CARTUNA REPORTING - TIFF DAY SIX
Okay, kids...
Day Six of TIFF has concluded. Past the halfway mark!
I’d say this was the least ‘successful’ day of my festival so far, only two out of five were films I look forward to seeing again. But hey, they can’t all be fantastic. I’ve had a great average so far. Hopefully today will be better.
Anyway, here they are:
THE DAY WILL COME
directed by - Susanne Schneider
The short version:
Cool flick. Tense and emotional, character driven. I hope to see it again at some point.
The long version:
This one is a bit of a puzzle - not a twisty-turny type of thing, the revelations are pretty much what you are expecting, but it takes its time laying everything out for the viewer.
Shortly after a Judith’s photo appears in the papers (she was part of a protest) a younger woman arrives on her doorstep, needing a place to spend the night after banging up her car. Judith had been unusually upset about having her picture in the paper, and is immediately suspicious of this young woman. Because though she has lived there for a couple decades, and is the matriarch of an almost fully grown family, Judith is a woman with secrets in her past.
And she is right to be suspicious, because these secrets are exactly what the stranger has come to expose.
This is exactly the sort of small jewel that I come to the festival hoping to see. Something I might otherwise have never heard of, but which is extremely thoughtful, and rewarding.
There’s nothing particularly epic or flashy about this film, though it asks some pretty big questions about moral obligations, both to family and to society as a whole. A sense of desperation hangs over the movie, but it still manages to be fairly hopeful.
The characters are fully fleshed out human beings with clear needs and desires - the performances are all top-notch. As secrets are revealed, the family reels from the implications. I love that this is something more than the revenge film it might have been, had it been a big-budget North American film. It feels so much more human.
I liked this one a lot, and hope that people get a chance to see it. Seek it out if you like small but powerful films.
THE WARRIOR AND THE WOLF
directed by - Tian Zhuang Zhuang
The short version:
Ye gods, don’t. Just don’t. Yes, I know Maggie Q is cute as hell, but it’s not worth it. I STRONGLY disliked this one, and would warn anyone against it.
The long version:
This was the most frustrating and unrewarding film experience I’ve had since suffering through Che. Almost immediately, one could tell that this movie had no idea what it was doing, where it was going, what it was trying to say. It was all over the place, and had very few bright spots to justify the rest. Just a mess.
There’ll be some spoilers here, as I can’t be bothered to be careful with this one.
There’s this warrior, see? He doesn’t want to be, he wants to be a shepherd, but the army needs him apparently. (To tell you how great he is as a shepherd, I will mention that as his solution to scare off some wolves menacing his sheep, he ties hay around his own torso and lights himself on fire - as you might expect, he receives terrible burns for this nonsensical action). He’s cowardly, and terrible with a sword.
Then alluvasudden, he’s a skilled soldier. Sure. And when his commander is badly wounded, the warrior is given the command of the troop.
Holy crap, even the synopsis is interminable. I haven’t even gotten to the main part of the film. Geez.
So, anyway, we’re told there’s a massive snowstorm, (though onscreen we see the most gentle inoffensive snowflakes drifting down) and the troop need to hole up in a village. The hut that the warrior chooses to live in, has a lady living in the floor. When she emerges, there’s a bit of a struggle, and, as anyone would when finding a lady living in the floor of their hut, he rapes her.
Fun so far?
The walkouts began almost immediately and kept up in a steady trickle almost to the end of the film. I can’t be entirely certain of people’s reasons for leaving, but based on the timing, I would guess:
Some left when it was boring.
Some left when it was visually unclear (which of course is what you want from battle scenes)
Some left when nobody could understand what was going on.
Some left when Maggie Q got raped... the first time.
More left when she got raped the second time.
More left when it turned out she could’ve left at anytime.
More left when she begged the warrior not to leave because she couldn’t live without him and his raping ways.
More left when their continuous sex became mostly consensual.
I’m pretty sure a few left when the couple turned into wolves, and the movie seemed ready to end, before going on for another half-an-hour.
I didn’t leave. Why didn’t I leave? Is it because I love a good ‘rapemance’ movie? (I don’t know how that word would ever be needed often enough to enter general usage, but if it does, I want credit for it.)
No, I just hate leaving movies, and I didn’t have the excuse of too-little-time-to-get-to-the-next-one. So there I sat, hoping for a silver lining of some kind, to justify the experience, but it just never came.
No good. Don’t see it. Save yourselves.
Though... If it ever comes down to a choice between this and Che... Well, at least this has Maggie Q in it - she’s purdy.
VALHALLA RISING
directed by - Nicolas Winding Refn
The short version:
A great opening chapter, which I’d recommend to anyone as an awesome kick-ass short film. Then... a lot more movie without a whole lot going on.
The long version:
Wow, does this movie ever promise a lot with its opening chapter. I suspect many readers will LOVE the opening. And really, I didn’t hate the rest of it - not at all. There was a lot to interest there, and I know that many people will probably really enjoy the film as a whole, but it is certainly not for everyone. If you don’t have plenty of patience, I would bet you will find this movie to be an infuriating experience.
How can you decide which side you will fall on? Have you ever seen a Tarkovsky film? Did you enjoy the experience? If so, you will probably enjoy the remainder of this film. If you fell on the clawing-your-eyes-out-wishing-something-would-just-happen-already side of the divide... Maybe not so much.
Somewhere in Scotland, One-Eye has been captured and caged. He is handled extremely carefully by his captors, who bring him out as their gladiator-of-choice in vicious to-the-death matches. He defeats everyone handily, but can they keep him prisoner forever? Not fucking likely!
This is the fun and kick-ass chapter of the film. It was so awesome that a couple folks of weaker constitution had to leave. “Screw them!” we said. “More kickassery for the rest of us!” But it was not to be. That was pretty much the end. Maybe the deserters somehow realized this?
Anyway, after this sequence, One-Eye finds himself enlisted by crusaders, on his way to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem for Christianity. They travel a long way, but they end up... someplace else.
And it IS an interesting film, if somewhat of a bait-and-switch. It’s kind of an endurance test for the audience, but I suspect the promise of more of the opening held many in place who otherwise would’ve hit the road.
In the end, tragically, I had to leave - I KNOW! And after sitting through Warrior and the Wolf and everything! Well, the thing is, I had left a ridiculously short amount of time between this and the next film, and a check of my watch revealed the movie had already run longer than I was anticipating anyways.
So, unfortunately, this review is an incomplete one. I missed the very end. For all I know, it was a return to the awesomeness of the opening (if anyone caught it, please let us all know in the talkbacks) If this movie had switched places on my schedule with Warrior and the Wolf, I’d’ve left happily, and easily, and much much sooner.
As it was, by the time I got myself to the Ryerson, the line had already gone in, and there were VERY few seats. (TEN rows of reserved seats didn’t help (yes, TEN! That’s a huge percentage of the theatre)).
Anyway, Valhalla Rising is an interesting film, but definitely not for everyone. If you are short on patience, you should probably avoid it.
BAD LIEUTENANT : PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
directed by - Werner Herzog
The short version:
A detective story you could easily see topped on Law and Order. Cage’s performance doesn’t exactly make up for it. I was not thrilled, but the audience sure seemed to like it.
The long version:
(To be fair to this movie as its own beast, I won’t be referencing the earlier Ferrera film. Also, I haven’t seen it in a long while.)
Nicholas Cage plays a cop who gets injured while helping someone during Hurricane Katrina, and as a result (at least in part) becomes addicted to painkillers, both legal and less than. He investigates the case of a murdered family of Senegalese immigrants with something less than complete integrity, while juggling a bunch of potentially deadly underworld entanglements with prostitutes, drug dealers, bookies and gangsters, all the while reveling in his own corruption.
If there’s one thing I was NOT expecting from this movie, it was BOREDOM. You’d think, if nothing else, at least it would be entertaining, just by being batshit-insane. But no. Pretty much just boring, with a couple interesting spots scattered throughout.
I am sure that folks will accuse me of ‘not getting’ this film, but I don’t think that’s so. When it commences, it is a dry police procedural with dialogue and situations that feel like they were stolen from a 1970’s TV cop show, with all the cliches firmly in place. It’s possible this was intentional - commentary on cop drama of some sort, but I don’t really care - it was not any more interesting than those cop shows, and I don’t know if you’ve seen one of those recently, but they’re boring as hell.
But that’s not my main qualm with the film. Mainly, Cage’s Bad Lieutenant, was just not bad enough. Not by a longshot.
Sure, he wasn’t good. Not beyond the prologue, anyway. But Vic Mackey pulls worse shit than this guy. Denzel Washington does too, in Training Day.
I see a movie called Bad Lieutenant, I want to be utterly shocked by the depths to which a dude can sink. I want to leave saying, “Holy shit, that was one BAAAAAAAAD Lieutenant!” Here, there’s only one scene that comes close - one that takes place in a nursing home, and as far as I’m concerned, that should’ve been the starting point for his descent into badness, instead of the highpoint.
If they’d called this “Cackling Crackhead Lieutenant?” Yeah, that I could’ve gotten behind. I still wouldn’t’ve enjoyed it much, but at least it would’ve been accurate.
Cage is firmly in his over-the-top mode which we’ve come to know so well over the years. But it’s really uneven. He settles into an Ed Sullivan impersonation about halfway through that at least seemed like something we haven’t seen from him before. It once again shows that for an actor to really play unhinged, it requires a lot of discipline, and the guidance of a steady hand. In this case, it just seems as though the leash was taken off and the result caught on film. It’s lunacy, but not lunacy that amounts to anything.
But, as I said, the audience seemed to dig it. So maybe I was just not in the mood?
VENGEANCE
directed by - Johnnie To
The short version:
Awesome. An amazing movie. I highly recommend it.
The long version:
Ah, but the day ended on a high note with Vengeance. I dug the hell out of this one.
A French man comes to Hong Kong from France when his daughter and her family are the victims of a vicious gangland hit. She is the only survivor, and when he visits her in the hospital, she begs him to achieve VENGEANCE on her behalf.
This is a practically perfect action film. It’s got the bullets, it’s got the chases, it’s got wicked set-pieces. But it’s also got depth, and emotion, and appeal.
Everyone in this is fantastic and memorable, but no one moreso than Johnny Halliday, as the father-on-a-mission, who also has a disability that threatens his ability to properly avenge his family.
Interestingly, despite the Hong Kong setting, and partially French cast, the movie is almost entirely in English. Which means...
THERE IS NO REASON WHY THIS SHOULDN’T BE DISTRIBUTED AS-IS IN NORTH AMERICA!
Studios, prick up your ears! Distributors take note! This is a wicked film which could be a big success in wide release. It really could. Trust me, and make some bucks! Put some confidence in the North American movie viewer. PLEASE? It’ll be worth your while. Really and truly.
I just couldn’t recommend this film more. I’ll be buying the DVD as soon as I have the opportunity.
So, there we are. Finally past the halfway point. On the downward slope now.
Five more movies today. I’ll tell you about them, tomorrow.
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