TIFF ’02: Love Liza

September 7, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, TIFF
***½/****starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoffscreenplay by Gordy Hoffmandirected by Todd Louiso by Bill Chambers Love Liza is a potent movie about compulsive behaviour I'm growing fonder of by the hour; the film rises above some hoary tropes to become almost peerlessly unsettling. As a new widower who can't bring himself to read his wife's suicide note, Philip Seymour Hoffman once again dissolves before our eyes into a sweaty, ticcy mess stuck between sleep and awake. But here, without the reprieves you get from his strange behaviour in the ensemble pieces the actor seems to favour (Boogie…

TIFF ’02: The Good Thief

September 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Ireland, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, UK
***/****starring Nick Nolte, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Nutsa Kukhianidzewritten and directed by Neil Jordan by Bill Chambers A loose remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur (director Neil Jordan seems to have cast Tcheky Karyo for the way "Bob le flambeur" rolls off his tongue), The Good Thief is a minor-ish work from Jordan that benefits mightily, as most movies would, from Chris Menges's cinematography. Nolte inherits Roger Duchesne's role as Bob Montagne, an expert gambler and larcenist who in this film is hooked on heroin out of what appears to be sheer boredom. (A hilarious scene finds him stumbling…

TIFF ’02: Ararat

September 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, War
**/****starring David Alpay, Charles Aznavour, Eric Bogosian, Brent Carverwritten and directed by Atom Egoyan by Bill Chambers Shuffling the picture's sequences like a deck of cards, Atom Egoyan's signature postmodernism smacks of a diversionary tactic this time in Ararat. A film about the Armenian Genocide was Egoyan's dream project, yet he maintains an intellectual distance throughout, transparently terrified of the ostensible subject matter. Drawing from his well-stocked stable of actors while tossing a few fresh faces into the mix, Egoyan casts wife Arsinée Khanjian as an art history critic named Ani, newcomer David Alpay as her son, Raffi, bombshell Marie-Josée…

TIFF ’02: Standing in the Shadows of Motown

September 3, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF
*½/****directed by Paul Justman by Bill Chambers They had more number-one hits than Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined. They were...The Funk Brothers? That reversal of expectations, which occurs in the opening voice-over of Paul Justman's Standing in the Shadows of Motown, is one of the few clever touches that actually works in this documentary about the rotating panel of studio musicians who helped turn Berry Gordy's Detroit record company into a hit factory. In the film's first reel, producer/drummer Steve Jordan offers that it wouldn't matter if "Deputy Dog" had sung the songs…

TIFF ’02 Raising Victor Vargas

September 1, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coming of Age, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Romance, Teen, TIFF
***½/****starring Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz, Altagracia Guzmanwritten and directed by Peter Sollett by Bill Chambers The remarkable Raising Victor Vargas (formerly Long Way Home) stars soon-to-be somebody Victor Rasuk as the titular Victor, a 17-year-old raising the ire of his strict abuela (Altagracia Guzman) during the long, hot New York summer by virtue of having outgrown her idle threats. As the film opens, Victor asks out the beautiful Judy (Judy Marte) at a public pool in a pre-emptive bid to salvage his reputation for getting it on with a neighbourhood lass nicknamed "Fat Donna." When Judy shoots him…

TIFF ’02: 8 Femmes

August 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Musical, Romance, TIFF
8 Women***/****starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béartscreenplay by François Ozon, Marina de Van, based on the play by Robert Thomasdirected by François Ozon by Bill Chambers Almost every French actress I can rhyme off without help from the audience is in the cast of François Ozon's 8 Femmes, a delightfully odd murder mystery with song-and-dance interludes. (Imagine if John Waters had directed Clue.) The film takes place during Christmastime in 1950s France at a country manor where various women have gathered to celebrate the holidays with Marcel, the only significant man in any of their lives. But…

TIFF ’02: L’Idole

August 30, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Japan, Romance, TIFF
The Idol**½/****starring Leelee Sobieski, James Hong, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Jalil Lespertscreenplay by Gérard Brach, Samantha Lang, based on the novel À l'heure dite by Michelle Tourneurdirected by Samantha Lang by Bill Chambers I'm largely indifferent to L' Idole, a Gallic production directed by an Australian and co-starring two Americans of different ethnicities who admirably perform their parts in French. Leelee Sobieski's task is made more difficult by the role's requirement of her to deliver foreign-language dialogue in a tertiary accent, as the native New Yorker plays an Australian touring France with a theatre company. (I'm not enough of a linguist to…

TIFF ’00: Low Self Esteem Girl

September 3, 2000Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF

Low Self-Esteem Girl
***/****
starring Corrina Hammond, Ted Dave, James Dawes, Rob McBeth
written and directed by Blaine Thurier

Guys want her body.
Zealots want her soul.
–Low Self Esteem Girl‘s honest tagline

by Bill Chambers A few minutes into Low Self Esteem Girl, I got the distinct feeling I was watching an episode of “Candid Camera” in which the recording device itself, and not the camera’s subjects, was the one being had. First-time director Blaine Thurier, a former cartoonist for Vancouver’s TERMINAL CITY, zigzags his digital video camera about the house of Lois (Corrina Hammond) like a spy who has unwittingly stumbled upon a stage exercise: Lois and Gregg (Ted Dave), her one-night stand, conduct a pillow-fight with overtones of rape, and then she offers him a beer–at which point I half-expected a drama teacher to call time-out, step into the frame, and critique their performances.

Antz (1998)

September 13, 1998Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Family, Film Festivals, TIFF

**/****
screenplay by Todd Alcott and Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz
directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson

by Bill Chambers Directors Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson as well as “stars” Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Danny Glover, Jennifer Lopez, and Christopher Walken file into the sweaty, crowded Tudor Room of Toronto’s Four Seasons hotel to discuss the Dreamworks/PDI production Antz, a computer-generated movie that took two-and-a-half years to complete. Antz will beat the not-dissimilar Disney/Pixar project A Bug’s Life to screens by a month. That’s why Jeffrey Katzenberg–Michael Eisner’s former right-hand man, and the K in Dreamworks SKG–is there, tucked between some cameras and journalists. He looks to be gloating–does he have cause to?