Per Anna King’s post yesterday concerning amateur pugilist and apparent Chernobyl victim Mickey Rourke, one is forced to wonder what the big-screen wrestler makes of the new book by Bret "Hitman" Hart—former champion of the WWE and unapologetic sartorial champion of hot-pink tights. The Excellence of Execution’s new book, Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling, is 549 pages of pro-wrestling gold. And, as one of the greatest technicians of his generation, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture what would happen if Mickey saw Bret’s outfit and had another un-PC slip of the tongue. Sharpshooter?

 

As the fest reaches its tenth and final day, James Brown seems especially wise. Soul Power, the toe-tapping concert documentary made from decades-old footage of

Zaire ’s 1974 musical revue (meant to accompany the mythic Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle”), is exactly the kind of unheralded but stellar world premiere that

Toronto supplies year after year. The doc is loaded with gems: funketeers making merry on the 15-hour plane ride, B.B. King eyeing the ladies approvingly and the Spinners’ Philippe Wynne going for one larky round with the Greatest in the training ring. Can there be a better way for me to go out?

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How nice to catch up with old friends: Rithy Panh is a Cambodian-born filmmaker who pretty much knocked me flat at Toronto five years ago with his documentary S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. In that extremely uncomfortable viewing experience, former Khmer militiamen are confronted by their ex–torture victims in the hallways of a decrepit prison. Huge box office potential, I thought—yet I did crack a smile when the doc actually found a release many months later, based on the excellent word of mouth. Panh is back with a new film, the far-more conventional The Sea Wall, from a novel by Marguerite Duras, starring the steely Isabelle Huppert as a French colonialist fighting the power. Wish I could say I liked it more than I did (it’s loads better than Indochine), but it did put me in mind of Panh’s S21 and the fest’s occasional, appreciated role as a home for the shocking. Read more »

The festival wanes. Crowds thin; critics are getting a little slappy. In such enervated moments (typical to every fest), I recharge with the delicious, minty taste of unchecked ego and anger. Ha, not my own. Actors! A raft of performers, admittedly better than the films they inhabit, have lifted my spirits. Deserving mention, first and foremost, is Christian McKay, a purring tiger who brings the young Orson Welles to feisty, spitting life in Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles. Wow. Read more »

Fights, if not guerrilla skirmishes, have once again broken out over the Cannes film Che, Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour-plus antiprofile of the revolutionary played by a cryptic Benicio Del Toro. What’s the debate? Here, posed as a convenient thought question: Is it asking too much to expect even the merest hint of Guevara’s personal radicalization, his public impact, regrets or legacy? (You mostly get battle scenes; it’s a film for those who hold their nose at any kind of politics.) This morning, a distributor finally bit: IFC Films. Expect the movie in NYC for a one-week Oscar-qualifying run at the Ziegfeld in December. Personally, I come down on the “con” side; strategy or no, Soderbergh’s oblique engagement is way too timid for the subject. But Che does have me thinking: Can one make a political film without it being distastefully “political”? In true Toronto form, the fest provided at least two examples, both superior to Che. Read more »

Look at that photo. Sign of the apocalypse? An opportunity for reevaluation? Both? As it happens, the world premiere of the documentary profile Paris, Not France was neither, though let me add that I’m not an automatic hater. Crix have been I-told-ya-so-ing ever since the festival press office quietly canceled both journo screenings, along with two of the three public screenings. Naturally, I showed up for the remaining one. So did Ms. Hilton, emerging from her limo just as the sky opened up. (It’s been an unseasonably dreary week.) Read more »

Yes, it’s been a while, a whole weekend, even. What have I learned thus far? In search of cinematic salvation, one can try too hard. If you are a Belgian ex–ass kicker like Jean-Claude Van Damme attempting a Being John Malkovich–style metaparody like Toronto’s JCVD, you will reveal yourself as (surprise) a bad actor. Conversely, if you are an underrated performer who somehow got lost in tons of bad roles and weird facial fat, like Mickey Rourke, you will reveal yourself in The Wrestler as reborn. Read on. Read more »

Just because I happen to be in the Great White North doesn’t mean I’m not going to drop the occasional Rush reference. Decorum be damned. But I promise to make any prog-rock nods count. So after slogging through six mediocre films in two days—including the Coens’ desperately zany Burn After Reading and Claire Denis’s dull, kinda-about-nothing 35 Rhums (receiving mild praise for not being a cryptic mess like her The Intruder), salvation came in the form of You. Not you, dear reader, but You, the child-voiced, Japanese former pop idol who, once again, graces a devastating film by the master director Hirokazu Kore-eda. You so want to click through! Read more »