2009 TIFF Bytes #3: A Gun to the Head; Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
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
2009 TIFF Bytes #2: A Single Man; Trash Humpers
originally published September 18, 2009
Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF:
A Single Man (d. Tom Ford)
I can't speak for Christopher Isherwood's novel, which seems like it must be a pre-emptive eulogy for the relationship documented in Chris & Don. A Love Story, but the movie made from it is pretty embarrassing. For better or worse (worse, if you ask me), A Single Man is precisely what you'd expect from fashion designer Tom Ford, even if you can't quite picture that sensibility as applied to a movie set in the world of academia circa the early-'60s. (Cue much "Mad Men" envy.) I don't think I've ever seen digital colour-timing so serially abused, or so hammily: Colin Firth is an English professor trying to go about his routine after the recent death of his long-time companion (Matthew Goode, better than he was in Watchmen), whom he can't publicly mourn; every time he sees something 'sublime,' like a pretty little girl in a dress who asks him why he looks sad, the image goes from washed-out pastel shades to near-blinding Technicolor. Lee Pace, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Elisabeth Harnois are squandered inasmuch as one can squander those actors and Julianne Moore is cringe-inducing as a go-go lush hoping against hope that Firth will start to swing both ways, but the pièce-de-resistance is Nicholas Hoult, all grown up but still disconcertingly sporting the same head he had in About a Boy. Hoult's character, a student of Firth's who stalks him like a lost puppy, is ascribed an emotional clairvoyance Hoult himself is utterly incapable of conveying authentically. Indeed, he's matured into such a terrible actor that it's actually disturbing to watch him in scenes with Firth (solid here), as though he's some theatre geek who's cut himself into the film with iMovie. */4
2009 TIFF Bytes #1.5: White Material
2009 TIFF Bytes #1: My Toxic Baby
originally published September 13, 2009
Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF: