Dispatches from TIFF: Grab bag O’ Reviews – JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME, MONEYBALL, and THE DAY

Right, I’ve been sitting on these reviews since TIFF ended and if I don’t get them off my plate soon they’ll be useless to everyone. So rather than write up THREE separate reviews I’ve decided to roll them all together into a single omni review.

Read it and enjoy at your own peril.

Review the first, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME aka 'Why do I keep going to comedies that leave me doing the silent man choke up during the emotional climaxes?' I swear to god, since I became a Dad my emotional movie meter has been stuck on ‘blubber’. I used to yawn my way through touching and poignant scenes like they were a cure for insomnia, now I’m trying to keep it together through long distance phone ads and Tim Horton’s commercials.

Help me.

Anyway, Jason Segel is the titular Jeff. Ever since his Dad died 15 years ago Jeff’s family has drifted away from each other. Jeff lives in the basement of his mother’s house, getting high and not doing much of anything at all. His older brother Pat (Ed Helms) is a raging ass who doesn’t care for anyone else except himself and his new Porsche. Refereeing her two sons is Susan Sarandon, an unhappy and lonely woman who’s been able to fill the void in her life since her husband passed away.

Alone in the basement, Jeff is convinced that everything in life has a purpose and that unseen connections exist to tie everything together. He just needs to understand what that connection is. When a mysterious phone call ends up sparking Jeff’s imagination he sets out to prove that there’s more to life than what we see around us.

A low key, but touching comedy, I was pleasantly surprised by JEFF. Helms and Segel are veteran hands of the whole improv-edy genre and I was a little concerned that the two would hijack the film with extended riffing back and forth. Fortunately their focus was laser sharp and the two never get lost in the weeds for very long. Of all the interwoven plot threads at play here Susan Sarandon’s is the most down played but also the most compelling. Her calming presence provides an understated but essential heart and soul to the film.

My biggest complaint is one of a technical nature. The directors, Jay and Mark Duplass, obviously going for documentarian aesthetic, have an irritating habit of doing EXTREME CLOSE UPS on actors’ faces during conversations using hand held cameras. It’s distracting and not more than a little nauseating. There’s a time and a place for shaky cam work, like storming the beaches of Normandy during WWII, but it doesn’t work in this film.

JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME finds its laughs in the everyday foibles of human interaction and dysfunctional, but loving, families. A very solid outing.


Review the second, MONEYBALL.

“You just can’t help but get romantic about baseball”, says Billy Beane, Brad Pitt’s character in the upcoming Oscar bait MONEYBALL. And damned if he isn’t right.

MONEYBALL is the story of General Manager Billy Beane and his attempt to turn the impoverished Oakland Athletics into legitimate contenders against teams that have payrolls that tower his own. Beane’s solution is to embrace the field of sabermetrics, which emphasizes stats over traditional physical considerations, to close the gap between the financial disparities.

$BALL isn’t a baseball movie, it’s a movie about everything that takes place behind the scenes. The film is built upon conference calls and paneled boardrooms rather than pitchers’ duels and physical prowess. But even shorn of traditional baseball movie motives, damned if baseball’s romance doesn’t bleed through anyway.

With strong performances by perennial leading man Pitt and a surprisingly understated, but no less effective, turn by funny man Jonah Hill $BALL is a film that doesn’t take too many risks, but makes the most out of the opportunities it has. You don’t have to like baseball to like this movie, because passion and drive are universal qualities that will speak to any audience.

Review the third, THE DAY.

THE DAY is the low budget love child between MAD MAX and Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD. Only instead of fighting over the world’s remaining oil deposits the post apocalyptic survivors of THE DAY are just struggling to find something to eat. Of course some survivors are a little less squeamish than others, which means they don’t mind dining out on their fellow human beings.

THE DAY deals with a small group of survivors led by Shawn Ashmore and Dominic Monaghan, who stop in a seemingly abandoned farmhouse to rest and take shelter from the elements. However the farmhouse is really just an elaborately constructed trap to capture wayward travellers and hold them there so that they can be slaughtered and eaten by a local group of hunters.

When the cannibals, led by actor Michael Eklund, show up to collect their meal they find they’ve stumbled on more than they bargained for. What follows is a no holds barred, guns a’blazing fight for survival as Ashmore’s group holes up in the farmhouse to fend off the hunters.

For a movie playing about in such rich territory I found the THE DAY to be strangely bloodless, which is odd for a genre film like this. There was more gore and viscera in the TIFF darling DRIVE than the entirety of this film. I’m not calling for violence for the sake of violence, but in a world seemingly awash in bloodthirsty cannibals it seems odd that we’re never actually shown a scene where our protagonists are seriously considered as being candidates for a late night snack. Instead the audience is simply told that the baddies are cannibals, presumably to up the stakes, and the rest is left up to our imaginations, which sadly aren’t given much to go on. I would have liked to have seen some boldness on the part of the film to explore the darker reaches of the human psyche, pushed to the brink, rather than tread on the same old action flick clichés.

THE DAY traded largely on these clichés and stereotyped scenarios, trotting out familiar setups and characters and transposing them into the post-apocalypse scenario. What was fascinating about the movie were the risks not taken and the relatively safety of their approach.

Once our survivors are trapped in the farmhouse all character exploration completely stops. The most interesting characters are dipped in amber, their growth frozen in time and reduced to trotting out stock phrases.

The one standout of the film is actress Ashley Bell, who delivers a very credible performance as a tortured young woman living in this fresh hell, but not really alive. Bell’s character struggles to find the will to keep on fighting, despite all the horror she’s scene and death she’s been apart of. Of all the lead characters, hers is the most watchable and the most original.

Dispatches from TIFF: Film Review - 50/50

50/50 is a the note perfect tale of Adam, portrayed with skill and subtlety by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, after learning that he has a rare and aggressive form of cancer.

Initially optimistic about his chances of beating the disease Adam remains cheerfully defiant in the face of the long odds, the titular 50/50 referring to Adam’s chances of survival. Led by his flakey artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) and his stoner best bud Kyle (Seth Rogen) Adam’s friends and family rally around him to help him through this difficult time.

But as Adam’s disease begins to take a noticeable physical toll his personal life begins to break down as well.

As the harsh reality begins to set in Rachel’s affection for Adam crumbles in the face of his physical needs and his emotional neediness. Finding comfort in the arms of another man her affair is only revealed after Kyle spies her out on the town with her new beau. Betrayed and alone, Adam’s mental state begins to mirror his physical one.

It’s only in his one on one sessions with rookie therapist Katie (Anna Kendrick) that Adam manages to find a measure of solace with what is happening to him.

This movie is easily the best thing I’ve seen at TIFF this year. Be careful about watching this film if someone close to you has cancer. With its low key approach and improv-edy elements, 50/50 will find a chink in the armour of even the most emotionally distant film audience.

Given that I’ve seen Levitt in challenging work at TIFF as far back as 2001 I think it’s unfair that I keep mentally classifying him as that ‘weedy kid from THIRD ROCK’. He’s long ago shown that he is more than capable of handling demanding roles of depth and complexity. Rather than using 50/50 to mark his debut as a serious dramatic actor the role merely cements a truth that’s been self evident for a long time now.

Seth Rogen deserves a nod here as well. Resurrecting his stereotypical improv stoner persona straight out of 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP Rogen plays a crucial role as the film’s light hearted cut up. Without Rogen to provide a necessary stress release outlet 50/50 could easily be caught up in its own subject matter and turn the movie into an unrelenting piece of bleak misery. Instead Rogen’s character allows the audience to release all their pent up emotion in a cathartic belly laugh or two without undermining the dramatic tension of the film.

50/50 is an honest and unflinching examination of what it’s like to have one’s life ripped apart by the unrelenting scourge of cancer. While there are a couple Hollywood clichés at play here, mostly in terms of supporting character stereotypes, that doesn’t mean the film is soft selling us on the horrible fallout that the disease brings. And even if it seems inevitable that the writers will stop just short of following the film’s terminal trajectory to its bitter end that doesn’t mean that the journey the audience takes to get there is diminished in any way.

50/50 will make you laugh and it will make you cry, but it will never, ever lie to you.

Dispatches from TIFF: Film Review – KILLER ELITE

The problem with KILLER ELITE is that it’s actually two distinct films rolled into one. Rather than successfully fuse the two films into a genre bending mind-splosion of cinematic greatness ELITE chooses to simply flip back and forth between genres like a kid watching his Saturday morning ‘toons.

Long story short, it isn’t a very good movie.

Jason Statham is Danny Bryce, a (former) killer with a conscience who’s been pulled back into the game of international assassinery in order to rescue his old mentor Hunter, played by a woefully underutilized Robert DeNiro.

Working for a wealthy, but exiled, Middle Eastern oil sheik Bryce must kill three British SAS soldiers who’ve murdered the sheik’s sons.

A fairly straightforward revenge-style political thriller plot here with lots of room for room for potential. Only the filmmakers decide to muck it all up by imposing on Bryce a set of incredibly complicated criteria that must be applied to each victim.

First of all, as a reform(ing) killer Bryce has a thing about a not killing innocent victims. Now this would be great if innocent victims was code for babies and puppies and people who’ve never been in the SAS. But unfortunately Bryce chooses to apply this to any and everyone who isn’t the exact target he’s been hired to kill. This means that Bryce has to wade into a hornet’s nest of brutal psychopathic killers, all of whom are out to rend him limb from limb, but he can’t kill actually any of them, even when his life is being threatened.

A strange reaction for a lead in a film called KILLER ELITE.

All together now, hand, head, grimace.

Secondly, Bryce has to extract a videotaped confession from each soldier and each death has to look like an accident, to prevent suspicion from being cast back upon our scheming oil baron.

Apparently Bryce is such an effective killer of people that the only way to slow him down long enough to make the killing audience friendly is to place him square in the middle of a series of increasingly elaborate death traps. These excessive restrictions only serve to complicate the plot and don’t add a whit of tension to the film.

Anyway, the first half of the film is all about this espionage stuff. Mostly set in London, all very dirty and grimy, but none of it very exciting.

Then, all of a sudden, its like the producers took a look at their leading man, screamed “HolyshitballswehaveJasonStathaminourfilmwheresallthefighting!?”, and cranked the volume up on the film to 11.

After that KILLER ELITE becomes quite a different film all together, it turns into the Jason Statham action punchfest we all know and love. The only problem is the audience has been lost with the film’s listless build-up that we don’t really care anymore. By the time Statham gets around to leaping buildings and shoving broken chair legs through the faces of our tough as nails SAS soldiers its too far too late. We’re bemused by the films futile attempts to switch gears and all we can do is cast furtive glances at our phones, waiting for the credit sequence to roll. (Which is a bit frustrating considering the film has three separate and distinct end sequences.)

There’s precious little to recommend about this film. It never actually approaches out and out bad, but it is so unfocused and unable to make use of its considerable acting talents that it probably seems more underwhelming than it actually is.

Dispatches from TIFF: Film Review - COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE

COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE follows around a handful comic book devotees at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con. There’s the uber-fan who hopes to break into the biz, the dedicated military man with dreams of penciling for Marvel, the hardcore toy collector who’s only goal this year is to get the Con exclusive 18” Galactus figure, the young couple who found love at last years Con, a group of dedicated cosplayers and Chuck Rozanski, the owner of Mile High Comics, the largest comic retailer in the United States, who is having significant problems with his short term cash flow.

Interspersed between these personal stories are little vignettes from some of the biggest names in comic book and nerd culture, including Joss Whedon, Grant Morrison, Eli Roth, Guillermo del Toro, Kevin Smith and Stan Lee, providing history and context about the annual marketing extravaganza that SDCC has become.

Directed by Morgan Spurlock, of SUPER SIZE ME fame, COMIC CON is a fairly by the numbers documentary. Bucking the trend of recent high profile documentaries who use their celebrity directors as a de facto ring leader and showman, gleefully interacting with their subject matter, Spurlock has chosen to remain entirely absent from this film.

The end result is a documentary that seems strangely devoid of a distinctive personality and tone, which is odd considering the film’s rich subject matter. COMIC-CON just sort of happens and there’s very little about it that jumps up and grabs watchers by the throat. Clocking in at just under an hour and a half the film feels oddly truncated, unfinished and mostly superficial. We’re shown SDCC in all its glitz and glamour, treated to a little bit of history on how the show has changed from a comics focused love in to a multimedia spanning entertainment juggernaut. Despite that, I didn’t really feel like Spurlock captured the organized chaos of the event. He very much kept his camera trained on a few privileged individuals and then just left it there, eschewing some of the other rich offerings SDCC has to offer.

Rather than choosing to focus on his subjects only during the four days of SDCC I would have liked to see the documentary delve a little deeper into the lives of these fans. Who are they when they’re not losing themselves in the cheerful chaos of the Con, how do they balance their obvious nerd credentials with their everyday lives? Attending the Con should be the climax of the film, not simply the backdrop to a series of stories who deserve more thoughtful context and analysis then a perfunctory rundown of their particular nerd fetish.

Despite my less than glowing review of the film, COMIC-CON managed to leave its mark on me nonetheless. A dedicated fanboy myself I harbour my own dreams of someday making it into the rarefied world of comics publishing. As a result the struggles of the film’s two aspiring artists to break into comics struck a particular empathetic chord with me. While the doc itself might be stubbornly middle-of-the-road in terms of quality, it treats its subject matter with respect and never condescends to its audience by poking fun of the fans.

If I’m disappointed with this film it’s only because I’m passionate about the material and can see all the many avenues it chose to leave unexplored.

Dispatches from TIFF: Film Review – DRIVE

I couldn’t have picked a better film to start off my 2011 TIFF programming than DRIVE.

Like the 60’s Clint Eastwood Westerns of yore Ryan Gosling plays a nameless stunt driver, who supplements his income working as a mechanic at Shannon’s garage. But when he’s not doing that Gosling hires himself out as a getaway driver to L.A.’s criminal underground.

Gosling’s driver is a taciturn and calculating individual. Practically a mute, it seems as if the more pressure he’s under the more focused he becomes. But his highly fabricated world begins to fray when he starts to show an interest the single mother Irene, played with an almost childlike innocence by British actress Carey Mulligan, who lives just down the hallway.

After opening with a bang, showing Gosling driving two would be thieves away from the scene of a robbery entirely from the POV of inside the car, the film settles into a slow burn to allow Gosling and Mulligan sometime to build their onscreen chemistry. It seems as if the two lovers have barely begun their courtship when Irene gets the news that her husband (Oscar Isaac) is getting released from jail. When Isaac is beat up in order to extract some protection money he owes from his previous incarceration, Gosling offers to drive the getaway car for a pawn shop heist that will allow to Isaac pay off all his outstanding debts.

Unfortunately the pawn shop is holding onto a million dollars worth of a local gangster’s money and Isaac is killed mere steps from freedom. In the blink of an eye Gosling goes from in charge to out of control as he must figure out a way to protect Irene and give the mobsters back their money, preferably without losing his life in the process.

DRIVE is a gritty, intense crime drama, shot through with rich streaks of tragic love story.

Gosling’s lead character is an unlikely leading man. Too repressed and closed off to be truly likable, but sporting the prerequisite Hollywood heart of gold, he seems like a throwback to an earlier cinematic tough guy stereotype. Sporting a vintage racing jacket and surgically implanted toothpick he really could be Eastwood’s ‘Man With No Name’ stepping into the 21st century.

Gosling delivers his performance in a stripped down, minimalist style, managing to convey more tension and danger through the rasp of a tightened leather driving glove than any clanging movie soundtrack could ever hope to achieve.

At times Gosling’s overly pretty looks seems at odds with his moody character, but in the hands of director Nicolas Winding Refn you soon forget that this is the star of THE NOTEBOOK and CRAZY STUPID LOVE.

I was a little concerned that giving Refn an A-list actor might dilute is his normally uncompromising filmic sensibilities, but except for a few token scenes I was relieved to find that my concerns were misplaced. Refn continues to delight in gleefully pushing the boundaries of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking.

No character is ever safe. They hurt, they bleed, they die; frequently and often bloodily.

If Refn can’t physically maim his cast he resorts to torturing them psychologically. He rends friendships apart, betrays lovers and inserts the threat of betrayal into everything he puts onscreen.

And when Gosling’s perfectly constructed fantasy finally does fall apart, Refn makes sure that its shattered permanently, forever removing any chance of redeeming his leading man.

The film’s third act pushes DRIVE almost into a parody of a grindhouse revenge flick, with Gosling forced, in fits of gory ultra violence, to dispatch anyone who would threaten Irene.

Between Gosling and Refn DRIVE is elevated beyond a conventional crime drama into something quite different. It frequently switches film genres like some people switch underwear and the results are uniformly shocking. Supported by Bryan Cranston, Carey Mulligan and Albert Brooks (inhabiting a role as pragmatic gangster) DRIVE is a fascinating and compelling tale of the lengths one man will go to in order to the right thing.

Dispatches from the Toronto International Film Festival

It’s that time of year again. Time to get my film-on with my annual September dalliance at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I’ve been going to TIFF for over a decade now, ever since my salad days as a poor woe begotten film student. Blowing a substantial amount of my tuition money on as much as 35 tickets a year TIFF was a sleep deprived, poorly fuelled and nonstop whirlwind that I looked to every time.

Of course, by the end of it many of the movies would often blend in to one another and if you quizzed me at the end of the day I’d be hard pressed to tell you what films I’d seen that morning.

But that’s not the point, is it?

The best film experiences I’ve had come from crowding into a movie theatre with a bunch of like minded film devotees who aren’t there to simply kill a few hours on a Friday night but are eagerly looking forward catching the latest cinematic offering by their artist of choice. This means an audience with no texting, or yakking with their neighbours or taking phone calls in the middle of the show, which is a rarity in this time and age.

This year, for the first time ever, I actually got all my first choices. This promises a pure, uncompromised cinematic injection the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. Unfortunately circumstances have forced me to moderate my festage somewhat; this year I’m seeing a paltry 10 films. So to make the best of the situation I’m forgoing my usual wide sampling (Canadian, Inde, Sci-Fi, Horror, ANYTHING WITH TAKESHI KITANO IN IT) in order to focus more on the Hollywood hits that I’d probably would have seen in the theatre anyway but won’t have time to catch this year.

So, in no particular order, the films I’m seeing at TIFF this year are…

DRIVE
You might know it as the fast car movie starring Canucklehead pretty boy Ryan Gosling but DRIVE boasts some serious auteur credentials in director Nicholas Winding Refn. I was first exposed to Refn’s work during TIFF two years ago when I caught VALHALLA RISING, an epic Viking quest fuelled by blood, religion and hallucinogenic drugs. The film was so powerful that I went back and checked out Refn’s other movies including his seminal work, the disturbing PUSHER trilogy. Needless to say, I’ve been hooked on his distinct directorial style and his unflinching take on complex subject matter. I’m highly looking forward to this one.

COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE
Do I really need to explain this one? Directed by Morgan Spurlock, Mr. SUPER-SIZE-ME himself, the film is a behind the scenes look at the fans who attend the San Diego Comic Con. When I was at SDCC this year Spurlock was in attendance doing some additional filming. It’s a film tapping into the particular niche of geek culture that I call home. There was never any doubt I was going to pass this one up.

KILLER ELITE
I’ve got a man crush. The recipient of said crush? Jason Statham.

KILLER ELITE is the latest entry for the king of slightly better-than-average action flicks. Only this time he’s backed up by a little more actorial gravitas with screen heavyweights Robert DeNiro and Clive Owens.

Working a well worn plot, retired SAS agent must get back into the biz in order save his mentor, ELITE promises two hours of splashy gun battles, gritty one-liners and plot twists so thin they might as well be invisible. I can’t wait.

HARD CORE LOGO II
I had to have at least one Canadian entry and why not the sequel to one of the grittiest, dirtiest, foulest (and best) Canadian films ever? Made 14 years after the original LOGO, which owned the faux documentarian style, following around the fictitious and titular punk band fronted by Headstones singer Hugh Dylan, director Bruce McDonald is going back to the well by re-exploring the same basic plot with a new band and a 21st century backdrop.

Unfortunately I’ve found McDonald’s latest films to be rather an uneven lot, so I have to say I’m seeing this one more out of a sense of dutiful obligation than burning desire. But watching the first film was a transformative experience for me in film school and I live in hope that with this follow up McDonald will be able to capture some of the grubby lightning that made the first entry so damn good.

50/50
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who will forever be known to me as the little kid from 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN) and Seth Rogen bring the funny. Nothing wrong with that right?

Basic plot? Gordon-Levitt is diagnosed with cancer and is told that his chances of surviving are 50/50. Rather than be overwhelmed by his diagnosis he chooses to embrace life and what not. At least that’s what the trailer is trying to tell me.

A HAPPY EVENT
Look, I’m still a newish dad right? That means I’m strangely interested in movies and television shows where other newish parents struggle with the responsibilities that parenthood bestows upon us. That’s mostly so I can feel better about my own parenting missteps and reassured that not screwing things up too bad.

A HAPPY EVENT is just that. Refusing to be thrown off by the fact that its French, and all the baggage that might entail, I thought I’d check out some international parenting films and see what they’ve got to offer.

WARNING: I just checked out the imdb summary while writing up this post. I may have badly miscalculated here. The recap is full of that flowery pretentious language that tells me I’m in for a deep, thinking film that promises to explore the ‘human condition’, rather than the endless stream of dirty diapers and feeding time follies that characterizes my current situation.

BEHOLD THE LAMB
More international goodness. This film was kind of my wild card entry. I read ‘Irish’ and ‘dark comedy’ in the film’s synopsis and decided to just wing it, sight unseen. Other than that I have no idea what it’s about.

Lamb watching maybe?

I’ve had some luck with the Russian roulette method of choosing films before, getting exposed to some interesting films I would not otherwise have seen. I’ve also seen some real stinkers too. I’ll let you know what side of this coin this one turns out to be.

JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME
A film I picked based on the strength of its cast. Starring Jason Segel as a shut in afraid to leave his mother’s house, it looks like a nice piece of light comedy that shouldn’t have too much thinking involved. I do enough of that already.

The film also stars comic talents Ed Helms and Judy Greer so I’m hoping its not going to be another improve-edy. (We all agree that those are done with for a few years right?) But I’ve only really gotten into Segel’s work over the last year or so after catching HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER in reruns over the summer. So I’m prepared to laugh, laugh til it hurts.

MONEYBALL
The great romantic era of baseball movies is over. (As is the great romantic era of baseball itself) In its place is a game played by millionaires and managed by billionaires.

And yet, for me anyway, the allure of the game lives on.

I’ve recently started warming up to baseball again, coasting on all those warm, fuzzy nostalgic feelings from my youth. Will MONEYBALL be able to adequately capture how the game has changed so substantially and yet still manages to be relevant to the fans?

Maybe?

I just want to watch a good baseball movie again. And this one doesn’t look too shabby.

No, Brad Pitt probably won’t be at the screening. Sorry.

THE DAY
Post-apocalyptic MAD MAX\THE ROAD mashup, starring Charlie from LOST!

Stabby-stabby!

Shooty-shooty!

Sigh, you had me at stabby.

Seriously, this is not highbrow stuff here and that’s just how I like my post-apocalyptic films.