Daydream Nation (Michael Goldbach)
It’s tough to fault a Canadian film so willing to poke fun at its own cultural heritage. “There’s more incest in this town than in an Atom Egoyan movie,” Kat Dennings’ character remarks early in Daydream Nation. And yet, Michael Goldbach’s directorial debut — starring Dennings as Catherine Wexler, Josh Lucas as her steamy (and surprisingly creepy) high school English teacher, and Reece Thompson as the awkward, lovelorn Thurston — fails to resonate. Densely layered and tightly packed, Daydream Nation throws enough pop culture references at you that it’s almost certain that some will stick, and despite dealing with subjects like teen angst, serial murderers and taboo student-teacher relationships, Goldbach’s story of life in a small town in “the year that everything happened” still feels like it’s trying too hard to be trendy and intelligent. Not all is lost: Wexler’s performance is convincing and the soundtrack – featuring Metric, The Stars, and Beach House – succeeds in creating a beautiful, dreamlike soundscape, tying in nicely with the shallow depth of field and engaging suburban cinematography. But honestly: a film so heavily referential to 1980s rock band Sonic Youth (and their late-80s sonic magnum opus, Daydream Nation) really shouldn’t be this underwhelming.—TOM CARDOSO
Barney’s Version (Richard J. Lewis)
Not a lot of actors could have pulled off Barney Panofsky, the hero of Mordecai Richler’s final novel. A hack TV producer and worse husband, he cheats, he lies, he leaves his second wife at the wedding reception to ask out a potential third; ignores his loved ones to watch the hockey game, and possibly even kills his friend. Paul Giammati’s performance is so good because it is so merciless. His Barney is too smart to tolerate the people around him, too selfish to deserve their attention, and too self-aware not to hate himself. He’s also very funny, in a curmudgeonly sort of way, and to be fair, he seems like a bastard by birth, not by choice. This slick and entertaining Robert Latnos production covers most of Barney’s adulthood in its leisurely 132-minute running time, pleasingly structured like a novel on film – or a life, for that matter. There’s a lot to cover, and the secondary characters get the short shrift (Barney’s first two wives are cruel caricatures, the third is simplistically noble), but maybe that doesn’t matter. Barney is definitely the star of his own life story, and Barney’s Version is a fine showcase for Giammati.—WILL SLOAN
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
You can’t always explain your reaction to art. Certain pieces of music, or paintings, or passages of poetry elude all critical thought and strike you at a gut level. What I mean to say is, I’m still just happily baffled by Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, and that the best I can muster is, “It’s The Red Shoes meets Videodrome.” I sure hope that gets quoted on the ads.
The film is a berserk fusion of melodrama and body horror, two subgenres that work best as visceral experiences. Natalie Portman – never a more erotic presence – plays a dancer cast as the White and Black Swans in Swan Lake, a dual role that seems beyond her ability. Among the things that struck me on a gut level: the warped power dynamic between Portman and her director (Vincent Cassel); Portman’s sexual awakening, and how it contrasts with her infantilized relationship with her mother; her insanely driven, mind-and-body-destroying pursuit of artistic perfection; the curious psychosexual drama between her and a rival dancer (Mila Kunis), who is nothing if not a Black Swan. And there are the final thirty minutes, set during the opening night performance, which are just terrific filmmaking. Aronofsky’s camera circles around the dancers, gliding to the tempo of Swan Lake – a virtuoso sequence that reaches its emotional pinnacle with a literal onstage transformation that really shouldn’t work but absolutely does. Please don’t ask me why I found it all so moving. Sometimes trying to explain something can destroy its magic.—WS
Everything Must Go (Dan Rush)
If the line between comedy and tragedy really is as thin as they say, then Will Ferrell is blessed with the ideal actor’s body. The opening shot of Everything Must Go is of his face – doughy, aging, with patches of greying hair and a frown that looks as worked-in as an old baseball glove. If his comic characters have poignancy, it comes from the gap between who they think they are and the saggy, middle-aged reality. The only thing missing from his dramatic roles is the self-delusion.
In Everything Must Go, Ferrell plays a relapsed alcoholic in Arizona, fired the same day his wife left him, changed the locks, moved out, and left all his belongings on the front lawn. With his bank account frozen, he chooses to stay on his lawn, partly out of spite, mostly out of self-pity. It sounds gimmicky, but writer/director Dan Rush (adapting a short story by Raymond Carver) doesn’t play the situation for easy laughs, instead using the setting as a visual compliment to Ferrell’s disciplined, deadpan (and very good) performance. He also respects his audience – he doesn’t underline the emotional moments with aggressive music, he never departs too far from how this might actually play out in real life, and he doesn’t feel the need to tie everything neatly together at the end.—WS
Film Socialism (Jean-Luc Godard)
Jean-Luc Godard can get away with a lot. Film Socialism, which screened in Cannes with pidgin-English subtitles, arrives on these shores without any subtitles at all. For those not fluent in French, German, and Czech, this will be something of an issue. Or maybe not: I read that one of Godard’s targets is the problem of communication. Well, mission accomplished.
This is “a symphony in three movements,” according to the publicity materials. The first, taking place on a cruise liner, is the best, with Godard’s contrasting use of high-definition digital (the ship, sky, and ocean are vividly blue) and colourfully pixelated, YouTube-quality images very striking and beautiful. The second is about a family who (I believe) operate a gas station. This section is very talky, and I didn’t make it past 10th grade French, so forgive me for being sketchy on the details. I learn from my trusty Wikipedia that it “…involves a pair of children, a girl, and her younger brother, summoning their parents to appear before the ‘tribunal of their childhood,’ demanding serious answers on the themes of liberty, equality, and freedom.” The third section is an assemblage of footage of Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Naples, Barcelona, war newsreels, atrocity footage, Hollywood movies, and other clips, with unsubtitled narration. I believe Godard has a point to make about how the media’s constructed images mediate our reality, though I still don’t know how Charlie Chaplin figures into it.
I sometimes sensed the social commentary was perhaps not worth the effort it took to decode. Footage of bombardiers is followed by people dancing mindlessly in the ship’s nightclub. Good one, Jean-Luc. Still, you have to hand it to the guy: at 79, he may still be the most experimental, personal, and radically uncompromising major film artist. I would just appreciate it if Godard would allow his audience a point of entry.—WS
The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
In his pantomime comedies like Mon Oncle and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, comedian/director Jacques Tati showed a warm, bemused take on human behavior. In The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), a no less keen human observer, has an equally warm, bemused take on Tati. Based on an unproduced script by the master himself, Chomet casts an animated Tati as a struggling magician called Tatischeff. From the too-short pants to the never-bending legs to the arms that remain rigidly straight as the upper body leans precariously forward, Tatischeff is Mr. Hulot resurrected.
Not a lot happens in this gentle, charming little wisp of a film, which more or less follows Tatischeff’s wanderings from place to place, accompanied by a twentyish washerwoman with whom his relationship is most definitely platonic. Tatischeff spends the most time meandering around a particularly dreary section of Edinburgh, where his neighbours include a ventriloquist whose dummy is seemingly his sole friend, and a suicidal man who puts off hanging himself so he can eat his supper. “The Illusionist” is melancholy, but never despairing — how could it be, when it has the indefatigable spirit of Hulot, and Chomet’s amusing drawing style? Among the many sights worth savouring: a rock and roll star who pivots dangerously on his skinny legs; Tatischeff’s beady-eyed, buck-toothed little disappearing rabbit; a huge-jawed, ever-smiling Scotsman, happily (and drunkenly) oblivious to whatever is happening; a line of chorus girls, rail-thin save for their massive thighs; the old woman sleeping next to Tatischeff on a train, with a little bit of fuzz above her lip; Tatischeff’s companion dancing daintily around the apartment in the new coat he bought her; and Chomet’s extraordinary watercolour backgrounds.—WS
I’m Still Here (Casey Affleck)
Maybe it’s possible that Casey Affleck was heartless enough to simply stand and film as his brother-in-law imploded. Or that Joaquin Phoenix really believed his godawful hip-hop songs would interest Sean Combs. Or that Phoenix was unselfconscious enough to allow Affleck to film him snorting coke and cavorting with prostitutes. What isn’t possible is that we can hear both lines of Phoenix’s phone conversations, despite no recording equipment. Or that when the camera spies on Phoenix through a peephole (yes, a peephole) we can hear his dialogue. Or, for that matter, that there were always two or three cameras to capture the scenes at different, more convenient angles.
So Joaquin Phoenix’s public meltdown was a hoax, perpetrated for this faux-documentary. Was it worth it? It must be said that Phoenix’s performance is certainly brave, and completely committed. Maybe too committed. “Joaquin Phoenix” really is an awfully unpleasant character to be around (when the famous David Letterman interview occurs, it’s deeply cathartic), and once the film makes its satiric point about celebrity narcissism (Phoenix rails against his “stardom,” but clings to his A-list lifestyle, and wants fame as a hip-hop artist he clearly has not earned), there is little to do but repeat it again, and again, and again. One question remains: why would Phoenix throw away his career for such an obvious film?—WS
It’s Kind of a Funny Story (Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden)
Craig (Keir Gilchrist), the hero of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, has a projectile-vomiting problem. He vomits during moments of extreme stress, which, evidently, happens often enough. Well, that’s certainly an odd quirk. More information: he is in high school, is neurotic, stressed about his future and his moribund love life. He is suicidal, and has checked himself into a psychiatric ward. In an opening dream sequence, he is about to jump off a bridge, and his family is more concerned that he hasn’t locked his bike.
Certainly no family would ever really act like that, and one problem with Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s comedy is that it lacks the ring of truth. Another problem is that mistakes odd quirks for humour, and no bad psychiatric ward comedy would be complete without a buffet of insulting crazy-folk caricatures. There is a roller-skating Hasidic Jew named Solomon with super-sensitive hearing. Is a roller-skating Hasidic Jew intrinsically funny? There is a man who says, unprompted and matter-of-factly, “I’ve known a lot of ladies… Back in my day I was Sir Lick-A-Lot.” Would anyone ever really say anything like this? There is another who is obsessed with beavers, of both the animal and vaginal varieties. There is a fantasy sequence in which the characters sing “Under Pressure” dressed as glam rockers, and cutesy postmodern narration by Craig mixed into this stew of recycled faux-indie tropes. The film’s message of seizing the day is also pretty familiar, although Gilchrist, Emma Roberts, and a surprisingly effective Zach Galifianakis are understated enough to just about pull off selling it.—WS
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (Andrew Lau)
No one has ever doubted that Hong Kong martial arts star Donnie Yen aspires to be Bruce Lee’s heir, but Legend of the Fist takes his preoccupation to strange, vaguely embarrassing extremes. This quasi-sequel to Fist of Fury (1972) sees Yen playing Chen Zhen, Lee’s Chinese nationalist ass-kicking machine, continuing his tireless efforts to kick the ass of every last Japanese occupier, now relocated to Shanghai, 1925. An enemy of the state, Chen adopts the guise of “the Masked Avenger” (matter-of-factly referred to by the villains as “a superhero”), whose costume is near-identical to Lee’s Kato from The Green Hornet. Infernal Affairs director Andrew Lau’s recreates postwar Shanghai as a top kitsch fantasyland – the type of movie city full of flashing lights and swanky nightclubs and streets that are always damp from rainwater. This odd, over-the-top hybrid of superhero, kung fu, and period piece genres is mildly amusing for a while, but the pace really lags in the middle, and it’s hard to get emotionally invested in these cardboard archetypes or their world. This jingoism, which wasn’t exactly Fist of Fury’s shining virtue, is a little unsavoury here too. Of course, the one thing anyone can reasonably expect from a Donnie Yen movie is good fight scenes, but in Legend of the Fist they’re surprisingly few and far between, and when Yen does break into fisticuffs, his moves are obscured by shaky camerawork, quick cutting, and special effects (whenever he kicks a gangster through the air, it’s less Fist of Fury than Kung Fu Hustle). Would Bruce have approved?—WS
Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
Fans of the remarkable Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2008) should know that Matt Reeves’ much-dreaded American remake is perfectly fine – certainly not the bastardization that many feared. Indeed, its only real problem is that it doesn’t have much reason to exist. Set in New Mexico during the Reagan years, the main character is once again a bullied boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who finds a curious friendship in an eternally 12-year-old vampire (Chloe Moretz) who represents his opposite. Reeves maintains the slow pace and downbeat tone for what is virtually a scene-for-scene re-do. It has, however, seen some of its more interesting elements softened for mainstream consumption: issues of the girl’s gender and sexuality are mostly sidestepped this time around. Technically, there are no problems: the cinematography is top-notch (more amber-heavy than the original’s wintery hues), the acting is fine (Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas have supporting roles), and Reeves maintains a nice sense of gloomy atmosphere. It gets the job done, and it will no doubt be more impressive to those who have not seen the original. Of course, the question remains: why would they settle for second-best?—WS
Machete Maidens Unleashed! (Mark Hartley)
American B-movie producers in general (and Roger Corman in particular) colonized the Philippines for film production in the ‘70s for one reason: it was cheap. Mark Hartley’s documentary about the Philippine exploitation cinema, with an emphasis on American co-productions, has the same zippy tone as his terrific Australian exploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood – fast pace, lots of clips, lots of pithy talking heads (including Corman, Joe Dante, Pam Grier, Jack Hill, and a very funny John Landis) – but it never convinced me that these films were anything other than quickly-made crap. Not Quite Hollywood generated excitement about a fun-looking new corner of disreputable cinema, but when the interviewees in Machete Maidens keep repeating that nearly every film brought up is terrible, it’s hard to tell why we should care. The film is also a bit of a structural mess, bouncing from topic to topic without much depth, and no clear arc. Once you’ve seen the ludicrous paper-mâché monster from Mad Doctor of Blood Island tear off several women’s clothes, you start getting numb to all those gory killing and kung-fu fighting naked girls (though the James Bond spoof For Y’ur Height Only, starring a 3-foot-tall actor, is a late high point). But if nothing else, the film does contain my new favourite Roger Corman quote: “I didn’t like The Big Doll House. I thought it had gone a little too far with the sex and violence… Then when I saw the grosses, my scruples faded away.”—WS
Score: A Hockey Musical (Michael McGowan)
The makers of Score: A Hockey Musical seem to be under the misguided belief that if one is creating entertainment that is not meant to be taken seriously, then one doesn’t have to take the making of that entertainment seriously either. Michael McGowan’s last feature, the ultra-Canadian One Week was a mediocre film at best but at least, in that case, it seemed like everyone involved was trying really hard. Here, it doesn’t seem that way.
“So what if the lyrics don’t quite rhyme?” I can imagine Mr. McGowan telling his producers and financiers. “So what if the syllables don’t quite match? This isn’t meant to be high art! This is meant to be fun!” But it’s not fun. The music is grating, as if it belongs in a high school production; the actors play broad caricatures of what blue collar hockey fans, elitist intellectuals, and even Italians might appear to be to the least intelligent and easiest-to-please members of society; and the story of a home-schooled boy making it big in the OHL is full of every cliché and contrivance imaginable. Yet this is the film the Toronto International Film Festival has decided will represent Canada to the media of the world on the opening night of the festival. Pathetic.–ALAN JONES
