LivDiv wrote:

Pulp Fiction

[10]

Perfect review.

Tarantino is a classic case of directors bloat. He needs to be more ruthless with the edit.

Jackie brown i still rate as his best work

Minkymu wrote:

Tarantino is a classic case of directors bloat. He needs to be more ruthless with the edit.

Jackie brown i still rate as his best work

I feel you are just saying that just to be different. I'd agree Tarantuno is too keen on bloat but arguable Jackie Brown is where it starts (pulp fiction is longer but it has a much faster pace for the most part thanks to the the mix of plots.)

As a fan of QT, I like near all his movies but don't think Jackie Brown would make a top three.

Jackie Brown is my favourite as well.

I disagree with the general opinion that his films need editing. He is a one of a kind director and I'm happy to let him cook.

I only ever watched JB once. I should really rectify that.

LivDiv wrote:

I disagree with the general opinion that his films need editing. He is a one of a kind director and I'm happy to let him cook.

This.  The Kill Bill films annoyed me when they came out but I've seen them since and enjoyed them a lot more (once I'd stopped sulking about the not being the kind of films I thought he should be making).

More films from the Toronto Film Festival then...

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

The title of this Quebecois vampire comedy tells you pretty much everything you need to know - though it's probably worth stressing that it leans very much more into comedy than horror. (Most of the actual vampire action happens offscreen.)

The lead character, Sasha, is a vampire with an unhelpful abundance of empathy for humanity, stemming from an early (vampire) childhood incident. Her family grudgingly supports her with "baggies" of blood, but when her fangs finally come through, they tell her she's on her own, and she'll have to find a way to feed. 

This is a surprisingly sweet little film, stylistically it burrows a bit from Burton and Wes Anderson, but for a debut feature it still notably has its own style. There's another, different film to be made with the same premise, I suspect, one that leans harder into the moral dilemma it poses, and less into, well, romcom territory, but still, it's a fun night. (And a nice palate cleanser after a run of more serious movies before it)

[8]

Hitman

I was ill and didn't get to see this one, which was hugely disappointing as I had wanted to. I've included it in the list as my wife and youngest daughter both feel it was the best movie they saw in the festival. Tight, funny, and compared favourably to Out of Sight by my other half.  Most frustratingly for me, Linklater (of whom I am a fan) turned up and talked at length about the process of making the film, so I definitely missed out...

The Burial

This film feels like it belongs in the early 1990s.  It's the tale of an elderly undertaker who takes a billion dollar funeral company to court. It's billed as a David and Goliath fight for justice, but in truth I felt like the legal case wasn't really all that clear cut even with the film desperately trying to sell it to me. In reality it's more a film (and indeed a trial) about race - with Tommy Lee Jones's elderly white family man bringing in Jamie Foxx's OTT black personal injury lawyer to fight his case for him. (Having realised it would be an all black jury).

It's all pleasant enough, lightweight fare - with one moment in particular getting a fair amount of applause from the crowd - though ultimately my primary emotion on leaving, even whilst agreeing that the people who lost deserved it - was that the law is an ass.

[6]

Rustin

A lot of movies got picked up by Netflix over the course of the festival, but this one came as one of theirs from the outset. In many respects it's a fairly uninspired, by the numbers biographical movie.  However there are a couple of things that make it stand out. Firstly, the subject - I'd never heard of Bayard Rustin before. He was the architect of the "March on Washington" (where Martin Luther King gave that speech), and was a hugely influential strategist for civil rights organisations for much of his life - if you're wondering why he wasn't more famous it's probably also worth noting that he was gay at a time when merely associating with a homosexual could torpedo your cause.

Secondly, there's Colman Domingo's lead performance. The film's chief draw, and chief pleasure, is that Domingo makes Bayard a man you want to be in the presence of. I have no idea what he was like in real life (though after the film the director George C Wolfe started listing some of his accomplishments, and he'd done more for civil rights that I have by the time he'd finished secondary school) - but Domingo makes him extraordinarily charismatic, fiercely intelligent and, yes, obviously and unapologetically gay. There ought to be an Oscar nod for the performance, if not the movie itself.

Oh, and finally, it has a really interesting score. Whilst more biopics seem to lean towards the sombre and serious for their musical backdrop, Branford Marsalis' score is an upbeat jazz delight, leaping to attention every time Rustin enters the frame, as if he brought his own amazing soundtrack with him wherever he went. 

[8]

The Critic

This ought to have been a slam dunk. Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton both acting their arses off in a movie penned by Patrick Marber, and based on a best selling novel?  And yet...

It starts off quite well, with McKellen's scheming theatre critic quietly working to retain his position at his beloved paper, interspersed with run ins with the blackshirts, and Arterton's consistently badly reviewed actress. I've seen some comments about the film that suggest that it's the tip into melodrama that sinks it, but in truth I'm not sure that's the problem - the real issue is that it doesn't then embrace that melodrama - when it should be going big, it remains small at heart, and so it does what no melodrama should ever do - it becomes boring, and then just sort of fizzles out.  (In the Q&A someone asked "the film has about 4 endings, what made you choose to end on the one you did?" and the director admitted that he didn't really know, because they couldn't;t really settle on one.  And it shows.)

[5]

NAGA

Yeah. Where do I start?  This Saudi film played in the "Midnight Madness" slot (usually reserved for the more out there offerings, or hour movies, other films this time included Harmony Korine's latest InfraRed film Aggro Dr1ft and the considerably more entertaining sounding "Dicks! The Musical").  The crowd there seemed to recall enjoy it, and I see Bloody Disgusting gave it a great write up.

I thought it was an incoherent mess.  It has its moments - in particular a scene in which the heroine is terrorised by a rabid camel will probably be enough to get it a cult following alone - but it was chaotic, episodic, and fairly pointless. The plot, as much as there is one, is that the film's heroine sneaks out on a date in the desert but absolutely must be back at 9 for fear of actual literal death at the hands of her over-protective father. (A pre-credits sequence shows the birth of her father, and establishes that family's approach to women having unauthorised contact with men)

Naturally, everything that could go wrong does, and she has a poorly conveyed race against time to get home. Is it a satire?  (I hope so) Or is it serious?  (Probably not). There are a fair few interesting directorial choices in here - a brilliant scene in a market where we watch the action through rolled up carpets - but it still ultimately feels to messy to be satisfying.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit. (I don't doubt that it's a trip if you're already slightly off your face when watching it).

[5]

Next Goal Wins

Taika Waititi does a football movie. Pretty much everything you need to know. Is it silly? Yes. Is it charming? Yes? Does he pop up and give a slightly toe curling comedy introduction as one of the characters? Of course. Are all the characters essentially stereotypes? Afraid so.

It's based on the true story of the American Samoa Football Team, who are famous only for recording the worst ever loss in International Football History (31-0). It stars Micheal Fassbender as Thomas Rongen, the coach brought in with the hope of delivering their first ever goal. It's also a way to tell the story of Jaiyah Saelua - the first ever Trans Woman to compete in a World Cup Qualifier.

It had an interesting route to screen, particularly as one of the characters was originally played by Armie Hammer, and they had to reshoot all of his scenes with Will Arnott instead once it became clear that Hammer was a wrong 'un.

Is it a good film?  Honestly, not really.  It's a by the numbers sports movie like pretty much any you've seen before. But, if you like Waititi's schtick (and Thor Love & Thunder aside, I usually do) it's a fun time - and was certainly a nice thing to do literally before leaving to hop on a plane home.

[7]


And that's the lot.  TIFF's a nice festival if admittedly a bloody long way away. We were there long enough to feel part of it by the end - slow hand clapping though the Bulgari ads, and providing piratey "arrrrs" during the anti-pirating message along with the regulars.  Yes, it was kind of a bummer that the actors strike meant that we got no celebrities at the screenings, but all but two were attended by the director and/or producer who then stayed for a Q&A, and as my eldest said "the directors are more interesting anyway".  Which is probably true.  If I happened to live there, I'd be going every year.  As it is, maybe some day we'll do it again. (I have friends who live in Toronto so it's not all that ridiculous a thing to do...)

Book of shadows let's go

I might be the only person on thus forum who saw all movies ans played all pc games.

36. Man of Steel - 17 Sep
A rewatch, with the boy this time. I think he enjoyed it but he's only 10 and won't understand why some of the character (or out-of-character) decisions are stupid and bad. Plus no real character development. Camerawork all over the place with overlong and overblown OTT action sequences. Hardly anything to recommend this shit. Only rewatched cos just felt like a lazy Sunday afternoon chill session with my boy.
[3]

The White Ribbon Slightly disturbing but highly engaging tale set in a pre WW1 German village in which crimes are being committed by unseen hands starting with tripwire set for a horse riding doctor and escalating from there. It's beautifully shot in crisp b&w and has echoes of Bergman (indeed, one scene is highly reminiscent of one from a Bergman film) but is very much its own film. 

It embues a feeling of something rotten at the core of the society - some commentators take it as an early indicator of Nazism but I think that's an over simplification as one can see the structure of this society everywhere with a small number of males (the Baron, pastor, doctor and steward) being highly influential leaders holding a strict, puritan disciplined regime in which the children in particular bear the burden more than others.

Not one for the popcorn but recommended. On BFI.

I loved Superman as a 10yr old.  Everyone and their dog devoured comics as nippers these days, allegedly, but I only ever bought Superman, Turtles and Robocop Vs Terminator.  I reckon Man of Steel would've blown my brain to bits as a kid - I probably only stopped rewinding the bit where Nuclear Man drew blood from Superman's neck in A Quest for Peace in about 1990.

47. Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
Ooft. Went into this with very low expectations, but was also a bit hopeful as I've got a lot of time for the first 2 films. It starts ok, but as soon as it goes into the quantum realm it just falls apart (asides from some pretty cool creature/environment design). It's like they took all of the things that made the first 2 films charming - the small scale, the likeable characters, the funny script - and thought 'Fuck this - what we need is an incoherent, shallow, Marvel by numbers, huge scale universe ending threat to be dealt with by the least serious hero we have, with an awful script, cringey attempts at humour shoehorned in and some of the worst acting we can get out of these people'. At times you can actually see the actors souls leaving their bodies as they grind their way through some truly awful lines. There are some things to like here, but good god this was bad - although Marvel still haven't reached the Stygian depths of Aquaman or WW1984, but on the evidence of this screaming tailspin of a movie they'll get there yet. 3

A Million Miles Away Michael Peña as the very intelligent Mexican immigrant determined to become an astronaut. It’s the underdog story that’s been done a lot but told with such heart and likeable characters I couldn’t help but enjoy it. It’s on Prime.

The Dark Knight  Still a great caper. It's tight and breezes along quite well. Ledger's performance is still top drawer, and there's plenty else to enjoy when you look at Oldman, Caine and Freeman. But there isn't a weak link in the entire cast.

Maybe I have a false memory but I though the Gambol kill sequence showed more of the killing of the two henchmen and Gambol himself. Maybe I was just filling the blanks in? Was watching this on DVD.