TIFF 2018: The Elephant Queen

The Elephant Queen is a wonderful documentary about Athena, the matriarch of an elephant herd in Kenya, and weaves together outstanding footage to tell the story of the herd's migration over the course of a year. We meet the members of her family, see birth and death, and learn how the elephants affect and coexist with some of their neighbours along their journey. The cinematography was amazing, and the film makes you feel like you know the elephants as friends.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give is a powerful film by director George Tillman Jr (based on a book by Angie Thomas), that makes the story of young black men being shot by police feel very personal. (And yes,  I know my white privilege is showing when I say that, as the story is already very personal for most people of colour, who have been given "the talk" by their parents).

Starr (played by Amandla Stenberg) is a girl from a black working-class neighbourhood who attends a mostly-white private school in a "better" part of town. Starr feels she has to be two different  people in the two settings. Her life is turned upside down when a good friend is shot by a police officer during a routine traffic stop. She feels torn between speaking up as the only witness to hold the police accountable, and protecting her family from the local drug lord who wants her to stay silent because the shooting victim worked for him.

The story is real and timely, the performances are strong, and the film grabs you from the start and takes you along for an emotional and upsetting ride. I also learned a bit about 2Pac and the meaning of the title. This is a very important film that should not be missed. One of the best I have seen at this year's festival.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Summer Survivors

Summer Survivors is a Lithuanian film about a psychologist starting as a research assistant at a mental hospital who is asked to drive 2 transferring patients to another hospital. The TIFF programmer who introduced it said it had a unique visual style; that turned out to be a lot of off-kilter, out of focus shots, or scenes where the subject of interest was obscured by something in the way. I guess it was supposed to make you feel unsettled, and it did, but it felt like a cheap, annoying device, used instead of finding a way to make us care about the characters and feel their pain.

This was a really bad movie and I couldn't wait until it was over. I thought that if someone combined the atrocious cinematography of this film with the really annoying soundtrack of Retrospekt, you could come up with the worst film of all time. Tt was definitely the worst film I have seen at TIFF this year.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Free Solo

Free Solo is a documentary that centres on Alex Honold, the world's most elite practitioner of free solo climbing, in which the climber ascends high rock walls without a rope. We follow him over the course of a couple years as he prepares for an outlandish goal: climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park free solo.

We get to know Alex and understand what makes him tick. We learn that the fear centre of his brain is not activated by the usual stimuli, allowing him to focus on difficult climbing in a situation where the slightest error would quickly cost him his life. We see him in a relationship with a girlfriend where he seems unable to understand that his death would really matter much to her or his friends and family. And that's what it takes to be able to undertake such an insane challenge: a near-complete lack of fear and human attachment.

Honold is an incredible climber; his ability to endure long, hard stretches of climbing and keep his focus is unmatched. he is also one of the very few climbers who do free solo climbs who has not yet died doing that; it is not a forgiving activity. I think one must be pretty much insane to do what he does. I have grave concerns that films like this will encourage others to go free soloing without Honold's skill or mental suitability to the task, and without his extensive preparations that do substantially reduce the risk involved. Those concerns aside, this is a very good film that provides a really good look into who Honold is and how he is able to do what he does.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Falls Around Her

Falls Around Her stars Tantoo Cardinal (whom we also saw in The Grizzlies) as Mary Birchbark, a musician who returns to her Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation home village after years of touring. She is withdrawn and quiet and at peace with the land, but there is also something unsettling going on under the surface. The film moves slowly, and for much of it little is said and not much happens. The land is shown prominently, almost as a character in the film: stark, cold and beautiful. Gradually the underlying conflict emerges and erupts in a burst of action. What has happened to Mary may be a metaphor for what has happened to her people.

This film was not as moving or compelling for me as some others in this year's festival, but it was an interesting change of pace and perspective.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Tel Aviv on Fire

Tel Aviv on Fire is an amusing satire of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that follows good-for-nothing Palestinian Salam (Kais Nashef) who gets a job on a soap opera through his uncle, and before he knows it is one of the writers. The show is a favourite of both Palestinian and Israelis, establishing something in common between the opposing factions. Clueless about how to write, Salam turns to those around him for material, and when he is questioned by an Israeli officer at the Ramallah checkpoint who turns out to have an interest in the show, he is suddenly pressured to work his ideas into the scripts.

This was our third film of the day, and a late one, and I admit to nodding off at times during the film, so I admit to missing parts of the plot, but it's an entertaining and funny window into a place where conflict and pain are the norm.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: The Old Man and the Gun

The Old Man and the Gun is based on a true story, and stars Robert Redford as a lifelong bank robber who is still at it in his seventies, with Sissy Spacek as his love interest. I expected a delightful, touching, funny film, and almost got it. This was not a bad film, but definitely a disappointment. I wanted to love Redford but his performance in this was somewhat wooden, and he kept a distance that made it difficult to really feel much for him.The film started off nicely, but didn't seem to go anywhere.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Green Book

Green Book stars Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in what seemed to me as a mash-up of Driving Miss Daisy, My Fair Lady and Cyrano de Bergerac. The title refers to the guide book published to help black travelers find accommodations while travelling through the segregated south of the 1960s US.

Ali plays Dr Don Shirley, a talented black pianist heading off with his backing musicians for a tour of the deep south. Mortensen plays Tony Vallelonga (aka Tony Lip), a nightclub bouncer whom Shirley hires to smooth out the issues that he knows will come with such a trip in 1962. The two are as unalike as possible: Shirley is black, literate, refined and cultured, while Tony is a rough and tumble Italian labourer from the Bronx. As they travel together and get to know each other, they begin to develop respect for each other, and a friendship develops as they help each other in unanticipated ways.

The injustices inflicted on the black population in America's deep south are familiar, but this film shows them in a different light. Shirley was from a wealthy family of immigrants from Jamaica, and feels apart from the poor black population of the South. He is accepted by the white elite in each town as an entertainer for their private soireés, but still subject to their humiliating segregation laws.

You may figure out early that this will be a buddy travel film, and it is, but in ways that are deeply touching. This is one of the films I was most looking forward to at this year's festival, and it did not disappoint.

After the film there was an excellent Q&A with Viggo Mortensen and Nick Mortensen, the real-life son of the character he portrayed, who had written and produced the film.

TIFF Co-Head Cameron Bailey hosting the post-screening Q&A

with Nick Vallelonga  and Viggo Mortensen 

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: The Grizzlies

The Grizzlies is based on a true story, and is set in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, where an epidemic of suicide is occurring in a community with little hope, and little to do except drink. Teacher Russ Sheppard (Ben Schnetzer) is there to work for a year, as a condition of the aid he received to get through school himself. He arrives completely unprepared, ignorant of any of the local customs, surprised that there are no trees, and astonished at the high prices in the grocery store, where everything has to be flown in. His classroom is half empty, since many of the school age kids either need to work or hunt for their families, or have just given upon school altogether.

Gradually Russ gains the respect of some of the kids, and by introducing them to lacrosse, he gives them something to do that is fun and healthy, and then that brings them together. I expected a sort of Mighty Dicks sort of film, but this is much more. It brings together both the beauty and the tragedy of northern Inuit communities, and somehow presents the horror of teen suicide together with humour and hope.

This was the world premiere of the film, and the audience was clearly full of the cast and crew and their families and friends. That added a lot of extra energy to the experience. The standing ovation at the end was well-deserved. This is one of my favourite films of the festival this year, and I hope it gets a good distribution deal so many more people can see it.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: A Million Little Pieces

A Million Little Pieces tells the story of James Frey (based on his book) as he goes through rehab and tries to overcome his addictions to crack and alcohol. His life is a complete mess. At the rehab centre he is helped by a few of the other patients, discovers that some people may be even more screwed up than he is, and gradually starts to care about helping himself. The performances are very good and the story is told well. I found this to be a good but not great film, and when it ended I was not very deeply moved by what had happened.

Susan and I are now at exactly the halfway point of our 2018 TIFF adventure (I have seen 9 of my 18 films, she 8 of her 16). We have seen a few great films, some good ones and a few stinkers. We now have an intermission of  almost two days to rest & recharge (we are tired!) before we resume on Wednesday night!

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: American Woman

American Woman stars Sienna Miller as Deb, mother of Bridget, who like her mother before her is a single teenage mother. When Bridget goes missing, we experience her grief, and then we see her evolve as the years go by and she raises Bridget's son. Miller's performance is outstanding, and her characters grows as she weaves her way through relationships and keeps her hope alive that she will find her daughter. It's a deep role that is portrayed very believably. The supporting cast is also very good, and the story is moving. A good film.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Life Itself

I had seen two trailers for Life Itself before going to see the film, and after seeing the second one, I remember thinking "that looks like a completely different movie than that first trailer!". I was right, and that's why I won't spill anything about the plot here. The unifying theme of the film is that of the Unreliable Narrator (I know because they told me several times in the film), and that "the ultimate unreliable narrator is Life itself". That's all you'll get here about the story, but I will say that this was the best film I've seen this year at TIFF so far. The cast was excellent, with some great performances, and the story was moving and unpredictable.

I will also apologize to those near me in the theatre who were disturbed by my sobbing.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers is based on the novel by Patrick DeWitt, and stars John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as Eli and Charlie Sisters, two hired killers in the old west. They are following John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) , a detective who has been tracking Herman Warm (Riz Ahmed), who claims to have a formula for identifying gold in place in a river. All of this tracking and killing is at the behest of The Commodore, a powerful rich man up in Oregon City, who seems to have everyone in the old west either working for him or trying to steal from him.

Director Jacques Audiard has captured the book's light-hearted approach to two killers in a world where that is the norm, showing the brothers as boyish, innocent and caring amidst their brutality. I chose the film because I had loved the book when I read it, and now I have gone back to re-read the book because the film made me love the characters just as much.

After the film Director Audiard took the stage for a Q &A. He spoke almost entirely in French with another crew member translating for him. I think he speaks some English but was likely more comfortable fielding random questions with a translator to make sure he understood them fully. He told us that he doesn't really like Westerns, but that he sees this story as more of a fairy tale than a western. I wanted to ask him if he had read the book in English or in translation.

This film offered great performances by a strong cast, beautiful cinematography, and a faithful interpretation of a wonderful story, with a little less brutality than the book. One of the best at TIFF 2018!


TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Fahrenheit 11/9

Fahrenheit 11/9 is Michael Moore's latest work, dealing with much of what is wrong with Trump's America, starting with Trump himself. I found it lacking in focus, jumping from asking how the fuck we got to a Trump presidency, to the water crisis in Flint, to the uprising of the students from Stoneman Douglas High School after the shooting there this year. All of those topics are important, Moore handles each with the usual mix of clear, blunt facts and occasional humour that are his trademarks. It's all very well done and convincing, but if there was a unifying overarching point to the film,it's just that things are really screwed up, and it will take mass action to bring about any meaningful change. That is, do not count on the Democratic Party establishment to do anything.

Moore was present for a Q & A after the screening, and seemed to bounce between hope and hopelessness. He said that he thinks Trump is not the idiot many of us think he is, but rather a true evil genius and master manipulator. If this film can inspire more Americans with a soul to vote and take action for positive change, then it will have served its purpose.

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Retrospekt

Retrospekt is a Dutch film dealing with abusive relationships and how people deal with them, told in a piece wise, out-of-order manner. Mette (Circé Lethem) is a mother and wife who works for an agency that assists abused women. We see her at various times pregnant, caring for her newborn child and young daughter, and recovering from physical trauma, putting the pieces together as the film progresses. Like Memento, which tells its story in reverse, the mixed-up timeline reveals details when the director chooses to, and the time jumps serve to keep the audience somewhat disoriented and unsettled. That feeling is strongly reinforced by a musical score and sound effects that are loud and annoying, making the film very uncomfortable to watch.

I was enjoying the first half of the film and thought I knew where it was headed, but the continuing needling of the annoying sound track wore me down, and in the second half I was hoping it would end soon. The ending of the film was also less satisfying than I had hoped for, not in terms of expecting a happy ending, but because there was less closure and clarity than I expected.


TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: Out of Blue

Out of Blue stars Patricia Clarkson as Mike Hoolihan, a homicide detective in New Orleans, working to solve the murder of a professor at the local observatory. The synopsis I had read made it sound as if the professor's studies of black holes and cosmology would be integrated into the story, hinting at a mysterious ending, making me think that there might be some sort of metaphysical or parallel universe thing woven in. if that was the case, I missed it. Clarkson's performance as a reserved, maybe repressed Hollihan was strong, and there was some mystery about her past that got resolved at the end that was pivotal to the story, but over all the film did not really work well for me. I found it slow and long, and in the end it came up short of being really compelling for me.

This was my third film of the day, all by female directors with female protagonists. It had two interesting things in common with MOUTHPIECE. Both used the city it was set in almost as another character, and in the Q & S director Carol Morely spoke of how she wanted to avoid overplaying the typical New Orleans scenes and just let the city be portrayed in a more normal day-to-day way (though there was one scene with beignets that seemed to be putting it a bit in our face). Both films also included a line in which someone said something to the protagonist about "dressing like a woman", which seemed offensive each time.

Overall, an interesting film, bu not a great one, in my opinion.


TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: That Time of Year

My second film of this year's festival was the Danish film That Time of Year, directed by and starring Paprika Steen as Katrine, the mother/daughter/sister/wife who is hosting Christmas dinner for her normal but dysfunctional family. Just about everyone attending (her kids, her divorced parents, her sisters and their spouses and children) has one issue or another, and most of them have issues with each other, all of which come out over the course of the evening with some no-holds-barred conflict.

There are issues that have been repeated every year, issues that have been buried and come to the surface, and new issues that arise and surprise some of the characters. The film shows how families mix love and hate for each other, but than in the end our family is our family and we cannot, and do not want to escape from one another no matter what is going on. The film was set in a foreign country, spoken in a foreign language (Danish with subtitles), focused on a holiday and rituals that are mostly foreign to me, but none of that mattered, and the underlying themes and emotions still resonated with me, even though my family is way more "normal" than Katrine's. Good film.


TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: MOUTHPIECE

My first film this year was MOUTHPIECE, the story of a woman dealing with her feelings after her mother's death, as she prepares for the funeral and the eulogy she will deliver. I first heard about this film when I saw this TV clip of my daughter being interviewed about it:

https://globalnews.ca/video/4427766/2b-theatre-company-presents-mouthpiece

so I got tickets to see it with my mom (which turned out to be a great idea). The film is based on the play of the same name, which was created and performed by the two actresses in the film, Amy Nostbakken (as Tall Cassandra) and Norah Sadava (Short Cassandra). The unusual device of having two actresses portray the same character was strange and at first awkward, but it worked as a way to provide insight into the different sides of Cassandra and her inner turmoil and conflict over both how she deals with the world, and how she feels about her mother. At times the two actresses' movements and speech are synchronized, and at other times they behave independently or even at odds with each other. It was an effective way to tell the story and let us get to know both Cassandra and her mother.

I liked how the film was obviously set in Toronto, but without using any of the typical touristy shots such as the CN tower or City Hall. the film received a standing ovation when it ended.

In the Q & A session after the film we heard from Director Patricia Rozema (I've Heard The Mermaids Singing) and the two lead actresses. They talked about how different the film is from the play (which is staged simply and features only the two actresses, who voice all the other characeters themselves), how different acting is for stage vs screen (Rozema would tell them to "act like real people!"), and how different it is to perform the play again after having made the film (they now have the other actors' performances of the other characters in their heads as they voice those in the play). Rozema said she realized after making the film that she had made it for her mother, and when the actresses were asked if their mothers had seen the film, they pointed them out in the audience (it was the World Premiere of the film). I was glad I had seen it with my mom, shown below with a 9-day old baby we met while waiting in line!

Marilyn (95) and Denver (9 days old).

Perhaps the oldest and youngest attendees at TIFF this year?

TIFF 2018 Overview

TIFF 2018: The Films

It's that time again! Last Tuesday was my selection window to choose films for TIFF. This year we got  package of 50 tickets, to be shared among Susan and me, my two cousins and another friend. The larger number of tickets and people made the process more complex than ever, and just as I completed my picks and was double-checking them, I clicked on Show Seating Chart for a film with reserved seating, and all my picks disappeared! I had to re-enter them all, which only took about 10 minutes, since I had entered each film in my calendar as I picked it, so I had the complete list handy. It was a relief to get through the process intact.

In the end, Susan and I have picked 16 films to see together, and I'm going to one other two others without her that she wasn't interested in or available to see. Here is my list:

• MOUTHPIECE
• That Time of Year
• Out of Blue 
• Retrospekt
• Fahrenheit 11/9
• The Sisters Brothers 
• Life Itself 
• American Woman
• A Million Little Pieces
• The Grizzlies
• Green Book 
• The Old Man and the Gun
• Tel Aviv on Fire
• Falls Around Her
• Free Solo
• Summer Survivors
• The Hate U Give
• The Elephant Queen
• Galveston

After I posted this there were a few changes! Because we bought 50 tickets, we got 4 bonus vouchers to add a few films. The vouchers were not valid until the morning of September 5th, and could be used only for the back half of the festival (Sept 12-16). So I was able to get 2 more tickets to The Elephant Queen for my cousins, and Susan and I added Falls Around Her. And I had an email from TIFF telling me that Galveston had been withdrawn from the festival. They substituted A Private War for us, but we weren't interested in that, so I swapped that for MOUTHPIECE, which I will see with my mom. It's the film version of a play that my daughter Karen is producing at 2b theatre in Halifax (see her discuss it at https://globalnews.ca/video/4427766/2b-theatre-company-presents-mouthpiece !).

As I see each film I'll add a link to my review of that film. Films in bold are not to be missed! It all starts for us Friday!

Partial ranking of the best films I saw this year:

1. Life Itself 
2. The Hate U Give
3. MOUTHPIECE
4. The Sisters Brothers 
5. Green Book 
6. The Grizzlies
7. The Elephant Queen
8. Free Solo

And a few stinkers I do not recommend:

• Out of Blue 
• Retrospekt
• Summer Survivors