10 September 2008, mid-morning
The day before I watched Machan, I saw Treeless Mountain at the film festival. I like depressing movies, and the story line for this film hit all the right notes when I read the synopsis: two little girls are left with their aunt while their mother looks for their estranged father; they are told by their mother that if they behave their aunt will give them coins they should place in a piggy-bank; when the bank is full she will come home. The film is slow, and the plot is simple. I don’t think that is a big deal, the film is really about the characters. The two little girls do an amazing job playing their parts — impressive considering neither are actors. The mother, aunt, and everyone who plays a supporting role in the film was excellent. If you can, go watch this movie. The very last scene is simple, but great.
Movies
9 September 2008, early morning
The Film Festival has been great so far. I’ve seen five films, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I’ll write about them all at some point, but the film I watched yesterday was so good I felt compelled to say something this morning. If you have a chance, you should go see Machan. (It is playing once more before the film festival comes to a close.) Machan is the directorial debut of Italian producer Uberto Pasolini, who’s prior work includes the Full Monty. Machan has that same down on your luck dudes overcome adversity sort of feel. What’s particularly interesting is that this Italian director decided to set his first in Sri Lanka, with everyone speaking Sinhala. I asked the director how he ended up making a film in Sri Lanka of all places, and he said he read a little news clip in the paper about 23 Sri Lankans who arrived in Germany for a handball tournament, played and lost 3 games, and then disappeared into Europe: he knew he had to turn that story into a movie.
It’s a funny film. Two down on their luck Sri Lankan boys are trying to immigrate to Germany, legally, and failing spectacularly (because the West only wants the developing worlds Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, etc). When the pair learn of a handball tournament taking place in Germany, they hatch a plan to sneak into the country by pretending to the Sri Lankan National Handball Team. Though no such team exists, and none of them know how to play the game, they manage to muddle through. The movie is a light hearted look at some very serious topics: legal and illegal immigration, globalism, racism, the East/West divide. Pasolini manages to tackle these weighty topics without bogging the film down in too much drama. Machan does a good job of outlining what people are leaving behind when they come to wash dishes or clean office buildings in the West.
The Q&A that followed the film was great, primarily because Pasolini was a very engaging and funny speaker. Every screening I’ve been to thus far has featured some horribly ignorant question asked by some middle aged White lady in relation to the country the film was set in. Machan was no exception — it’s stupid question was essentially, “they have movies in Sri Lanka?” — but the director managed to turn that into an interesting discussion on how he opted out of using professional actors for much of the cast in the film. There was some discussion on the films name, how he managed to secure Italian, German, and Sri Lankan producers, and other interesting topics.
Machan was an excellent film. If you have a chance you should definitely watch it.
[4] Movies
26 August 2008, early morning
I need to head off after work to pick up my order book for the Toronto International Film Festival. Getting tickets for TIFF is an involved and convoluted process. It involves a lot of lining up, filling out forms, and more lining up. Mezan thinks this is to discourage people who aren’t that interested in movies from coming out. He’s probably right. The film festival begins in two weeks, but the TIFF website still doesn’t have descriptions of what is being shown. Their web site usually sucks, so I don’t know why I expected this year to be any different. (Why they don’t ask the Hotdocs people for help, I don’t know.) Last year I didn’t see many films, which was a bit disappointing. This year there are already a couple that sound interesting, in particular the Ashes of Time Redux. Anyone else going to the festival?
Update: I watched the following films at TIFF 08:
My friend L ended up watching the following two films with me too:
And then went out to watch a whole lot more:
[2] Life | Movies
28 July 2008, early morning
Shima and I watched Shopgirl on the weekend. It’s a nice little story about a young lady from Vermont, played by Claire Danes. Danes’ character is living in LA and working at Saks Fifth Avenue when she meets two men: the first is a loser dude played by Jason Schwartzman, and the second is a wealthy old man played by Steve Martin. (The film is based on the book, also by Steve Martin.) I quite liked the film. The acting is great. Claire Danes in particular is awesome. The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was the narration, which seemed really out of place. That aside, it’s well worth watching. Who doesn’t like a melancholy romance? (Though it’s not that melancholy.)
The official Shopgirl web site.
Movies
23 July 2008, early morning
I watched the Dark Knight with my friends last night. It was oh so good. Christopher Nolan continues to do a great job of helping us forget the crap that was Schumacher’s Batman films. The Dark Knight opens with a bank robbery that introduces the audience to the Joker, and continues from there. At the start of the film everyone views the Joker as an unimportant crazy dude; by the end of the film he’s cemented his position as Batman’s arch-rival. Heath Ledger does a great job playing the Joker. The other important element to the film is of course Harvey Dent, Gotham’s newly appointed district attorney who is cleaning up the streets and trying to put all the mobsters behind bars. At the start of the film Batman thinks he will soon be able to hand in his cape, trusting that Dent will finish the work he started. If you are familiar with the comics, you’ll know this idea doesn’t work out too well. Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey Dent, and he also does a great job with the part. Actually, everyone does a great job in this film. It’s such a solid movie. There are of course silly plot points and gadgets and all of that stuff, but on the whole it’s a very dark and interesting look Batman. It goes without saying you need to watch this movie.
The official The Dark Knight web site.
[3] Movies
16 July 2008, late at night
Over the course of a couple lunch breaks my coworkers and I watched Chugyeogja (The Chaser). It is damn good. The movie is about a ex-cop turned pimp who is trying to sort out who is stealing his girls. We learn quite early that they’re probably being killed. It’s a thriller of sorts, though at times it’s quite funny. The action sequences all have a very realistic feel to them — for example people are barely able to move by the end of long chase sequences. It is at times very violent — surprisingly so. The acting is superb. Yun-seok Kim, who plays the pimp, is amazing. I don’t know what else to say really, besides go find this movie. It’s one of the better films I’ve seen this year.
[2] Movies
6 July 2008, late evening
I finally watched The Last King of Scotland with Shima. The movie, a fictional retelling of the rise (and fall) of Idi Amin, was very well done. James McAvoy plays Amin’s doctor, and the movie focuses on their relationship. When McAvoy arrives in Uganda everyone is loving off Amin, McAvoy’s character included. The more time he stays in the country, the more he comes to realizes Idi Amin is a crazy son of a bitch. You are left aware he kicked out all the South Asians from the country, and that Amin killed a lot of people, but this all plays out in the background. Forest Whitaker does an amazing job portraying Idi Amin. All in all it’s a good movie, well worth watching.
The official The Last King of Scotland web site.
Movies
20 June 2008, early morning
Shima and I watched Fire Wednesday night. It’s the first film in Deepa Mehta’s elements trilogy. Compared to Water, which I really enjoyed, I found Fire a bit weak. I think the film is a bit too heavy handed and in your face with all the Ramayana allegory. The fact they keep mentioning the story, and keep explaining the parts of the story Metha is criticizing, struck me as very lame. I suppose she was worried Western audiences may not be aware of this Indian religious literature. That aside, it was still a good film. The actors were great, and the story is well told. I think it’s worth watching.
Reviews of Fire on MetaCritic.
[1] Movies
13 May 2008, early morning
I watched Street Health Stories and the Interventionists last night at DIGIN to DOCS. Street Health Stories features a few homeless people discussing their lives; this narration is played over portraits of them taken by 4 ladies who were at one time homeless. It’s basically an attempt to put names and faces to statistics on homelessness. I thought it was a well executed film. The Interventionists looks at a new unit within the police force that deals with mentally ill people: a police officer is paired with a psychiatric nurse, and they attempt to diffuse situations that would normally be dealt with by EMS or the police. They try to divert people that would normally be sent to jail or to the hospital to services in their area, unless this isn’t feasible. It struck me as a smart and effective use of resources. Both films were interesting.
The discussion after the film went the way most of these discussions seem to. I get the sense that people in the area feel no one listens to their concerns — which is probably true — so whenever they are given a chance to speak, I find they are generally far too antagonistic. The people who came to speak were all basically working to improve the lives of the homeless in Toronto. They really aren’t the people you need to demand more from, since they are fighting the good fight. The fact they might be based downtown, rather than in our neighbourhood really isn’t something you can fault them for. I see this sort of thing happen all the time. Adam Giambrone is by far the most responsive of the elected representatives in the area. And because he’s the most accessible he is the one that gets bitched at the most. Silva and Ruprecht basically hide for 4 years and no one in the area cares — worse still they elect them again. And people are surprised nothing changes?
You can learn more about the Interventionists and Street Health Stories at the NFB.
[3] Movies | Bloor and Lansdowne
12 May 2008, mid-morning
I watched Ironman over the weekend with a few of my friends. The film was brilliant, easily one of the best comic book films done to date. (In my mind it ranks up there with X-Men 2 and Batman Begins.) The film goes through the origin story of Ironman, changing the story somewhat to make it more contemporary: instead of being injured in Vietnam, Stark is injured in Afghanistan; he is saved by an Afghan scientist instead of a Vietnamese one; instead of fighting the commies he is fighting Islamic Jihadists. (I think there are a few other differences between the comic and the movie, but nothing too drastic.) Robert Downy Jr. is a perfect Tony Stark. I can’t imagine anyone else playing the part now. Ironman is a fun comic book film; it doesn’t try to take itself too seriously. It is at times very funny. Ironman is well worth seeing.
The official Ironman website.
[3] Movies
8 May 2008, early morning
Shima and I watched Leon (known in the US as The Professional) last night. The movie is about the relationship between a very young Natalie Portman, whose family is killed by in a drug dispute, and Jean Reno, who plays a hitman. Reno ends up taking care of Portman after her parents are killed. This is the second time I’ve seen the film, and it was just as good as I remember it. The gun fights are crazy. The stars all are wonderful playing their respective parts. I think it’s one of Luc Besson’s best movies. (It is certainly a cult classic.) If you watch the film, be sure to watch the international version. The original version cuts out 22 minutes of the film. Apparently some of the sexual tension between Portman and Reno was a bit too much for viewers. The film also stars Gary Oldman. Who doesn’t like Gary Oldman? I love the film.
Read reviews of the The Professional at Rotten Tomatoes.
Movies
3 May 2008, early evening
The last film I watched at Hotdocs (last week!) was S&M: Short and Male. The movie is a humorous look at the adversity short people face. Basically, there are countless studies that show if you are short you are destined to make less money and be ignored by women and all other sorts of great stuff. The movie is actually pretty informative, and covers a lot of interesting ground. The problem with the film is that a lot of the characters are kind of annoying. And, as far as I can tell, everyone they profiled is actually really successful. The film is sending conflicting messages. It’s an OK documentary.
S&M: Short and Male was the last film I saw at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
30 April 2008, early morning
After Betrayal I went for a drink with the rest of my movie watching compatriots. We walked over to the Green Room, which was close to Bloor Cinema, where the next screening was taking place. Movie #2 of the day was Football Undercover, a German/Iranian film about the difficulties in setting up an exhibition match between the Iranian women’s football team and a football team from Germany. It is trickier than you would imagine. The more interesting portions of the film are those shot in Tehran, showing you the lives of the football players living there. The actual match is fun to watch as well, as the women fans get a bit too rowdy for the morality police. I thought it was an entertaining enough film, though a little bit light overall.
Football Undercover was the 8th film I watched at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
29 April 2008, early morning
The best film I saw at Hotdocs this year was, by far, Betrayal (Nerakhoon), by Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath. The film is narrated by Thavisouk, and the focus of the movie is primarily on him and his mother. The entire film is beautifully shot. Kuras is a cinematographer by trade, so this is probably to be expected. This film is her directorial debut. There is so much going on in this film, it was incredible.
During the U.S. military’s covert operations in Laos in the early 1970s, Thavisouk Phrasavath’s father was recruited to help the CIA. But when the Americans withdrew and the communist regime gained power, Phrasavath’s father and thousands of others were declared enemies of the state and imprisoned. At the age of 12, Phrasavath made a harrowing escape from Laos to Thailand and eventually to New York City, where the hardships of an immigrant’s life forced him, his eight siblings and his resilient mother to face an entirely different kind of war.
On one level the film is really about just how big an impact the bombs the US dropped on Laos have had on the Laotian people. The first portion of the film will most certainly fill you with some ‘Fuck America’ rage. The footage of the bombs being dropped over Laos is both amazing and beautiful, and horrible and disgusting, all at the same time.
And then the story moves forward and you find yourself watching a movie about the immigrant experience. I knew the film was going to be awesome when we are shown a scene of a younger Thavisouk showing off his long hair and tattoos. Text on the screen informs us we’re watching footage from Brooklyn, 1985. Kuras looks to have been following this family’s life for over 20 years! I can only imagine how much film they had to wade through to make the movie they ended up with. The narrative they’ve managed to put together works so well. The movie covers a lot of ground, but never feels disjoint. Thavisouk seems to find his bearings in the US, but his brothers and sisters end up rebelling quite hard. At my high school you saw this exact same thing play out with the Tamil kids who escaped the civil war in Sri Lanka. I think this is a very common experience. The fact that Kuras has all this footage of the family’s first years in the US is what really makes this portion of the film work so well.
I don’t think I’ve been at a film where you can hear so many people crying. It’s a bit unsettling when you can hear grown-ass men sniffling behind you. Betrayal was a brilliant film.
Betrayal was the 7th film I watched at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
28 April 2008, early morning
My Hotdocs posse and I watched a series of short films on Friday. The screening began with Lovely Andrea, and was followed by Je Suis Une Bombe, Cock Fight Song, Time Flies, and Perfect / Growing Older (Dis)gracefully. Lovely Andrea was about a woman searching for a photograph she posed for in 1987 for a bondage magazine in Tokyo. I enjoyed the film, it’s a strange peak into the porno world. Je Suis Une Bombe was probably the coolest film of the lot. A woman in a Panda suit dances like a stripper, then takes of her head and says a poem. (I suppose its something you need to watch.) Perfect / Growing Older (Dis)gracefully looks at widow living in Liverpool who gets a makeover in order to look more trendy. It was very enjoyable. All the films were a bit more quirky then your typical Hotdoc film I suppose. None were an exhaustive look at any subject.
Hotdocs is over. I still need to write about Betrayal (easily the best film I’ve seen at the festival), Football Undercover, and Short and Male.
Lovely Andrea, Je Suis Une Bombe, Cock Fight Song, Time Flies and Perfect / Growing Older (Dis)gracefully were the 6th set of films I saw at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
24 April 2008, early morning
Following The Red Card I saw Where Do We Belong, a film about the life of Afghan refugees and their Iranian brides. The movie consists primarily of interviews with Afghan men and their Persian brides, sitting in their homes with their families. The first half of the film takes place in Iran, and examines how the Afghans are treated by the Iranians. None of the Afghans are considered proper Iranian citizens, even if they were born their. Their children are also without rights. (If an Afghan women marries a Persian man, then their children are proper Iranian citizens.) Basically, life in Iran if you are an Afghan kind of sucks. (I have a hunch that life in Iran sucks in general, but I haven’t lived there myself.) The later half of the film looks at the lives of Afghans who have been deported back to Afghanistan. I’m not sure what this part of the film was supposed to convey. There are dog fights, polygamy, child marriage, and lots of ignorance and abject poverty. So, life in Afghanistan seemingly sucks more than life in Iran. The second half of the film seemed like a showcase of the ways in which Afghanis are so provincial — if Iranians held a low opinion of Afghanis before, I don’t think the film does anything to change that. Where Do We Belong was shot quite well. The director has a good eye. Like many Iranian films I’ve seen, its pace is very slow. Where Do We Belong was an interesting movie.
Where Do I Belong was the 5th film I watched at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
24 April 2008, early morning
I watched two Iranian films last night, the first of which was The Red Card. A strange film about the murder/sex scandal involving Iranian soccer star Nasser Khani, whose wife was murdered, presumably by his mistress, the outspoken “Shahla” Jahed. This looks to be the OJ Simpson trial of Iran. It’s a very bizarre film, mixing court room footage, interviews with Khani, and video Shahla took of her and Khani in private. The film is worth watching if only to hear Shahla’s testimony. There is lots of wailing, which is something Persians like to do. Red Card was a cool film.
The Red Card was the 4 film I watched at Hotdocs 2008.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
22 April 2008, early morning
I watched My Mother’s Garden last night. The film, by director
Cynthia Lester, is all about her mother’s compulsive need to hoard things. Their family home is literally buried under piles and piles of garbage. Her mother sleeps outdoors. Cynthia describes loosing her room to junk when she was a girl, and eventually leaving home at 13. Her brothers were also effected by her moms illness, one joining a gang, the other turning to booze. Now adults, the family reunites to try and save their family home, which the city has threatened to take away from the mother. Lester has managed to capture both the humane and charming side of her mother, and the neurotic and irrational side. Her mother is an an endearing character, and I suspect part of the reason the film works so well is that her mother — despite all the crazy — is so very charming. You see all the ups and downs as the family tries to deal with a very stressful situation. It is at times quite intense. The film was excellent; you should watch it.
My Mother’s Garden was the 3rd film I saw at Hotdocs 2008. It was shown with the short Ground Floor Right There is a brief Q&A with Lester on the Hotdocs web site.
[1] Movies | Hot Docs 2008
21 April 2008, early morning
La Carona was followed by Searching 4 Sandeep, an Australian film written, directed, and starring Poppy Stockell. The film follows Poppy as she begins a long distance relationship with a closeted British Punjabi girl Sandeep. The movie starts with Poppy waiting for Sandeep for their first meeting in Bangkok. It then jumps back 4 months to give you the story that lead up this meeting, and then moves on from there. As the movie began, I thought to myself, “what a lame choice to follow up La Carona.” It starts off quite light-hearted and cheesy. The movie is certainly funny throughout, but as the relationship becomes more and more serious things become a lot more interesting and heavy. The film touches on a lot of subjects, but perhaps most interesting is the relationship between Sandeep and her family as she comes out to them. Sandeep was given a camera early into the film, and some of the stuff she filmed is quite intense. Searching 4 Sandeep turned out to be a very good film.
Searching 4 Sandeep was the 2nd film I saw at Hotdocs 2008. This film screened with La Carona.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
21 April 2008, early morning
Saturday afternoon I watched a double bill at Hotdocs The first of the two films featured was La Carona (The Crown), which was about a beauty pageant taking place in a medium/high security prison in Bogotá, Colombia. The directors followed four of the girls who are competing in the competition, showing you how they are preparing for the event, and giving you some of their back stories. It’s a strange film: it is at times very happy and upbeat, but there is always this very bleak undercurrent that runs through the whole film. All the women have clearly had very hard lives. I enjoyed the film very much. It’s certainly worth checking out.
La Carona was the 1st film I saw at Hotdocs 2008. The film screened with Searching 4 Sandeep.
Movies | Hot Docs 2008
16 April 2008, early morning
I watched Through a Blue Lens at DIGIN to DOCS this past Monday. This is the second film in the series being shown at Bloor Collegiate. The film was shot by a group of police officers working in Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside. The cops and the addicts have a very good rapport with one another, which makes for an interesting movie. The addicts let the officers shoot them in some pretty rough shape, and they are very frank about their addiction, their prior lives, etc. It’s a very gritty look at addiction. One lady explains how she ended up with this huge open sore on her arm: basically she picked away at it so much when she got high because she thought bugs were crawling all over her. And once it was all open she started shooting up in it. It was like a nastier larger version of the sore in Requiem for a Dream. And she had more scars like that all over her body. It scared me straight. (Also, the cops were at her place because her boyfriend had just shot himself in the head in front of her.) This was 10 minutes into the film, tops. And the movie just keeps going from there. Through a Blue Lens is a great documentary, well worth watching.
I couldn’t stay for the discussion that followed, which kind of sucked. They had a good line-up of people.
The official Through a Blue Lens web site. Michael has a writen about the film as well.
Movies
10 March 2008, mid-morning
Despite a warning from Mezan I decided to watch the Protector: it’s a really bad movie. Shima and I started off watching the US release, but switched to the original Thai version once I realized there were two versions on the DVD we rented. We should have stuck with the US version I think: the original movie is 20 minutes longer, and features some horrible English dialog — really, really bad stuff. The film’s plot is stupid and the acting is really atrocious. All of that said, it’s probably worth watching the film in fast forward just for the fights. There are some really good action sequences in the film, in particular the single-take fight in the illegal restaurant. It’s also great watching Tony Ja enter a scene by taking two dudes out with his flying knees of fury. The Protector is clearly a big budget film, I just wish they spent the money better.
The official The Protector web site.
[2] Movies
9 March 2008, late evening
Shima and I watched About a Boy last night. It’s a Hugh Grant film from a few years back. Grant plays a dude who pretends to have a son so he can lay the mack down on vulnerable single mothers — hilarity ensues. About a Boy is pretty funny. It’s a quirky romantic comedy. It reminded me of Love Actually a little bit, in that the film isn’t quite as clean cut as your typical romantic comedy. The film also stars Rachel Weisz: Meow.
The official About a Boy web site.
[1] Movies
9 March 2008, early evening
I finally saw Blade Runner with Matt. This involved trekking out in the Arctic weather we had yesterday, but was well worth the trip. The movie was good, and I got to hang out with Charlie, who both remembers me and enjoys my company: excellent. Blade Runner is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In the film, Harrison Ford plays a cop tasked with tracking down some rogue androids. The movie is filmed like a film noir: the music, dialog, and plot have a very 1950s crime film feel to them. The version I watched was the recently released directors re-cut: like Alien, it doesn’t look like Ridley Scott mucked around with too much. Matt said the film is fairly similar to what he remembers. I quite liked the movie; it’s definitely well worth watching.
The official Blade Runner web site.
[2] Movies
2 March 2008, late morning
I watched Darren Aronofsky’s third film, the Fountain, with Mezan and Carvill yesterday. There are three story lines in the film: in the present day, where a scientist is trying to save his dying wifes life by searching for a miracle cure to brain cancer; in the past, where a Spanish conquistador is searching for the tree of life for his Queen, and in the future, where a dude is traveling through space in a sphere with a tree. It’s basically a love story, with some science fiction mixed in. The dude is always played by Wolverine and the lady by the lovely Rachael Weisz. It’s an interesting film. I liked it a lot. Visually it’s quite stunning. I thought both Weisz and Jackman did good jobs playing their respective characters. The Fountain is well worth watching.
The official The Fountain web page.
Movies
