Drama Archives - Page 29 of 119 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Unbroken (2014)

December 24, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Coen Brothers, Drama, Sports, Theatrical, War

*/****
starring Jack O'Connell, Domhnall Gleeson, Miyavi, Garrett Hedlund
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen and Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson
directed by Angelina Jolie

by Walter Chaw I genuinely believe that Angelina Jolie means well. She's like the distaff Sean Penn. Unlike Sean Penn, she probably shouldn't direct more movies. Jolie does her research by going to the places she makes movies about. She cares. She adopts children from those places. She takes embarrassing publicity photos with her subjects, sometimes, that indicate not malicious self-promotion, but rather an unaffected, Costner-esque surprise and wonder. She's growing in her morality before our very eyes, and it's great, but her second time up to the plate, Unbroken, is naive and simpering. The only thing remotely interesting about it is that its subject, Olympic athlete and WWII POW Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell), after getting tortured by the Japanese for a while, decided post-war to embrace Billy Graham and forgive his torturers. That bit, the interesting bit, is left to a few lengthy end-title cards. It's sort of like reading the Old Testament and calling it good and, um, wanting to post the Ten Commandments in schools instead of the Sermon on the Mount. Never mind.

The Gambler (2014)

December 24, 20142014, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jessica Lange
screenplay by William Monahan, based on the screenplay by James Toback
directed by Rupert Wyatt

by Angelo Muredda "The only way out is all in," teases the dishonest poster for The Gambler, a safe adaptation of Karel Reisz and James Toback's 1974 original that would surely bore its own hero. It's hard to say who's most at fault for turning Toback's semi-autobiographical moral tale of a failed author turned debt-ridden professor into such easygoing pap–the antithesis of all-in. The contenders run from Toback's own smug paean to male irascibility in the original to Rupert Wyatt's slick commercial style, as forgettable as it is watchable. But it's tempting to put all your money on William Monahan. Oscar-certified out of the gate for The Departed's heavy philosophical nothings and largely unheralded since (except by Ridley Scott apologists), Monahan has apparently had some time to think about what it means for a serious man with serious thoughts to not quite live up to his potential. The Gambler becomes the unwitting dumping ground for all he's learned, a redemptive character study of a shitty guy who accepts congratulations for every last baby step he takes into adulthood.

Vengeance is Mine (1979) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

December 17, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Japan, The Criterion Collection

Vengeanceismine1

***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A
starring Ken Ogata, Mayumi Ogawa, Mitsuko Baisho, Frankie Sakai
screenplay by Masaru Baba, based on the novel by Ryuzo Saki
directed by Shohei Imamura

by Walter Chaw It would be tempting to say that nature is appalled by all the terrible things Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) does. Just after Enokizu hammers an old man to death in a garden and takes his stuff, Nature erupts in a windstorm–furious witness, it seems: a tempest as analogy for the rough gales driving the mysterious tides of this murderer’s soul. Yet Shohei Imamura has something else entirely on his mind. Vengeance is Mine is about the fallacy of a moral universe. It’s not that it believes there’s no reason for atrocity; rather, it believes there’s no definition for atrocity. Imamura is the spiritual brother of guys like Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick. The questions he asks aren’t about ethics and morality, they’re about all the ways that men lie to themselves about being bound by ethics and morality, only to transgress those boundaries they create, whether they be bans on religion, law, or philosophy. They’re not evil. They can’t help it. No one can.

Inherent Vice (2014)

December 14, 2014****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, Esoterica, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston
screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

by Walter Chaw Paul Thomas Anderson’s maybe-second, arguably third Thomas Pynchon adaptation after There Will Be Blood and The Master, Inherent Vice is the first official one, as well as the truest. It provides a Rosetta stone for Anderson’s career to this point, Pynchon’s work serving as a template for an artist crossing genres while holding true to a certain standard of intellectual rigour, a certain florid prosody, a specific interest in telling true the story of whatever the times may be. Inherent Vice also offers a framework for Anderson’s intimidating film craft, his particular way of marrying image with sound, and the extraordinary shots–unbroken literally or rhythmically–that have made his movies as much pop poetry and music as narrative. Consider the reunion sequence in Punch-Drunk Love that finds Shelley Duvall singing Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack while Anderson rocks the camera like a baby in a cradle, or the wordless opening sequence of There Will Be Blood, with Jonny Greenwood’s terrifying, Kubrick-ian Dawn of Man overture rattling the soundscape. Or the Gravity’s Rainbow opening of The Master as our hero, on a boat, sways in another swaddle far above his madding crowd. Remarkable stuff. Cinema as high art, doing things that only cinema can do.

Jersey Boys (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

November 16, 20142014, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Drama, DVD, Musical

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Christopher Walken
screenplay by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Angelo Muredda Clint Eastwood has never been the most self-referential filmmaker, preferring shopworn competence to flashy displays of idiosyncrasy. But it’s hard to imagine he’s not at least slightly gaming his audience throughout Jersey Boys, an otherwise limp tour through the Four Seasons‘ early discography. What else are we to make of the gag where baby-faced songwriter Bob Gaudio (Chris Klein dead ringer Erich Bergen) catches an image of his director’s grizzled mug in “Rawhide” on a hotel TV? While that feels like a pretty straightforward joke on Eastwood’s uncanny endurance all the way from “Sherry” (1962) to Jersey Boys the Broadway musical (2005), it’s a bit harder to read an equally surreal moment like the dispute between producer and sometime lyricist Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle) and wise-guy guitarist Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) over the band’s sound. “I’m hearing it in sky blue,” Crewe whines in the middle of a recording session, “and you’re giving me brown.” On the one hand, it’s not like Eastwood to take the piss out of his own work, but on the other, what better analogy for his adaptation process can there be than the conversion of a sky-blue all-American songbook to a shit-brown sung résumé, rendered all in blacks and greys save for the odd splash of salmon and the occasional scrap of tweed?

Draft Day (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

November 13, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Sports

Draftday1

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Chadwick Boseman
screenplay by Rajiv Joseph & Scott Rothman
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Walter Chaw The first Broncos game I remember watching was on the couch with my father. October 16, 1977. I was four. They were playing the Oakland Raiders–hated rivals, I’d come to understand–and featured players from my eternal morning like Craig Morton, Haven Moses (who I had the pleasure of sharing a couple of pitchers and a few dozen hot wings with a decade ago), Riley Odoms, Louis Wright, and Otis Armstrong. I have all of their signatures on an old ball, gathering dust on a bookshelf in my office. I have all of their rookie cards in little plastic holders. Since that first game, I’ve seen every one in its entirety save four, most of them in real-time. (I was in the hospital for some reason or other for three of those.) When the Broncos won their first Super Bowl against the Green Bay Packers in 1998, I cried like a baby and worried for hours afterwards that there had been some mistake–that the universe could take it all away.

The Normal Heart (2014) – Blu-ray Disc + Digital HD

November 9, 20142014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Television

Normalheart1

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Julia Roberts
written by Larry Kramer, from his play
directed by Ryan Murphy

by Bryant Frazer The Normal Heart begins in 1981, as a ferry pulls into Fire Island Pines, the nexus of social life for well-off gay New Yorkers who prize sunshine and sexual freedom. Stepping off that boat is Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), a writer from New York who seems at once titillated and disturbed by the buff, barely-dressed men suddenly surrounding him. Weeks, it turns out, is a notorious buzzkill. He wrote an infamous novel criticizing promiscuity (“All I said was having so much sex makes finding love impossible,” he objects when called on it), and he resists joining the party with his sexually active friends, instead watching from the sidelines when their dancing gets dirty. Still, he’s human, and wanders into the woods in search of more ephemeral–and anonymous–companionship. As he leaves the island, a newspaper headline draws his attention: “Rare Cancer Is Diagnosed in 41 Homosexuals.” And so it begins.

Force Majeure (2014)

October 30, 2014****/****, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Sweden, Theatrical

Turist
****/****
starring Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wttergren, Vincent Wettergren
written and directed by Ruben Östlund

by Walter Chaw As so few people saw the magnificent The Loneliest Planet (including a few who actually reviewed it), it's hardly a spoiler to say that Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure is essentially the droller, married version of Julia Loktev's masterpiece of relational/gender dynamics. Set at an exclusive ski resort in the French Alps, the picture follows handsome workaholic Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and his beautiful wife, Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), as they spend a week with their two adorable children in what should be a winter paradise. On the first day, something terrible happens and, more to the point, Tomas doesn't act or react in the way one would expect of a husband and father, leading to a series of increasingly awkward conversations between not only the couple, but also their friends Matts (Kristofer Hivju) and Matts's much-younger girlfriend, Fanny (Fanni Metelius). The brilliance of Force Majeure is how carefully it builds itself to the "big event" and then, after, how perfectly Östlund captures the way people talk to one another, whether married with children or just starting off. It's a withering essay on masculine roles and ego–one, too, on the parts women play in easing or exacerbating those expectations. It's amazing.

Insomnia (1997) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

October 21, 20141990s, 2014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Norway, The Criterion Collection, Thriller

Insomnia2

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Stellan Skarsgård, Sverre Anker Ousdal, Bjørn Floberg, Gisken Armand
screenplay by Nicolaj Frobenius & Erik Skjoldbjærg
directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg

by Walter Chaw A rather astonishing feature debut, Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Insomnia is dour, surreal, nihilistic, and steadfast in its theme of masculine self-reflection. It’s as slippery to pin down and single-mindedly purposeful as its protagonist–a procedural only inasmuch as Oedipus Rex is a procedural. It’s a work of Expressionism, in other words: its exteriors are projections of its interiors in all their canted, perverse, blighted ugliness. An essential misnomer to call it a “noir,” Insomnia in its best moments is an absurdist nightmare that pinions male behaviour as these constant vacillations between violence and frailty. (This choice to discuss the world in terms of gender relationships is likely why it’s considered a noir at all.) It’s the movie that brought Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård to international prominence via a role that suggested a departure, hot on the heels of Breaking the Waves, though a quick peek at his earliest work (especially Zero Kelvin) hints at the volatility of Insomnia‘s Det. Engstrom. He’s the centre of a dark universe. Setting the film in a place above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t set has the interesting effect of lighting Engstrom, as he commits his many black deeds, like a particularly ill patient in a doctor’s examining room.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Whispers Behind the Wall + The Duke of Burgundy

October 19, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Germany, Romance, Thriller, UK

Die Frau hinter der Wand
**½/****
directed by Grzegorz Muskala

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY
***/****
written and directed by Peter Strickland

by Walter Chaw Grzegorz Muskala's moody, sexy Whispers Behind the Wall updates Matthew Chapman's little-seen but well-remembered Heart of Midnight. Both films are about a young, vulnerable, single person in a new space, discovering Monsters of the Id hiding behind the walls. Where Chapman's film tossed literal apples at a quailing Jennifer Jason Leigh, Muskala introduces vaginal holes in his hero Martin's (Vincent Redetzki) new flat, the better to hide illicit diaries and, ultimately, ease egress into the climax. More, Muskala fills Martin's never-draining bathtub with red sludge, and hides in its drain, in one of several nods to Hitchcock, the key to the whole bloody affair. It seems that Martin, a student who looks just like Ewan McGregor in Shallow Grave, has secured his new, coveted lodgings on the strength of his willingness to allow a creepy caretaker to take a shirtless picture for hot landlady Simone (Katharina Heyer). It also seems former occupant Roger has disappeared, leaving Martin to eavesdrop on Simone banging her insane boyfriend Sebastian (Florian Panzer) before finding himself in Simone's eye, in her clutches, and in her bed.

Fury (2014)

October 16, 20142014, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, War

*½/****
starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña
written and directed by David Ayer

by Walter Chaw Signifying not much, David Ayer's Fury is another of his brutal excoriations/celebrations of men under pressure that people like Howard Hawks did really well because people like Howard Hawks are geniuses. It follows Wardaddy (Brad Pitt), a tank commander in the 2^nd Armored Division doing mop-up duty in the heart of Nazi Germany during the first months of 1945. His motley crew of battle-hardened, psychopathic misfits is composed of backwoods inbred "Coon-Ass" (Jon Bernthal); the quietly religious one who's going to go insane, Bible (Shia LaBeouf); Mexican guy Gordo (Michael Pena); and clean-cut-rookie-whom-Wardaddy-will-take-under-his-wing-and-see-himself-in-while-they-both-learn-something-from-each-other-they-didn't-think-they-could Norman (Logan Lerman). Episodic in the way of such things, it's a story of men and war told through a series of tank battles, intra-tank squabbling, and dramatic scenes like the one where Wardaddy makes Norman kill someone in cold blood, and that other one where Wardaddy makes Norman sleep with a beautiful young fräulein they discover hiding in the rubble (Alicia von Rittberg). Woe be to any woman in an Ayers joint, however. Spoiler.

All That Jazz (1979) [The Criterion Collection] – Dual-Format Edition

October 15, 2014****/****, 1970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Palme d'Or Winner, The Criterion Collection

Allthatjazz

****/***** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer
written and directed by Bob Fosse

by Bryant Frazer Celebrated as an incisive, self-lacerating backstage spectacle and razzed as an indulgent and pretentious passion project, genius director-choreographer Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz is one of the most ambitious American films of the 1970s. At this point in his career, Fosse had nothing to prove to the show-business establishment (in 1973, he won the Oscar, the Tony, and the Emmy, all for directing), but a 1974 brush with death–exhaustion, heart attack, life-saving surgery–put him in an introspective mood, and the results were spectacular. Not content with reaching a dazzling apotheosis in the on-screen presentation of song and dance, Fosse wove singing and dancing into a semi-autobiographical narrative chronicling the final days in the life of Joe Gideon, a genius director-choreographer whose non-stop work regimen is making him physically ill. Underscoring the threat, All That Jazz opens with a line attributed to the high-wire artist Karl Wallenda, who fell to his death during a performance in 1978: “To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting,” Joe’s work is his life, and the irony is that his work–along with the pills and smokes that keep him going–is what kills him.

Fantastic Fest 14: The World of Kanako

October 9, 20142014, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Japan, Mystery

***½/****
starring Koji Yakusho, Nana Komatsu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Jo Odagiri
screenplay by Tetsuya Nakashima, Miako Tadano, Nobuhiro Monma, based on the novel by Akio Fukamachi
directed by Tetsuya Nakashima

by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike's Natural Born Killers, essentially, with a bit of the old Park Chan-wook ultra-violence (or is it Shohei Imamura's A Clockwork Orange? Tarantino's Hardcore?); I'm finding it next to impossible to talk about Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako free of larger contexts, and its short-circuiting of my hard drive is perhaps intentional. The film is extremely stylish, distractingly so–or it would be if not for a central, anchoring performance from Koji Yakusho as disgraced detective Akikazu Fujishima, demolished by a long drunk and roused back to furious, ugly action by the disappearance of his daughter, Kanako (Nana Komatsu). Yakusho is so good, so grounded in his self- destruction and loathing, so extraordinary, really, from calamity to atrocity to spurious bloodletting, that watching him in this Grand Guignol is something like a true privilege. He's manifested possibly the most disgusting hero in the history of such things (Mickey Rourke's Harry Angel? Eagle scout), a creature of this dank, abattoir noir who gets progressively filthier, baser, as the picture unravels. His performance, not to gild the lily, is fucking genius.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Esoterica, Musical, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham
written and directed by Brian De Palma

by Bryant Frazer When did Brian De Palma become Brian De Palma? Some of the director’s pet themes were already taking shape in his earliest films, and–following his abortive, disowned studio debut, Get to Know Your Rabbit—Sisters proved he could make something out of a lurid, over-the-top indie thriller. But only Phantom of the Paradise suggested the real scale of his outré ambition. Mixing slasher-movie tropes into a supernatural romantic fantasy with elements of rock opera, in collaboration with an actual star singer-songwriter? In 1974, apparently Brian De Palma believed he could do anything.

Gone Girl (2014)

October 2, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Fincher, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry
screenplay by Gillian Flynn, based on her novel
directed by David Fincher

by Walter Chaw The only question David Fincher's movies try to answer is whether it's possible to do everything well (better than well, really–I mean better than anyone has ever done anything before) and still produce what is essentially a piece of shit. He's the king of garbage cinema, David Lean doing Jackie Collins for some damn reason. Sometimes he does misanthropic stuff that's transcendent (Se7en, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and sometimes he does misanthropic stuff like Gone Girl. Don't get me wrong: for what it is, Gone Girl is a masterpiece, but its source, Gillian Flynn's ridiculously-popular potboiler, is so trashy that at some point one can't help but wonder if Fincher isn't testing himself with the weakest possible material. After tackling this and Stieg Larsson, I suspect he was in the running for, and disappointed not to get his hands on, Fifty Shades of Grey; how about this one with Fabio on the cover, Mr. Fincher? There seems no low to which Fincher wouldn't descend, and here goes your deeply, comically misanthropic proof.

TIFF ’14 Wrap-Up: The Gift of MAGI and some quick takes

September 30, 2014****/****, 2014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Sweden, TIFF

by Bill Chambers I try my best to stay away from the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto's state-of-the-art cinematheque, during the Festival, because for a goodly portion of those ten days it becomes Pandaemonium with a red carpet. But I made what I hope is a self-explanatory exception for the Industry conference "Ad Infinitum: Bigger, Faster, Brighter Movies – The Changing Creative Landscape of Digital Entertainment," where Douglas Trumbull–who designed the lightshows for, among others, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner; directed the cultish SF movies Silent Running and Brainstorm; and engineered Back to the Future: The Ride–debuted/previewed his new MAGI process, a digital replacement for his late, lamented Showscan. Trumbull took the podium to introduce a featurette on his work that set the context for UFOTOG, a short subject shot in 4K resolution and 3-D at 120 frames per second (fps). Although the piece dovetails with Trumbull's geeky interest in space invaders (the title is a portmanteau of "UFO" and "photography," just as MAGI is a weird anagram-cum-abbreviation for "moving image"), its raison d'être is to serve as MAGI's proof of concept. Good thing, too: as a narrative it's pretty incoherent.

Fantastic Fest ’14: The Babadook

September 22, 20142014, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Horror, Thriller

***/****
starring Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McElhinney, Daniel Henshall
written and directed by Jennifer Kent

by Walter Chaw Though taut and incredibly well-performed, Jennifer Kent's assured debut The Babadook has a general lack of faith that subtext is most effective when it remains subtext. There's irony there, somewhere, in saying this about a horror movie that's essentially about the concept of a Jungian Shadow. The Babadook concerns a mysterious children's book featuring the titular bogey, who, after knocking to announce itself, bloody well lets itself in, thank you very much. Discovered one night by troubled little Samuel (Noah Wiseman) and read to him by his mom, long-suffering palliative-care nurse Amelia (Essie Davis–stardom awaits), the book foretells the arrival of a Jack White-looking thing (Tim Purcell) that serves as an unfortunately obvious metaphor for repressed grief. It’s a pity, because for all the wonderful moments of the film, it never feels truly menacing–I never believed that it would be a fable that ended in a moral, hard-won, rather than a fairytale with a happily ever after.

Fantastic Fest ’14: Tusk

September 20, 20142014, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Horror

*/****
starring Michael Parks, Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez
written and directed by Kevin Smith

by Walter Chaw Apparently based on an obnoxious shit-shooting session from one of Kevin Smith's outrageously-popular podcasts, Tusk is Smith's The Human Centipede, sort of, in which a crazed mariner (Michael Parks), mourning a long-lost, large-land-mammal buddy, abducts outrageously-popular podcaster Wallace-sounds-like-"walrus" Bryton (Justin Long) and proceeds to surgically turn him into a walrus. Here's the thing: I always seem to like parts of Kevin Smith movies. I think he's a smart guy; I like what he likes. He's wordy and mannered but, shit, so are Whit Stillman and David Mamet. And yet, somewhere along the way, without fail, no matter how smart something of his is in the beginning (Dogma), Smith tosses in a literal shit-monster. He's puerile. He can't help it. Tusk has Michael Parks going for it–the rest of it is shit-monster. If I dislike Smith more than I dislike other people who aren't as clever as he can be, it's because every single one of his films is a missed opportunity.

TIFF ’14: 99 Homes

September 20, 20142014, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF

**/****
written and directed by Ramin Bahrani

by Angelo Muredda Where was there to go for Ramin Bahrani after the ghastly critical Americana of At Any Price–complete with race cars, ominous cornfields, and home movies–but a wildly over-cranked story about the housing crisis? Another silly, histrionic look at America Today, 99 Homes continues Bahrani's curious late run as the unaccomplished middlebrow answer to Nicholas Ray. It stays afloat where his last sank, though, largely thanks to some inspired scenery-gorging by the perpetually-vaping Michael Shannon, playing slick Rick Carver, a side-armed real estate broker who makes his bones seizing other Floridians' foreclosed houses and flipping them to the banks that probably shouldn't have given them a loan in the first place. Enter Andrew Garfield as working-class angel and struggling single-dad Dennis, who cedes his keys to the devil in the tan jacket only to go to work for him for a shot at getting his family home back. What are the odds he'll keep his house and, more importantly, his soul?

TIFF ’14: Seymour: An Introduction; Love & Mercy; Whiplash

September 18, 20142014, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF

SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION
***½/****
directed by Ethan Hawke

LOVE & MERCY
**½/****
directed by Bill Pohlad

WHIPLASH
**/****
written and directed by Damien Chazelle

by Bill Chambers Ethan Hawke’s first documentary isn’t the affected thing its Googler-confusing, appropriated-from-Salinger title would suggest. (And perhaps we should be grateful he didn’t go with Suddenly Seymour, Seymour Butts, or I Know What You Did Last Seymour.) Intimate but not prying, Seymour: An Introduction profiles the homuncular Seymour Bernstein, a former pianist of some renown who withdrew from the concert circuit in his prime to focus on teaching piano, hoping to stave off the neuroses of fame. Hawke decided to make the film after receiving some life-altering advice from Bernstein at a gathering, as if compelled to share his good fortune with the world, and that generosity of spirit courses through a piece that looks for wisdom, not pathology, in its subject’s hermetic existence (57 years alone in the same New York apartment) and monk-like devotion to music. A forgotten genius, Bernstein also proves an unsung raconteur in enthralling stories that place him at the centre of a real-life Sunset Boulevard or on the front lines of Korea; he commands the screen in lingering close-ups and holds court with equally-captive audiences of confrères and disciples, despite his professed stage fright. The picture builds to Bernstein’s first live performance in decades, a recital Hawke has arranged in a gesture that seems like a betrayal yet has the not-undesirable effect of making Bernstein look oddly heroic. If possible, he’s an even more expressive individual when filtered through the keys of a Steinway.