Tag Archives: foreign films

The Wave

We tried to see this at the Whistler Film Festival but they had both technical and organizational difficulties that meant the movie just didn’t play at our intended screening, and they weren’t able to get us into any other.

the-wave-movie-image The good news is, it’s on Netflix now, and you can satisfy your curiosity as to how Norwegians handle disaster flicks. The easy answer: a lot like us. Sure they sound a bit like the Swedish Chef (yes I really am this ignorant!), but they’re privy to all the same tropes that we are:

One guy knows the disaster is coming. No one will listen to him.
His family is split up. Can he save his wife and son?
His son is of course not paying attention. Doesn’t hear warnings. Impedes escape.
Outrunning the disaster. Usually unsuccessful for most.
Since the disaster is never enough, there has to be a superficial villain, and his or her karmic death.
One word title. You may think the The in The Wave negates this, but it’s just Bølgen in its language of origin.

Kristian (Kristoffer Joner, in a weird combination of Hillary Clinton haircut and ginger pedo mustache) is a the-wave-2015-1080p-bluray-ac3-x264-norwegian-etrg-mkv0109 geologist who knows what’s coming, only no one will believe him. Classic case of ignored scientist syndrome. His wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) and son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) are at a resort hotel in town. He and his young daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) are of course elsewhere so of course when the alarm finally does sound, it’s too late for most, and this family will have to further test the odds by dividing them.

The disaster: an avalanche causes a rock slide which causes a violent tsunami. And it was such a picturesque fjord up until then. Everyone starts driving in an up direction, which of course causes deadlock. They abandon cars to run. Some are so stupid you’ll hope to see them die (everyone else screams at this idiot too, right? Like, fuck, your stuffed bunny from the carnival where you had your 3rd best date isn’t literally to die for you motherfucker!!!) But the end for some will be so horrible you’ll take it all back, forgive them all their dumb mistakes. More or less.

There are fewer special effects scenes in this movie, which they make up for with more character, and that’s refreshing in a tired genre. In fact, this setting being relatively unknown is a nice change of pace. There’s no White House explosion or underwater Statue of Liberty. It’s new to my eyes, and likely to yours. Director Roar Uthaug gives us gritty rather than slick but it went down just as easily.

TIFF 2016: The Best

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Graduation

From time to time, we all have to compromise our own values. It’s part of growing up. But do you remember the first time that you betrayed your own moral code?

According to Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, director of the brilliant and beautiful 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (which I have not seen), Graduation is about a lot of things. “It’s about family. It’s about aging. It’s about you. It’s about me”. But mostly, as the Cannes Best Director winner articulated at the North American premiere, it’s about that pivotal moment in one’s life where they make a conscious decision for the first time to do what they know in their heart to be wrong.

Romeo (Adrien Titieni) couldn’t be more proud of his daughter Eliza (Maria-Victoria Dragus) when she gets accepted into a fancy British school but he still can’t relax. Despite her stellar grades, she still needs to pass her finals to get out their Romanian town. When a vicious random assault threatens to shake Eliza’s confidence just days before her exams, Romeo can’t help feeling tempted to use his position as a well-respected surgeon to bargain with her educators in exchange for some leniency.

Graduation takes its time. It takes time to establish the relationships, set up the scenario, and let the story play out. Mungiu doesn’t resort to melodrama or even a musical score to beg for our attention. Almost every scene plays out in just one meticulously framed take. It’s an approach that gives his actors plenty of room to shine and his story the time to come alive. If you don’t mind the slow pace, Graduation asks big questions and will get you talking. It’s a very rewarding experience.

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My Entire High School is Sinking Into the Sea

Dash Shaw was in high school when James Cameron’s Titanic was in theaters and couldn’t help imaging what it would be like if his school sank like the famous ship with all of his classmates inside. When you think about it, to avoid drowning to death in a sinking building, the smartest would head for the top floor and try to get to the roof. Once Shaw, director of My Entire High School is Sinking Into the Sea and apparently quite an accomplished comic book writer, started imaging each floor being occupied by a different grade level, he knew he had a story worth telling.

To see a film called My Entire High School is Sinking Into the Sea without feeling like you’re seeing something completely unique would be a letdown. So I’m pleased to announce that, whether you love it or hate it, Shaw’s debut feature will not let you down. The unusual animation style takes a little getting used to at first and, even once you get comfortable, there is so much to look at that many of the movie’s jokes- and the jokes are almost constant- can be easy to miss. My Entire High School may eventually be best remember for its carnage (those who are spared from drowning are mostly impaled, electrocuted, or eaten by sharks) but it’s made all the more special by the hilarious and sometimes touching dynamic between three adolescent friends whose bond is in crisis just as their lives are in imminent danger. And it’s all brought to life by some of the best voice acting you’ll hear this year from Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Maya Rudolph, Reggie Watts, and Susan Sarandon.

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It’s Only the End of the World

I was one proud Asshole walking out of the Toronto premiere of Quebec director Xavier Dolan’s latest family drama. I was genuinely moved by a Xavier Dolan film. I admired Mommy, his last movie, I really did. It was just too self-indulgent for me to really relate to it in any real way.

So I was pleased to find myself loving this movie, more than almost anything else I saw at the Festival this year. I was finally starting to get it. I was quite disappointed to see that not everyone was as impressed as I was. It’s Only the End of the World currently has a score of 48 on Metacritic. If you’re not familiar with that site, let me put that in perspective. That’s only four points higher than Batman v. Superman’s score. Ouch.

I stand by my recommendation though. Based on a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, It’s Only the End of the World tells the story of a family who are easier to relate to than to understand. After a 12-year absence, Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) is finally coming home but he is bringing sad news with him. He is very sick and doesn’t have much time left. He’s not quite sure how to bring it up but it wouldn’t matter anyway because his mother, brother, and sister can’t stop alternating between picking fights with him and each other and awkwardly trying to force reconciliation. They try to bond over trivial things and fight over tiny details but can’t seem to bring themselves to talk about anything important.

The claustrophobic family reunion atmosphere seems to rein Dolan in a bit. He still manages to make Lagarce’s play his own though. For such a talky film, it’s surprisingly cinematic with its unnerving score and great performances from Ulliel, Nathalie Baye, Marion Cotilliard, Lea Seydoux, and Vincent Cassell. Using his signature tight close-ups, Dolan works with the actors to find subtext amid all the shouting. No easy task. Hard to act like you’re holding back when you’re screaming at each other.

I’m still not entirely sure what they were fighting about. But the story feels real and profoundly sad.

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Nocturnal Animals

Careful with this one. The people around me at the TIFF encore screening of Nocturnal Animals were basket cases watching it.

It’s easy to imagine yourself in the same position as Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal), a husband and father whose family finds themselves terrorized while driving a lonely Texas highway in the middle of the night. The tension is nearly unbearable as this story unfolds. Those around me could barely sit still watching it and Susan (Amy Adams) is getting even more stressed reading about it. See, the scary part of Nocturnal Animals is but a story within a story. It’s the plot of a manuscript that Susan’s ex-husband (also Gyllenhaal) has sent her of his latest novel. As unnerving as the novel is to watch, it’s even worse for Susan. She’s quite sure the novel is about her.

The three narratives (there are also a lot of flashbacks of Susan’s marriage) are balanced beautifully in the second film from director Tom Ford (A Single Man). Susan is a successful art dealer and everything around her is beautiful and fake. In the story within the story, Tony’s world is harsh and all too real. Nocturnal Animals is sure to be divisive. Ford lays out his themes very clearly and I’m sure I feel comfortable with all of his implications. But there’s so much to look at and so much to feel, think,about, and talk about that you kind of just have to see it.

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Oh, and if you’re not sold yet, Michael Shannon plays a crazy cop in it.

OIAF: Psiconautas: The Forgotten Children

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galeria_03_l Psiconautas finds beauty in unusual places: decimation, addiction, and poverty, to name a few. In a word, the art is stunning. It feels like a throwback in its hand-drawn aesthetic, and yet feels modern in subject matter and futuristic in its setting.

Taking place on an island populated by talking animals, Psiconautas immediately throws us into multiple animals’ stories with hardly any explanation and leaves it to us to reconcile the strange things we’re witnessing. galeria_05_l Like why a mouse’s stepfather is a human dressing up as a mouse, why her “fake brother” is a bulldog wearing a luchador mask, and why her bird boyfriend is possessed by horrific crows.

Psiconautas is completely captivating and keeps the viewer eagerly searching for answers to those questions and more. The answers that are provided make things even more confusing, but galeria_01_l in a good way. All of it has meaning, all of it is a blurry reflection of our society, from our proclivity to make trash to our struggles with addiction to police brutality. I left the theatre wanting to immediately watch Psiconautas again to see what other threads could be tied together.

Psiconautas is beautiful, haunting and fascinating. I highly recommend it for adults, but make no mistake, this movie is not for young kids. With that said, a childhood encounter with a horror movie seems to have led Tom Hanks to stardom, so maybe there’s something to that method!

If nothing else, you should see this movie so we can compare notes in the comment section. Psiconautas has won a plethora of awards so far, so hopefully it gets a wide release based on that, because this film deserves to be seen.

Ottawa International Animation Festival 2016: Louise en hiver

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Louise values her peace and quiet so she barely even seems disappointed when she misses the last train of the season from the small seaside town where she likes to spend her summers. Through voiceover, she claims to be more annoyed than afraid to be left alone in this increasingly stormy abandoned town.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m no good at describing animation but at least here I can tell you that the OIAF website praises Louise en hiver for its “beautiful pastel imagery”. I can also show you some pictures.

Louise may not be a people person but 9 months is a long time to spend by yourself. Plus, there’s the whole “no one seems to be looking for me” thing which can eat at you a bit, especially when left alone with your own thoughts. So, like Tom Hanks in Castaway, she needs someone to talk to. And with no other people or volleyballs around, a talking dog named Pepper will have to do.

Yes, the dog talks. Unlike in Castaway, where Hanks’ conversations with Wilson were largely one-sided, we see everything from Louise’s point of view. It’s not always easy following this story through the eyes of the occasionally confused and forgetful protagonist. Reality, fantasy, memories, and dreams are interwoven so beautifully that it isn’t always easy to tell which are which.

Louise en hiver is worth the trip into a lonely woman’s mind. It’s quite a beautiful film from its simple yet effective animation to its sad yet hopeful meditation on aging, memory, and looking back.

Here’s the trailer.

Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe

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Mongolian border, 1979: soldiers are exhausting themselves digging a mine, but damn do they believe in the cause. They believe it so hard they break into song when they’re not collapsing of altitude sickness. Is this a propaganda movie? Wait: a rumble. Our hero, Hu Bayi, turns toward the tunnel in time to get hit by the force of an explosion, an explosion seemingly caused by the recent unearthing of gigantic fossils.

Many are dead, but the explosion has opened up enormous caves that lead down into previously unknown parts of the mountain. What are the fossils? What secrets does the mountain possess? A brave few volunteer: Hu Bayi (Mark Chao) of course, the venerable Professor Yang (Wang Qingxiang), and the professor’s beautiful daughter, Ping (Yao Chen).

The expedition encounters a footprint of enormous proportions. They haven’t seen yet what we’ve seen: a dragon or dinosaur or big reptilian animal of some sort. Yikes. They march on, tracking the prints, when a flock of pink bats suddenly attack. The bats can change colour, and dodge bullets, and also dive into humans and incinerate them from the inside out.

With fewer and fewer survivors, the stakes get higher, the surroundings more treacherous and the CGI more ludicrous. Slo-mo avalanche deaths? You betcha. Super slo-mo avalanche deaths? Why the hell not.

And that’s when things start to get super messed up. When they stumble upon a temple, they open up a portal the releases…well, I’ll call them hell bats for the sake of argument. We can debate the semantics later. Net result: Hu is the only one left standing. Years later, present day: Hu lives in NYC and spends his time studying demonology. And this is when shit gets EVEN MORE MESSED UP.

Directed by Chuan Lu, Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe (Jiu ceng yao taIt) feels like the genetically modified bastard child of Indiana Jones and X-Men Apocalypse, only without the budget. Asia doesn’t really do sci-fi the way we understand it, but they do love the supernatural and they love love love a monster movie. Put them together, subtract reason and logic, multiply by two hours of subtitles and what do you get? A movie I regret watching.

TIFF: The Rest

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Carrie Pilby

Awkward, isolated and disapproving of most of the people around her, a precocious 19 year-old genius is challenged to put her convictions to the test by venturing out on to the NYC dating scene, in this adaptation of Caren Lissner’s best-selling 2003 novel.

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I was especially excited about the world premiere of director Susan Johnson’s debut feature because I knew I would get to share the experience with my parents. I also liked the sound of Carrie as described by the TIFF website. I’ve always enjoyed unlikeable characters who become easier to empathize with once we get to know them.

As it turns out, Carrie Pilby isn’t nearly as misanthropic or as unsympathetic as the website would have you believe. In fact, when played by Diary of a Teenage Girl’s Bel Powley, she’s actually quite charming. She may be a little too sarcastic for her own good but she’s never mean and her posture suggests such obvious vulnerability that you may just want to give her a hug.

You may find Carrie’s exasperation with those around her easy to relate to considering the unforgivably forgettable supporting cast. Nathan Lane and Gabriel Byrne phone in their performances as her therapist and father and potential love interest Jason Ritter finds a way to make sleazy seem boring. Only Saturday Night Live’s Vanessa Bayer, who I was pleasantly surprised to see at the premiere, holds her own against Powley as Carrie’s co-worker and new friend.

In the end, the script is nowhere near as smart as Carrie is. Though it offers a number of big laughs and some seriously sweet moments, the dialogue is way too obvious most of the time. I found I was able to anticipate line after line almost as if I was dreaming the film into existence myself.

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Headshot

The indomitable Iko Uwais (The Raid) stars in this fast and furious actioner as an amnesiac whose mysterious past as a killing machine comes to the fore when he takes on the henchmen of a vengeful drug lord.

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I ended my first night at TIFF 2016 the best way I know how- with my annual Midnight Madness screening. You never know what you’re in for with the Midnight Madness program but this year I felt like I was in good hands. Back in 2011, I caught a midnight screening of The Raid at the festival and I was so exhilarated by the experienced that I’ve made sure to catch at least one midnight film each year. No matter how many bad movies I have to sit through.

The Raid isn’t just a bloody good time. It’s actually an impressive film. There isn’t a wasted moment in the whole movie and every shot serves to build suspense. This combined with outstanding fight choreography and a less-is-more approach to dialogue make The Raid one of the best action films so far this century.

The Raid works in large part because of director Gareth Evans who I really wish was directing Headshot. The latest vehicle for Indonesian martial arts superstar Iko Uwais is nowhere near as tense or as tightly edited. Not that directors Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto do badly. They do an admirable job of capturing every chase and fight so that we always know who’s kicking who. But there’s something missing. Maybe it’s that The Raid managed to avoid the kind of silliness that Headshot has so much of (amnesia, for example, not to mention a sometimes corny love story).

That being said, Uwais’ hands, feet, elbows, and whatever else he can find always connect like they’re supposed to and Headshot manages to outgore The Raid. Friday’s Midnight Madness crowd seemed to have a good time and if you don’t mind a few heads being split open I’m sure you will too.

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A Monster Calls

Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones star in this adaptation of the award-winning children’s book by Patrick Ness, about a lonely young boy struggling with the imminent death of his terminally ill mother who is befriended by a friendly, shambling monster that arrives in his room nightly to tell him stories.

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I read on Wikipedia that Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall holds over 2,300 people. I am quite sure that on Saturday afternoon I heard 2,000 cry. I could hardly stop myself from crying through the final moments of the latest film from director J. A. Bayona (The Impossible) and didn’t do much better through the closing credits or walking down King Street after.

I was surprised by my emotional reaction given that I was finding most of the film disappointingly uninspired. As much as I loved the design of the monster and the outstanding voice work of the great Liam Neeson, I expected more wisdom from his stories (which are brought to life in lovely animation).

Only in the end do the monster’s lessons really become clear. As frustrated as the young boy is by the seemingly pointless stories at first, it becomes clear that he is being taught lessons unusually mature for a children’s story. I can think of several family films where a child has to learn to cope with the loss of a parent but I can hardly think of any that are less condescending and more painfully honest.

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Hello Destroyer

Jared Abrahamson (Fear the Walking Dead) plays a painfully shy but ruggedly capable enforcer on a minor-league hockey team who discovers the cutthroat nature of his locker-room “family” in the forceful first feature from Canadian director Kevan Funk.

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Tyson Burr (Abrahamson) may not be the star player of the Prince George Warriors but he’s an enforcer – the guy you can count on when the game gets rough. In one particularly rough game, Tyson puts someone in the hospital and soon sees how quickly his team, his coach, and the community at large can distance themselves in hopes of avoiding responsibility for the culture of violence that they helped to create.

When introducing the film on Saturday, Funk was quick to insist that Hello Destroyer is not intended as a commentary on Canada’s infamously violent national sport. He’s more concerned with violence in general and the social context around aggressive behavior. There’s very little hockey played onscreen and some fans of the sport may be disappointed by the slow pace of the film. I’ll admit to being frustrated as it slows down even more in the second half. (It was my third film of the day and I was starving). It’s only after the fantastic Q and A with Funk and the cast that I let it all sink in.

This is one tragic, hard-hitting, and beautifully acted film. It’s the kind of movie that gets better and better the more you think about it.

TIFF: In The Blood

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Rasmus Heisterberg is perhaps most well known to date for having written the screenplay for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but this Dane’s putting himself on the map as a writer-director with In The Blood (I Blodet).

In The Blood is about a defining time in a young man’s life. It’s summer in Copenhagen and Simon’s enjoying the bright nights as always – drinking and partying and waking up in a stranger’s bed, late and hung-over for class where intheblood_01 he’s a successful medical student. He’s content to have this repeat on an infinite loop, but the friends he shares an apartment with are not. They’re ready to sell up and move on – to girlfriends, babies, and different cities. Simon’s hitting the brakes hard but his friends’ growing-up momentum may just pull him over the cusp into adulthood, like it or not.

Kristoffer Bech, usually performing with his band Shiny Darkly, is well-cast in his first role. As Simon we see both his playful spirit and also a creeping melancholia as impending adulthood and responsibility cast their shadow over carefree youthful days.

In The Blood carefully studies the tipping point in an identity-seeking year of one’s 20s. There’s joy and freedom, reflected in the saturated cinematography by Niels Thastum. Copenhagen looks lush and full of life. But there’s also confusion and uncertainty in this self-seeking, and unfortunately, that’s reflected in the film making too, in overlong scenes that don’t accomplish much, and a run time that feels bloated.

This movie has a personal edge to it that veers into self-indulgence at times. Simon isn’t a very likeable character and it’s hard to hang in there as he flails about between one bad decision and another. As much as it may seem all-engrossing to the person going through it, this kind of personal growth is a little boring to watch.

Film festivals are curated by the best in the business. That said, when you’re seeing a couple of dozen films back to back to back, usually knowing very little about them, it’s inevitable that you’ll rub up against some you don’t like. I didn’t connect with this one. At all. I found it insufferable. But I still want to stand up and applaud this first-time director for getting his baby over an ocean to a world-respected film festival. That’s an accomplishment. And if this is the worst thing I see at TIFF this year, that’ll be an accomplishment too.

This review first appeared on Cinema Axis.

Beyond The Grave

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Beyond the Grave (Portos dos Mortos) is a post-apocalyptic indie sensation out of Brazil, where it successfully made the rounds of film festivals. It’s about a police officer looking for a serial killer, more or less. The catch: life is governed by magic and madness in this new reality. The serial killer is possessed. The cop is fueled by vengeance. This is not a tale of good vs. evil, but rather, the bad vs. the very bad.

The cop picks up a couple of teenagers on his travels – a risky thing to do, he knows. But they too are searching for someone who did them wrong. The cop isn’t much of a talker but luckily the boy can provide both sides of any conversation. And the bonus: the cop has a gun without bullets, and the kid has a lone bullet.

During their road trip they pass what look like zombies to me, but low-budget zombies you’d see trick-or-treating at your house come Halloween. It’s hard to embrace horror when the effects are too cumbersome to be scary. There are some genuinely interesting visuals here, most of them blood-soaked, but it’s not enough to make up a frustrating act in story-telling. The quiet serves the story well though, the audience learning much of what we know from a constantly cracking radio rather than any character.

I was a little upset, and by a little upset I mean and I was REALLY FUCKING UPSET when a zombie pulled out a gun. I mean, doesn’t that violate everything we know about zombies? And how do the zombies have guns when the cop’s is useless? I know I just mentioned two paragraphs ago that this post-apocalyptic world is governed by magic, I just didn’t expect the ‘magic’ to be ‘stupidity.’ My mistake.

So I lost interest in the movie quickly after this, especially when some super cheesy music was played over a montage where the teenagers learn to shoot a gun…that has no bullets.

So this movie is probably only to be enjoyed by those who really love zombie flicks – foreign, subtitled, low-budget, fantasy, road-tripping zombie movies with a western twist. Which I can’t say that I am.

When Marnie Was There

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I haven’t a single bad thing to say about this movie, except it just didn’t speak to me. I’m supposed to like it; it’s Oscar-nominated from the Studio of Ghibli, which are all the credentials it needs. But it’s slow. Painfully slow at times.

I feel guilty for not liking this, for failing to appreciate the beauty of a more hand-drawn aesthetic. The truth is, I’m just not comfortable with someone that looks too much like Sailor Moon.

And the plot, based on an English book (which I suppose explains the awkward tripping over of the name ‘Marnie’ with a Japanese accent), relies too heavily on a 12 year old’s sensibilities. I couldn’t relate. And I didn’t care to. There were definitely some visuals with a watercolour beauty to them, but the whole thing didn’t add up to the usual magic I’m used to from Studio Ghibli, and by the middle of the movie I was so bored by the thing I just wanted it to wrap up already. Does this make me a terrible person? Probably. Everyone else loves this movie. It’s just really not for me.

Familyhood

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Go Ju-yeon (extremely well-played by Kim Hye-soo) is pushing 40 and running out of ways to feel young. Despite plastic surgery, affairs with younger men, and a faithful and well-meaning entourage that protect her from unflattering headlines, Ju-yeon has finally reached the point where she has to admit that the public just doesn’t adore her anymore.

It’s a tough pill for any actress to swallow but it’s even worse for someone so needy and self-absorbed. Not ready to be forgotten just yet, Ji-yeon makes one last desperate attempt at being loved. She’s going to have a baby. Or, more accurately, buy a random middle-schooler’s baby and try and pass it off as her own.

It’s actually quite terrible and, as her stylist reminds her more than once, illegal. Dan-ji (Kim Hyeon-soo) has nowhere to go except live with her neglectful big sister and sure could use some money for art school, a fact that Ju-yeon is quick to take advantage of. Dar-ji is quickly hidden away in a stranger’s house during the most confusing nine months of her life.

This movie really didn’t work for me. The comedy comes, as you’d expect, mostly from Ju-yeon’s lack of self-awareness and the outrageous misunderstandings that her charade inevitably brings. It just isn’t very funny. I found it very broad and, worse, obvious. Director Kim Tae-gon excuses the implausiibilities and all the selfish behavior as “satire” of celebrity, “the cult of youth and beauty”, and the hypocrisy and double standards surround teen pregnancy. When it comes to Familyhood’s satire of celebrity and youth, its target is too easy and its tone not nearly subtle enough for it to be effective as satire. Tae-gon does, however, have some interesting and worthwhile things to say about the shaming of pregnant teen girls. It was a nice surprise but seems to show up out of nowhere towards the end of a film that seems to have realized that it wasn’t really about anything and just blurted out “teen pregnancy” in a panic.

I just didn’t like it. I’m not sure why. The crowd at the International Premiere at this year’s Fantasia Festival responded with delight to every tired joke. So maybe I was just having an off day and you’d enjoy it as much as they did. But I can’t help thinking that Familyhood seriously missed its mark.