Anne Perry is not your average bestselling author. Born Juliet Hulme, she once helped classmate Pauline Parker murder her mother in the notorious act that Peter Jackson dramatized in Heavenly Creatures (Kate Winslet played Hulme/Perry). Over five decades later, Perry is a successful writer of detective novels living on a large country estate. Initially, it's hard to accept that someone responsible for a murder could lead such a seemingly charmed existence, but it eventually becomes apparent that Perry's bliss is all a facade and, despite appearances to the contrary, she is still haunted by her past. And yet the feeling that comes through most clearly in this stark, spare film is a sense of calm. This is largely Perry's doing, as she forefronts order, cheer and reserve in her outward appearance, but a quiet sense of dread is present throughout, not only because of Perry's troubled past, but because of a more universal dilemma: mortality. Now in her early seventies, Perry has still never experienced normal adult pleasures like companionship or love -- and time is running out.
In the late seventies, a group of New York artists, musicians and filmmakers -- most of whom resisted those titles -- launched a strain of startling, unconventional art broadly categorized as the No Wave movement. Major actors (Steve Buscemi), directors (Jim Jarmusch) and musicians (Sonic Youth) emerged from this movement, but it also spawned a second, more harshly confrontational wave known as the Cinema of Transgression. While many of the filmmakers who contributed to these movements are forgotten today, their films are resurrected in all their shocking vitality in director Celine Danhier's lively, detail-packed debut, Blank City.
Sure to provoke mixed reactions, Montreal-based musician Josh Dolgin (a.k.a. "Socalled") blends hip-hop, jazz and klezmer to create an audacious amalgam. For better and worse, this mild doc isn't quite so brazen. Somewhat refreshingly, there’s no real conflict to overcome, but Dolgin is gradually revealed to be a near-prodigal maestro and impressive Jack of all trades, exhibiting creative skills in several mediums outside his musical comfort zone, including filmmaking, doodling and street magic.
Filmmaking has a way of attracting shameless opportunists, but the last place you'd expect to find this parasitic mindset is in the once serious, idealistic world of non-fiction cinema. Oddly enough, this is the second hatchet job targetting a celebrated filmmaker at Hot Docs 2010. The worst part? Both this film and The People vs. George Lucas are lively, engaging films, in spite of a troubling (but intermittent) disrespect for revered icons of cinema. David Wants to Fly is a particularly egregious offender, as its director uses his pose as devoted fan to both ingratiate himself with his subject and give weight to his attacks. What ever happened to the solidarity of filmmakers?
Who shot first? Why does The Phantom Menace suck so very hard? And what was George Lucas smoking when he came up with that preposterous midi-chlorians rationalization? These are some of the universal questions "the people" (and Francis Ford Coppola) address in director Alexandre Philippe’s solid-if-not-quite-definitive exposé of the love-hate relationship Star Wars fans have with George Lucas -- and his hit-and-miss galaxy far, far away. While this doc goes a little overboard with the neurotic fanboy howling, these nerds are never less than endearing and, in many cases, they're downright hilarious.
There's a good chance you hate Joan Rivers. Or at least you hate what you've seen of her in fleeting glimpses on TV shows you'd rather not be watching. But she's really not that bad. In fact, seen outside the crass TV culture that has defined her star persona over the last five or six decades, her wise, iconoclastic intelligence shines through. This breezy, entertaining documentary brings Joan Rivers -- and show business in general -- down-to-earth and takes an honest look at the pain and frustration involved in any Hollywood career. It also offers a harsh reminder that, even if you've endured for as long as Rivers, there's no real "Hollywood community," just a bunch of vulnerable, highly motivated people at different points in their fame trajectories.
A tribute to late, great monologist Spalding Gray, And Everything Is Going Fine is one of Steven Soderbergh's most artful, enigmatic and humane films to date. Much more than a simple biography, this is a fascinating, multi-layered dissection of the past as seen from varying distances (both temporal and physical) and perspectives (both Gray's and Soderbergh's). Soderbergh foregoes interviews and allows the master storyteller to do most of the talking himself, but as Gray openly admits, many of his stories were exaggerated or invented outright. This ultimately makes for a peculiar, original and imaginative exercise in unreliable biography.
A life cut tragically short is explored by way of home movies, found footage and even some tastefully incorporated Hollywood film clips (ie. Hollow Man, Twister) in celebrated Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom’s memorial doc dedicated to his departed friend and editor, Mark Karbusicky. At 35, Karbusicky took his own life, shocking everyone who knew him to be an exuberant, open-minded free spirit. Friends, family and former lover Mirha-Soleil Ross -- his transsexual mate, who provides the film's most heartrending moments -- painfully recount Mark's story, going as far back as childhood.
Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt is one of the reigning enigmas of indie rock, which makes him both a fascinating and surprising subject for a documentary. But as it turns out, our vision of the obsessed, multi-talented musician laboring day-and-night over his musical ideas tells most of the story. The only real revelation of this film -- and this won't be a surprise to anyone who's witnessed The Magnetic Fields' amusing stage banter -- is that the curmudgeonly Merritt also has the capacity to be very friendly and light on his feet, generally in the presence of manager/pianist/co-vocalist Claudia Gonson. An irresistibly charismatic screen presence, Gonson is the life of the party and, by all indications, the only person Merritt really loosens-up around. In fact, it sounds like he's not even friends with the rest of the band.
Every non-fiction film must be processed as both a reality and a construction. Due to this film's clumsy, unsophisticated directorial style, it fails as a construction, but it nonetheless features an intriguing and sympathetic reality. In telling the story of anorexic-turned-competitive-eater Pete Czerwinski, the filmmakers stumble upon an impossible tonal challenge: balancing the lingering impact of a life-threatening illness and the utter absurdity of food eating contests. Sadly, they are no match for the challenge.
In this deeply felt documentary, French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert fixes his camera on a despondent three-time widow with severe arthritis... who also happens to be an orangutan. Philibert's big conceptual risk is his decision never to show a human being onscreen. Instead, his camera remains locked on the title character and her cage mates for the film's entire 70-minute duration. Ironically, this outside-the-cage perspective gets us inside the experience of Nénette. When we visit a zoo, there's a (not entirely rational) sense that these creatures are leading fulfilling lives outside the five minutes of our visit, but when you're subjected to many consecutive visits, the tedium of zoo life becomes painfully apparent.
With the inspired curatorial assistance of one-time Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, the Cinematheque Ontario has put together a pair of outstanding programmes on the essay film in recent months. The current programme is especially notable for its inclusion of Thom Andersen's much-admired, rarely-seen gift to cinephiles, Los Angeles Plays Itself. This is a witty and insightful dissection of Los Angeles (not "L.A.," Andersen insists) as represented in (mostly) Hollywood cinema. Surpassing even Martin Scorsese's epic pair of cinephilic essay films (A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, My Voyage to Italy) in the diversity, complexity and originality of its ideas, Los Angeles Plays Itself is essential viewing for anyone with an insatiable appetite for film history -- or history as defined by films.
Based on Shutter Island's effective, but relatively generic trailer, you'd have no way of knowing that this seemingly by-the-numbers horror film is actually one of Martin Scorsese's most ambitious, assured and enigmatic films to date. There's a tendency to speak of Scorsese's considerable talents in terms of "technical virtuosity," as if he simply knows how to push the right buttons on the tools at his disposal. However, as Shutter Island proves, this technical skill is at the service of something much more substantial: Scorsese's incredibly rich and original imagination. He shoots scenes in a manner that is visually striking, yes, but he also invests even the most mundane moments with unexpected detail, insight and purpose. He's the consummate filmmaker, but with the wealth of wildly original ideas on display here, you get the sense that he could thrive in any creative field.
People necessarily take short cuts when reviewing movies -- particularly in conversation -- but cribbing your thoughts from reviews you've read is the height of disrespect for the art of cinema. Since virtually nobody in the world uses the words "twee" or "precious" to describe anything except Wes Anderson films (and maybe Belle & Sebastian records), you have to wonder why virtually every anti-Anderson critique relies so heavily, lazily and incorrectly on these two words. The problem, I suppose, is that it wouldn't sound like a criticism if you called these films "fastidious," "polished" or "exacting" instead. Let's face it, "precious" and "twee" are more annoying words.
Forget (almost) everything you've read about The Box. Slammed by virtually every critic who's come anywhere near it -- including those who like it -- this is further proof that Richard Kelly's films are the wrong kind of critic-proof. With the exception of a few appealingly out-there voices in the American film critic community, most critics have developed painfully conservative, compromised tastes designed to anticipate the reactions of their not-especially-knowledgeable-or-adventurous readerships. As a result, it seems that there's no place for films that value ambition over coherence. This is unfortunate, not only because some of the finest films ever made thrive on uninhibited self-indulgence (Fellini anyone?), but because Richard Kelly is quietly making some of the most striking American films of his generation -- and he's being mocked for it.
In recent years, the zombie comedy has become a legitimate sub-genre. Since the release of 1985’s Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead is the reigning title-holder, but there have been many other memorable zombie efforts in those years, including the films of Sam Raimi (if supernatural demons qualify), Robert Rodriguez (if you include zombie-style vamps and other diseased, zombie-like creatures) and zombie maestro George A. Romero. But this newfound popularity isn't necessarily a good thing for zombies. These days, meaty zom-coms are drowned-out by lackluster re-makes and straight-to-video drivel like Zombie Strippers. Even Romero’s last couple zombie efforts -- particularly Survival of the Dead, which screened earlier this month at TIFF -- bordered on unwatchable.
Inglorious Basterds takes everything you know-and-love (or hate) about Quentin Tarantino's films and exaggerates it to ludicrous extremes. There are too many characters, too much dialogue, too much violence and too little discipline. Paradoxically, this is both the secret of the film's success and the recipe for its ultimate undoing. Of all the films Tarantino has directed, this is the least cohesive -- and yet it features some of his most bravura sequences to date. For this reason, it's very possible that someone with extremely mixed feelings about Inglourious Basterds (ie. me) could feel just about the same as someone who thinks it's a masterpiece. The second guy's just a lot quicker to remember the film's peaks and forgive (or forget) its many valleys.
