TIFF 2020: Preparations to Be Together for an Undetermined Amount of Time

 

Preparations ... was my least  favourite film of this year's festival (and one of Susan's bottom 2). Woman who does not emote thinks she has a relationship with man who does not emote (which he does not acknowledge), and then nothing much happens for an hour and a half. Unlike Falling, which we also hated, there were no characters in this film about whom we cared at all. Other reviews call this film enigmatic and mysterious, and it currently gets an 80% rating on RottenTomatoes.com. I find it mysterious and enigmatic that anyone liked it.

TIFF 2020 Overview 

TIFF 2020: Falling

 

Falling, starring and directed by Viggo Mortensen is basically senile old asshole making his son miserable, and having flashbacks to when he was a young asshole making life miserable for his whole family..

 

TIFF 2020 Overview 

TIFF 2020: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel

 

The New Corporation: ... is a documentary that revisits an earlier documentary by the same filmmakers, which had looked at a legal ruling defining corporations as having many of the same rights as persons. The sequel focuses on how companies are rebranding as "socially responsible", while pursuing goals that undermine democracy. I expected a lot of talk about "greenwashing" (pretending to be environmentally conscious while continuing to ravage the planet), and there was some of that, but the film went further, exposing rampant privatization of not only health care and prisons (US trends I was well aware of), but also education in poor countries, and municipal water systems.

Much of the film was shocking and depressing. At one point we are told that we should be despairing over what is happening. Then the later parts of the film focus on very recent events: the pandemic and the uprising of a movement for justice in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and we see how everything is connected, with the recent events exposing how the huge transfer of wealth enabled by the policies of privatization have made all of this much worse. There is some hope at the end, as we see some local movements succeeding, and people running for office to make things better.

This is a really important film, and I hope the positive message at the end in an indication that a better future is possible, but it also left us feeling haunted by how much trouble our world is in.

 

TIFF 2020 Overview

TIFF 2020: MLK/FBI

 

MLK/FBI is a documentary about how the FBI under J Edgar Hoover obsessively followed and bugged Martin Luther King Junior during the 1960s. The material was interesting and we learned some things we did not know, but the delivery was very dry. The title ought to have been FBI/MLK. It was a mix of old footage, clips from fictional films and TV shows about the FBI (those parts seemed very hokey), images of FBI reports and interviews with people who either knew King (Andrew Young, for example) or knew about the inner workings of the FBI (James Comey). The end result was not as moving or impactful as we had expected.

TIFF 2020 Overview  

TIFF 2020: The Father

 

The Father stars Anthony Hopkins as a man slipping into dementia, and Olivia Colman as his daughter, trying to support him. The film plays tricks with the viewer to make us identify with the father, and understand how it feels to lose your grip on reality. On our walk around the neighbourhood after the film, Susan and I were still trying to put some of the pieces together. It's a disturbing, depressing film, but a well-executed one, with an outstanding performance by Hopkins.

 

TIFF 2020 Overview 

TIFF 2020: One Night In Miami

 

One Night in Miami brings 4 real-life friends (Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcolm X) together for a fictional gathering at a critical point in time. Clay has just beaten Sonny Liston to become World Heavyweight Champion, Brown is at a pivotal point in his NFL career, Cooke is trying to win over white audiences with his music, and Malcolm X is struggling in his role at the Nation of Islam, worried about enemies both inside and outside the organization. The 4 friends discuss issues of race and power, mostly in a modest hotel room in Miami in 1964. We see each of their different approaches to the issue, and the pros and cons of each.

The pace of the film is very slow, and for most of it there is very little action. That made it tedious at times, but the message and the relevance to our own time was still powerful. Eli Goree's performance as a playful and at times childish Cassius Clay stood out for me.

TIFF 2020 Overview 

TIFF 2020: I Care a Lot

 

In I Care a Lot, Rosamund Pike (from Gone Girl) and Peter Dinklage (from Game of Thrones) face off in what at first seems to be an amusing variation of the "criminal accidentally pisses off gangster" genre, but becomes a sort of horror movie along the way.

Pike is Marla Grayson, a court-appointed guardian of senior citizens who has enlisted doctors and nursing home directors in her scheme to loot the estates of seniors who don't really need to be removed from their homes. We quickly see how purely evil she is. 

Her latest victim has an unexpected connection to a Very Bad Man (Dinklage), and while we see how evil he is as well, we start rooting for him to give Grayson what she deserves.

The story takes some twists which I won't spoil any further, and great acting made us care (a lot) about what happened to some of the characters (not always in a good way). There were some huge plot holes that made the story far from believable. That did not detract from my enjoyment of the ride, and Susan still found herself engaged and entertained while struggling to accept some of what was happening, but her son Stuart found the last half fairly ridiculous.

We also watched the film with my 97-year old mother, who had shown an interest in the subject matter based on the summary of the film I read to her. Luckily there is no danger of anyone thinking she needs help taking care of herself! 

TIFF 2020 Overview

TIFF 2020: Penguin Bloom

 

Naomi Watts stars as Sam Bloom in Penguin Bloom, based on the true story of a woman badly injured in an accident, and the bird who helps her find her way back from the depths of despair.

That's pretty much it, actually. The film is pretty predictable as it follows the path you expect, but it works, thanks to:

• very good acting by Watts, Andrew Lincoln as her husband Cameron Bloom (doing an Aussie accent instead of the American one I'm used to hearing on The Walking Dead) and the actors portraying their children, 
• great magpie wrangling
• beautiful cinematography of the Sydney area (the film was largely shot in the real-life home of the Blooms).

Susan and I were both in tears by the end. Sometimes a good, predictable story is just fine.

TIFF 2020  Overview

TIFF 2020: Nomadland

 

 

 

Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman who has lost her husband and her town, and wanders the western US in the van she has modified to be a basic RV. Empire Nevada was a company town for US Gypsum, and when the mine closed in 2011, the company shut down the town. Fern's husband died soon after, and she headed out in her van. 

 

The film follows her through a variety of jobs, none of them glamorous or exciting, and a series of campsites. It is more of a mood than a story; not a lot happens, but we get to know Fern along the way. She is content but not happy, alone but still fairly social, especially given her lifestyle. She is self-sufficient and has most of the skills she needs to survive, but still vulnerable.

Susan and I both found this to be a bit of a sad film (maybe bittersweet is a better word?), but we enjoyed it. It's not how we would want to live, but we accepted that it was the life Fern wanted, even with its disadvantages.

TIFF 2020 Overview

TIFF 2020: The Way I See It

 

 Pete Souza was the official White House photographer for both the Reagan and Obama presidencies. In that role he had a silent, behind-the-scenes role, and his work spoke for itself. After Trump became president, Souza found himself troubled by the lack of respect being shown for the office of the President, as well as Trump's bullying and lies, and he began to speak out, starting with his Instagram account, where  he began to post photos from the Obama years as a contrast to how Trump was behaving. This lead to his book Shade, and now his film The Way I See It.

The film slowly starts off taking us through his experiences in the Reagan years, establishing that while he did not agree with all of Reagan's policies and decisions, he still respected him as a decent man who loved his country and his wife, and was capable of empathy and compassion. Then we see him begin to cover Obama and become his official photographer, and the vast respect he had for another decent man. The contrast with the current president is so obvious it does not need to be pointed out, and mostly Souza does not even mention Trump or why he finds him so disturbing.

This is a beautiful reminder of when there was a decent, wise, intelligent man with humility and empathy in the While House, who could listen to conflicting points of view to make a better decision. It made me cry at times (usually when we saw Obama dealing with people affected by tragedy), and gave me hope that in a few months there will again be a decent person leading the United States.

TIFF 2020 Overview

TIFF 2020 Overview

 

                                                    The TIFF Kainona Home Theatre

 

Like everything else, TIFF is different this year. There are far fewer films than usual, and most of the screenings are online. There are a few drive-in or sit-in screenings outdoors (we were unable to get tickets for the drive-in screening of One Night In Miami), and some in-theatre screenings with no more than 50 people in the theatre. When we heard that food would be served and patrons could remove their masks in their seats, Susan and I decided we were not comfortable attending an in-theatre screening. That policy was later changed (no food will be served and masks must be kept on at all times), but by then we had bought all our tickets for online screenings.

So my spreadsheet was much simpler this year, with only 11 films that we wanted to see, so in theory the ticket selection process should have been quicker and less stressful. Uh-uh. Perhaps because it opened to all members at the same time (instead of assigning everyone start times staggered over a few days), the ticket site was incredibly unresponsive and buggy. Sometimes it said there were no events available, and then moments later would again let me try to pick a film. At least 3 times I had tickets in my cart that were discarded before I could buy them. After too many hours of patience and persistence, I did manage to get a ticket to every screening we wanted, but the experience was horrible.

Here are the films we're seeing this year in our living room (films in bold are highly recommended):

• Shiva Baby 
• The Way I See It
• Nomadland
• Penguin Bloom
• One Night in Miami
• I Care a Lot
• The Father
• MLK/FBI
• The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
  
• Falling
• Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time
  

 

TIFF 2020: Shiva Baby

 

Shiva Baby is an uncomfortable comedy starring Rachel Sennot as Danielle, a student with an uncertain future who is earning money on the side, and not by baby-sitting, as she tells her parents. At a shiva with her family, Danielle has awkward encounters with her ex and others, as secrets and lies make everyone uncomfortable. The behaviour of those at the shiva, in particular the older women, is exaggerated but believable, and while we watch we feel as uncomfortable as Danielle and the others in the film. 

TIFF 2020 Overview