend when Dong (correctly) accuses the man of stealing Hong's motorcycle, the tension becomes too great, and Dong flees. Finding a place with his cousins in a much smaller town many miles away, Dong struggles to make sense of his life. Paralyzed by waves of overpowering emotions and plagued by confusing desires, he struggles to connect with those around him. Dong awkwardly bonds with his uncle, only to be beaten by him a few days later; he meets a pair of sisters who spark his interest, but he has no idea what he wants from them, and even less idea what to expect from their shaky friendship; his wise, all-knowing aunt cares for him with the same tenderness she grants her grade-school age son -- hers seems the perfect approach to an utterly lost young adult.

For his part, Dong's behavior is apparently dictated by his own arbitrary decisions about how to behave. Largely silent, he drifts along, watching and listening but rarely reacting to what he encounters; it's as if he's searching for someone who will tell him how to deal with the pain and confusion he feels. Occasionally he springs into action, but only when he's emulating the behavior of someone he admires: After his uncle bizarrely decides that Dong needs to learn how to shoot, Dong sneaks out under cover of night to fire the uncle's gun. Dong has no goal in mind; his uncle thinks gunfire is manly so Dong does it, trying to vault past the confusion, straight into manhood.

It is in the somewhat comical scene with the gun -- Dong hears distant sirens in the night and panics, throwing the gun into the woods -- that the true depth and subtlety of Rain Dogs first begin to reveal themselves. To this point, we've been lulled into a state of passive acceptance by the extremely slow, awkward progress of Dong's struggle to find himself. Since he never mentions his brother, it's been easy to forget about Hong's death, and to chalk Dong's behavior up to typical teenage angst. When he picks up the gun and disappears from our vision, however, we're seized with the realization that it would be a tragic non-surprise if Dong shot himself. Through a painstaking accumulation of tiny actions and details, the director has infused Dong with a misery much deeper and more profound than we ever imagined; the revelation that we were unconsciously aware of the character's pain is astonishing, and hints at what is in store for the film's conclusion.

In that conclusion, with four magical closing shots, Ho forces a complete reevaluation of his film. The scope of his story suddenly explodes outward, and the depths at which he had previously only hinted are finally made clear. What was originally a slow-but-lovely character piece is revealed to be something much more, and the entire film gains tremendous heft and power as a result. Make no mistake -- the film's end is in no way a twist, just a profound, masterful expansion and clarification. It leaves us both deeply moved and feeling a bit foolish for not recognizing the movie's true merits earlier.]]> 2006-09-11T13:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/11/tiff-review-rain-dogs/ 666880

What's truly surprising about The Italian, a Russian film that won two minor Best Feature awards at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival and received favorable stateside reviews after its North American debut at Telluride last month, is its tremendous warmth. Set in a rundown orphanage, the movie features none of the horrors -- neglect, abuse, hunger -- that western audiences associate with that world. Instead, though undeniably poor, the orphanage is a strangely comforting place. Run by a good-hearted man (Yuri Itskov) who struggles daily to balance his desperate need for money with his obvious affection for and desire to protect his charges, the place is home to a wide array of children, all of whom have well-established friendships and a tremendous ease in their environment.

The director notwithstanding, the real rulers of the orphanage are found in a group of old kids: Tough boys and girls who go outside the gates daily to make money, both legally and otherwise. Though we sometimes see younger children punched and intimidated by these older boys, it's very clear that nothing is done arbitrarily, or out of cruelty. Instead, the boys are enforcing a code of conduct that demands honesty and the sharing of assets, all for the good of the group -- it seems that, at least among the young, socialism is alive and well in Russia.

The film's title character is Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov), a six-year-old with the maturity of one who has been on his own for a long time. Like many kids who have to fend for themselves too early, his mind is a charming mix of tough self-awareness -- he is treated as an equal by the ruling older kids, and carries himself with tremendous, matter-of-fact confidence -- and the naiveté appropriate to those his age (he and his best friend seriously discuss foreigners' use of adopted Russian children for "spare parts"). As the film opens, Vanya is chosen over his quiet, jealous peers to meet an Italian couple who want to adopt. Dressed in his best clothes, eyes filled with anticipation and fear, Vanya introduces himself to the couple. Like all of us, the Italians are charmed and agree to return in a few weeks to make the adoption official, and take the boy home with them to start a new life together.

At first, Vanya -- now nicknamed "The Italian" -- is thrilled by the opportunity to have a family. But when the birth mother of a recently-adopted friend appears at the orphanage, desperate to reclaim the boy she abandoned, Vanya begins to worry: What if his mother comes to find him, and he's already left for Italy? What then? Despite the heartfelt, searingly honest attempted of the other kids to convince the boy that mothers don't usually try to find their kids (and, even if she did, he wouldn't want to be with someone who gave him up), Vanya decides that he has to find his mother, even if it means losing the Italian family. And so it begins: On his own, Vanya travels by train, bus, and on foot towards his mother. He's neither desperate or emotional, just focused and smart, utilizing the wiles he's learned in his six years of state care.

The Italian would be totally ineffective without an appealing central presence and, through some sort of miracle, director Andrei Kravchuk found the perfect star in young Kolya Spiridonov who makes his first screen appearance in the film. Though Spiridonov is not necessarily the most subtle of actors (he shows surprise like Brandon De Wilde did in Shane: Comically wide eyes, accompanied by a violent head-jerk), his pale blonde hair, scrawny frame and wide, cautious eyes more than make up for his practical weaknesses. Best when he's not speaking, Spiridonov has the ability to appear simultaneously adult and childlike, rubbing his tired eyes with clenched fists one minute and spinning seductive lies for strangers the next. Those eyes are wonderful, huge and expressive, always touched by fear but also capable of humor, confusion and surprising understanding.

Never pretending to be a great work of art, without Spiridonov, the film would be nothing more than a well-made, Russian after-school special. With him on board, it's transformed into a tight, temporarily convincing little trifle, memorable for its constant, unexpected air of affection, and for the determined little boy at its center.

For another take on The Italian, see Kim's Telluride review.]]> 2006-09-11T12:31:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/11/tiff-review-the-italian/ 666440

There's a small subgenre of independent cinema that appeals only to the most patient (or masochistic) of filmgoers. This unnamed grouping is usually made up of low-budget foreign films that are character studies at heart, rarely showing much concern for plot, character growth, or any sort of action. For some of us, these films are gold mines of personality and depth; for others they're nightmares of ponderous self-indulgence. Whatever you think of these spare, independent features, The Dog Pound is one of them. Achingly slow and distracted for its first half, the film eventually gains strength and focus, and ends as a piece of affecting, thoughtful filmmaking from Manolo Nieto, a Uruguayan writer-director working alone for the first time.

Though it has a periodic tendency to wander almost at random, the movie centers on Daniel (Pablo Alexandre, a film student appearing on screen for the first time), a lazy, pot-smoking 25-year-old lay-about who lives, rent free, in the holiday cottage of his father (Martín Adjemián), and at first seems content to do so for the foreseeable future. His perfect life of sex, sleep and weed is thrown asunder when his father arrives unexpectedly and, disgusted by the state of David's life, cuts him off. Though his father feels that school -- even on scholarship, which he sees as freeloading on the state -- is essentially a waste of time, he agrees to let Daniel reapply (he's already spent some time at university in Montevideo) if he can finish building a house on the land his father gave him some months ago. Though Daniel brags a lot about his plans for the house, there's not even a foundation laid, and his father has nearly given up.

Anchored by the year-long build of the tiny, ramshackle house, The Dog Pound is a deceptively easy-going look at life in small town Uruguay (specifically in Rocha, where the film was shot and where some of the cast lives), seen through the lens of Daniel and his ne'er-do-well friends. None of them seem to have jobs, a fact by which they are profoundly untroubled. Content to live hand-to-mouth, the small "tribe" (as they call themselves) of friends spends most of its time -- both together and alone -- drinking cheap wine, getting stoned, talking about sex and masturbating. Occasionally, they find the motivation to help Daniel work on his house, but that's generally when they get hungry, or want some of their friend's weed. Despite his apparent lack of motivation, Daniel is really the only member of this group with any interest in the future; his friends mock him constantly for preferring sleep over work, but in a growing part of Daniel's brain he wants a life beyond Rocha, and his dreams of returning to school become increasingly important as the weeks go by.

Difficult to sit through during its wandering, scattered first half, Nieto's film snaps into focus with about 45 minutes to go. (In a post-show Q&A, producer-editor Fernando Epstein admitted that the film, which was shot and edited in segments, was given its focus in the editing room rather than in the screenplay, and it shows. (The movie is much tighter in its second half, as if Nieto took a while to realize what his film was actually about.) Suddenly, we're in the hands of a surprisingly mature filmmaker who effortlessly exposes Daniel's very core: For the first time, we see his world as he does in his rare moments of sobriety. Like many people in Daniel's stage of life, the fun and brotherhood he shares with his tribe are only a flimsy façade laid over the real disappointment with which they all live, and an effort to stave off the struggles ahead.

In the impressive second half of his film, Nieto explores these truths with a surprisingly deft touch: He steadfastly keeps his emotional distance, refusing to judge or draw conclusions. Daniel's creeping loneliness is heartbreaking and absolutely real, and Nieto's straightforward storytelling gives the last section of his film a very European feel. The easy vulnerability of the second half of The Dog Pound more than rescues it -- it also definitively marks the film's young director as one to watch for the future.]]> 2006-09-10T21:06:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/10/tiff-review-the-dog-pound/ 666254

Watching Lights in the Dusk, the latest feature from prolific Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, you could be forgiven for thinking someone has slipped Quaaludes to the entire cast of a 1950s noir film. Everyone moves carefully and very slowly, while the entire city of Helsinki seems to be under a blanket of silence and isolation. Indeed, apart from the film's cast, the city appears to be deserted: There are no passers-by, no irate motorists, and no nosy neighbors. Just the movie's handful of gangsters, along with the social detritus with whom they casually become involved.

The film centers on Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen), a man so forgettable that, after three years in his night security job, his supervisor still asks his name when he signs out for the evening. As played by Hyytiäinen, Koistinen is aggressively Keaton-esque, both in his immovable visage and his expression of constant concern -- the worried creases between his eyes never lift. It's as if he's got secret knowledge that, any minute now, something awful will happen. And, after the first few minutes of the film, we understand Koistinen's worldview: He's greeted with instinctive disgust everywhere he goes, even by those who don't know him. Prepared as he is for constant disaster, however, Koistinen greets each new slight with nothing more than a sigh, and his only response is to make himself less conspicuous.

What makes Lights in the Dusk so wonderful is that everything in the film is extremely underplayed. Even the most hilarious, pathetic moments of Koistinen's totally unwitting downward spiral (think Detour, except without that first mistake) are played completely straight: No one cracks a smile or expresses any sympathy for his plight, and he doesn't seem to expect any. Indeed, the only character who feels anything for Koistinen -- the woman who runs the food van at which he spends an inordinate amount of time -- is the subject of his scorn every time she reaches out to him. He doesn't want pity, only to be left alone in his well-worn misery and dismay.

All of this plays out against a stylized background, full of bright colors and carefully posed tableaus. The city of Helsinki is always present -- particularly its most industrial vistas -- but within the city Kaurismäki finds pockets of pale blue walls, single carnations and deep red interiors to offset his grim story. Koistinen's apartment, for example, is dark and almost entirely free of furniture -- it feels like nothing so much as a basement corridor -- and yet its walls are painted in totally incongruous, lush colors that almost seem to be mocking their tenant. Against those walls, Koistinen's misery is heightened, and in shooting him there, Kaurismäki, a smile surely on his lips, calls to mind the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Douglas Sirk before him. Like some of the work of those directors, Lights in the Dusk is distant and cold, taking wry pleasure in presenting Koistinen's downfall with such beauty. There's a single shot late in the film -- gangsters playing cards high above the city, with their moll vacuuming in the background -- that comes as close to flawless as anything I've seen on screen all year. You want to press pause, and just sit and take it in: The colors, the humor, the light, the surfaces; the simple pleasure of watching a master at work.]]> 2006-09-10T17:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/10/tiff-review-lights-in-the-dusk/ 666238

At the center of The Lives of Others is Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a quietly proud Stasi officer who has spent his life and career in unquestioning service of the East German government. His service is not blind: Wiesler is a man who serves with full knowledge of what his State does to its enemies -- indeed, he teaches interrogation at the Stasi University, and is applauded by students for his ability to break suspects. He's not a mindless functionary but an intelligent man who sincerely feels socialism is the best path for his country, and that the Stasi provides a crucial service. Not a proponent of belligerent proselytizing, Wiesler simply observes the world around him, judging with his sad eyes when he sees others whose commitment to the State stems from self-interest rather than true devotion to its principles. When his superior and old friend Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur) becomes increasingly focused on his own advancement within the Stasi hierarchy, Wiesler offers the dour disapproval of a parent, quietly asking the other to remember why they first joined the Party.

Dragged by Grubitz to the theater one night on yet another of his friend's steps towards self-advancement, Wiesler sees a play by Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch in a charming, low-key performance), one of the few high-profile, truly talented playwrights in the country fully committed to the Socialist cause. After spending most of of the show watching Dreyman, Wiesler becomes vaguely suspicious of the man's true feelings and, through a series of accidental circumstances, finds himself charged with setting up and directing surveillance on Dreyman's apartment.

Sitting in a dark warehouse surrounded by listening equipment and flickering closed circuit monitors, Wiesler is drawn into Dreyman's world, focusing on the writer and his actress girlfriend (Christa-Maria Sieland, played by Martina Gedeck) with a childlike intensity. Not only is he being forced to see one of his subjects as a whole human being for the first time, but he's also encountered a suspect to whom he doesn't immediately feel superior. Wiesler is fascinated by his subject: A passionate, intelligent artist who seems, at least at first, to genuinely support the government. Despite being blissfully unaware of the surveillance, Dreyman repeatedly misses even the most private opportunities to criticize the government in East Berlin. Though he rarely tries to persuade others to abandon their rebellious views, he nevertheless preaches caution and control, clearly believing, if not in the State, at least in reality: Were he to oppose the government, he would lose his comfortable existence, and would never work again. Given the choice between rebellion and acceptance, Dreyman sees no choice at all; he's as apolitical as possible, making few compromises, violating no rules, and working in peace.

All of that changes, however, with the suicide of Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), a director friend who had been blacklisted years earlier for endorsing an unspecified anti-government document. When Jerska dies, Dreyman realizes that he needs to take action, and his true feelings come rushing to the surface. Listening in horror as the man he has come to admire says words that should at the very least earn him interrogation (at worst, he could be made to disappear), Wiesler is suddenly out of his depth. No longer the distant watcher, he begins pulling the strings of Dreyman's life, secretly controlling and directing events to protect him; in the process, he betrays his own government, and turns his back on decades of committed service. To the immense credit of first-time writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Wiesler has no Eureka! moment. Instead, he's just a man reacting with his gut; for the first time in years, Wiesler acts without first running his life through his internal State filter.

What's most impressive about The Lives of Others is how smoothly it blends politics with both the traditional elements of thrillers and unabashed sentimentality. Von Donnersmarck's film powerfully condemns the Stasi -- often with cutting, sudden humor -- while also shamelessly tugging our heartstrings with its story of one man risking everything for another. In addition, the movie contains strong elements of 1970s conspiracy thrillers (particularly The Conversation) with its central theme of surveillance, and unrelenting air of doom. The proof that the combination is successful can be seen in the film's massive success at this year's German Film Awards, the German equivalent of the Oscars: If a movie centered around a sympathetic Stasi officer can be critically and publicly acclaimed in a country still alive with memories of the horrors wrought by that institution, it must be a very good film indeed.

Crucially, sympathy for Wiesler is created without ever compromising the movie's condemnation of the Stasi, or soft-peddling Wiesler's past actions. While Von Donnersmarck's writing is part of that subtlety, most of the credit must go to Ulrich Mühe, whose performance in the role is as nuanced as it is powerful. A slight, compact man, Mühe's Wiesler is physically very orderly: He keeps his jacket zipped up under his chin and carries himself ramrod straight, his large, expressive eyes made cold by years of practice. Everything in his life runs according to routine, from his travel to and from his bland, anonymous apartment to his nightly rituals of dinner alone and visits from the occasional brusque prostitute. When his life begins to meld with Dreyman's, though, Wiesler undergoes small physical changes, from the softening of his eyes to slight losses of control over his body. What once was a well-oiled Stasi machine is suddenly subject to uncontrollable burst of emotion, and Mühe makes every tiny moment count, breaking our hearts with a simple twitch of his arm. The fact that Mühe himself spent his pre-unification adulthood being watched by the Stasi only renders his work that much more impressive. The performance stands out in a well-crafted film full of solid acting; both Mühe and The Lives of Others are unforgettable.]]> 2006-09-10T09:00:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/10/tiff-review-the-lives-of-others/ 665991

Superficially, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen -- the film that opened this year's Toronto International Film Festival -- is the story of how a small group of Inuit people confronts a changing world. Lead by Avva (Pakak Innuksuk), a powerful shaman, the group is faced with the twin challenges of a weather-induced famine and the arrival of Western culture, in the form of both religion and Greenlandic explore-cultural anthropologist Knud Rasmussen (Jens Jørn Spottag) and his team. Purportedly based on events described in the journals of its title, the film is set in 1912 in the Canadian arctic, moves at an extremely slow pace, and takes place almost entirely in Inuktitut (an ancient language now spoken by fewer than 100,000 people), much of which isn't translated in subtitles. In reality, the film -- the second collaboration from Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, directors of the award-winning The Fast Runner -- is more a collage of image and sound than it is a traditional narrative feature, and is a challenge well worth audience perseverance.

We see Avva's little tribe -- his family alone consists of several grown children and in-laws, in addition to at least once grandchild -- experiencing a wide range of emotions and events, from family discipline to a wild party; from simply passing the time together to an exorcism of sorts. As viewers, we are kept very much outside of their world, reduced, like Rasmussen and the other White Men, to impotent watchers. At one point, Avva tells the story of his childhood directly to the camera, answering off-screen questions that could just as easily be asked by us as by Rasmussen -- like all cinema-goers, we are voyeurs. The difference here, however, is that the objects of our gaze are always aware of our presence.

Kunuk and Cohn's film is filled with song, prompted both by anthropological curiosity (both Avva and Rasmussen ask the other to sing) and real-world events; the Inuit people seem to use song to express joy, sadness, and the grey area in between. Because the lyrics are almost never translated, the songs work on the audience as pure sound and emotion, and affect us on a very fundamental level. They bypass the brain and go straight to another, more basic part of our consciousness, acting with a totally unexpected power (and it's no accident that the dirge-like prayers sung by the converted Christians are the most jarring and exhausting in the film). The same is true of the emotions on display -- the faces glowing with joy, or expressionless in attempts at strength, speak more than entire conversations that are never reduced to subtitles. The stolen moments in the lives of Avva and his tribe -- particularly those shared by the women and children -- are so private that no one, audience or otherwise, deserves access to them. We never have any doubt, however, what is happening in the hearts of those we can't understand.

Visually, the movie is equally powerful, and equally fragmented. There are touches of narrative -- Peter Freuchen's (known to the tribe as "Big Pita", and played by the soulful Kim Bodnia) casual closeness to the young men around Avva is particularly moving -- but most of what we see is ice, either in great, eye-filling swathes, or in the miraculously orderly blocks of an igloo. Switching violently between blinding, ice-reflected sunlight and close, lamp-lit darkness, Kunuk and Cohn create a vivid impression of a world of extremes, and never lets us forget the daily battle for existence fought by those we're watching. Often, the ice shares the screen with a nut-brown, craggy face shot in extreme close-up, a second contrast of light and dark reminding us again and again how out of place man is in this environment. Like the visual extremes, the cliffs and valleys in those expressive, worn faces -- particularly the eyes, heavily lined from constant squinting against the punishing cold and wind -- serve as further reminders of the astonishing struggle behind the lives on screen.

Within the whirlwind of sound and image, however, we have one anchor: Leah Angutimarik as Apak, Avva's troublesome youngest child. Gifted with her father's power to contact the spirit world, Apak uses her ability only to have passionate dream-sex with her murdered husband (eerily, the claustrophobic sex is shot largely from his point-of-view), and steadfastly refuses to conform to the expectations of those around her. She's not aimlessly rebellious, simply opinionated, and too strong to bow to the expectations of her little society; Angutimarik's is a truly astonishing, genuine performance from a girl who had never before appeared on film. In addition to challenging her family on a regular basis, Apak's inner power also renders her staggeringly lovely. When she laughs, she puts her entire soul into it, and her eyes burn with an energy so bottomless that it's hard not to just stare, open-mouthed. Rather than leering, however, the men lucky enough to be in her presences simply gaze upon her in grudging awe. "With someone that beautiful around," an ex-suitor grins ruefully, "no one is safe." By reading Apak's wide, open face, we know exactly the emotional temperature of the film and, despite the impenetrability of the language, absorb the gist of what is being said.

Some films earn audience commitment from the start, drawing us in with arresting characters, clever writing, promising plots or some combination of the three. They're thrilling or engaging or hilarious from the start, demanding nothing more than our presence in exchange for instant payoff. Others, however, require more trust. Instead of winning us over, they proceed according to their own agendas, seemingly willfully ignoring the needs of the audience; we are left to hope that the images before us will eventually be transformed into a whole that will have been worth our time and attention. The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, falls very much into the latter category, and though we're not always aware of how the film is working upon us, its last image packs such an unexpectedly shattering power that there's no doubt our trust was not in vain.]]> 2006-09-09T19:04:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/09/tiff-review-the-journals-of-knud-rasmussen/ 662914

Had Simone been able to see what her aunt Maggie was pointing at through the binoculars, it would have driven her to drink. Sadly, she could see it pretty clearly without the binoculars...and even worse, the binoculars weren't real. They held a few shots worth of Jack Daniels. Simone took a swig, then took another. It was going to be one of those days...

Our winning caption this time around comes from the lovely Heather C, who somehow managed to resist the clearly powerful pull to mention either Jack Valenti or someone's penis her caption. As a result, she gets her very own "Censorship Gets F*cked" tshirt, as well as a hat that will allow her to both look like a badass AND help director Kirby Dick advertise the just-released This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Heather, please send your mailing info to kim.voynar@cinematical.com. The rest of you, sit tight: Another contest is coming tomorrow. ]]> 2006-09-03T09:04:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/03/caption-this-we-have-a-winner/ 662892

Less a movie than a blunt instrument, Crank is an explosion of sex and violence, set to a deafening soundtrack and cobbled together by a crazed editor. From the look of it, first-time directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wanted to make a compact film -- it's only 83 minutes (they're long, long minutes) -- but refused to leave out a single one of the insane images and visual flourishes they'd been collecting in their heads in preparation for their cinematic debut (both men come from an advertising background). As a result, the film has a terrible case of ADD: Scenes are chock-full of unnecessary visual touches that, while striking and interesting if used judiciously, quickly lose their power when they show up in every scene -- several times.

Jason Statham plays Chev Chelios, a hitman with possibly the most absurd name in the history of cinema. He awakens one morning with blurred vision -- the handheld camera shows us his point-of-view -- and in extreme physical pain, but with no idea what happened to him. Careening around his huge, warehouse-style apartment, he comes upon a DVD resting on his (of course) giant flat-screen television. And from the obscenity scrawled on its face, we can assume the disc wasn't there when Chelios went to bed. The star of the DVD is Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), a cringingly stereotypical Latino Villain who chews through the limited scenery as he gleefully tells Chelios he's been poisoned with "some Chinese sh*t", and has just an hour or so to live. So the movie opens with its central character already dead (much like D.O.A. did way back in 1950 -- and then again in 1988), and the bad guy's confession already out of the way: Forget solving a crime (already done) or avoiding danger (no point): Chelios gets to spend the whole movie trying to track down and kill Verona before his time runs out. Needless to say, blood will be spilled, limbs severed and cars crashed in the process.

And, as if the early setup wasn't enough of an excuse for pure action, it soon becomes apparent to our hero that when his heart stops pounding, he quickly begins to fade. Describing his symptoms by phone to his sketchy personal physician Doc Miles (country star Dwight Yoakam, wonderful as always), Chelios hears a lot of movie medical mumbo jumbo, all of which means that a rapid flow of adrenaline is the only thing that will keep him alive. Of course, since the conversation takes place while Chelios is high on cocaine and driving his car through a mall, one gets the impression he already knew the prognosis.

Now that all the excuses are firmly in place, Neveldine and Taylor can start the action in earnest -- and start they do. There are probably five minutes in the entire film not filled with the sound of either pounding music, gunshots or crunching metal -- and generally all three are happening at once. On his way to both find Verona and rescue his naïve girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart, playing the same role she always does, with about the same degree of success) -- she thinks he's a computer programmer -- from the thugs he thinks are heading her way, Chelios grimly rampages his way through Los Angeles leaving abject destruction (not to mention lots and lots of bodies) in his wake. (Crank is a very much a kitchen sink action movie: Everything is in there, sometimes twice. Everything.)

All of which could have resulted in a highly enjoyable movie. But Crank isn't. Instead, it feels more like an assault we have to survive, largely because, though the movie is full of the sort of jokes frequently used by action directors to disarm extreme violence (Severed hands: Always funny.), it has a unremittingly grim tone. Statham spends virtually the entire film either swooning or sporting a nasty, tough guy snarl, and he runs/drives/rides through the movie like a soldier assigned a task; it's as if he's trying to get through the 83 minutes just like we are, and is enjoying it just as little.

Jokes in action movies work best when there's a certain acknowledged absurdity to the film. When, after shooting dozens of men in Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger grunts "They're not dead," we laugh in spite of ourselves because the movie itself knows how silly it all is. Like everyone the Terminator meets in the film, our feelings for him are a combination of awe at his robo-Austrian physique and power, and gentle mocking at his inability to understand the world around him. Crank, however, has none of that. When Statham makes cracks about Verona's brother, or plays with that old reliable severed hand, it's all done with the same seriousness of purpose he brings to shooting his handler's henchman in the head, or terrorizing a hospital. And, since we're clearly supposed to think he's the coolest, baddest guy ever to be poisoned in his sleep, there's no room for mocking, either within the movie or without it. As a result the humor falls flat, and serves only to remind us of violence it's try to disarm.

At its core, Crank is nothing more or less than a male fantasy come to life. Bare breasts abound at every turn; rampant, consequence-free violence (at one point, Chelios gets shot; though he complains at the time, it's never spoken of again) and public sex, complete with cheering crowds, provide monotonous set-pieces. (The fact that the sex scene starts out with the woman -- his girlfriend Eve -- repeatedly shouting "NO!" and pushing him away is, of course, completely dismissed.) To that end, it's likely to do huge business with that tantalizing late-teen/early twenties male demographic, who will eat up the naughty, noisy allure of the whole thing, without ever noticing that it's sloppy and unfocused. Which is too bad, because there are fleeting moments in the film -- a quiet conversation between Chelios and Doc Miles, a wonderful, blissful scene set to Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin' at Me" -- that suggest Neveldine and Taylor have the ability to do more than slap together naughtiness and action sequences. The inevitable box office success of Crank, however, is likely to bind them to that assembly line for a long time to come.]]> 2006-09-02T10:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/02/review-crank/ 662382 Getting the jump on other American distributors, Strand Releasing snatched up US rights to Cannes award-winner Poison Friends prior to its stateside debut at next month's New York Film Festival. The second feature from Emmanuel Bourdieu, the movie follows "a circle of college intellectuals who are duped by a seductive and charming pathological liar," exploring "the pretentiousness of the Paris-centric literary scene without pretension." And, if you're still not sure if this one is up your alley or not, this gem from Variety's review of the film should solve any indecisiveness: Bourdieu's film is "so unrepentantly French that viewers who enjoy truly Gallic pics can start (tastefully) salivating now." Ha! And yes, please.

If you can't get to NYFF to see the film, Strand is tentatively planning to have it in theaters next spring. ]]> 2006-09-01T18:03:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/01/strand-has-poison-friends/ 662386 Before I get to the meat of this post, can we all just say "GRK!" a few times? Thank you.

For those of you who, like me, had never seen that glorious word until this morning, it's actually the name of the dog in a British series of children's books (yes, another one of those). The series so far consists of three books -- A Dog Called Grk, Grk and the Pelotti Gang and Grk and the Hot Dog Trail -- that follow the adventures of a 12-year-old boy and his dog (Grk!) as they "fight an evil dictator in Eastern Europe, chase dangerous criminals in South America and pursue other adventures in exotic locations around the world." Film rights to all three of the books were recently picked up by Xingu Films, the production company run by Trudie Styler (who, in addition to being Mrs. Sting, is also a sometime-actress and a very successful producer in her own right).

According to Styler, the series is ripe for the jump to cinema because it's about a normal kid (read: Not Harry Potter or Alex Ryder) who is simply "a citizen who does the right thing and becomes a young activist." Furthermore, "The stories are wildly entertaining and set in exotic places. It's done with the broad stroke of high adventure." So there, haters. Grk! The Hollywood Reporter compares the books to Hergé's Tintin series, which annoys me because nothing can ever be as wonderful as Tintin (and even if Grk does have a better name, there's no way he's as cool as Snowy), but they do sound pretty appealing -- anyone actually read the things? ]]> 2006-09-01T17:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/01/grk-grk-grk-grk-grk/ 662383 The last we heard about John Woo's long-simmering The Battle of Red Cliff was back in February, at which point there were rumors that it actually might be moving forward. And now, a mere seven months later, the project finally has financing lined up, a cast in place, and a confirmed start date. Woo (if you will) hoo! For those of you who have forgotten, the movie is based on a classic Chinese novel, and tells the true story of "the final days of the Han Dynasty in the year 208, ... [covering] the war that established the Three Kingdoms period, when China had three rulers." The central battle of that war took place, as you might have guessed, at Red Cliffs, and involved as many as a million soldiers. Damn.

Surprisingly, the mutterings about the cast have turned out to be mostly true: This morning's Variety reports that the film will star frequent Woo collaborator (back in the Hong Kong days) Chow Yun-Fat, as well as Ken Watanabe, Tony Leung and Lin Chi-Ling, who apparently is a Taiwanese model. The IMDb also lists Andy Lau in the cast, but his presence is unconfirmed.

Production is expected to begin next March, with release planned for early 2008. ]]> 2006-09-01T11:04:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/01/star-studded-cast-for-woos-battle/ 662387 Apparently the people at upstart production company Big Beach have a bit of a "sunshine" fixation: They're going to follow up their smash indie hit Little Miss Sunshine with a project called Sunshine Cleaning. Not, just so we're clear, a sequel in any way -- they're just really, really into the word. According to this morning's Screen Daily, the film will star Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, and is "a character piece about a woman who starts up a business that cleans up after someone dies." Hmm. So we can pretend for the moment that it's about Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction, except as a woman? Sounds good to me. The movie is budgeted at about $7 million, and will be directed by New Zealander Christine Jeffs.

Sunshine Cleaning co-producer Glenn Williamson (Hollywoodland) spoke briefly about the project in Venice yesterday, and also offered a few details about another film with which he's involved, entitled Wonderful World. This one is another character piece with an even smaller budget -- $3-5 million, according to Williamson -- and will tell the story of "a cynical divorcee (Matthew Broderick) who starts a relationship with an African woman (Sophie Okonedo)." The film is being written by Josh Goldin, who will also direct. ]]> 2006-09-01T10:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/09/01/news-from-venice-projects-for-adams-blunt-okonedo-and-broderi/ 661781 Though it took a little while -- the film had its world premiere this past spring at Tribeca -- it's no surprise that Jake Kasdan's The TV Set has finally been picked up for US distribution. After all, it probably came fairly cheap (I realize it's all relative, but you know what I mean), and stars big names like David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver; ThinkFilm certainly can't be blamed for taking a flyer on the thing.

A behind-the-scenes comedy about the television industry, the film stars Duchovny as a naive writer who "steers a fictional skein through a gantlet of stars, managers and a severe network exec (Weaver)." Kasdan spent the early part of his career in television (he directed episodes of both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared), and the TV Set reviews in the trades all mention the impressive accuracy of his depiction of that world. However, they reviews also wonder how funny such an insider story will be to the general public; we'll all get to decide for ourselves when the movie hits theaters next spring. ]]> 2006-08-31T20:04:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/thinkfilm-picks-up-tv-set/ 661782 Samuel Goldwyn Pictures seems to see a huge American audience for foreign, Kirsten Dunst-free period drama that no one else has noticed. To that end, they've picked up the rights to Michael Apted's Amazing Grace, a movie that phantom audience is sure to devour: The film stars a trio of talented actors who are also non-draws in the US (Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney and Romola Garai), and is a biopic of William Wilberforce, an 18th-century British abolitionist. Yes, 90% of America just fell asleep.

Now to me, this sounds awesome (as does the distributor's insane-yet-admirable plan to collaborate with Walden Media on a "comprehensive marketing initiative" addressing modern slavery, and urging social action) -- but you know I'm a history nerd who enjoys reading books about things like maps and 15th-century monarchs. And moviegoers like me will earn this film what, $4,000 on its opening weekend next February? If you're not yet convinced that everyone at SGP has lost their minds (albeit in a wonderfully ambitious way), get this: The release date has been schedule to fall on the 200th anniversary of Parliament's vote to end slavery in all British-controlled territories. If anyone cares about this, I will be the happiest wrong person on earth, but really, the chances seems very, very slim. ]]> 2006-08-31T19:05:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/amazing-grace-for-goldwyn/ 661786 A guy stars on the one the best TV series of all time, and all he can get is a lame, second-banana gig in the Matrix sequels. Then he shows up on a show of debatable quality that everyone watches, and he's got jobs coming out of his ears. Yes, I'm talking about Harold Perrineau. And no, I'm not surprised, just a little depressed. Don't get wrong -- I'm happy the man's getting gigs, just a little resentful that it didn't happen during Oz.

My own pouting aside, things are looking damn good for Perrineau these days: In the past few weeks he's signed up for gigs in three upcoming films. The first is 28 Weeks Later..., in which his role as "an upbeat American Special Forces pilot who documents and leads to safety the families returning to London after the viral outbreak" sounds likely to be pretty small (I'm thinking, like, Richard Dawson in King Rat small here). The others, however, could be more substantial. He'll be playing Richard Roundtree (who in my mind is at least three times Perrineau's size) in Matthew Wilder's Philip K. Dick movie -- recently retitled Your Name Here -- because, at least within the weirdass world of Wilder's film, Roundtree is obsessed with Dick. So to speak. In addition, Perrineau will appear in the harrowing-sounding Gardens of the Night alongside John Malkovich, Jeremy Sisto and Diana Ross' little boy Evan. ]]> 2006-08-31T17:02:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/lots-of-work-for-perrineau/ 661784 Apparently someone has told all of Hollywood that the apocalypse is coming, and we can all be saved only be making MORE MOVIES ABOUT URBAN LEGENDS. And, because they have our best interest at heart, our friends in the movie industry have leaped to humanity's defense: On Monday, Universal bought a super-secret spec script about an urban legend on a college campus, and today comes the news that Intrepid Pictures (which, by the way, has a first-look deal with Universal) just picked up ... exactly the same thing. Yippee, we're saved!

Universal's pic is called Agony; Intrepid's is Mercy. And that's pretty much the only difference. Seriously. Though Universal is being coy for some reason about the details of Agony's plot, it's set on a college campus, and deals with an urban legend that -- shocker! -- turns out to be true. Mercy, meanwhile, is about "a college student who sets out to debunk the urban legend of the Mercy Killer ... only to discover that he is all too real and has chosen her as his next victim."

So basically, if you snuck in under cover of darkness and switched the scripts, no one would notice. Ain't Hollywood great? ]]> 2006-08-31T14:32:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/so-urban-legends-are-the-new-superheroes/ 661647

According to the MPAA website, "One of the highest accolades to be conferred on the rating system is that from its birth in 1968 to this day, there has never been even the slightest jot of evidence that the rating system has deliberately fudged a decision or bowed to pressure." If that statement's patent absurdity wasn't already obvious to any follower of non-mainstream film, This Film Is Not Yet Rated proves it, with a celluloid middle-finger salute to the MPAA and the Leave it to Beaver-style fantasy image it sells to the public.

Despite proudly proclaiming that its board of directors includes "the Chairmen and Presidents of the six major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States", the MPAA nevertheless insist with a sort of dreamy sanguinity on the film ratings board's -- made up of parents, we are repeatedly told, whose only interests are in protecting children and families -- absolute neutrality and invulnerability to outside influence. With that sort of material to work with, mocking the MPAA is like shooting fish in a barrel for a filmmaker as witty and skilled as director Kirby Dick. And mock he does: Via a multi-pronged attack featuring interviews with directors, detective work and side-by-side comparison of levels of obscenity, Dick creates an often-hilarious documentary that is both cutting and compelling; it's so engaging that even filmgoers who wouldn't dream of setting foot in an arthouse cinema will eat it up.

The Film is Not Yet Rated is most effective when it focuses on films, rather than on the MPAA. Though Dick says many directors of independent films were unwilling to talk to him because they feared participation might cause problems with the MPAA in the future, he managed to persuade filmmakers ranging from John Waters and Darren Aronofsky, to Matt Stone and Kimberly Peirce to talk on-camera about their MPAA experiences. To a person, the filmmakers -- all of whom are thoughtful and articulate -- feel that the MPAA treats independent films differently than they do major studio products, and gay sex differently than straight. While both of these arguments are nothing new to opponents of the current ratings system, the gain added power when we hear of Matt Stone, when he was merely the producer of an independent film (Orgazmo), being told that the MPAA doesn't give notes on what scenes cause films to be assigned particular ratings; when he submitted the Paramount-backed Team America: World Police for approval, he was stunned to receive a detailed list of problematic scenes. Or see side-by side sex scenes from films with different ratings, that are virtually identical apart from the genders of the participants.

Later, Dick turns his attention to the members of the much-derided ratings board -- a board that is rigidly anonymous, ostensibly to protect its members from undue influence -- hiring a private detective to unearth their identities. For what appears to be several weeks, the detective -- with Dick in tow -- stakes out the heavily fortified MPAA building, watching and following everyone who leaves for lunch in an effort to determine which are raters and which are simply office workers. In addition, she (legally) goes through the trash of at least one of the possible board members, makes several phone calls to unsuspecting MPAA secretaries and films and photographs her suspects. In the end, she succeeds, and Dick triumphantly displays the names and photographs of all but one of the raters (they have his name, just no pictures), as well as information about their families and living situations -- in some cases, their homes are shown.

While the detective sequences are undeniably great fun to watch (conveniently for Dick, the detective is a lesbian whose is frequently assisted by her partner's teenage daughter; her story ads a bit of tangential emotion to the film), they're also a bit unsettling, when one pauses to consider them. One could perhaps argue that the members of the ratings board should be public figures, and that it's therefore acceptable to share personal information about them in a motion picture -- but what, exactly, is Dick proving by his unmasking? Yes, he found them, and yes, their identities certainly should be a matter of public record. But then what? In reality, Dick has accomplished nothing more than making himself feel better -- the identification of these devils often feels like the tantrum of an offended child: They've made him angry, so now he's going to get back at his appointed bad guys. Which, in reality, is nothing more than an inconvenience for the MPAA: They will simply appoint a new board, and continue to function as they have for years. Though Dick portrays himself as something of a grassroots-style revolutionary in these sequences, his revolution is nothing but a big show, put on, it seems, to satisfy his own ego, and assuage his frustration.

Despite those unsettling moments, however, This Film is Not Yet Rated ably achieves its primary goal: It will get people talking, hopefully in great numbers, about the MPAA and the absurdity of its ratings system. In addition to its snappy editing, a genial host/director in Dick himself and consistent wit, the movie offers the undeniable draw of making audiences feel smart. There's nothing more alluring as a filmgoer than being convincingly told how superior you are to someone in power (in this case, the MPAA and its minions), and Dick is a masterful manipulator. With this film, not only do we learn about the MPAA, but we get to laugh at them as well: They probably deserve it, and Dick knows a perfect hook when he sees it.

For another viewpoint, check out James' Sundance review of the film and read Ryan Stewart's very excellent interview with Kirby Dick.
]]> 2006-08-31T11:03:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/review-this-film-is-not-yet-rated/ 661787 Though he stridently denied his interest in a remake just a few months ago, Peter Jackson has a long-standing love for 1954's The Dam Busters, a British film about a real-life secret squadron created to to destroy three crucial German dams during World War II. And, according to an exclusive interview he gave Screen Daily yesterday, Jackson is, in fact, producing that non-existent remake.* He actually inquired about the rights to the film years ago, before work on the The Lord of the Rings series had even begun. At that time he was told the rights were held by Icon, and that Mel Gibson was considering a remake, but they recently became available again, and Jackson snatched them up.

The film -- retitled Dambusters for our slick, streamlined times -- will be directed by long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers, and the pair have already done extensive research for the project, including trips to England to interview the squadron's surviving pilots, and Germany to visit the rebuilt dams. Though Jackson told Screen Daily that he hopes to begin shooting by the middle of next year with a budget between $30 and $40 million, he and Rivers have yet to hire a screenwriter.

*There's no word yet on whether the offensively named dog will make it into the 21st century version or not. ]]> 2006-08-31T10:04:00+00:00 http://news.moviefone.com/2006/08/31/peter-jackson-is-remaking-dam-busters-after-all/