Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with El Chivo's newest Toronto article, covering Ed Harris' Western APPALOOSA, City of God's director Fernando Meirelles' flick BLINDNESS, the LeBron James doc MORE THAN A GAME, Danish kill them Nazis good WW2 resistance film FLAME & CITRON and Ramin Bahrani's GOODBYE SOLO, which is a surprise Star Wars film that takes place between EMPIRE and JEDI. Oh, sorry... Just read the review and it's a drama about a cab driver in North Carolina. Nevermind.

All the flicks are interesting, most of them Chivo rates very highly. Thanks for the reports and the pics! Enjoy El Chivo's reviews!

Greetings all! El Chivo back at the end of day three. Jumping straight in:

APPALOOSA

I love westerns. That said, it's really hard to quantify what I'm looking for since just about every story under the sun feels like it has been told. I think THE PROPOSITION was the best to come out in the last decade. It felt fresh and so wonderfully dirty. For me, APPALOOSA falls into second-tier fun more along the lines of 3:10 TO YUMA. It's one of those movies where you realize five minutes in that it isn't aspiring for greatness, so you just lower your expectations a little and settle in to watch a nice slice of a genre you love. Director Ed Harris seemed a little hung-over from the previous night's big party, but he seemed genuine about hoping we would enjoy the film. None of that "Toronto is the best film festival with the best audiences in the world!" crap that many other directors toss out. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to ride horses with his buddy Viggo and a chance to romance Renee Zellweger. Speaking of, I really liked Zellweger's role in the movie. It's hard to talk about her character arc without giving too much away, but it is safe to say she'll do whatever to take care of herself and turns upside-down the lives of the men around her in the process. Sets, scenery and score were all quite nice. Acting solid, though Jeremy Irons -- as cool as he is wearing a hat -- didn't evoke as much menace as I would've liked. The four or five shootouts are brief and deadly. My TIFF People's Choice Ballot: 2 out of 4.


MORE THAN A GAME

Doc about LeBron James' high school team. I can't imagine being a documentarian picking up a camera and dedicating years of time to a story, hoping it turns out to be something special. Kristopher Belman did that back in High School with the St. Vincent-St. Mary basketball team in Akron, Ohio. It was joked onstage at the Q&A that most of the guys on the team didn't know his name and just referred to him as "camera man." I'm trying not to oversimplify, but the title gets across the main point of the film. This isn't a just a clip-reel for a sports show. We catch themes of sons and their fathers, friendship for those without, and amazing, unparalleled chemistry on the court at such a young age. You go into the film knowing one name and leave caring about six. The film doesn't quite approach HOOP DREAMS levels of greatness; it wants to also be a good time and provides a soundtrack and an editing style you can cheer along with. Also, it was very nice to see those real moments of "acting a fool" (as LeBron put it) that you only get in documentaries. James and all but one of the other guys were present, along with a large entourage of family accompanying from Ohio for this, the World Premiere. Yes, it was touching to see them all, including King James, tear up as they tried to talk about the amazing run and hardships that defined their high school days. My TIFF People's Choice Ballot: 3 out of 4.













GOODBYE SOLO

I liked Ramin Bahrani's film MAN PUSH CART about the hotdog vendor in Manhattan. Bahrani has a way of dropping into the life of immigrant workers and wringing a lot of feeling out of what seems to be a small story on the surface. Precise as they are with small details and observed events, both films feel more like documentary than drama. In the first moment of film we start inside Solo's cab as he negotiates a future ride with his passenger William. Solo is a Senegalese cab driver in North Carolina. Solo has not eaten the fruit; he doesn't know to be ashamed about anything. He is completely open to the world and everyone around him. Through his insistence, Solo pulls enough out of William to gather that he plans on killing himself in two weeks time. The rest of the film is about Solo injecting himself into William's life, even though William seemingly couldn't give a shit about anything other than smoking his Marlboros and going to the movies. Solid. My TIFF People's Choice Ballot: 3 out of 4.


FLAME & CITRON

There are a few movies in my schedule that I really have an extra bit of excitement about seeing. This Danish film was one of them. Why? Because WWII resistance films, assassin films are Nazi's-getting-blown-up-good films are some of my favorites. Here we get all three in one. Kind of like Munich, but without the Jews, obviously. Flame and Citron are a team. They receive their orders from a higher-up in the Copenhagen resistance and then carry them out while Flame wears a very cool trench coat and always uses a few more bullets than necessary. By necessity there is a lot of talk between killings -- seeing as how they happen so fast and so mercilessly -- but even the interludes are full of tension. For example, the resistance likes to celebrate killings with meals at a restaurant frequented by Nazis. They even use a back room in the restaurant as a meeting place. Amazing what you can get away with if you just act like you belong and know what you're doing. The Citron half of the duo is played by Mads Mikkelsen, who you may know as villain Le Chiffre from Casino Royale (he is also in one of my favorite films, AFTER THE WEDDING). Mikkelsen gets a great scene involving himself, about a 100 Nazis and a trunk full of guns and grenades. And not just any guns, but guns that you get to hold sideways and look oh-so-cool while firing. Oh yeah, guilty-pleasure films like this one aren't supposed to be true, but Flame and Citron were real, heroes to the Danish people, and this is their story. My TIFF People's Choice Ballot: 3 out of 4.

BLINDNESS

Fernando Meirelles's CITY OF GOD is one of my favorite films. If I had to pick a different spy name, I would be "Benny the Coolest Gangster in Rio." However, I get the feeling that we may never see a film as electric again from Meirelles. I don't begrudge the guy for using the big budgets and high-power casts his success has afforded him, but I do feel I need to scale down my expectations a bit. I hear this is better cut of BLINDNESS than the poorly received version that played at Cannes, which relied heavily on a voiceover from Danny Glover. Think GIRL, INTERRUPTED meets I AM LEGEND, but with blind people instead of mutants and junkies. I liked it. Good, but not great. Voiceover pops up strangely in a couple of places and it certainly feels like a film that has been re-cut multiple times. If you've seen the trailer you know the blind are quarantined and the set up and evolution of their society is my favorite part of the film. Metaphors aplenty here, if you feel like dissecting. I have a soft spot for sci-fi apocalypse themes and enjoyed it well enough. The cast seemed to be having fun, including Gael García Bernal coming in riding on the back of Mark Ruffalo. My TIFF People's Choice Ballot: 2 out of 4.