If the eyes are the windows to the soul, does that mean Nicolas Cage has a pair of bay windows? Here he is, bugging out in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog’s antisequel that’s way too histrionic not to enjoy immensely. I’m suspicious of anyone who takes the movie all that seriously. Abel Ferrara wrung nervous laughs from his viewers in 1992, while Herzog elicits campy, silly giggles. Despite some post-Katrina nods, he works largely in a nonrealistic vein. (Perhaps you’ve heard about the iguanas. If not, I’ll leave you with the pleasant surprise.) And still, the film somehow connects—think Wicker Man—so who cares if its director, so rigorous as a documentarian, seems wildly out of control when handed a script? There has to be room for fun, and such movies often get short shrift in festival write-ups. Let’s rectify that. Read more »

A movie called I Killed My Mother isn’t going to appeal to a certain demographic—I’m pretty sure about this. And yet, hearing the sniffles (and ultimately, robust applause) that greeted writer-director Xavier Dolan’s comic drama about a surly French teen and his suburban single mom, you could be pursuaded into thinking the film was, indeed, for the carpool-to-mall set. Anchored by two unsparingly direct performances by the 20-year-old Dolan (he also edited) and feisty Anne Dorval, the film doesn’t skimp on the screaming. It’s also a coming-out drama and postdivorce anxiety tale. But a resilient bond emerges from the crucible of a broken home and a dysfunctional parent-child relationship. Taking the wider view, this year’s Toronto was marked by treatments of spirituality (the Coens’ A Serious Man, Bruno Dumont’s absorbing Hadewijch, the extraordinary Lourdes), but perhaps it was domestic abuse, literal and figurative, that proved the deeper thread. There were plenty more films that turned family into a nightmare. Wouldn’t you expect as much from Todd Solondz? Read more »

Even if a movie isn’t 100 percent successful, an individual performance can keep me rapt. That’s been the case with two Toronto films starring my favorite actors working today. Neither is a Hollywood star (so unfair), but each consistently roundhouses her onscreen competition. If mainstream viewers know Russia’s Oksana Akinshina (left) at all, it’s as the scared girl who holds up her end of a tense conversation with Matt Damon at the conclusion of The Bourne Supremacy. She also gave what I think is the performance of the decade in Lukas Moodysson’s harrowing Lilya 4-Ever (2002), a female tragedy on a par with Mouchette. Other high-profile roles haven’t been forthcoming; while capable of beautiful blondness, Akinshina is picky and seems to have a taste for serious acting. Laziness is beyond her. So there was simply no way I was going to miss Hipsters, title be damned. Read more »

Some titles attract buzz—manufactured, earned or what have you—and when the buzz comes, you go. A Single Man picked up an acting award for Colin Firth last week at Venice; it also landed a distributor in the Weinsteins mere hours ago, who added a second Toronto press screening and stoked the fire. For the record, I was already planning on seeing it, not just because I’m exquisitely attuned to microchanges in hotness, but because the movie is the first by fashion designer Tom Ford and I like to see those kinds of professional leaps. Since the film is superstylish and set largely in 1962, people are crying Mad Men (many critics are swooning). But a better comparison might be something like Far from Heaven, which swaddled a tragic, pre-lib gay story in affecting melodrama. The clash isn’t wholly successful. Read more »

Elia Suleiman makes deadpan comedies. They’re often as witty, at least in terms of pacing and unspoken desperation, as Buster Keaton’s stuff—take a look at this image of the director himself, from his latest, The Time That Remains (which rocked the press corps with laughs), and you’ll see why he often gets the Great Stone Face comparison. But here’s the provocative thing: Suleiman’s subject is, and always has been, Palestinian-Israeli relations and Arabic issues. Perhaps black comedy is the only sane response to an insane situation (paging Dr. Strangelove). The Time That Remains, also a sweet ode to the director’s Nazareth parents, is filled with small, brilliant set pieces. My favorite has to be the shot of the Palestinian kid pacing back and forth on a cell-phone call, discussing a new dance tune, while a giant Israeli tank follows his head with its enormous turret. Suleiman’s character watches from behind a wall; as soon as the clubber departs safely, the tank notices him. To observe is to interfere: Suleiman is turning the political into something extremely hysterical. Read more »

Please understand, I take getting scared very seriously. It’s the only reaction I have at the movies that dependably reduces me to a childlike state, inspiring deep feelings of appreciation for a director’s bag of tricks. (I won’t be the first critic to call the thriller the most technically demanding of genres.) Lazy horror bums me out. So let’s just say it: George Romero, these days a full-time Torontonian, has made a stultifyingly dull zombie movie in Survival of the Dead. It lumbers. Not in a good way. You have no idea how much it pains me to write such things. Read more »

Apart from watching Ellen Page play roller derby in Whip It, one can see plenty of seriously whacked-out experiments at the fest, not merely art films but downright alien creatures. Harmony Korine antagonized the crowd with Trash Humpers, a cruddy-looking “found object” chronicling a gang of destructive gigglers wearing old-man masks like Grandpa in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. (Korine then mocked an offended viewer who wanted some answers in the Q&A: “What’s your hat about?” the director retorted.) Menace hangs over the film, making it feel interesting, but it’s ultimately a stunty piece of silliness that begs saps to take it seriously. Shirin Neshat, she of the contemporary art world, has taken her videos about chador-clad sufferers out of the gallery and into a logy, earnest feature called Women Without Men. Almost predictably, Neshat has a lot to learn about directing actors, not composition. Read more »

Only two days in, and the festival overwhelms me with its abundance. Going to a weeklong fest doesn’t necessarily mean that you see the best movies; in fact, the exact opposite is guaranteed. But Toronto assures you a quick rebound when you see a stinker. There are too many options here not enjoy at least some of them.

Catching up with some of the underwhelming Cannes slate, I nodded in mere admiration at Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, a sumptuous, sexy film but clearly not one of the Spanish director’s best. The story of a blind ex-director and his onetime lover (Penélope Cruz) is too beholden to its meta nods to Peeping Tom and Audrey Hepburn to breathe; plus, it’s got one too many revelations. It’s a weak closing-night selection for our upcoming New York Film Festival. Read more »

Can I have been completely wrong about the Coens for more than two decades? Raising Arizona and Barton Fink were my gateway drugs into what I thought was significant cinema; now I cringe at how painfully wacky those movies are. Meanwhile, by the time The Big Lebowski came out, I thought I had smartened up, so I brandished my dislike. Yet that film is so clearly their sweetest: a frog-and-toad story and a masterpiece.

Now comes A Serious Man, set in Jewish suburban Minnesota in 1967. The drama shows the Coens still keenly attuned to language and banality, almost to the point of caricature. But pinned behind their gorgeous compositions (capturing the woody, ashtray-laden decors of lawyers’ offices and synagogues) is a new feeling, a modulation on Fargo’s desperation. Finally, I feel that the brothers have written their signature script, about trying to hold it all together amid so much tightly wound phoniness. No matter how aggressively lacquered their style is, it totally works in this case, and beautifully. Read more »

Only 30 hours on the ground and I’m seven films in. How is that humanly possible? Mainly by not sleeping. The movies, including some unusually strong ones, might have something to do with it as well. Lots to discuss here, but let’s start off with a post about the most clamorous media event so far (and certainly the shriekiest in recent TIFF history): last night’s midnight screening of Jennifer’s Body. Read more »

There’s a reason why Team Film goes to Toronto every year—and it has something to do with this zombie. (She’s from the latest by George Romero, the king himself, whose new thriller has its North American premiere this weekend.) Mainly, we come ravenous, prepared to gorge on four or five titles a day. Toronto is the most comprehensive of the world’s film events, showcasing work from Cannes, Berlin and Sundance, but also Venice—which is happening right now—and the forthcoming New York Film Festival. Top-flight directors are in attendance; this year brings new stuff from the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh, France’s Claire Denis (swoon), Michael Moore, a multitude of others. There are, by my count, no less than three entries that deal expressly with the apocalypse, including the long-delayed The Road. And there will surely be unexpected discoveries. Our plane leaves in a matter of hours. Check this site daily—here’s a handy link—for all the dirt, dish, scoop, reviews, buzz and goings-on. For ten days, TONY will get a glimpse at the next 12 months of significant cinema. So will you.