This year I watched 27 films, my favourite being Dallas Buyers Club, coming next month to theatres. It's more than just Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto losing a bunch of weight for a role, though that's certainly the first remark on everyone's lips. Their performances as a homophobic-womanizing-cowboy-turned-AIDs-activist and drag queen junkie were engrossing and simply terrific. I know it creeps towards the trumped up Hollywood bio pic side, and they do cast Jennifer Garner as the sympathetic doctor (you do endure less of her dimples though in this film, as it’s not much of a smiley role), but the underlying story is moving and that comes across. You cannot not help but root for them as they skirt around laws, throw their entire fortune into legal battles, and find every loophole to ensure the very best treatment for the ailing.
As if TIFF wasn't enough, a couple weeks after it was all over, before I was even out of that post-festival daze (the TIFF hangover), I was off to New York. Sometimes I like to be pretentious and say I am going to NYC in order to attend the New York Film Festival, but I'll come clean that it was really for the shopping. It just happened to be the first weekend of NYFF as well, so I couldn't resist going to a couple screenings. It's impossible to see every single film on your TIFF wish list, and for the second year in a row I managed to find a film at NYFF that I couldn't see during TIFF, this year it was Le Week-end.
Roger Mitchell's film features a strong cast including Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, and Jeff Goldblum, all of whom were in attendance at the screening. It is a charming and quirky look into love between a senior couple, who have decided to take a weekend trip to Paris to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I feel like if Richard Linklater were to revisit with Jessie and Celine again in their 60's, they would be very much like Meg (Lindsay Duncan) and Nick (Jim Broadbent) struggling to recognize love after affection and patience seem to have widdled away. I'll be the first to admit that portrayals of love between older couples or those who've been together a very long time is sometimes lost on me, I was most definitely entertained by Le Week-end but not as charmed as some of the other members of the audience appeared to be.
My second film was Google and the World Brain, which first screened at Sundance at the beginning of this year, also the Doc Soup featured doc this month. Google endeavoured to create an online collection of every book every published, a huge undertaking, but along the way violating copyright and arousing suspicions of other underlying intentions. This was actually a project I knew next to nothing about, so I needed the classroom lecture, though it was a bit of a shame that's kind of what it felt like to me. Filmmaker Ben Lewis did explain Google's refusal to give him an interview for the project nor allow him to have any footage of the company's scanning facilities, which didn't leave much else to present on the screen other than talking heads of experts and theorists, and a bit of an H.G. Wells tie-in that allowed scenes of old sci-fi movies to be intercut. I'm not saying I didn't learn something, also I found it interesting that with a current tread of films featuring info-sharing advocates (The Fifth Estate, The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, Downloaded, etc), Lewis appears to be standing behind the copyright holders’ stance. Having Ben Lewis present for the Q&A after the screening actually went a long way to improve my overall experience with this film. The documentary is like the homework you must do, in order to benefit from the exploratory Q&A session afterwards.
Screening at NYFF today, and also an official selection of TIFF, is Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. I caught this during what my friends and I affectionately refer to as “Asian night” (more TIFF jargon!) at this year’s TIFF. Every year it seems, there will be one Asian movie, or a night when several Asian movies are screening, and many of us converge at these shows to watch them together. This year it was the screenings of The Wind Rises and Blind Detective (by Johnnie To) at the Elgin Theatre on Sep 11th. Studio Ghibli rep (as Miyazaki was not able to travel to Toronto) confirmed to saddened fans that this was going to be his last film after Miyazaki recently announced his retirement from filmmaking. Described as some of his most mature work, this is along the vein of Ghibli’s nostalgic Japanese life films such as From Up on Poppy Hill, rather than the fantastical (like Spirited Away). Perhaps a little slow and meandering at times, you cannot deny the beauty of the film, with its themes of humanity and mortality.
Coming up next week at NYFF, and the most stylish film I saw at TIFF13, is Only Lovers Left Alive. Jim Jarmusch does vampires! Not a correlation I would’ve immediately thought of, but the two really enhance each other. Right off the bat you should know it’s slow, but the pacing is deliberate and ties in to create a dreamy moviescape where these reclusive creatures float amongst human beings. I really enjoyed Jarmusch’s vampires, who are earthly and human-like creatures in that they are materialistic collectors, suffer from emotional disorders, and not immune to moments of bad judgement. Tilda Swinton and Tom Huddleston are really quite perfect for their roles. Another highlight of me where seeing the streets of Tangier, what a great place for a vampire to take up residence!
Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut (which he also wrote), was another official selection of TIFF13. I missed it at the festival but caught it in theatres recently. As devoted as I am to JGL, I have to admit this movie left me feeling “meh”. Many of those who have seen this before me have described it as so-so with some parts quite funny, no one really raved. They never really said what made it so-so, and if I had to take a stab I would have to say that the problem lies within the story (I think JGL’s going to do fine as a director). Though completely different characters and personalities, is Don Jon really that dissimilar from (500) Days of Summer? Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy comes to realization it’s all for the best and moves on… Or maybe it has something to do with the likability or there lack of, of the characters? I guess this is part of what makes the movie funny, the sheer ridiculous and expectations of this meathead/princess, but it doesn’t make us care whether they stay together or not. I get that overall it’s supposed to be about character growth more than anything, but what does character growth matter when you don’t care about the character to begin with? Jon’s obsession with porn and his attempts to explain it through narration makes for some hilarious monologues, I can see how it might make some people squirm, I had some genuine laughs there.
Other films that I missed at TIFF but are now in theatres include Prisoners and Parkland, hopefully I’ll get to see them soon. Even Rush looks pretty good. I’m also excited for 12 Years a Slave and August: Osage County coming later this year.
Next festival coming up is Toronto After Dark, from Oct 17-25, the full film line-up has been announced. I really hope I get a chance to see We Are What We Are (among a handful of others). Outside of the festival realm, there are also a couple documentaries screening in Toronto soon that have caught my attention. Lost Years will be at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on Oct 24th and The Hooping Life at Innis Town Hall on Nov 11th. Hopefully I’ll get out to both, in the meantime you should really check out their websites for full info.
Finally to keep up with what I'm writing when I'm away from this blog: http://thetfs.ca/author/ada-wong725gmail-com/
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