TIFF 2017: My Thoughts on Acknowledgements

There was something new before each film I saw at TIFF this year: an acknowledgement that the event was taking place on traditional native land:

"To begin with, we would like to acknowledge the Mississaugas of New Credit, the Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat, the original keepers of this land, for hosting us today, and for hosting TIFF on their land every day."

I had heard similar acknowledgements at a few events recently, and now I have heard the one above 18 times in the last week or so. I have mixed feelings about this. Mostly I am happy that this is being publicly acknowledged, to help raise awareness, and in line wit the federal government's intention and efforts towards real reconciliation. But I worry about a few things:

• That people will tire of hearing these, and tune out over time.
• That some will hear these words as just another example of political correctness, and use that as a reason to shut out the message.
• That these are just words, and some may be content with just saying the words, rather than continuing to work towards real reconciliation with our native peoples, and real improvements to their standard of living. When not everyone in our country has clean drinking water, and when youth in the northern communities are killing themselves at a massively disproportionate rate, there is still a long way to go.

Despite these worries I do think it is good that this is being done, and I plan to include this in some of the upcoming events that my business will be hosting, including a few climbing competitions and a film night. They may just be words, but words can help, as long as there is also action. I am reminded of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "Sorry Speech" from 2008 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3TZOGpG6cM); just words, but powerful words that could make a difference.

TIFF 2017: The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales

The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales (original French title: Le grand méchant renard et autres contes) is a series of 3 animated stories sharing common animal characters who live on a farm. Animator/cartoonist Benjamin Renner has adapted his own cartoons and the result is sort of a French version of some old Warner Brothers cartoons: fun, zany, with characters we love even when they are idiots. Follow the link above to learn more about each story; this was good fun, and a nice low-key finish to the festival for me this year.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: The Death of Stalin

Steve Buscemi as Nikita Krushchev, Jeffrey Tambor as Georgy Malenkov, Michael Palin as Vyacheslav Molotov; I'm not sure I need to say much more to convey what The Death of Stalin is up to. It's 1953 in Moscow, Joseph Stalin dies, and the other members of the Central Committee are maneuvering for position and power in a farcical comedy that delivers a lot of good laughs.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Jane

Jane used old footage from the 1960s thought to have been lost to tell the story of how Jane Goodall came to spend her life studying the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. I was especially interested in this film because in 1991 I visited Goodall's chimps at Gombe Stream National Park. I have read a couple of her books, and was looking for an update on what I knew about the chimps. I didn't get that, as the film really focused more on her life, but I did learn a lot more about her as a person, including that she had been married & divorced and had raised a son, which surprised me.(Looking her up in Wikipedia I learn she also had a second marriage, not mentioned in the film).

The old footage from the 1960s is in surprisingly good condition (or has been really well restored). If you're looking for a deep dive into her study of the chimps, I'd suggest reading one of her books, but if you want a look into what makes a woman spend her life studying and advocating for our cousins, this is an interesting film.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Sergio & Sergei

Sergio & Sergei tells a fictionalized story based on some real events. It's 1991 and the Soviet Union has collapsed, stranding astronaut Sergei Asimov (Hector Noas) alone in the Mir space station for four months longer than planned. Down on Earth, Cuba has now lost its patron, and the economic impact leaves the country struggling, including university professor Sergio (Tomas Cao), whose background in Marxist philosophy and fluency in Russian are no longer in such great demand. Sergio makes contact on his ham radio with Sergei and they strike up a friendship. Sergio also has a ham radio buddy named Peter (Ron Perlman) in New York who is a conspiracy theorist. The film tells a serious story of people caught in personal struggles for the well-being of themselves and their families brought on by these bigger world events, with some insight into the workings (and non-workings) of the governments that each of the two protagonists has to deal with. I'm surprised that the Cuban government supported what would appear to be a pretty subversive film. It was fun and quirky and a very original story and I liked it a lot. The film is mostly in Spanish and Russian (with subtitles) with some English as well.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Three Billboards Outside Epping, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Epping, Missouri takes what at its heart is a dark story full of conflict, violence and nastiness, and injects it through and through with humour, yielding an outstanding film that is touching and sad, and that makes us feel for almost all the characters in it, even some who start off seeming to be total dicks. That seeming contradiction will make more sense when I tell you that its star-studded cast starts with Frances McDormand (as Mildred Hayes, the mother of a girl who was raped and killed), and includes Woody Harrelson (Sheriff Willoughby), Peter Dinklage and Sam Rockwell. Mildred rents 3 billboards and puts up signs asking why there has not been an arrest in her daughter's killing, putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the popular Sheriff Willoughby. This sets much of the town and most of the police department against her, though Willoughby accepts his responsibility and emerges as a caring, sympathetic guy.

The story takes several unexpected turns as Mildred deals with her grief, her anger, her guilt, and issues with her ex-husband and son, while other characters surprise us in numerous ways. It's a little weird, very wonderful, and the strange blend of emotions works really well. Highly recommended, and one of the best films I've seen at this year's festival.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes takes us back to 1973, when self-styled male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carell) takes on women's tennis star Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) in a circus act of a tennis match that fit into King's battle for equal treatment for women on the tennis tour. The casting is brilliant, as both Stone and Carell are entirely convincing in their roles. We see some turmoil in each of their lives, as Carell struggles with pretending to try to give up his gambling addiction, leading to marriage trouble, and Stone finds herself exploring her sexual identity after meeting an alluring woman (her hairdresser), leading to doubts about her marriage. I found the characters compelling and sympathetic, even though King never really opens up to either of her partners about how she really feels, and Riggs is a scoundrel who doesn't really deserve any affection or admiration. The tennis scenes seemed very authentic to me (stunt doubles?), and the action moved along well. Some of the comments made by men in the film (including some archival footage of Howard Cosell)  were cringe-inducing, reminding us how recently such denigrating views of women's role in society were commonplace. This is a pretty good movie.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Black Cop

Black Cop is one of the more interesting films I've seen at this year's festival. It's the second Canadian film I've seen (the other was Public Schooled), set recognizably in Halifax, in the North End. It's also the second film I've seen this week dealing with racial injustice, with a very different take than that in Mudbound.

Ronnie Rowe Jr. delivers a great performance as the title character (we never hear his name, which is perhaps a device to set him apart as "other"?). Fed up with the unending harassment and injustice faced by the black community, and himself the target of profiling by other cops who don't initially know that he is "one of us", Black Cop decides to take justice into his own hands, and deliver to a series of white people he encounters the kind of treatment that blacks often receive. It's shocking and violent and upsetting and very wrong, and that's entirely the point. One message I got from the film is that it is unreasonable to expect reasonable behaviour from those who have long been the targets of unreasonable treatment. That is not an endorsement of violence, but a plea for understanding.

Directory Cory Bowles has assembled a piece that is part conventional movie, part performance art, part slam poetry. He and some of the cast & crew came on stage after the film for an interesting Q&A. He talked about how he wanted to speak up for his community and provoke uncomfortable conversations, and that he certainly didn't want to encourage any black cops in the audience to emulate his protagonist! Then came the uncomfortable question. A middle aged white man in the audience asked what bigger themes in the world Bowles was trying to speak to, suggesting that maybe it's not appropriate to focus on the suffering of just one part of society when there are so many wrongs going on all over (I was waiting for him to say "All Lives Matter" but he didn't). At one point he said something about the "evolution of the Negro" and the audience started to grumble. The moderator cut him off to let the director respond. He thanked the man for his question and said he did want to engage in uncomfortable questions like that one, and simply said that while there certainly are lots of other wrongs going on in the world, he felt driven to speak up and fight for his community. Then he handed the microphone to Lanette Ware, (who does not appear on-screen in the film but is a voice on the radio that Black Cop listens to), and she nailed the response. I can't remember exactly what she said, but she politely put the questioner in his place with a very calm and beautifully eloquent comment about the need for the black community to speak out and resist injustice.

I can't say this is the best film I've seen at the festival. The pacing suffered at times, and not all the performances were as great as Rowe's. But I think it's an important film that provides a Canadian perspective on an urgent issue of our time. The Canadian aspect is important because we often celebrate that we are not as bad as the US when it comes to racism (and I still believe that), but that is a very low bar that we need to improve on. I hope Black Cop gets distribution to theatres across Canada soon.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: The Mountain Between Us

The Mountain Between Us stars the gorgeous Kate Winslet as photo-journalist Alex and the gorgeous Idris Elba as surgeon Ben. They are brought together by a common need to get to where they are going after flights are cancelled, and decide to share a small private plane. The plane goes down in the mountains, and they have to find a way to survive and find their way back to civilization. Ben and Alex are very different people; she is inquisitive and wants to get to know him, while he is private and not quick to share details about his private life. They also have very different ideas about the best way to get out of their predicament, but eventually work together to fight their way to survival. Oh, and at some point they each finally realize how gorgeous the other is, so there's that.

The story is pretty predictable but engaging, the performances are strong and damn are they gorgeous. It's a good film.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Downsizing

Kristen Wiig and Matt Damon in Downsizing

Matt Damon is Paul Safranek, a man whose name is never correctly pronounced, and whose life never seems to work out the way it should. He and his wife decide to make a fresh start in Leisureland, a community for those who have chosen to be downsized - shrunk down to a few inches tall - in order to reduce their footprint on the planet, and also to be able to afford the life of leisure and luxury that being small enables. Downsizing tells the story of how new technology can change the world dramatically, and at the same time not at all. Paul's life in Leisureland is not what he expected, and he struggles to find his place in his new world.

Christoph Waltz contributes some zaniness, but it's far from his best role. Hong Chau really steals the film as a Vietnamese political activist who is downsized by her government as punishment for her disruptive actions. Her character Ngoc Lan Tran is blunt, funny and then surprisingly very caring.

The film takes some unexpected turns; it's funny and warm and sad, and exploring how the downsizing technology might affect society is pretty interesting. It was entertaining, but for me it didn't break through from good to great.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Mudbound

Jason Mitchell and Garrett Hedlund in Mudbound

Mudbound tells the story of two poor families - one black, one white - struggling to get by in Mississippi during and after World War II. Each family sent a son to fight, and when they return they both find it's not so easy to fit back in. Jason Mitchell plays Ronsel Jackson, whose family work a farm as sharecroppers; in the army he was a sergeant and treated with respect, but once back home is is quickly reminded that he must sit at the back of the bus, and use the back door when entering/leaving a store. Garett Hedlund plays Jamie McAllen, whose family own the land. He was a bomber pilot in the war, but comes back troubled and more interested in drinking than working. The two become friends through their shared experience, and Jamie is one of the few whites who treat their black neighbours with respect.

I'm kind of skipping over what is on the surface the main plot of the film: the struggles of Jamie's brother and his wife and they move to the farm and adapt to a more primitive existence than that have been used to. But the heart of the story is really the shared experience of the two returning soldiers, and how their friendship is not accepted by the 1940s society in Mississippi.

This is an important story, and a good film, but for me it dragged a bit at times.

Directer Dee Rees came on stage for a Q&A after the film, looking much younger than her 40 years. I was quite impressed with her, as she spoke about the making of the film, including the challenge of getting the cast (both black and white) comfortable with the racial basis of the story. She would have workshop sessions in which the white actors would repeat their lines that included the N word until the stigma faded and they were comfortable doing that in character, with her watching.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Human Traces

Human Traces is a New Zealand film set on a remote, desolate island, where a handful of scientists are researching and trying to restore the natural food chain that was disrupted when humans first came to the island. Sarah (Sophie Henderson) and Glenn (Mark Mitchenson) are husband and wife researchers, whose relationship deteriorates around the time new research assistant Pete (Vinnie Bennett) arrives on the island to replace a departing worker. The story is told three times, once from each of their perspectives, which allows us to see that some assumptions we made initially are not true, and that each of the three has done things to hurt others. The film feels as desolate as its setting, and the poison each character has contributed in pursuit of their objectives often fails, paralleling the researchers' failure to control the natural environment.

I found the construction of the film interesting, but in the end I didn't love it.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: The Shape of Water

Guillermo del Toro at Q&A after The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water is Guillermo del Toro's latest film, a monster movie, love story, and commentary on otherness. Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute janitor working at a mysterious government lab, where a creature resembling the Creature From The Black Lagoon arrives for research. The creature is not being well-treated by the man in charge of him, Strickland (Michael Shannon) who loses a couple fingers in an early encounter. Elisa however is entranced by him (the creature, not Strickland, who is the true monster in this film), and gradually finds ways to communicate with him. When she learns that Strickland plans to kill the creature, she decides she must find a way to free him.

This is a story of those who are different being misunderstood by the greater society, and del Toro spoke at length about that theme in the Q&A after the film. He also told us before the film that all screenings of this film are being held at the Elgin theatre because it was used as a set. It was remarkable to sit in the theatre watching scenes set in the theatre!

This is a beautiful, powerful and moving film, and one that del Toro invested hundreds of thousands of his own dollars into working on over a period of a few years, before he had a deal to get it made. He is rightly proud of it, and it's one of the best films I've seen at the festival so far.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Breathe

Q&A after Breathe with Director Andy Serkis, Actors Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield,

Producer Jonathan Cavendish and his mother Diana

Andy Serkis moves from actor/motion capture performer to director in Breathe, the inspiring true life love story starring Andrew Garfield as Robin Cavendish and Claire Foy as his wife Diana. Robin is a tea broker and Claire a pretty, rich girl, who meet, fall in love, and then head off to pursue his business in Kenya, where he is stricken with polio. It's the late 1950s, and the fate of those paralyzed by polio is to lie in a bed with a respirator or iron lung in a hospital ward with no hope of ever leaving. Robin wants to die, and for Diana to leave him and move on with her life, but she refuses him on both counts and stands by him, including when he asks to leave the hospital. Doing so is unheard of, and the hospital administrator tries to stop them, but the next thing we know Robin is home with Diana and their baby Jonathan.

They accept the higher risk of caring for him and monitoring his respirator 24/7 (which does not go entirely smoothly), and Robin's quality of life immediately improves a little. It takes a huge jump for the better when his friend assembles a wheelchair that can accommodate the respirator and a battery to run it for a few hours, and then a van that can accommodate the chair.  Now Robin can venture out of the house, and even out of the country. It helps that they have some money to fund all of this!

The most touching part of the film is that Robin Cavendish didn't stop at enjoying his own freedom from institutionalization; he fought to deliver it to others with his condition, first by getting more wheelchairs with respirators made and showing that the risks he had taken in leaving the hospital were reasonable ones, and later by showing other doctors what was possible, and starting to change minds about how the profoundly disabled could be integrated into regular life.

I remember something startling I saw one day when I was a student at Berkeley in the early 1980s. I was walking across campus when I saw a stretcher rolling rapidly along the ground, apparently out of control. I assumed some ambulance had lost control of its patient and was shocked at seeing this poor helpless invalid headed for what was obviously a crash somewhere. Then I noticed that the stretcher was not out of control at all; it was being driven by its occupant! This was a student on their way to class! I had seen people in wheelchairs many times of course, but never someone confined to a stretcher out on their own navigating the world. That person was one of the beneficiaries of the determination of Robin and Diana Cavendish to change how the disabled can live.

After the film, there was a Q&A with Andy Serkis and the two lead actors. They were joined by producer Jonathan Cavendish - Robin & Diana's son - who had long wanted to tell his parents' story. Someone asked him what his mother thought of the film, at which point he brought her out on stage as well!

After seeing 6 films so far in this year's festival, this is the second one that moved me greatly; interestingly both this one and The Upside are based on true stories of men who could not themselves move.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Public Schooled

Q&A after film with director Kyle Rideout, co-writer Josh Epstein

and cast members Andrew Herr and Andrea Bang

Public Schooled is a fun coming-of-age story in which Daniel Doheny plays Liam, a high-school kid who has been home schooled by his mom Claire (Judy Greer), entering public school for the first time and facing the challenge of learning about how teenage society works. Liam is very smart and really nice, a little nerdy, and extremely socially stunted due to having no friends, and being completely enveloped in the closest mother/son relationship possible without being creepy. He sets his sights on a pretty blonde girl with a prosthetic leg while dodging the school bully, all while taking the place of a girl named Maria Sanchez who is apparently out sick. The setup is a bit hokey, but the main characters are lovable and you care what will  happen to them. Russell Peters also has a small role as a lecherous guidance counselor that didn't quite hit work for me.

The film doesn't aim to take sides in the debate about home schooling; that's just a device to set up both the close relationship between mother & son, and the disorientation of Liam as he enters the real world. It brings to mind a comparison to Brendan Fraser in Blast From The Past, although Liam is just awkward, not naive.

This is a good, fun Canadian comedy that deserves to be seen more than it probably will be. Both Doheny and especially Greer deliver fantastic performances, and it was thoroughly entertaining.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond - the story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman with a very special, contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton

I love seeing tons of films every year at TIFF, but I am not interested in spotting celebrities or stalking them near the theatres. As I was filing in to see Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond - the story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman with a very special, contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton, there was crowd of fans looking at Jim Carrey in front of the theatre, and shouting at him to come over to see them (and autograph their stuff). One yelled "I'm your biggest fan, Jim". It completely validated my decision not to become an extremely talented and famous Hollywood celebrity.

Jim & Andy ... (it turns out the full title will fit in a tweet, but just barely with 2 characters to spare) is a documentary using behind the scenes footage from the making of Man On The Moon, in which Carrey plays Andy Kaufman. That footage is blended with archival footage of the careers of both Andy Kaufman and Jim Carrey, and an interview with Carrey talking about what playing Kaufman meant to him. More than any other role I have read of, Carrey truly became Andy Kaufman (and at times his alter-ego, lounge lizard Tony Clifton). He stayed in character at all times when on set, which caused a great deal of stress for Man On The Moon director Milos Forman and others. The role clearly was perfect for Carrey in every way, as his career was largely inspired by Kaufman, and the two share a sense of the absurd as a way to entertain people.

The film doesn't dig deep into the lives of either Carrey or Kaufman, but mostly focuses on the making of the film and what that meant to everyone involved. Carrey felt it was in a very real way a reincarnation of Kaufman for those close to him.

There was a good Q&A after the film. Jim Carrey spoke a lot (both int he film and in the Q&A) of his spiritual outlook on life, which seemed very Daoist/Zen to me, and very much not focused on the individual. And partway through he pointed out that Tony Clifton himself was in the audience, sitting a few rows behind me (apologies for the poor photo quality; the lighting was better on the stage than in the audience!).

I'd definitely recommend this film to anyone who loves the work of Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey or both.

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: Mom and Dad, preceded by Great Choice

Sunday night I saw my first films from the Midnight Madness track of the festival: Mom and Dad, preceded by the short film Great Choice. Great Choice is an offbeat short showing a woman trapped in a Red Lobster commercial from 1994. Director Robin Comisar spoke before thefilms, saying how much of his creative inspiration had come from the original ad, and that he hopes to turn the short into a feature. I assume he was kidding about the former, and I hope his was kidding about the latter. It was a cute, wacky little film, but I can't see it holding up in a longer format.

Mom and Dad did hold up throughout its full 83 minutes Selma Blair (Kendall/Mom) and Nicolas Cage (Brent/Dad) are the titular parents, caught up in a suburbia where all the parents are for some reason feeling compelled to attack and kill their children. The compulsion does not otherwise disturb their thinking, so there are "normal" conversations about the stresses of parenting woven into the lunatic attacks. It's a fun black comedy with deliberately heavy foreshadowing of most of the attacks, and some nice family bonding along the way. Not a great film, but a good bit of fun.


TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: The Cured

I am a big fan of zombie movies, and have enjoyed many different takes on the genre. The Cured is a new one, starting at the point after a zombie apocalypse where many of the infected have been cured, and are being reintegrated into society. The film is set in Ireland, and the zombie premise serves as allegory for a variety of conflicts between segments of society.

Ellen Page stars as Abbie, a reporter and single mother, whose husband was killed during the outbreak. Sam Kelley is Senan, Abbie's husband's brother, one of the Cured, whom she has agreed to take in as a condition of his release. The Cured remember everything they did while infected, and of course the uninfected do as well, and the reintegration is not going well. Themes of alienation, otherness, family, discrimination and betrayal are nicely woven together, and the violence seethes below the surface for most of the film, kept alive by Senan's flashbacks of what he did while infected.

This is a pretty good film, but not the best zombie film I've seen - for example not as excellent as last year's The Girl With All The Gifts.

With about half an hour left in the film, and at an especially critical moment ("What happened to Luke?"), fire alarms went off in the Ryerson Theatre, and we had to evacuate. After maybe half an hour milling around on the sidewalk outside the theatre, and with the lineup for the next film waiting beside us, we were readmitted and asked to return to our original seats. A TIFF spokesman got on stage, and apologized for the disruption. The film was restarted a minute or two before the interruption, the Q&A still took place after the film, and we were told we would each receive a credit for another screening in our online TIFF accounts to make up for the disruption. A very classy way to handle the problem, TIFF!

TIFF 2017 Overview

TIFF 2017: The Upside

My first film of this year's festival was The Upside starring Bryan Cranston as Phil, a very rich quadriplegic in need of a new caregiver, though he doesn't much want to live any more. Kevin Hart plays Dell, a troubled parolee who needs to gather signatures to prove he is really out looking for work. He accidentally becomes a candidate for the caregiver job he is utterly unqualified for, and Phil hires him, thinking he'll likely screw up and kill him. Nicole Kidman plays Yvonne, Phil's dedicated business assistant who obviously cares for him more deeply.

As Dell starts to understand what his job really entails, and as he and Phil get to know each other, they each heal the other. Phil finds reasons why live is still worth living and enjoying, and Dell finally figures out how to take care of, and how to care about, someone else, and that filters through to the other parts of his troubled life. There is plenty of comedy (not necessarily the kind one would expect from Hart) and lots of emotion (I had a good cry to kick off the festival). We laugh at the pretentiousness of the rich and we get a peek at how the disabled can be invisible, and uncomfortable for others to really face.

A big thumbs up; highly recommended!

TIFF 2017 Overview