TIFF 2012 – No One Lives Review (Matt Hodgson)

Photo from http://www.tiff.net

No One Lives (2012)

Starring Luke Evans, Adelaide Clemens, Derek Magyar, Beau Knapp, America Olivo, Lee Tergesen, Lindsey Shaw,and George Murdoch

Directed by Ryûhei Kitamura

For the third night of Midnight Madness (MM), the midnight programme at the Toronto International Film Festival, I was hoping to be treated to a taut and terrifying home invasion style movie, as Kitamura is a MM veteran, and the title of his latest project promises something that few horror movies can actually deliver on – zero survivors. The theatre loaded smoothly, and the movie started on time. As the lights dimmed I was uncomfortably shifting around in my seat with nervous energy as I eagerly anticipated the opening scene of No One Lives.

The story is a simple one: two travellers are making their way across a relatively deserted highway in America. We’re not sure what their destination is,  but it’s clear that their relationship has seen better days; something is driving them apart. The man, played by Evans, is the picture of stoicism and emanates a no-nonsense attitude. On the other hand, his female companion simply seems tired, both mentally and physically. Through an ill-fated stop at a roadside diner the couple run into a group of dangerous criminals who are the modern day equivalent of highwaymen. But what starts as a typical ‘bad guys tie the good guys up and torture them’ movie is quickly spun on its head thanks to a refreshing premise that I won’t ruin here. What follows is a very bloody movie, with plenty of one liners, a high body count, and an intense finish.

Based on the very short description I thought that No One Lives sounded very similar to last year’s You’re Next, which was a wild success with the MM crowd. Add to this similarity the fact that Kitamura is a veteran filmmaker and I thought it would be a guaranteed great night at the movies. While Kitamura definitely has his filmmaking talent on display, the script and acting don’t do him any favours. From the opening scene the dialogue feels very awkward and uninspired. This is surely a combination of both the writing and the acting, but the source material didn’t give the actors a lot to work with. Also, the sound is mixed in such a way that some of the actors are often inaudible. It was hard not to be frustrated. However, the most frustrating thing about No One Lives is that it could have been such beautiful trash if the writer had dived right in with that intention.

There are moments in the script that are absolutely hilarious for their absurdity. For example, one of the characters sees a bloody knife protruding from a tire or a wall, her line: ‘something’s wrong here’ (or something along those lines). Also, I don’t think I will ever forget the perfectly ridiculous ‘Nobody kills Ethan!’ However, on other occasions it seems like the dialogue is bad, but unintentionally so. That said, this was still a script and ultimately a movie that was perfect for the MM crowd.

Despite my problems with the script there were plenty of moments in No One Lives that had the crowd riled up, and for good reason. Some very creative kills and moments of bloody carnage were often on display and the MM crowd has a reputation for enjoying this type of fare. The fact that it wasn’t a serious film made the onscreen carnage enjoyable rather than frightening. Although Dredd 3D and Seven Psychopaths each had their fair share of carnage, I think No One Lives finally quenched the bloodlust of the crowd.

I personally did not have a great time at No One Lives, but much of the crowd did by the sounds of it. Despite the writing problems when it came to the dialogue, the writer excelled at creating some hilariously trashy scenes and some very creative kills. It’s just unfortunate that No One Lives was not as ridiculous as it could have been.

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The Matchmaker Review (Kirk Haviland)

The Matchmaker (2012)

Starring Tuval Shafir, Adir Miller, Dror Keren, Bat-el Papura, Dov Navan, Maya Dagan, Tom Gal and Neta Porat

Writen and Directed by Avi Nesher, based on the novel by Amir Gutfreund

This week sees a small Israeli film that played at TIFF back in 2010, The Matchmaker, open in Toronto for a highly exclusive engagement. This coming of age story set in the backdrop of late 1960’s Israel is a little charmer that deals with a lot of serious matters under the surface but maintains a quick witted exterior to help keep the audience enthralled.

As young Arik Burstein (Shafir) is out playing and goofing around with his friends on a summer afternoon the group stumbles upon a strange man. Yankele Bride (Miller), a Romanian survivor of the Holocaust with a scarred face and a noticeable limp, is a relentless matchmaker that specializes in difficult cases. He combs the streets looking for prospects for his clients. After discovering that Yankele is a long lost friend of his father’s (Navon), Arik is hired to help research Yankele’s matchmaking candidates. Nicknamed “Spyguy”, Arik learns about the infamous low rent district frequented by sailors, gamblers, prostitutes and people looking for bootleg merchandise. Yankele has an office in back of a movie theatre that shows only love stories. It is run by a family of Romanian dwarfs, led by its matriarch, the lovelorn Sylvia (Papura). Yankele himself longs for the hand of his etiquette teacher Clara (Dagan), who is stalked and admired from afar by the town librarian Meir (Keren). Arik learns the mysteries of the human heart and falls in love himself with Tamara (Porat), his best friend Benny’s (Gal) cousin who has just returned from America full of talk of women’s right, free love and rock and roll.

The Matchmaker has a lot of heart and a smart script to back it. Never directly dealing with the Holocaust head-on yet making sure that it is never far from the viewer’s eye, Director Nesher keeps the tone light and fun while never losing sight of these people on the fringe of society desperately trying to start over. Miller is Fantastic as Yankele, his performance is the type that grabs your attention immediately and never lets you go. Shafir is good as our young lead and the supporting cast is solid, if you do not fall in love with Papura’s Sylvia you should be ashamed. And the beautiful Porat is the epitome of every teen male’s fantasy, but with a brain and opinion of her own.

The small town setting is perfect and the locations add an additional layer of authenticity as it looks barely untouched from the 60’s. This helps keep the quaint village feel, like something out of an idealized dreamy French fairy tale, alive and well and maintains the innocence of Arik’s journey while constantly keeping the past just a scratch under the surface.

A sweet little gem of a film, The Matchmaker really does try to steal your heart, and indeed it will. The Matchmaker is a solid recommend.

The Matchmaker is currently running on an exclusive engagement at Toronto’s Sheppard Grande Theater. For Showtime information click here.

Till Next Time,

Movie Junkie TO

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TIFF 2012 – Rust and Bone Review (Paolo Kagaoan)

Photo from http://www.tiff.net

Rust and Bone (2012)

Starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts

Directed by Jacques Audiard

Rust and Bone is textural, an intimate kaleidoscope. Its reedy waters and dense yet leafless autumns are reminiscent of Stan Brakhage’s dreamlike haze although the director cited Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter as one of his movie’s aesthetic inspirations. Those two movies, among other visual inspirations, shower pixie dust on the modern world as this new one does. The images here, in its simplicity and honest depiction of contemporary exurban life, should be iconic if the movie-watching world knows where to turn their eyes.

This aesthetic is fitting for such a loose adaptation, fusing strings and pieces of Craig Davidson’s short story collection of the same name. Ali (Schoenaerts) is a manifestation of the broken boxers and bad father figures featured in two stories. His friend Stephanie (Cotillard) is a female version of a whale trainer in another story. And together they mingle and a romance develops, becoming one with the mistreated dogs, nighthawks, sex addicts, old pop songs and other elements of the source material.

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I guess it’s not necessary for audiences who want to see this movie to have read the book beforehand, but part of the joy in watching this movie for me is to see when and where the elements from the book pop up. I knew what will happen but the surprise is in questioning when these events will happen. There’s also the fun in how this adaptation will represent it as part of their local fabric. It’s like there’s universality within violence and seediness, that these stories can exist in different parts of the world and in different languages.

The movie but begins with Ali and he figures into the story more. He’s almost an irredeemable character, indifferent towards others and occasionally exploiting them, inadvertently or otherwise. There’s a scene where he shoplifts and runs away from his son who’s just standing there by his lonesome. But it’s also interesting to watch humanity at its depths and how his survival instinct must come first, at the risk of being myopic to the other characters’ needs. His aggression is bursting from the seams. It’s a physically demanding character but Schoenaerts has proven repeatedly that he’s up to the task, despite being closer to being typecast as troglodytes as he was in this year’s Bullhead. That doesn’t mean, however, that his performance overpowers Cotillard’s – in fact, they complement each other. With (or possibly, without) Schoenaerts Cotillard explores dark and tougher sides of herself, stretching her abilities to the greatest.

Photo from http://www.tiff.net

One last thing, this is an art-y foreign film but I can’t express enough how grubby the world it exposes and how delightfully specific it feels. Ironically or otherwise, it also has made my music more extensively shittier because of the use of Katy Perry’s song Firework that’s more infectious than I expected. Her yelling style of singing actually makes sense within the inspirational parts of this movie. They even use the song twice! And I’m all the happier for it.

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TIFF 2012 – The Last Supper Review (Matt Hodgson)

The Last Supper (2012)

Starring Siyan Huo, Cuckoo He, Zeru Tao, Qi Li, Dao Qi, Yulai Lv, Bojie Hao, Ye Liu, Daniel Wu, Chen Chang, Lan Qin, Yi Sha, and Yuan Nie

Directed by Lu Chuan

SPOILERS

The Last Supper is a sweeping historical epic with a giant cast of characters, each struggling for power or simply to survive during the fall of the Qin Dynasty in the second and third centuries B.C. We join Liu Bang (Ye Liu), the central character of the movie, as he is apparently on his deathbed. Once a commoner but now an emperor, Liu Bang has seen the highs and lows of life, and is living proof that kings are made, not born, a sentiment that echoes throughout the narrative of The Last Supper. Unfortunately for Liu Bang, his once sharp mind has crumbled, leaving him in the midst of a waking nightmare and not much more than a mad king. Perhaps even more unfortunate are the lives of the characters around Liu Bang, having dedicated themselves to him, he proceeds to weed them out one by one with the help of his heartless wife as his unstable mind conjures up imaginary ways in which they have betrayed him or could be a threat to his position as emperor.

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Those expecting the film version of a Dynasty Warriors video game should under no circumstances hope for something similar in The Last Supper. The movie is about the game of thrones that goes on behind the curtain of war and makes a point of not being just another period piece action movie. I had heard that Lu Chuan was a very visual director, and I had not been mislead. The Last Supper is easily one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen. Multiple times I had to pick my jaw up from the floor as I stared dumbly at a gorgeous landscape, or a slow motion shot of horses and riders breaking through a thick fog. However, the entire picture is not nearly as stunning as the visuals.

Photo from http://www.tiff.net

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not well versed in Chinese history, so naturally a period piece going back over 2000 years in time may be a little inaccessible for North American audiences who are most likely in a similar position to myself. But that doesn’t mean I’m not in a position to enjoy the story being told, even if it is a little confusing. Fortunately The Last Supper is fairly easy to follow, remarkably so considering the huge cast of characters. The problem is that the central character, Liu Bang, is borderline despicable without actually becoming a villain. A protagonist with many flaws, we spend a lot of time with Liu Bang as his mind erodes. It was very difficult to feel anything for this man. On the other hand, there are a number of other characters who have dedicated themselves to Liu Bang and may have hearts or minds that audiences could identify with. Unfortunately we spend far too much time with Liu Bang and his equally unlikeable wife, and not nearly enough time with the other characters. So when they are eventually dispatched by the paranoid couple, it is again hard to feel much of anything.

Photo from http://www.tiff.net

Watching The Last Supper felt like staring at a very beautiful piece of art for a very long time. It’s clear that a lot of passion was put into making this film, and Lu Chuan’s visual genius is undeniable. However, it’s a shame that more work was not put into the characters or how the story was told. The Last Supper is ambitious and gorgeous, but it’s also too impersonal. It definitely feels much more like a history lesson than a secret window into the last years of Liu Bang’s life.

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TIFF 2012 – The Place Beyond the Pines Review (Matt Hodgson)

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The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Mendelsohn, Emory Cohen, and Mahershala Ali

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

The Place Beyond the Pines (PBtP) attracted me with its all-star cast and the hint that it may be the unofficial sequel to last year’s wildly successful Drive. I’m only joking about the sequel business, but if I accidentally refer to PBtP as Drive 2: Ride, then please forgive me. Everyone is obsessed with The Gos lately, and for good reason, but the rest of the cast solidified this as a must see movie at TIFF this year. I’m often guarded when I see movies with a mega-cast, but considering that PBtP was helmed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) and the movie was well over two hours in length, I was hoping that this would not be a case of style over substance. While not a perfect movie, I’m very happy to say that PBtP may be the best thing I have seen at TIFF so far.

The Place Beyond the Pines is a multi-generational story about identity, inheritance, the sins of fathers, and life in general. Gosling plays a motorcycle stunt rider who works as little more than a side-show performer at a travelling carnival. His work is dangerous and he has long ago been hardened by it; his lean body etched with tattoos and covered by tattered clothing. The last time he found himself in the small town the carnival is currently passing through he had a one night fling with a cute young waitress (Mendes), however on this occasion the same waitress seems rather cold, as she harbours a bit of information that is about to change his world. Cooper on the other hand is a young police officer whose role on the street is causing a lot of tension at home. To go into further detail would ruin the experience at the cinema. Characters are fleshed out, important life decisions are made, and paths cross.

As I’ve said, PBtP is not perfect, but there are so many compelling elements that it’s hard not to be very excited discussing this movie. The performances are absolutely top-notch, nearly across the board. Gosling channels some of the same energy that made his Driver so compelling, but he adds a layer of self-doubt and fear which makes his character in PBtP much more accessible and identifiable for viewers. Mendes doesn’t have as much screen time as many of the other lead characters, but when she’s onscreen we see a vulnerability that is uncharacteristic of the characters she normally plays. Mendes has definitely added an interesting dimension to her career with this performance. The young guys, DeHaan and Cohen have an amazing dynamic  throughout the latter part of the movie. It’s hard to believe that they have not acted together before (please correct me if I’m wrong). Also, the supporting actors, particularly Greenwood and Mendelsohn turn in very strong performances. Despite very limited screen time, I don’t think Greenwood has ever been better. Unfortunately, Bradley Cooper is satisfactory at best. His performance is inconsistent, as he’s great onscreen when the situations aren’t that serious, but when things get emotional it feels like he doesn’t have the repertoire to deliver a convincing scene, tear, or emotional line. This becomes even more obvious next to Gosling’s wonderful performance.

The script and direction by Cianfrance are equally as good as the high level performances. PBtP is a multi-generational story, and as such there are gaps of time that we traverse in seconds to catch up with the story. When this happens in a movie it can feel like rebooting your computer – a necessary amount of waiting must be done to get back to business. Thankfully these ‘reboots’ in PBtP fly by, and even though we find ourselves in a new storyline, it always turns out to be a very intriguing one, almost immediately. If I had to say something critical about the writing and directing I would say that PBtP does not tug on the heartstrings as masterfully as the filmmakers may have liked. Certain scenes at the end which should have been very powerful, especially considering how much time we had spent with the characters, but they end up feeling a little flat. Despite my emotional detachment from certain characters and outcomes I was not intellectually detached. The various storylines had me intrigued throughout and the ending was certainly satisfying, although definitely not a tearjerker. When I look back on the experience as a whole, I would be hard pressed to think of a better movie I have seen at TIFF so far this year. The Place Beyond the Pines is definitely one to keep an eye on.

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