All the hype about screenwriter Zach Helm being the next Charlie Kauffman may be overblown, but there’s no denying that Stranger than Fiction is the most original and whimsical mainstream comedy so far this year.
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Driving Lessons
Jeremy Brock’s directorial debut begins with such promise. The first 15 minutes focus on Rupert Grint’s (better known as Harry Potter’s geeky brother-in-arms, Ron Weasley) pasty, hang-dog face. It’s been years since I’ve encountered a visage that better communicates the awkwardness of the bumbling, confused male teen. When his Ben Marshall stumbles after a statuesque love interest or succumbs to his mother’s bullying, the actor’s face is flooded with a great, incommunicable but instantly recognisable, pain. Whatever else you might say about Brock’s Driving Lessons, he scored a coup in the casting of his male lead.
The Cats of Mirikitani
It was a frigid January morning in 2001. Documentary editor Linda Hattendorf was walking down the street. And there he was, asleep under layers of old clothes in front of a Korean deli in SoHo. A familiar situation. “What must that person’s life be like?” The thought flashes through the mind and then disappears like a wisp of breath on the cold wind.
Babel and Borat
Babel looks amazing on paper. If only it held up half as well on screen. The final installment in Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu’s (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) “Death Trilogy,” the film examines how characters tied to a single event, yet oceans and languages apart, struggle with powerlessness, isolation and, as the title suggests, an inability to communicate.
Death of a President
I will defend Gabriel Range’s Death of a President’s right to exist until the end of the earth. I won’t, however, actually defend the film that Range has made. While its use of special effects and archival footage successfully creates the illusion that we are watching a retrospective program about George W. Bush’s assassination in Chicago in 2007, D.O.A.P can’t follow up its much anticipated money shot with anything absorbing or original.
Catch a Fire and The Anderson Platoon
While many might associate Australian director Phillip Noyce with such political fare as Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American, one shouldn’t forget that he’s also the hand behind Dead Calm, A Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games.
Amnesty International Human Rights Film Festival
This year’s Amnesty International Human Rights Film Festival features a rich slate of provocative and timely (if sometimes difficult to watch) films, including a 12-minute short called Let’s Talk About It from Canada’s Deepa Mehta.
Into Great Silence
We’re 140 minutes into the press screening and people are beginning to leave. They’ve seen enough. I suppose that’s fair. Hardly a word has been spoken since the beginning of Philip Groning’s aptly titled Into Great Silence. But there’s only so much silence you can take.
Contested Streets
Tonight, at the Bloor Cinema, you can catch the Canadian premiere of Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock, French Director Stefan Schaefer’s new doc about the evolution of street life in the Big Apple.
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Running With Scissors
The line between quirkily eccentric and dangerously crazy is a thin and difficult one to locate. And it is this precise line that Ryan Murphy (the creator of Nip/Tuck) walks in his new film, Running with Scissors), an adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ 2002 memoir. At first glance, Running with Scissors looks and feels like a reworking of Wes Anderson’s Royal Tenenbaum’s: we’ve got a lovingly nostalgic evocation of an era (the late ’70s and early ’80s), a family of oddball narcissists (this was the “Me Generation” after all) and a slew of soul-smile pop songs. Assuming we’ve been here before, we settle in for some quirky, American indie fun. But that’s all part of Murphy’s plan—he’s exploiting the Wes Anderson aesthetic to play with our ideas of eccentricity.
Win Tickets to See Babel!
In honour of the recent release of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3D last week and, more obviously the creeping approach of All Hallows’ Eve, I thought I’d strike up a little dialogue about the best films for Halloween viewing. Obviously, there are those who love to don their make-up and fish nets and do the Time Warp (again). Then there are those who love the campiest, classic horror they can find. I’ve even got a friend who has watched the entire Melanie Griffith back catalogue on Halloween (I think I get the joke, but I’m not sure). Here’s my top 10 list, in no particular order:
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is not a costume drama biopic. While it’s based on sometime historian Antonia Fraser’s revisionist biography,Marie Antoinette: The Journey, this film is more about shoes and cakes and celebrity than it is about the period preceding the French Revolution. And that’s not necessarily an insult. Coppola’s film very consciously creates a series of images so sensual, gorgeous and outrageously over-the-top, that questions about what happened where and when are superceded by a far different one: how the hell can anyone live in such a world and maintain any sense of perspective?
Hearts and Minds
Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds was arguably the most controversial American documentary film of the 1970s. Long before the Vietnam war was set to the music of The Doors and long before Michael Moore brought personal and humorous agitprop films to the mainstream, Davis used his lens to examine the myriad ways in which the United States took a wrong turn in Indochina—conveying a searing message without uttering a single word himself.
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The Queen
I have to take something back. The other day, I proclaimed that Kevin MacDonald’s The Last King of Scotland was the best English-language film of the year. After seeing Stephen Frears’ The Queen, however, I have to reconsider that remark.
Tideland
“Try to imagine that you’re innocent,” Terry Gilliam said as he introduced his latest film, Tideland at Cinematheque Ontario this past Monday night. “Try to get back to that place, where you’ve got no prejudices, or any of that stuff we let cloud our thinking as adults.”
