Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to introduce "garbageman33" who has sent in some Toronto Fest reviews from time to time. He's back again this year with 12 capsule reviews of the films he saw at the fest, ranging from Cub Scout midnighter CUB to Jake Gyllenhaal's creeptastic NIGHTCRAWLER.
The dude has some strong opinions, which you'll see below. Enjoy!
TU DORS NICOLE
When you’re going to be seeing 12 movies in 4 days, it’s generally best to ease into it a bit. So, instead of seeing the Ukrainian film about a vicious gang in a school for the deaf, told entirely through sign language, with no subtitles or sound, I opted to see Frances Ha again. Except this one is French-Canadian. But it has the same basic plot (a pretty young girl is stuck in that in-between stage where she should be a grownup, but still acts like a kid, with bad decisions galore). It’s also shot in black-and-white. And it’s really good. Nicole is an insomniac, so the film takes on the quality of a waking dream, with surreal touches like an 11-year-old boy who speaks with a man’s incredibly deep, soulful voice. In addition to being funny, it has a couple touching scenes that come out of nowhere, which make them even more powerful. It was a fun start to the festival. More fun than a deaf street gang.
Grade: B+
RED ARMY
Much has been written and filmed about the 1980 U.S. hockey team. But what about the team they famously defeated on that fateful night in Lake Placid? They finally get their due in this documentary, which traces the team’s rise, while chronicling the time period in which they came together, alongside the rise of the Soviet Union. It’s a rich story, told by people from both sides of the Cold War. The undisputed star (of the team and the film) is Slava Fetisov, who is nothing less than a Russian folk hero. He proves a funny, charismatic, outspoken storyteller. And as we learned in the introduction, he almost didn’t participate. After repeatedly declining requests to be interviewed, he finally relented and offered the director 15 minutes of his time on their last day of shooting. He ended up staying for 5 ½ hours. Honestly, I’m not sure they’d even have a movie without him.
Grade: B
WILD TALES
Man, Argentines are pissed off. At least that's how it seems in this series of 5 or 6 blackly comic vignettes. In each one, Argentina is depicted as a place barely maintaining a thin veneer of civility, which can explode at the slightest provocation (a traffic ticket, an inconsiderate driver, a philandering fiancé). Just imagine Michael Douglas in Falling Down. It's wicked fun to see just how quickly human decency can disappear when push comes to shove. But what was shockingly funny in the first vignettes becomes a little too expected once you see where this is all going.
Grade: B
A HARD DAY
In this North Korean thriller, a police detective is having kind of a tough day (I'm thinking that might even have something to do with the title). In addition to dealing with his mom's funeral, he's also juggling an internal affairs investigation. Oh, and he just ran over a guy in his car while driving drunk. But hey, he can just throw the dead guy in the trunk and deal with him later. No biggie. At least, not until he starts receiving mysterious phone calls from someone who claims to have witnessed the accident and wants to blackmail the poor guy. It's almost unbearably tense, especially in a scene involving a casket and a ringing cellphone. Too bad it eventually veers into standard thriller territory. Also, I can’t fully endorse any movie where, if an otherwise very smart person would've made one incredibly simple, obvious decision, there wouldn't even be a movie.
Grade: B-
CUB
In this Belgian midnight madness flick, a troop of Cub Scouts on a camping trip is tormented by a serial killer who devises all kinds of devious traps, like some kind of sociopathic Rube Goldberg. Just imagine a deadly game of Mousetrap. Which actually sounds kind of awesome. Unfortunately, Rube Goldberg has a little helper who, are you ready for this, can only be seen by the troop's emotionally damaged member, who’s dealing with some kind of unnamed family tragedy. Yep. That old chestnut. Here's the thing about a midnight madness audience, Mr. Belgian director: unlike the art film snobs who want to ask you pretentious questions about your French new wave influences, we just want to yell and scream and have the shit scared out of us. But please, don't insult us. And if you serve us a twist we can all see coming five minutes into the movie, don't act like you're fucking Keyser Soze.
Grade: C
WHILE WE’RE YOUNG
Allow me to sum up every Noah Baumbach movie for you: "Look at these douche bags. Can you believe how stupid they are? They're so stupid. What a bunch of douche bags." In his latest comedy, the objects of his contempt are Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a filmmaking couple in their 40s who meet a young couple played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried and are immediately smitten. Before long, the older couple is doing things like riding fixie bicycles and taking hip-hop dance classes. As usual, Baumbach has some smart, funny things to say. In this case, about how young people just want to be older and older people just want to be young. I only wish he could say it without all the contempt for his own characters. I know I’m the wrong person to be making this complaint, but it’d be nice to see Baumbach drop the cynicism for once. Although I guess that's like asking Wes Anderson to knock it off with the fucking dioramas already.
Grade: B-
‘71
In this British drama, a very green army private (Jack O'Connell) is mistakenly left behind by his unit after an ugly IRA riot on the streets of Belfast during The Troubles. From there, he has to use his wits and survival instincts to try to make it out alive, often relying on the kindness of the very people he's supposed to be fighting against. The film does an excellent job of capturing the gray area that surrounds this and any other conflict. And the opening scenes, particularly the riot itself, are breathtaking. With a really strong sense of time and place. Which, sadly, get lost when it inexplicably becomes a standard espionage thriller with the usual shifting alliances and double crosses that could be in any war movie. It's still really good, but it should have been great. Speaking of, if you don’t know who Jack O’Connell is, or perhaps confused him with Jerry O’Connell, you should seek out the British prison drama Starred Up.
Grade: B
TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER
In the latest documentary from Nick Broomfield (Biggie and Tupac), he explores the case of Lonnie Franklin, the so-called Grim Sleeper. Franklin was arrested in 2010 for the murder of 10 women but he may have killed as many as 100 since the mid-80s. So how was a vicious serial killer able to go so long without being caught, despite the fact that he wasn't exactly careful? Well, this may come as a complete shock, but it turns out that maybe the police don't care that much about black people, especially the hookers and drug abusers who comprised most of his victims. With a former prostitute as his tour guide to the streets of Compton, Broomfield is able to uncover more in a 90-minute documentary than the police uncovered in 25 years. It's pretty damning stuff, not just of the police department but also of drug culture and the community itself. In fact, there’s so much outrage to go around that Broomfield isn't real clear where he wants to direct it all. The result is kind of a scattershot approach that could've been even more devastating if it was focused a little better.
Grade: B
LAGGIES
In the latest comedy from Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister) Keira Knightly plays a woman who finds herself stuck in a holding pattern while her friends are all getting married and having kids. After fleeing an unexpected marriage proposal, she throws caution to the wind, buys beer for a teenager (Chloe Grace Moretz) and ends up hiding out at the kid’s house for a week while she tries to get her shit together. If it sounds awfully mainstream, you’re not wrong. Which makes Shelton seem like a weird director choice, given how fiercely independent she’s always been. And while she doesn’t exactly subvert the sitcom-y nature of the material, she makes the best of it, mostly through her casting choices. Especially Sam Rockwell, who plays the teenager’s befuddled father. Actually, he plays Sam Rockwell. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it.
Grade: B-
KILL ME THREE TIMES
In this Australian black comedy, Simon Pegg plays a hitman caught in the middle of a twisted situation in which a dentist and his receptionist wife want to kill her sister-in-law, switch the dental records and collect the insurance money to cover his gambling debts. If it all sounds confusing, don’t worry, the timeline is all messed up, so the same scenes are often repeated. Yes, the director saw a Tarantino movie once. And figured he could do it too. All he needs is some surf guitar riffs and extreme violence played for laughs. It’s that easy, right? Wrong, dipshit. If you’d read a little further in your Tarantino for Dummies guidebook, you’d have seen that characters the audience actually gives a shit about are kind of important too. To be fair, I left after an hour to see a much better movie, but I feel fairly safe in assuming this didn’t get any better.
Grade: Incomplete
NIGHTCRAWLER
In this drama, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a petty thief who sees much bigger and better things for himself. He’s just not sure what. That all changes when he happens across an accident scene and realizes there are people who get paid (handsomely) to film the horrific effects of tragedy and violence. And before long, he’s sabotaging his competitors, re-staging accident scenes and crossing every ethical line in the book. All with an incredibly creepy look on his face. He’s like Rupert Pupkin in the King of Comedy. Just one of those slightly off people who seem harmless. Right up until the part where he starts harming people. Rene Russo plays a TV news director who encourages him (not that he needs much encouragement) and the seedy streets of L.A. also play a prominent role. But the standout is Gyllenhaal, who lost 20 pounds for the part. It seems like all that’s left is eyeballs. Just a great, unhinged performance that never resorts to scenery chewing.
Grade: A-
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
In this midnight madness film, commissioned by the New Zealand Documentary Board, a camera crew follows a group of vampires. We quickly learn that it isn’t all flying around and seducing women. There are also household chores, petty jealousies and the everyday hassles of not being able to see yourself in the mirror. It’s like The Real World, in which all the roommates just happen to be immortal. Admittedly, it’s a pretty thin premise. But when the premise is this funny, it doesn’t really matter. Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords is one of the vampires and co-directed the film. He also wrote it, although he admitted in Q&A that almost the entire movie was improvised. After a somewhat lackluster festival, this and Nightcrawler really ended it on a high note.
Grade: A-
