TIFF 2010 Day 2: Jack Goes Boating; Curling; Never Let Me Go

September 11, 2010Posted in2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Sci-Fi, TIFF, TIFF 10, UK

by Bill Chambers Friday began with Jack Goes Boating, the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also stars as the title character. Jack is an airport limo driver who’s been the third wheel in the lives of his married friends Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Ruben-Vega) for so long that they’ve decided to intervene by setting him up with the mousy but receptive Connie (Amy Ryan). The movie, adapted–and, one suspects, significantly “opened up”–by Bob Glaudini from his own Off-Broadway play, casually parallels their burgeoning romance with the evaporation of Clyde and Lucy’s relationship. In a fall preview on his delightful blog, Nick Davis summed up his level of anticipation for Jack Goes Boating thusly: “Loved Synecdoche but can’t take much more schlub.” Truer words, etc. Jack isn’t just a schlub, he’s the ur-schlub, a maddeningly static individual who has to be nudged into action like a soccer ball, and Hoffman lights and poses himself to look as appetizing as Grimace from the Happy Meals. I much prefer another passion project of Hoffman’s, Love Liza: although it operates on the same demented frequency as Jack Goes Boating, there’s a whole slew of theatrical affectations to contend with this time around. (You can eventually set your watch to Jack’s nervous throat-clearing.) Ortiz is tremendously winning, though, in a bromantic role that reveals a lot more range, not to mention teeth, than Hollywood’s ever given him a chance to show. Jack Goes Boating reminded one woman I spoke to of Rocky; I can see it if I squint.

TIFF 2010 Day 1: Stone; I’m Still Here

September 9, 2010Posted in2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, Jack Nicholson, Music, Pseudo-Documentary, Robert De Niro, Thriller, TIFF, TIFF 10

by Bill Chambers I started the morning off on a bum note by boarding the wrong subway train (which caused me to miss The Town), but other than that, the day went off without a hitch. I found the new homebase of the Festival okay, spotted Karina Longworth (who like most critics of note looks part cartoon character), got mistaken for a stand-up comic (am I the only one who feels bizarrely contrite when this happens?), and managed to park my ass in a cinema just as Stone was beginning to unspool. As an aside, I now see a real upside to holding the press screenings at the Scotiabank instead of the Varsity, as the larger auditoriums are cutting down on the last-minute scrambles to find a seat; at both of my movies today, the first few neck-straining rows were almost entirely empty. It’s a throwback, really, to the good old days of the Uptown.

2009 TIFF Bytes #3.5: A Shine of Rainbows

September 23, 2009Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Family, Film Festivals, Ireland, TIFF
originally published September 23, 2009Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF:A SHINE OF RAINBOWS (dir. Vic Sarin)Gawd, this movie is so nauseatingly nice. And generic. And hackneyed--any seasoned moviegoer will be able to predict every single story beat in advance. Connie Nielsen and Aidan Quinn--neither of whom is from Ireland (the director, meanwhile? From India)--play an Irish couple who adopt an adorable stuttering moppet (John Bell) from the local Dickensian orphanage. Because the kid is timid, kind of effeminate, and more than happy to learn the ropes…

2009 TIFF Bytes #3: A Gun to the Head; Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

September 22, 2009Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, Thriller, TIFF

originally published September 22, 2009
Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF:
A Gun to the Head (d. Blaine Thurier)
Those who, like me, missed Male Fantasy, the sophomore feature of Blaine Thurier, may find themselves at a loss to distinguish between Thurier's growth as a filmmaker and advancements in digital video since his directorial debut, the better-in-retrospect Low Self Esteem Girl. Thurier's latest, the Vancouver-lensed A Gun to the Head, is comparatively polished, yet the film, with its focus again on suburban drug culture, feels dismayingly unevolved coming from someone who leads a prolific life that includes a steady gig as the keyboardist for the indie-rock supergroup The New Pornographers–even as it cops to a certain anxiety about abandoning comfortable milieux via Trevor (Tygh Runyan), a newlywed struggling with the demands of marriage in the face of his old freedoms. Basically a bush-league Mikey and Nicky, the picture has Trevor ferrying paranoid cousin Darren (Paul Anthony) all over town on a drug run just to avoid the dinner party his wife (Marnie Robinson, the spitting image of Jordana Spiro) is throwing back home; eventually the two run afoul of Darren's suppliers, who have already shown themselves capable of murder. I will say that Thurier is good with actors–this cast really brings it, with the suddenly-vivacious Sarah Lind a particular standout. (Revealing hidden comic chops, she plays a nasal-voiced bimbo who only picked up the word for "um" on her trip to Japan.) Lead baddie Hrothgar Mathews unfortunately bears a sometimes-striking resemblance to Glenn Gould the same year a documentary about the famous pianist plays alongside A Gun to the Head at the TIFF. Which leads me to… (**/4, by the way.)

2009 TIFF Bytes #2.5: Vincere

September 21, 2009Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, TIFF
originally published September 21, 2009Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF: Vincere (Win) (d. Marco Bellocchio)Structurally and even editorially, the oddly-titled Vincere (Win) is kind of a mess, but the badass opening scene hooked me. Therein, a slender, dark-eyed journalist with a good head of hair--you guessed it: Benito Mussolini--sets a pocket watch and gives God five minutes to strike him down; if he's still alive when time runs out, Mussolini (Filippo Timi) tells the pious crowd gathered before him, it means there is no God. I really wanted…

2009 TIFF Bytes #1.5: White Material

September 15, 2009Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Claire Denis, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Thriller, TIFF
originally published September 15, 2009Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF:White Material (d. Claire Denis)This is Claire Denis' very own Gone with the Wind, and she seems to denote it as epic by shooting it in 2.35:1 widescreen. Headstrong Maria (Isabelle Huppert) struggles to keep the Vial coffee plantation operating in the midst of an African civil war despite accumulating exit cues. Her entire workforce heeds the evacuation call she chooses to ignore. She finds a severed animal's head among the beans. Her son (Nicolas Duvauchelle) goes…

Mute Witness: On “Synecdoche, New York”

September 14, 2008Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Charlie Kaufman, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 14, 2008
As threatened, a few stream-of-consciousness thoughts on Charlie Kaufman's latest…

When Synecdoche, New York premiered at Cannes, I remember being annoyed by how feeble the critical coverage on it was. But I get it now. This is a film I'm hard-pressed to describe, let alone review in depth, after just a single viewing. I can say that I see why Kaufman kept this one for himself rather than entrusting it to Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry—it's so dense and cryptic that it would be nigh uninterpretable by anyone but the source. Kaufman is a pretty meat-and-potatoes director, all things considered, but there are so many idiosyncrasies built into the material that it's stylish by default.

Why I’m Not Formally Reviewing ‘Control’

September 9, 2007Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 9, 2007Control is an authentic-feeling biopic about the late Ian Curtis, the epileptic front man for Joy Division who committed suicide–though a revisionist theory absurdly contends that he "accidentally" hung himself from the clothesline in his Manchester flat–in 1979 at the age of 23. Spoiler. Directed by music-video auteur Anton Corbijn and objectively lensed in black-and-white and 'scope by Martin Ruhe, the film overcomes the central miscasting of Samantha Morton as Ian's wife Deborah (though she would've nailed this role in her Morvern Callar days, she's far too long in the tooth for it now) with the near-perfect casting of Sam Riley as Curtis, Craig Parkinson as Tony Wilson, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Annik Honoré, a.k.a. The Other Woman. (Morton's incongruous star-power is easily explained by the basis for Control's screenplay: Deborah Curtis' own memoir Touching from a Distance.) The film is admirably not a hagiography while engendering empathy for a gifted asshole more successfully than, say, Man on the Moon, and the song recreations are surprisingly persuasive, although I was a bit disappointed with how literalmindedly the music is applied at times.

The TIFFing Point

September 14, 2006Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 14, 2006
Two more days until I turn back into a pumpkin (or something like that), probably for the good of not only my health, but also that of FILM FREAK CENTRAL. Anyway, some more stopgap coverage for you…

FAY GRIM (d. Hal Hartley)
As far as this unlikely sequel to the brilliant Henry Fool is concerned, those hoping for a Before Sunset should brace themselves for a Texasville. The movie feels like it came out of Hartley sideways (or, conversely, all too painlessly), and it never really catches fire until Thomas Jay Ryan makes his long-delayed cameo as Henry Fool. By then, it's too little too late. **/****

My TIFF So Far

September 9, 2006Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF

originally published September 9, 2006
Seems we're all a little constipated right now but rest assured reviews are on the way; here's a quick rundown of TIFFpix screened thus far by yours truly.

BABEL (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
It coheres better than 21 Grams, but Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are really spinning their wheels at this point. A few funny extratextual lessons are imparted: never take a Fanning to Mexico (Elle has almost as harrowing an adventure there as sister Dakota does in Man on Fire); and never trust a director who includes a post-script dedication to his children. As with 21 Grams, though, Babel doesn't make room for any intentional levity, eventually desensitizing you to all the calculated anguish. *½/****

More Two-Second TIFF Reviews

September 15, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 15, 2005Wassup Rockers (d. Larry Clark) Somehow the most humanistic film of Clark's career is also his most nihilistic. Nice to see him acknowledge the "other," but they're still skater punks. *** (out of four)Romance & Cigarettes (d. John Turturro) A fugue. In the words of David Lynch, "Fugues make me crazy!" Actually eager to rant about this one. *½ (out of four)All the Invisible Children (ds. Various)As with any omnibus film, hit-or-miss. I think I liked Kátia Lund's segment best, but John Woo does his best work since heading West. Your mileage will vary. **½ (out of four)

Two-Second TIFF Reviews

September 12, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 12, 2005Mary (d. Abel Ferrara)Third-tier Ferrara, as evidenced by his choice of star (Matthew Modine). ** (out of four)Heading South (Vers le sud) (d. Laurent Cantet)Cantet works in dread the way some work in oils. A much-needed antidote to the twee likes of Ladies in Lavender. *** (out of four)Takeshis' (d. Takeshi Kitano)A kind of career summary for Beat by way of Buñuel; heard outside the screening: "Was that a comedy?" Short answer: yes. ***½ (out of four)

In Es-Crowe: On “Elizabethtown”

September 10, 2005Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Film Festivals, TIFF
originally published September 10, 2005Because Cameron Crowe considers it a work-in-progress, critics at last night's TIFF screening of the interminable Elizabethtown were asked, in not so many words, to handle the film with kid gloves. (Apparently the folks at Venice saw a completely different cut.) So to avoid a flap, I won't be posting a capsule review at the mother site, but let me just say that the version I saw--which looked polished but by no means finished--makes one long for the subtlety and finesse of Garden State. (And really, how much more warning do you need?) Its epiphanies are so processed and…