Hey folks, Harry here... Anton Sirius is at it again and finding stuff I so want to see... FULL TIME KILLER... Bring it the hell on... Anton's glimpse at it below has drool dripping, and I so understand why he'd bump into El Gordo there... I mean Guillermo Del Toro at that screening... My wondrous fellow gutman is there with THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, which is one of the most elegant and genuinely sad haunting stories of youth that I think I've ever seen. Anton... kick Guillermo in the shins and tell him to get that ass back to Austin! Hehehe... But back to it... of the films he saw, the one I'd kill Massawyrm 3 times to see is FULL TIME KILLER! Read on...
"Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars."
- Charlotte Vale
Day Three
I have my interview with Guillermo del Toro tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Tuesday, and Tim Blake Nelson and Peter Fonda on Wednesday. Just so’s you know.
I actually got to meet Guillermo tonight at the Midnight screening, along with some genuine Hong Kong royalty- Andy Lau, Simon Lam and Johnnie To. That echo you are still hearing is from the very vocal members of the Andy Lau Fan Club who showed up at Midnight as well, and quite past most of their bedtimes I would guess.
Didn’t get much of a chance to talk to the Prozac Nation crowd- Ms. Ricci and Ms. Williams and Mr. Biggs- unfortunately, but they basically got off the plane with enough time for the world premiere and only one measly party before heading back out of town. Oh well.
One of the reasons, I think, that Toronto does get the star turn out it does is the fact that most of them aren’t hassled and hounded every second they are out of their hotel rooms. Just in 2001 I’ve heard stories like Gabriel Byrne walking- sans entourage- into an Uptown screening and leaving without being stopped for a single autograph or handshake. Celebrities, for the most part, get treated with respect in Toronto, and the fest goers deserve a lot of credit for that.
You can reach me at Anton2001Fest@Yahoo.Com
Tape (2001, directed by Richard Linklater)
Tape is the very definition of a little film. Taking place entirely inside one crappy motel room, Tape tells the story of an impromptu reunion between three friends from high school- Vince (Ethan Hawke), the ne’er-do-well dickhead; John (Robert Sean Leonard), the doing-pretty-well filmmaker dickhead; and Amy (Uma Thurman), Vince’s ex.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around the events that may or may not have occurred one night at the end of senior year. Quite frankly, if it weren’t for the talent involved you’d think Tape was a student film, it’s that lightweight. Which leaves me with nothing else to talk about but the talent, alas. Since the film deals as much as it does with high school I’ll assign everyone letter grades:
I’ll give Ethan a B-. He is quite convincing as the dumb-ass pot head shit disturber. Interpret that how you will.
Robert comes out the best of the three actors, slipping between a phony film fest schooze voice and a whiny high school geek voice as the situation demands. He still doesn’t move beyond the limits of the stereotype, though. B+.
Uma is left out to dry, as usual. For the record, I don’t think sh’es a terrible actress, just one with a limited range, which is normally fine for Hollywood. (Heck, it’s encouraged.) Her career, however, is littered with roles that were just beyond her (i.e. Jennifer 8, Gattaca)- when they weren’t in flat-out awful films. Tape is yet another example of the former. The script deliberately gives Amy inscrutable motivations, and as a result Uma is all over the map with her reactions. She does display a good effort, though, and is rarely tardy. C-.
As for Linklater’s direction, he comes up with a few interesting shots to liven up the one room setting, but also falls into some really annoying clichés, like a jerky back-and-forth during some of the more intense conversations. And since the movie is little more than a series of intense conversations, this gets very old very fast. Plus he let Uma twist in the wind. I’ll give him a C- as well.
All of which adds up to a passing grade for Tape, but one with reservations. If Tape buckled down and applied itself it could probably be an honor student, but as it is Tape will be in for a rude awakening when it gets to college.
Prozac Nation (2001, directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg)
Based on a book that has- to say the least- touched the lives of more than a few people, Prozac Nation is a huge challenge, given that it must depict visually a story which is nearly entirely internal, while still remaining faithful to the source. Unfortunately the compromises it makes leave it a little short of both.
Let’s start with what it does right. In its expression of depression Prozac Nation, or more specifically Christian Ricci, is terrifying. We all know Ricci can act, but this is a tour-de-force even for her. Acting opposite a magnificent Jessica Lange as her mother, Ricci’s Lizzie is constantly finding new corners of emotional hell she can crawl through, and everyone around her gets taken along for the ride.
The supporting characters, including a surprisingly good Jason Biggs, hold up their ends of the bargain, but this is Ricci’s film. Watching her rip to shreds anyone who dares think she might be worthy of loving is beyond uncomfortable, precisely because Ricci gets it so right. She [click]
Oh Goddess, she’s here. I can feel her. I can *smell* her, she’s filling my nostrils like salt water and I’m drowning in her presence, my skin tingling where she used to hook her arm in mine and lean her head on my shoulder and it’s too much, I can’t breathe and I can’t move and I can’t escape my goddamn curse of seeing both sides of everything because even as I watch her drive the nails into her palms again I remember my own stigmata, remember collapsing against a gravestone that night in Vienna when the dam finally burst and all those glorious blessed tears starting pouring down my cheeks like holy water and I just want it to stop, want her to stop and see how strong she has to be to have made it this far, want her to stop running, want her to look in the mirror with my eyes want her to see WHY CAN’T I MAKE HER SEE
I just want it to stop.
Please, somebody make it stop.
[click] I’m sorry. No, wait, I’m not sorry, I’m… jeez, I don’t know. But I’m not sorry.
Prozac Nation isn’t a perfect film by any means. There’s hardly any Prozac in it, for one- the film reduces the drug to a script point, introducing it right at the end of Act Two as the textbook key to the Protagonist’s resolution of the Crisis, which leaves what feels like barely twenty minutes to examine its effects on her. It may have made the script easier to write, but after an hour of Ricci’s brutally honest performance it feels like a cop-out.
The direction itself seems a little superficial to me too. This is Skjoldbjaerg’s second film after the critically acclaimed (but in my book over-rated) Insomnia. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s just coming on the heels of the inventive ways Iwai chose to depict pain and turmoil in All About Lily Chou-Chou, but much of the way Prozac Nation is presented seems too slick and calculated. Of course, many of you might see that as a plus, and the distance it gives you from the subject matter might just have been necessary. But in a contest between Ricci eviscerating herself on screen and some sub-Aranofsky camera trickery, it’s not hard to guess which one is going to come out the worse for the comparison.
Make no mistake- Prozac Nation is worth seeing, although you might want to consider your current emotional state before buying your ticket. As Lizzie herself says, "Don’t say I didn’t warn you."
Full-Time Killer (2001, directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai)
Full-Time Killer is in many ways a throw-back to the kinds of films Hong Kong put out in the ‘80s, before the money dried up and the talent started drifting away. The film takes a staple plot of love and honor- two elite hitmen competing for the heart of a woman and recognition as the world’s greatest killer and takes it places it has never gone before.
O (Takachi Sorimachi) is the established #1, the consummate professional. Tok (Andy Lau) is the cocky young up-and-comer who lives his life as though he were the lead in a Hollywood action film. The two characters could not be more different in their approach to life and their work. In fact it seems the only things they have in common are a mutual attraction to Chin (Kelly Lin), a video store clerk who makes ends meet as O’s part-time housekeeper, and the presence of Inspector Lee (Simon Yam) on their trails. Nonetheless, as their worlds implode and collide, they start to find they have more in common than they thought.
Full-Time Killer is a tremendous film. Great performances, characters that are fathoms deeper than the typical action cookie cutters, and outrageously fantastic action sequences, including Lee’s assault on O’s apartment and the final climactic duel (set in a fireworks warehouse) all represent a leap forward from even the Woo classics in the genre. This isn’t so much the story of two men bound by their honor as a generational war, pitting Tok’s break-all-the-rules cartoon daredevil aesthetic against O’s ultra-caution and careful adherence to his personal code.
As with last year’s the Mission (a film I didn’t like at the time, but I’ve come to greatly appreciate since) To and Fai playfully refine and elevate a traditional Hong Kong genre piece into something greater. Full-Time Killer may not be quite the masterpiece the Mission was (and I should really apologize for last year’s review- my only excuse is fatigue, and I know had I seen the Mission at 4 in the afternoon instead of at Midnight I would have been right there) but it’s still light years beyond bloated crap like Swordfish that Hollywood has been offering lately.
Mr. In-Between (2001, directed by Paul Sarossy)
A first effort from noted cinematographer Sarossy, whose recent efforts include Egoyan’s Exotica and the Sweet Hereafter as well as the X-Men, Mr. In-Between is the funny, gruesome tale of a hitman in existential crisis.
Jon has what some might call a good life. He is at the very top of his chosen profession, has an employer who loves him like a son, and money to burn. But Jon’s success comes at a steep price, his very identity. Jon is an assassin, sadistic and meticulous, and the world he inhabits is by choice hollow and sterile. His apartment is spartan and cold, his mates are nothing more than drunken barflies with whom he has nothing in common. His life is his job, and in everything else he just goes through the motions.
That all changes after a chance run-in with his old school mate, Andy. Andy has the life Jon could not allow himself- wife, child, a quiet and suburban existence. What’s worse, Andy’s wife is Kathy, who Jon was in love with back in the day. Jon quickly discovers that with an actual alternative in front of him he does not like the person he has become at all. He tries to assuage his new-found feelings of discomfort by helping Andy and Kathy- he gets Andy a job and gives him a loan. But each act of charity just gets him in deeper, and when Andy is drawn into the fringes of Jon’s underworld the choices get harder and harder, choices Jon has deliberately left himself ill-equipped to make.
Sarossy’s direction is remarkably accomplished. The cold, antiseptic look he developed from his work with Egoyan serves him very well here, but Sarossy also proves himself capable of more, adding gritty life to a lower-class British flat and a sick thrill to Jon’s assignments. Mr. In-Between isn’t the greatest film ever made about a killer’s admission to Chapel Perilous, and their spiritual walpurgisnacht, but it holds its own, and more importantly announces Sarossy as a director to keep an eye on.
Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table (2001, directed by Carlos Saura)
A hugely ambitious project, Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table tries to mingle three very distinct flavors of filmmaking- it is at once an homage to Luis Bunuel, a parody of the adventure serial and a tale of a character’s spiritual enlightenment. Unfortunately, only one of the three actually works.
The plot is labyrinthine enough to work in a film like this. An aging Luis Bunuel is commissioned to write a new script, so in his mind he begins to weave a tale from his youth- the time he, his ‘sidekicks’ Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca undertook a quest to find the legendary Table of King Solomon in Toledo (Spain, not Ohio) in the ‘30s. The past and present form an uneasy alliance as the film progresses. Characters who interact with the old Bunuel inevitably show up in a different guise to aid or hinder the young Bunuel and his friends, while modern cars and Japanese tour groups pass by the intrepid threesome without causing them to bat an eye. This cuts both ways though, as the old Bunuel finds elements from his nominally fictional ‘script’ appearing in his own run-down existence.
The film is also littered with references to Bunual’s career, both overt and subtle, and with no attempt made to stick to the film’s rough era. Bunuel’s entire filmography is open for inspection and usually playful attack, from Un chien andalou straight through to his latest works like Tristana and That Obscure Object of Desire.
The film displays no such love for the serial, though. Even its title gets its wrong- it really should have been the full ‘Luis Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table’ to fit the formula (i.e. Indiana Jones, Buck Rogers… you always use the hero’s whole name). Part of the problem is that the episodic nature of Bunuel’s films clashes with that of the cliffhanger-driven serial, and the film can never settle on a way to mesh the two. But even beyond that, Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table simply lacks the sense of wonder and life that drives serials forward.
As for its illuminating qualities, forget it. The film’s images and archetypes are all hand-me-downs, worn out and faded. This was likely deliberate (this is a tale told by an old man at the end of his life, after all) but by using only third and fourth generation metaphors the film is robbed of any sort of resonance. Compared to recent efforts like Polanski’s Ninth Gate it seems to just be going through the motions.
Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table is in the end a disappointment. Part of the challenge of paying tribute to another filmmaker’s work in a film is knowing that you are placing yourself directly in their shadow. As such you can’t help but wonder what Bunuel himself would have done with a story like this, and there are very few filmmakers today who stand up under that comparison. Even stuck with a Mexican budget, the old dog would have put some life into the proceedings.
