My TIFF So Far
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/****
Strangers with Candy: The Complete Series (1999-2000) – DVD
Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
"Old Habits, New Beginnings," "A Burden's Burden," "Dreams on the Rocks," "Who Wants Cake?," "Bogie Nights," "Let Freedom Ring," "Feather in the Storm," "Jerri Is Only Skin Deep," "The Trip Back," "The Virgin Jerri," "Behind Blank Eyes," "Yes, You Can't," "The Goodbye Guy," "The Blank Page," "Hit and Run," "To Love, Honor & Pretend," "Blank Stare, Part 1," "Blank Stare, Part 2," "A Price Too High for Riches," "Jerri's Burning Issue," "Is Freedom Free?," "Trail of Tears," "Invisible Love," "Is My Daddy Crazy?," "Blank Relay," "Ask Jerri," "There Once Was a Blank from Nantucket," "Bully," "The Last Temptation of Blank"
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "Strangers with Candy" is at once extremely clever and not quite clever enough. On the one hand, its gleeful shredding of After School Specials is fanatically faithful to its target, turning the form's mealy-mouthed platitudes into the kind of dispiriting cruelty that is part and parcel of actual high school. On the other hand, the show's total devotion to that bit of satire means it doesn't hit any other targets. Though its heroine–Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), a 46-year-old former "boozer, user and loser" attempting to turn her life around by going back to secondary school–receives a constant stream of parent/teacher figures and learns negative life lessons as a result of her own corruption, the whole thing is fanciful to the point where you can shrug it off as one more naughty bit of college humour. Authority here isn't based on any real-life examples: they're just cartoons dishing out arbitrary meanness; the show's spirited inhumanity often drew a blank face out of me.
TIFF ’06: Torn Apart
Lucky Number Slevin (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD
***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu
screenplay by Jason Smilovic
directed by Paul McGuigan
by Walter Chaw I wonder if it's not ultimately a little too pat for its own good, but Paul McGuigan's Lucky Number Slevin is another slick, Guy Ritchie crime-manqué to pair with the director's breakthrough Gangster No. 1. It stars his muse Josh Hartnett (great in McGuigan's underestimated Hitchcock shrine Wicker Park) as the handsome Roger O. Thornhill/Wrong Man archetype–and it finds for Lucy Liu the first role that didn't make me sort of want to punch her mother. But the real star of a film that finds supporting roles for Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, and Sir Ben Kingsley is McGuigan's restless camerawork: an intricate lattice of matching shots and glittering surfaces that becomes almost an impressionistic projection of the mad, labyrinthine interiority of a mind bent on vengeance. Flashbacks and CGI-aided swoops and zooms are woven into the picture's visual tapestry, so that Lucky Number Slevin is read best as a lurid, comic-book send-up of a genre–every scene is played with a good-natured nudge, and when it overstays its welcome with a round-up that verges on sickly, its only real crime is that it's less a grotesque than a screwball romance. Hitchcock did it like that sometimes, too.
TIFF ’06: The Page Turner
TIFF ’06: After the Wedding
Hoot (2006) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVD
*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Luke Wilson, Logan Lerman, Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson
screenplay by Wil Shriner, based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen
directed by Wil Shriner
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover On the subject of keeping young people away from R-rated movies, Pauline Kael once remarked: "How are kids supposed to appreciate movies if they only see the crap that's aimed at them?" That "crap," of course, is usually stuff that's been interrogated for controversial subject matter and aesthetic interest alike, as if a sweeping camera or a finely-tuned mise-en-scène would disturb the kiddies. And on past performance, Walden Media is a leading exponent of this kind of subdued mediocrity: not only did they issue that ultra-bland C.S. Lewis adaptation from last winter, but they also cranked out the thoroughly innocuous Hoot to disastrous box office this spring. It's a movie that treats potentially charged material like No Big Deal–which is the supposed position to take with young minds in the room.
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – DVD
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Connor, Gretchen Corbett
screenplay by Norman Jonas and Ralph Rose
directed by John Hancock
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a sort of journeyman-hack remake of Repulsion: the fantasy-into-reality element is there without Polanski's jolting surrealism, while genre trappings are introduced to keep everybody from wondering what the hell they're watching. Strangely, the concoction successfully keeps you doing just that. Anchored by Zohra Lampert's convincing performance in the title role, the film manages to make its modest borrowings seem quaint and pleasant in a campfire-story way. Director John Hancock's craftsmanship prevents the whole thing from collapsing, and the gimmicky script, by Hancock and Lee Kalcheim (both writing under pseudonyms), has enough juicy plums to string you along for the next one. It isn't exactly good, but it's surprisingly watchable–if not always credible.
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Extended Version [Anniversary Edition] – DVD
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson
screenplay by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Flagg
directed by Jon Avnet
by Walter Chaw A seedy, sleight-of-hand weepie that mines tears from hilarious deaths, servile Negroes, cannibalism, itinerant rail-bo shanty towns, and a hint of lesbianism, Jon Avnet's revered Fried Green Tomatoes is redneck porn and noble-geriatric/fat-girl uplift mashed whole-kernel into a confused feminist tirade that finds strength in the literary retardation and literal consumption of men. With castration or cannibalization the main options for boys, then, doomed cousin Buddy (Chris O'Donnell) should count himself lucky that a poignant train ends his contractual agreement as the film's "good" white guy. It's really no wonder that Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) turn to the love that dare not speak its name after Buddy, the last virile, decent man, gets pasted into hash early in the flashback reverie of dotty old Ninny (Jessica Tandy).
The Quiet (2006)
*/****
starring Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Martin Donovan, Edie Falco
screenplay by Micah Schraft and Abdi Nazemian
directed by Jamie Babbit
by Walter Chaw Laden (leaden?) with melo-tragedy, Jamie Babbit's The Quiet is a burlesque of high school and incest, and though I don't doubt that there's a great movie in the intersection of the two, this ain't it. The film stars Elisha Cuthbert as the wounded "Heather," Nina, whose reputation as the perfect girl (read: the head cheerleader) is stained by a home life dominated by a zombie mom Olivia (Edie Falco) and an all-too-loving pedophile nice guy dad Paul (Martin Donovan). It wanders into the mind listlessly a time or two that Nina's backstory is identical to something the crazed Christian Slater character from Heathers would manufacture to justify the "suicide" of some teenage girl he's just murdered. The only way to really up the ante in The Quiet is through the introduction of deaf-mute orphan Dot (Camilla Belle), taken in by Paul and Olivia to act as the shadow/doppelgänger to our damaged-goods protagonist–and sure enough. But Dot can play Beethoven's "Appassionata" and "Moonlight" as the situation demands, and she provides treacly narration throughout in her piping, irritating lilt. She even goes so far as to attract chronic masturbator Connor (Shawn Ashmore) away from Nina's cartoon of a queen bitch pal Michelle (Katy Mixon).
Quinceañera (2006); Fall to Grace (2006); The Puffy Chair (2006)
QUINCEAÑERA
**½/****
starring Jesus Castanos, Araceli Guzman-Rico, Emily Rios, Alicia Sixtos
written and directed by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland
FALL TO GRACE
½/****
starring René Alvarado, Ricardo Azulay, Bill Johnson, Cassidy Johnson
written and directed by Mari Marchbanks
THE PUFFY CHAIR
**½/****
starring Mark Duplass, Kathryn Aselton, Rhett Wilkins, Julie Fischer
screenplay by Mark Duplass
directed by Jay Duplass
by Walter Chaw Gentrification is the inciting phenomenon of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Quinceañera, only the second film to land both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. Its celebration at the festival–which, like most festivals, prices itself culturally and financially out of most of the subjects its films exploit–should be regarded as something of a foregone conclusion: If it's not a product born of self-flagellation, Quinceañera at least owes its existence to an instinct towards the atonement of its two white, privileged creators, shooting a quasi-documentary/half-improvised character drama in the Echo Park neighbourhood where they found themselves the land-investor fixer-uppers. But it's even more complicated than that, owing to Glatzer and Westmoreland's homosexuality and the specific insight that an unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority engaged in the creation of a non-traditional family unit might bring to a story of another unpopular, oft-misrepresented minority (Mexican working class) looking to create a haven of kinship in a sea of cultural turmoil. Inserting themselves into the story as unkind spoiler-avatars in the piece (a gay, white couple acts as Quinceañera's bogeymen)–the set for their tasteful duplex serves as Glatzer/Westmoreland's real-life digs–is as thorny a po-mo entanglement as these two otherwise successful guys interpolating themselves in their neighbour's lives, homes, and rituals with movie cameras and an evangelical mission.
Mildred Pierce (1945) – DVD
***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on the novel by James M. Cain
directed by Michael Curtiz
by Alex Jackson The difference between Joan Crawford and her inextricably-linked contemporary Bette Davis is the difference between an icon and a mere actress. Davis was always acting and, in her lesser moments, downright hammy; Crawford simply was. A finished product, all she has to do is walk out and exude “Crawfordness.” If it’s not her best film, Mildred Pierce is certainly Crawford’s best-known film, and one of the fascinating things about it is how it illustrates her screen persona blending together with her personal one. I’m fascinated with the idea of transforming from an inferior being into a superior one–the leap from ape to Star Child in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to put it in its purest form. This is mankind’s most pressing drive, is it not–that is, to escape the banality of our mortal existence? Perhaps such philosophical musings are a function of my still living in young adulthood: I’m a year away from beginning a career in which I expect to spend the next forty years, and there is the persistent fear of this being “all there is.” That there’s nothing left; I’m going to spend the rest of my life attempting to maintain a constant state of security. The iconology of Crawford achieves such escape. She’s embraced the cinema in a way Davis never did. She’s drunk from the proverbial cup and is now immortal. Prick her, she doesn’t bleed; tickle her, she doesn’t laugh. She is beyond the flesh now, a creature of light and celluloid.
Just My Luck (2006) – DVD
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Faizon Love, Missi Pyle
screenplay by I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris
directed by Donald Petrie
by Bill Chambers A movie as ill-conceived as the original Bring It On (yeah, let's root for the privileged white chicks against the…all-black inner-city cheerleading squad?), Donald Petrie's Just My Luck fatally hitches its wagon to the miniscule charms of Lindsay Lohan. The migraine begins to form as soon as Lohan makes her grand entrance as PR chick Ashley Albright, striding out into the pouring rain without an umbrella knowing full well that the weather will clear up to accommodate her. (It does.) After scraping his jaw off the sidewalk, her Stepin Fetchit of a doorman hails a taxi, and while climbing into it Ashley notices a five-dollar bill stuck to the bottom of her boot. Does this cosmically-pampered princess tip the doorman with it? LOL! She's admiring the creases in Lincoln's beard as the cab peels away. Later, Ashley will receive two barely-provoked, if wholly deserved, punches in the face from a jailed black woman, while a Suge Knight-type record company overlord (Faizon Love) will declare: "I used to be [an idealist and a purist]…but then I decided to become filthy rich." I'm as surprised as you are that D.W. Griffith didn't write the treatment for this thing.
Little Jerusalem (2005) – DVD
La Petite Jérusalem
**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras N/A
starring Fanny Valette, Elsa Zylberstein, Bruno Todeschini, Hédi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre
written and directed by Karin Albou
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The deck of Little Jerusalem (La Petite Jérusalem) is so obviously stacked from the very beginning that it's not much fun to actually play the game. We know from the outset that its philosophy-student heroine, Laura (Fanny Valette), is going to fly the coop from her stifling Orthodox Jewish home. (A few stern words from her married sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) are deemed sufficient grease for the wheels of antagonism for the full 94 minutes.) Laura's fall from vacillation between the two stools doesn't feel like much of a struggle, even though her Kantian walks upset her proper family (they'd rather see her hitched and making babies); it's hard to rally much enthusiasm for the film's foregone conclusions, which are telegraphed at that. Little Jerusalem is painless enough, but there's no there there, and the whole thing evaporates minutes after you've sat through it.
The Illusionist (2006) + Half Nelson (2006)
THE ILLUSIONIST
*½/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
screenplay by Neil Burger, based on a story by Steven Millhauser
directed by Neil Burger
HALF NELSON
***/****
starring Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie
screenplay by Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
directed by Ryan Fleck
by Walter Chaw Out of the gate, Neil Burger's The Illusionist threatens to become the Viennese magician version of Amadeus, with Paul Giamatti's Inspector Uhl subbing for Salieri and Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton) his rabbit-hatted Mozart. But the film resolves itself in no time into something a good deal more mundane: a twisty crime drama complete with gauzy Guy Maddin visuals that cements Norton as the gravitas-heavy young actor most likely to be cast as Heathcliff in a badly-considered community theatre adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It's tedious and protracted, if not otherwise offensive–an elaborate piece of fluff that does its little tricks to the medium-delight of its tiny, undemanding audience before fading into the wings. Though it's tempting to laud it for having no pretensions to greatness, it's equally tempting to stay home and laud it from there.
2001 Maniacs (2006) – DVD
*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Robert Englund, Lin Shaye, Giuseppe Andrews, Travis Tritt
screenplay by Chris Kobin and Tim Sullivan
directed by Tim Sullivan
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Carol Clover has a lot to answer for. Prior to the advent of her Men, Women, and Chain Saws, slasher films were unambiguously misogynist, and hillbilly horror was unambiguously anti-South. Now the converse is stridently true, failing to take into account the infinitesimal cross-identifications that make both readings possible. 2001 Maniacs is interesting as a film that simultaneously mocks and sympathizes with ruthless killers from the destroyed South–it at once punishes and identifies with its Yankee victims, thwarting a straight-ahead reading. Its genre is rather like Daniel Auteuil in Caché: aware that there might be some crime in the past, but unable to deal with it once confronted with it. Alas, 2001 Maniacs is not interesting on any other level. The film is an 87-minute issue of FANGORIA, complete with bad puns and hard-R violence and distended by some smarmy shots at the characters who might be expected to want revenge.
Harry and Tonto (1974) – DVD
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Commentary B+
starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Larry Hagman
screenplay by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld
directed by Paul Mazursky
by Alex Jackson I complain a lot about film criticism being reduced to archaeology, but I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as impenetrable along these lines as Paul Mazursky's 1974 sleeper Harry and Tonto. It never coheres, it never makes its point, and it never justifies its existence. You know Mr. Bernstein's anecdote about the girl in the white dress in Citizen Kane, or Marge Gunderson's drink with her old high school chum in Fargo–those nice little throwaway moments that haven't much to do with the actual movie? In Harry and Tonto, Mazursky gets rid of the "actual movie" and gives us nothing but throwaway moments. Yeah, it's that kind of film.
Scary Movie 4 (2006) [Unrated & Uncensored] – DVD
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman
screenplay by Craig Mazin & Jim Abrahams & Pat Proft
directed by David Zucker
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The problem with Scary Movie 4 isn't that the jokes are cheap–indeed, we'd be disappointed if they weren't. No, the problem is that the film has no real point-of-view beyond a) black people are funny; b) gay people are funny; c) lascivious black women are hilarious; and d) recent horror movies fit together (however uneasily). The torrent of hit-or-miss gags is perhaps par for the course, but these bits aren't held together by some overarching idea or sensibility–there's no satire of current horror titles, just a parade titles and the lazy ethnic/sexual/bathroom humour that is this sort of movie's bread and butter. Which probably won't mean squat to the people who've made the series a cash cow, but anyone looking for genuine comedy (as opposed to listless shtick) is advised to look elsewhere.
Equinox [The Criterion Collection] – DVD
THE EQUINOX …A JOURNEY INTO THE SUPERNATURAL (1967)
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Skip Shimer, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers, Jr., Robin Snider
screenplay by Mark Thomas McGee
directed by Mark Thomas McGee & Dennis Muren
EQUINOX (1970)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A+
starring Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Boers jr., Robin Christopher
written and directed by Jack Woods
by Walter Chaw Four teens on a double-date venture into the hills around California in search of an old, dotty professor only to learn that the crazy old bat's unleashed the spawn of Hell with a book written by the devil. When producer Jack Harris bought The Equinox …A Journey Into the Supernatural (hereafter The Equinox) and hired B-hack Jack Woods to partially rewrite and reshoot it three years after its completion, he would insert a new character in evil, unibrowed park ranger Asmodeus (Woods), thus imposing a weird element of pervy grope cinema while handily washing away in a wave of lowbrow mediocrity most of what makes The Equinox so exceptional. Comparing the two versions (the revamp's title streamlined to Equinox) is an example of the difference between gifted amateurs pursuing a passion and slick exploitation artists applying their own interpretations (this time the burgeoning drive-in market) of where they might grab the quickest buck. For The Equinox to endure as an underground classic despite its co-optation is something like The Magnificent Ambersons maintaining its masterpiece status despite the non-existence of Welles's original cut. It's quite a relief, in other words, that Dennis Muren's The Equinox has survived for comparison's sake.