TIFF19: The Personal History of David Copperfield

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Dev Patel is David Copperfield – it’s an inspired bit of casting that’s instantly a perfect fit. In fact, the whole film is so overwhelmingly cast to perfection it’s almost embarrassing.

I worried about this film because though director Armando Iannucci’s previous film, The Death of Stalin, was extremely well-received by critics, it was not my cuppa, not by a long shot. As an introduction to this film’s premiere at TIFF, Iannucci informed/assured us the two films could not be more different. And while I’m not sure that’s true, I was relieved and elighted to find myself really enjoying it.

I hope it’s obvious that this movie is inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, though TIFF Artistic Director & Co-Head Cameron Bailey rightly called it an “audacious” interpretation, and it is that. Iannucci was struck by how timeless the themes of love and friendship were, so though the film is undoubtedly a period piece, Iannucci reminds us that for the characters, it’s present day.

As for myself, I was most struck by how convincingly Copperfield is portrayed as a budding writer. Even as a child he’s wildly observant, with a knack for accents and a fondness for “collecting” lovely turns of phrase. The way this movie explores and plays with language is unlike anything I’ve seen onscreen. It was setting off fireworks in the verbal parts of my brain. And there are plenty of visual treats too – beautiful costumes, dingy apartments, bustling markets, whimsical seaside abodes, and blooming gardens teeming with donkeys.

Sean did not feel so positively about the film – though he liked it, he also found it boring and meandering. Well, he said slow. I thought meandering sounded better.

The Personal History of David Copperfield is a funny, perceptive, and inventive twist on an old favourite. I can’t help but think Dickens would approve.

TIFF19: Black Conflux

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Set in 1980s Newfoundland, Black Conflux has an air of inevitability, and a foreboding sense of dread. There can be no doubt that this story will end badly. It seems certain that Jackie (Ella Ballentine) is going to cross paths with Dennis (Ryan McDonald). It also seems certain that if she does, it will not go well. You see, Dennis is an incel, or he would have been if that term had existed in 1987. He has a beer truck full of imaginary women who worship him, but he has nothing but contempt for the real women he meets. Jackie is a high schooler who has somehow caught Dennis’ attention, even though the two don’t seem to ever have met before. The more time we spend with Dennis, the more we come to think that the women in the beer truck might not be imaginary. They might be ghosts of other women that caught Dennis’ attention, and it seems like Jackie could be next. blackconflux_0HERO

Writer-director Nicole Dorsey’s talent and confidence are on full display in her first feature-length film. She has written two great characters in Jackie and Dennis. We quickly feel like we know them and can predict them, and Dorsey uses that to generate a great deal of tension in anticipation of the convergence (/conflux) of their stories. Adding to the tension are the slow pacing and the atmospheric shots of Newfoundland’s wild beauty, which reminded me there are plenty of places on the rock to hide a body or two or ten.

Dorsey is aided by two great performances from Ballentine and McDonald, who make their characters feel real. We care what happens to Jackie because we like her and we can relate to the teenage world she is trying to navigate, having been there ourselves. And while we don’t really like Dennis, we feel a bit sorry for his struggles to navigate the world he inhabits, even though he’s clearly making things more difficult than they need to be. Jackie is the more sympathetic one (mainly because she is not acting like a serial killer) but despite Dennis’ issues (or maybe because of them) I found myself fascinated by both characters.

It’s not that Black Conflux keeps the audience guessing, because a confrontation between Jackie and Dennis seems inevitable (after all, it’s in the title!). What makes Black Conflux so enjoyable is that it keeps the audience engaged, invested and interested in the journey to the climax. It’s a great debut feature for Dorsey and a great start to my 2019 Toronto International Film Festival viewing.

TIFF19: Awards

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The Toronto International Film Festival always elects a People’s Choice: the festival’s most-loved film, as voted by the regular people who bought tickets and went to the shows. They have not, historically, been big into awards, but that changes this year. They’re not going to declare best actors in the movies screened, but they are giving out several honourary awards in a glitzy ceremony meant to raise money for their year-round efforts.

Meryl Streep is, fittingly, receiving the inaugural TIFF Tribute Actor Award. As the most Oscar nominated actor in history, it would be hard to go with anyone else, as she’s gracing the festival as part of Steven Soderbergh’s The Laudromat. Is that the smell of nomination #22 in the air?

And after the world’s first TIFF Tribute Actor Award comes its second, into the hands of Joaquin Phoenix, whom you may have heard is in a little film this year called Joker in which he plays an emaciated loner named Arthur.

Even more excitingly (to me), is the Roger Ebert Director Award. Historically, the Roger Ebert Golden Thumb Award has been given out at TIFF, so it’s nice they’re continuing to honour Ebert’s passion and love for films. The Golden Thumb has been given to people like Scorsese, Claire Denis, Ava DuVernay, Wim Wenders, and Agnès Varda. This year, the newly minted Roger Ebert Director Award is going to one of my absolute favourites, Taika Waititi. Not only have I loved him for more than a decade, I used his early films as a Rorschach test of sorts for potential boyfriends. I will be delighted to be in the audience when he screens Jojo Rabbit for an assuredly enthusiastic TIFF crowd.

Also wonderful: the Variety Artisan Award will be presented to Roger Deakins! If you know movies, you know Deakins’ work, even if you haven’t noticed his name in the credits. But movie lovers know him, in fact, practically have a cult dedicated to his honour. His cinematography is out of this world – sometimes almost literally. The man has amassed 14 Oscar nominations before finally winning his first in 2018 (for Blade Runner 2049). He lensed Sicario, Unbroken, Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, No Country For Old Men, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption…and the list goes on. This year his work can be seen at the festival in The Goldfinch.

And finally we have the Mary Pickford Award for emerging female talent. If I may, just a quick word about Mary Pickford if you fail to recognize the name.She was the pioneering actor, producer, and co-founder of United Artists (which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, not coincidentally). Pickford was a Toronto native and Hollywood’s highest-paid actor (male or female) in the late 1910s. She helped turn the industry into what it is today. So her award goes to an emerging female talent who is also making groundbreaking strides in the industry. Who better, then, to receive this honour than French actress and director Mati Diop? Her film, Atlantics, screened at Cannes earlier this year, making her the first black female director to screen a film in competition there. Her film went on to win the Grand Prix.

TIFF19: Female Directors Edition

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Welcome to the first day of TIFF!!! If you’re anything like me, you might be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of excellent programming at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the curating only seems to get strong year after year.

To help narrow the field down just a tiny bit, here are some titles helmed by women, because it’s 2019, and if you came to the festival and didn’t see something directed by a woman, you did it wrong. There, I said it.

Pelican Blood (Katrin Gebbe): drop everything and see this movie. It’s about a woman who adopts a second daughter, and this second daughter turns out to be…well, it’s not PC to say “a psychopath” but basically, she feels no empathy, and claims dark spirits are rooting for her to do terrible things. So the poor mother had to decide whether to give this daughter back (and we all know what the return policy on kids is like), or risk her other daughter’s safety. Because oh yeah: of course they live out in the countryside. This movie is unnerving and fascinating and very, very tense.

Murmur (Heather Young): Young explores her signature theme of isolated women with a 60 year old who starts compulsively adopting dogs to keep the loneliness at bay. The film is stark and haunting, a slow burn that rewards patience.

Abominable (Jill Culton): Culton writes and co-directs this absorbing animated fairy tale about a magical yeti who needs to get home. Audiences of all ages will love this one.

How To Build A Girl (Coky Giedroyc): Fans of Caitlin Moran will be thrilled with this one, based on her novel of the same name. Beanie Feldstein stars as the impoverished young writer who reinvents herself as a music journalist and lady-sex-adventurer. Emma Thompson and Chris O’Dowd co-star.

The Father (Kristina Grozeva): co-written AND co-directed by Grozeva, The Father is hard to pin down but easy to like.

It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (Marielle Heller): is there a single beating heart among us who isn’t looking forward to this Mr. Rogers biopic starring the inestimable Tom Hanks? I doubt it. The first time I saw the trailer in theatres, I teared up. I haven’t seen this yet, and if I’m smart, I’ll leave it for the end of the festival, when I can be a big sloppy mess and then just go home. I have such high hopes. It’s almost sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Honey Boy (Alma Ha’rel): actually I haven’t seen this one either, but I’m willing to take a chance on it. Written by Shia LaBeouf about his own life, Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges star as LaBeouf at different stages, and LaBeouf stars as his own father. It might be awful and it might be wonderful, but either way, I’m betting it will be interesting.

Blow The Man Down (Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy Blow The Man Down): two sisters in Maine bond over the inheritance of their mother’s fish shop, and also the covering up of a crime. Gritty and bare, this one was a favourite out of Tribeca and is worth the watch.

Harriet (Kasi Lemmons): I mean, it’s hard to believe we haven’t had a big biopic of Harriet Tubman’s life before now. Crazy. And Cynthia Erivo is already getting Oscar buzz for her performance about a woman who escapes slavery only to go back to help others do the same. Powerful stuff.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria): literally could not be more different from the above, a bunch of strippers including Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu turn the tables on their Wall Street customers after the 2008 financial crisis leaves them strapped, and they do the scamming for a change. Hear them roar!

Speaking of which. I Am Woman (Unjoo Moon): yes, that’s literally a Helen Reddy biopic. I wouldn’t know the name if not for my mother, who always had time for Reddy’s feminist anthem (was Helen Reddy the Katy Perry of the 1970s? Am I going to hell for even suggesting it?)

Hala (Minhal Baig): I admit it, I looked at this one primarily for its star, Geraldine Viswanathan, who I thought was the breakout star of Blockers, another female-directed film I enjoyed courtesy of SXSW. This movie is another coming of age tale, but here she plays the daughter of strict immigrant parents, which makes for a very interesting shift in perspective and a fascinating twist in the genre, which never seems to go out of style.

Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi): Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie, a woman I hope to heck you’ve heard of before; she’s the only person ever to win the Nobel Prize in two different fields, physics and chemistry. This film’s based on an excellent graphic novel, and I encourage you to check it out as well.

My Zoe (Julie Delpy): honestly, I’m there for whatever Delpy puts out, but by all accounts, this one is much different from her usual fare – a psychological drama with hints of science fiction. Yes please. In fact, I’d take two (not to be greedy, but I would).

Honestly, I could go on, I could double and triple this list and stand by each and every one of them. This is me, exercising restraint. And this is you, pretending to believe that I am capable of restraint.

And may I just say, before signing off, that I am extremely proud of TIFF for going the extra mile to present us with such a wealth of choice. Other festivals have shirked the responsibility by claiming that women directors are such a minority that they’re happy to have their programming reflect that. Of course it’s true. Female directors are still very much the minority. But they’ll also stay that way if not for bold initiatives like this one from TIFF. And I think their lineup speaks for itself: there is no lack of talent here. Does it perhaps take more time to find all of these gems? Certainly. But female directors are telling such a wide breadth of stories at this festival, their presence feels essential, and of course it is. TIFF is the festival of the future, only they’re doing it now, and we get to live it. There is no better time to be at TIFF. The women are here. In numbers too big to ignore.

One Last Thing

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Dr. Dylan Derringer, D.D.S. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Well, I didn’t try all that hard, so maybe I could have, but I didn’t) is a lonely dentist with not a whole heck of a lot going on in his life besides golf when he learns some surprising news: he has a daughter. A 25 year old daughter.

Dylan (Wendell Pierce) stalks his daughter before working up the courage to introduce himself. Stalking has such a negative connotation, but it’s only about half as creepy when you’re watching a father fall in love with his grown daughter from afar. And I mean fall in love in the father-daughter bonding way, totally above-board and asexual and all that good, appropriate, wholesome stuff. Lucy (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is at least as surprised to learn she has a father, as she’s always believed him to be dead.

Of course, a relationship doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. It needs to be earned, so they go about putting in the time, getting to know each other. They do the What-If dance over and over, ruing their absence in each other’s lives. His is fairly empty save for a sexy hygienist back home (Joanne Froggatt), and hers is extremely empty, her mother having died and left her to be raised in foster care. She does have a girlfriend who isn’t very nice to her, though it’s a little dicey as to how much her brand new father can really object.

But anyway: she’s also desperately in need of a kidney, it turns out. Which seems quite fortuitous for her, and less so for him, or at least for his favourite kidney. It’s kind of sticky, asking your new dad/total stranger for a vital organ. And it’s also kind of awkward watching your new friend/new daughter die, right in front of your eyes. You can shuffle your feet and avoid eye contact all you want, but reality is, she’s gasping painfully for breath, and you’ve got life-extending capability right inside your body cavity.

Family is generally (though not always) good for more than just organs, so there’s a bargaining to this relationship that’s interesting to navigate. The film is utterly predictable of course, but sweetly executed. I found this movie streaming on Netflix and you can too!

TIFF19: All Cats Are Grey in the Dark

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I’ll be honest. Until I watched All Cats Are Grey in the Dark, I did not know the first thing about breeding cats. Now, having seen it, I have a much better idea of what is involved. It is safe to say I will not be getting into the business anytime soon, but it’s good to know it could be my life if I’m looking for a career change.

Christian, on the other hand, has clearly decided that cat breeding is for him. And he is all in. His cats go everywhere with him, whether on a ferry to another country, to a ski resort, or to what I can only assume is a European Costco. I realize that is not an extremely long list but All Cats Are Grey in the Dark is not an extremely long film, so there were probably more destinations that didn’t make the cut.

I would have been interested to see more of the world surrounding Christian and his cats, because the few shots outside Christian’s home are my favourite parts of the movie. Those scenes really capture the separation between Christian (and his cats) and literally everyone else. Christian may or may not be aware of the distance his cats create between him and others, and he may or may not care, but it’s obvious and striking how much of a barrier is put up by a person having two cats on his shoulder as he goes about his day. He sits alone at the slope-side bar, there is no one else in sight at the pet store, and his veterinarian is the only person Christian talks to directly during the 18 minute runtime of All Cats Are Grey in the Dark.

[Editor’s note: Although Sean has just told you the film is only 18 minutes long, I feel the need to tell you that he paused it somewhere in the middle because he was “so hungry I could eat a cat.” He had cereal. – J ]

Which is not to say that there is no other dialogue. Christian is very chatty with his cats, Marmelade and Katjuscha, and the three of them seem quite happy to do their own thing, especially when that thing involves staring hungrily at mice at the aforementioned EuroCostco (it’s exactly as pictured in Tom and Jerry). More accurately, Christian seems happy, because cats always seem angry no matter what they are doing.

Still, despite the happy facade, I can’t help but feel sad for Christian as he lives in self-imposed exile. Most of all, I can’t help but wonder how much different his life would be if he had just gotten a couple of dogs and, through them, brought the rest of world closer instead of pushing it away as the guy with two cats on his shoulder.

[Editor’s note: Sean makes this sound like a pretty gloomy movie, and I suppose maybe it is, but he watched all the way through the credits “In case there’s a post-credit scene!” so I guess there was something special about it after all. – J ]

Ed Norton’s Best Roles

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We are very shortly headed to TIFF where one of the many movies we’ll see is Ed Norton’s passion project, Motherless Brooklyn. While not his first time in the director’s chair, it IS the first one he also wrote, and of course stars in as well, because what the heck. He’ll play a Tourette’s-inflicted private investigator charged with solving the murder of his only friend (Bruce Willis). It looks good, and it’s had me thinking about Ed Norton’s other famous roles, of which there are actually quite a few, though he tends to be a bit under the radar (by which I mean: he’s always been more of an actor than a movie star).

Born in Boston circa 1969, Edward Harrison Norton became an actor because his childhood babysitter starred as Cosette in Les Miserables, and he caught the acting bug from her. He went to Yale as an undergrad where he was friends with Ron Livingston and Giamatti, and though he took some theatre classes, he graduated with a major in history. He was working on the stage, in New York, when he auditioned for a role opposite Richard Gere in Primal Fear; DiCaprio had passed on it, and Norton was chosen out of 2000 hopefuls. At the audition, he claimed that, like the character, he came from Kentucky (he grew up in Maryland), a lie that went undiscovered since his twang was evidently convincing. He picked it up watching Coal Miner’s Daughter, and threw in a stutter for good measure.

Lest you think that Primal Fear (1996) is his first IMDB credit, let me assure you that he wasn’t a complete noob – he’d previously appeared in a plethora of roles (including The Museum Guard) in an educational video designed to help newcomers learn English.

Before Primal Fear was even released, his test screenings were causing a Hollywood sensation, and he was soon offered roles in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, and The People vs. Larry Flynt. You may remember that Norton went on to win the Golden Globe for his supporting role in Primal Fear, and secured his first Oscar nomination as well: not bad for his first attempt.

Next he did Rounders (1998) with Matt Damon, and the two bonded by playing cards together (or, I suppose, against each other) in the World Series of Poker.

And then he earned his second Oscar nomination before the age of 30 for his transformative turn in American History X, in which he somehow extinguished the twinkle in his eye to play a Neo-Nazi, yet somehow keeps his humanity. And perhaps you’ve heard of his follow-up, a little film called Fight Club (1999)? Yeah, not to make Matt Damon jealous or anything, but he bonded with Brad Pitt by taking soap-making classes together. Hopefully with all safety precautions strictly followed.

And next we’ve got Keeping The Faith (2000), which is actually his directing debut. He plays a priest, and he and his rabbi friend (Ben Stiller) both fall awkwardly in love with the same woman (Jenna Elfman) even though neither of them can have her.

I took to Twitter to poll people’s favourite role, and American History X had a resounding win with 45%, including a vote from The Telltale Mind, and Fight Club pulling in a respectable 34%. Birdman took a surprisingly small slice with only 6%. Write-ins included Primal Fear, The People vs. Larry Flynt from Reely Bernie, 25th Hour from Matt of Armchair Directors, and even The Italian Job, this according to FilmGamer.

His more interesting roles this century include Death To Smoochy, The Illusionist, Moonrise Kingdom, and an astonishing supporting role opposite Michael Keaton in Birdman, for which he received a third Oscar nomination.

Motherless Brooklyn is his first writing credit but he’s done uncredited script work for 2001’s The Score, 2002’s Frida, and 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.

He lost a role to buddy Matt Damon in The Rainmaker. He turned down Damon’s role in Saving Private Ryan. He was the runner up to Jim Carrey for Man on the Moon (in which he played Andy Kaufman). He turned down the role of Bruce Banner in 2003’s Hulk but accepted it in 2008.

He’s had an incredible career but it feels like Motherless Brooklyn is a new frontier for him, and very likely a successful one (watch for the review – coming soon).

What’s your favourite role of his?

Saint Judy

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Judy Wood (Michelle Monaghan) and her young son Alex drive to California to start a new life. He’ll get to live near and have more time with his dad, and she’ll get to restart her career as an immigration lawyer. Not exactly what she had planned, but not exactly a choice, either.

She was a very successful public defender in her previous life, but it turns out you don’t need a lot of qualifications to be an immigration attorney because the clients are in no position to complain. They get what they get. Lucky for them, Judy Wood is a tireless crusader.

But she still has the capacity to be shocked by what she finds: people who have been held in custody for months or years, drugged for their own “protection,” the burden of proof on the detainees because, since they are not accused of crimes, they do not enjoy the protections afforded the common criminal. They are guilty until proven innocent – and with overworked, underpaid, unqualified lawyers, that’s a pretty dodgy concept.

Director Sean Hanish makes no bones about sainting his subject – it’s right there in the title. So basically we get to just sit back and watch this woman (based on a real-life woman) work up a steam of righteous anger all the way to making actual changes in the American law of asylum to actually save women’s lives.

Lawyers are often depicted as sleazy scumbags in Hollywood, and there are enough real-life counterparts that it’s hard to really object. But for every piece of shit in The Laundromat, there’s also a warrior in Just Mercy. Mercenary lawyers give everyone a bad name, but changes in law come from lawyers who care and are exceptional in their work. I don’t know Judy Wood but I bet she’s not actually a saint. Good news: you don’t have to be a saint to make a difference. Judy did it through hard work, compassion, and belief. And though I think this movie is needlessly formulaic and one-sided, if it serves to inspire a young woman to go to law school and believe that she too can be the change she wants to see in the system, then that’s a great thing.

Chicken Run

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Mr. & Mrs. Tweedy are modernizing the farm, which is a euphemistic way to say they’re installing a chicken pot pie factory on premises, which might make for savoury dinners, but it spells utter disaster for the farm’s chickens, who are, after all, our beloved protagonists.

Yes the chickens didn’t know how good they had it. Sure there was the stress of not laying enough eggs and having your head cut off as a result, but that felt like only a remote possibility, whereas the chicken pot pie machine has an actual conveyor belt built to render chickens into cutlets in mere seconds. If you thought the chickens had hustle before (and there’s a couple of excellent montages that suggest they do) boy are you about to see the ante upped now that there’s REAL motivation on the line.

Ginger (Julia Sawalha) is a natural leader of chickens and perhaps a little too bright for her lot in life. But good news: she and all the other chickens believe they are saved when a suave flying rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson) lands in their yard. He’s grounded with a broken wing, but he promises to earn his keep during this tumultuous time by teaching the chickens to fly. Thus the great chicken rebellion of 2000 is staged, and one of the most ridiculous escape attempts every committed to celluloid is born.

Which is not a complaint. Rather, Chicken Run is quite good fun. And though this film is nearly 20 years old, it’s aged quite well (I suppose there are limited advancements in clay). You all know by now how partial I am to stop-motion animation. It’s the details that get to me. Babs is a clucking little hen who likes to sit and knit; the knitting is real, done with toothpicks. Someone did that! The chicken’s bodies were molded with wire and covered with silicone, but their faces, which changed constantly to reflect their speech, had to be done in plasticine, which is much less durable; halfway through the shoot they’d already gone through 3,370 pounds of it!

With joy sprinkled liberally throughout, this movie has something for everyone, and makes for easy family viewing.

Dora and The Lost City of Gold

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I’m not what you might call a Dora stan. I have nothing against her, and I even have a measure of respect for intrepid young women who are curious and resourceful. But I’m a billion and a half light years too old to be watching her show – though I believe I did about 700 million years ago as a babysitter. Had Dora been on TV that long, or is she just living an extended life on Netflix?

No matter.

The movie doesn’t ask you to know much about the Dora universe; you could easily jump right in and be the 5th wheel on her trek through the jungle. If you do know the show, you’ll be delighted by several in-jokes; the movie is not afraid to poke fun of its origins, and those little touches separate Dora and The Lost City of Gold from others in its genre.

In the cartoon, Dora is a 6 year old, but the movie, unwilling to imperil a small child, instead chooses to imperil a slightly larger one, aging her up a decade, but keeping her innocence and hair band intact, though neither of those things makes her very popular in high school.

Little Dora was raised in the jungle by her professor/explorer parents, Elena (Eva Longoria) and Cole (Michael Pena). But when they’re preparing an epic and intensive search for Parapata (a lost Incan civilization, the film’s titular city of gold), they send Dora (Isabella Moner) away, to a proper big city with actual schools, and worse, peers. High school turns out to be an even more dangerous place. And while she’s happy to reconnect with cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg, nephew to Mark and Donnie), it doesn’t last long because she and a small group of students are kidnapped by mercenaries trying to find her parents, and not incidentally, all that lost gold.

Thus ensues an epic adventure, the kind only Dora could have, which is to say: filled with monkeys who may or may not wear boots, foxes who may or may not swipe, and songs that may or may not be about pooping. So even though Dora has boobs, she’s still a youthful, fun-loving gal who embraces the absurd (adorably, her grown-up back pack is designed in such a way that it appears to have a smiling face). There’s some very common denominator humour in here that had the kids in our screening spitting out their popcorn in delight. Truly, there was a variety of hoots the likes of which I have possibly never experienced before in a theatre. Moner is winning and lovable in the role, and what more could you ask for? It ticks all the boxes, occasionally manages to surprise and delight, and if I’m being honest, it exceeded my modest expectations, so I’m chalking this up as a win.