The list of films I saw, in reverse chronological order.
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Ways Of Kung Fu
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Poor Ta-Kung: bullied at the temple, bullied on the road, heck, he
even has to be bullied into learning kung fu. When a ne'er-do-well
who goes by the name of Lacking Virtue takes over a far-too-pacifistic
monastery with his dangerous swagger (not to mention his bad skin
condition and forceful laughter), Ta-Kung is forced to take refuge
with an old acquaintance of his teacher, one who practices the
forbidden, deadly art of kung fu. With the daily chores assigned by
his new master in actuality being a barely-concealed martial arts
training programme, it doesn't take long for Ta-Kung to develop the
skills needed to return to the monastery and save the day ... except
that at this point, the film is only half over, prompting Lee to
delay the climax for half an hour by expanding cameos into actual
subplots, most of which eventually feed into the expected knock-down,
drag-out finale. Comic relief is typically lacklustre, but at least
it's minimal, and is compensated for by an infusion of light camp
into the film's sensibility. Fave bits: Ta-Kung's new master snuffing
out a candle with a well aimed hock of a loogie, the villain revealing his
true identity by merely peeling off his fake patches of bad skin
and, for once, a urination joke that is actually enjoyably outrageous.
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Morocco
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The essential problem: after such an explosive introduction to Deitrich via
her deliciously cold handling of a potential suitor en route to Morocco
and her subsequent show-stopping performances upon arrival, there's no
way I want to see such an iconic presence cowed by something as ordinary
as romance, especially when the other half of the equation is somebody
as seemingly unworthy as Cooper, here playing a dim, boorish, sleazy
drunk. Von Sternberg appears to be primarily concerned with visual
texture -- his Morocco shimmers with shadowy exoticism -- and
insistently driving home a schematic thesis about the depths to which
one can fall at the hands of love, small matters like chemistry between
performers or competent delivery of lines be damned.
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Willard
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Smothered in self-conscious irony, Morgan clearly having such a grand
time with his baroque camera movements and the nudge-winky set design
that he's forgotten to consider whether the story should mean anything.
Oh well, in this day and age the whole killer rat concept probably works
better as comedy anyways, but Morgan's self-satisfied, look-at-me style
(not to mention the snail's pace) has a tendency to mute even that.
Crispin is typically awesome, though, capable of moving between eerie
calm and screaming hysteria in the blink of an eye.
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Spider
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Opinion unchanged. Cronenberg's methodical, precise camerawork
perfectly renders what is essentially a careful, clinically detailed
fabrication on the part of its titular character. Fiennes immersed,
abstract performance will annoy many, I'm sure, but I dug his shambling,
muttering commitment to the role.
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Etre Et Avoir
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Starts small, showing patience and respect for the rhythms of country
life, quietly introducing the classroom, then the students and finally
the teacher, the soon-to-retire Georges Lopez, whose gentle but firm
hand guides children through their daily lessons in this, the veritable
one-room schoolhouse. Given Philibert's predilection for focusing on
scenes of kids having problems with their schoolwork -- some are
uninterested, some distracted, other just plain don't understand it --
one begins to wonder just how characteristic the footage he's chosen to
include is. Are the kids atypically shy, merely self-conscious in front
of the camera crew or representative of any child in the early stages of
education? Does Lopez' personalized teaching style prepare his charges
for the very different next step in their schooling, which involves being
bussed to a larger institution in another town? Some testimonials from
former students might have been nice, just to set the context. Not that
I mean to be hard on M. Lopez; it's clear that he has more patience than
I will ever possess, and for that alone, the film's celebration of the man
and his lifelong work is entirely justified.
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Cinevent 2003
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Cowards Bend The Knee
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A delirious compendium of phobias and fantasies, mostly sexual, trumped
up with the kind of lurid melodrama that we all know Maddin adores, but
more than a bit silly when stretched out to a full hour. Not that that's
a bad thing per se, but having seen the clarity of purpose expressed in
Maddin's compressed, iconic Heart Of The World and his project for hire
Dracula, I can't help but feel this outing is a minor step backwards.
Admittedly, my mind might change were I given a chance to see and process
the work in a more comfortable setting; the peephole-style viewing
required by The Power Plant's
installation does focus one's attention
on the work, but it's also rather rough on one's back and eyes.
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The Pianist
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The survivor as enigma. If such a thing as the myth of the Holocaust
survivor exists, Polanski may well be trying to debunk it, showing that
Szpilman's survival was in no way a conscious act of heroism but rather
an unlikely combination of fame, luck and, as becomes apparent in the
film's gripping final section, base animal instinct. (Others are far
more venal, surviving due to bribery, knowing the right people or
engaging in outright complicity with the enemy.) Brody is marvellously
blank as Szpilman, as if he doesn't have any internal life to speak of.
His talent lies in the way he plays the piano, not in any particularly
distinguishing qualities of personality or intelligence. We watch this
particular corner of WWII unfold through his detached gaze, a far more
successful tactic than sentimentality or sensationalism for getting
across the desensitizing nature of its horror. Polanski lays it on a
bit thick in the opening half, making his film resemble a compendium
of horrific anecdotes more than a dramatic recreation, but he does a
fine job nevertheless of showing how ordinary people approached growing
persecution with disbelief and resignation while refusing to shy away
from those who preyed upon their own for personal gain.
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My Man Godfrey
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Does a lot right -- it's a very funny film, after all -- but perhaps
is more interesting for what it doesn't do. La Cava clearly sets up
hobo-turned-butler Godfrey as having fallen from the the upper classes,
presumably to make the burgeoning romantic relationship between him
and ditzy socialite/wannabe Svengali Irene palatable to all concerned,
but in the end it matters little as Irene forces herself on Godfrey
just as she has done throughout the entire picture. Instead, his
former lives yield a way for him to do right by those who have also
fallen through society's cracks without falling into the trap
of simple pity.
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X2
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Nothing like taking a second crack at a tough nut. In almost every
way, X2 is a significant improvement over its predecessor,
containing solid performances (the wooden Berry and snivelling Marsden
aside), accomplished art direction and set design, convincing special
effects, kinetic fight choreography, exciting set pieces and, most
importantly, an actual story. If this sounds like damning with
faint praise, keep in mind that I despised the first film's ineptly
realized collection of character introductions and half-developed
plot ideas. In other words, X2 does exactly what it is supposed
to do, bringing the source comic book to the screen in a format that
will satisfy long-time fans but remain digestible by newcomers. The
sheer number of personas involved means that few of them receive
fully-realized arcs, but for the most part, Singer does an effective
job of meeting the demands of plot and action without sacrificing
the important core connection to the characters. Only towards the
end does the film begin to show signs of strain, bending under the
weight of an expanding climax and characters that are perhaps too
powerful for the future good of the franchise. The requisite
climactic sacrifice will make more sense to those familiar with the
comic book, giving the denouement's platitudes and homilies a welcome
touch of irony.
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Buddha's Palm
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Imagine the Hong Kong equivalent of one of those big-bang comic book
crossovers like Secret Wars or Crisis On Infinite Earths, only
expanded to a hundred issues and then condensed into a mere two hours
worth of film. Given the built-in incomprehensibility factor of trying
to parse the history of a multitude of characters and the breakneck
pace at which their stories unfold, Wong's film is ultimately rather
wearying, but there's much to be said for its avalanche of colour:
the villainous Foot Monster and his eminently extendable leg, the
maniacally laughing Dark Evil Cloud, a large furry-winged creature
that looks like a Sid & Marty Krofft version of a Chinese lion, the
deadly pus-spraying Dragon Tumour Duo and especially the perennially
late Bi Gu (Lo Lieh), who never fails to turn up (announced by a
fanfare of trumpets, no less) just after a fight has concluded.
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Five Venoms
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Centered around the search for a cadre of martial arts apprentices,
all of whom may have gone bad, Cheh's film is notable more for its
overwhelming air of corruption than its kung fu set pieces. There's
precious little action until the finale, but Cheh's fascination with
brutal torture remains a constant.
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Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress
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Fragmentary (as is appropriate for a nostalgic memory piece), charming
and even pleasantly sentimental. The two bourgeois boys who come to the
mountains for Maoist re-education may crow about the way they influence
the locals with their stash of forbidden foreign literature, but as Dai
makes clear, the knowledge they impart feeds the independence of the
very person they most want to stay near even as they become more and
more attached to their temporary home.
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Dark Blue
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Less a case of wading through murky waters than one of becoming swamped
by an oscillating, choppy swell. Are L.A. cops just good men trying to
do an impossible job under even more impossible conditions or are they
racist thugs hell-bent on executing their own brand of justice? Is
life-time cop Kurt Russell an independent fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants
wild card who trusts his instincts and thumbs his nose at authority
or is he a grovelling lapdog of his immediate superior? In a better
film, the answer to these questions would be a bit of both, but in
Shelton's latest misfire, it's a case of one, then the other and back
again. With such emphasis on peaks over valleys, it comes as little
surprise that the film's other elements are similarly overdone --
voluminous speechifying, cop-film cliches taken far past their breaking
point, a 'this is serious dammit' score -- and lead directly into
something as explosive as the Rodney King riots. Unexpectedly, it is
here amidst the threat of racially motivated violence that the film
finally finds a comfort point, toning down the stilted dialogue and
stereotypical characters to lose itself in the immediacy of the chase
and a sense of omnipresent danger. It comes too late to save the
movie as a whole, but such oases do help to break up the otherwise
rather arduous journey.
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Vakvagany
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An exercise in interpretation. Are the orphaned home movies at the
centre of Meade's film evidence of severe family dysfunction or
harmless records of the everyday, easily misinterpreted given the
temporal and cultural distance from the source material? Experimental
filmmaking legend Stan Brakhage, crime novelist James Ellroy and
psychiatrist Dr. Roy Menninger all weigh in with their opinions,
but just when one begins to think that they're perhaps reading a
little too much into it all, Meade runs off to Hungary to track down
the original participants and prove his commentators right. At this
point, Meade's film turns unpleasant and exploitative, but also
implicitly confrontational, as if to rub the fruits of such curiosity
directly into his audience's face. But even if Meade is attempting
to indict the documentary form and the way it is consumed, his
smugness -- typified by an opening mission statement that makes
great claims for his film by referencing Vertov's Man With A Movie
Camera -- and incontestable glee at capturing human ugliness works
against complete success in such matters.
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Hush!
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St. Petersburg as seen through the filmmaker's window, alternately as dull
and fascinating as one might expect, but Kossakovsky's triumph lies less
in the human moments that he records than in the way he fashions the
street outside into a character that the audience comes to care about.
As each new work crew appears no closer than the last to figuring out
just what is ailing this aged roadway, our sense of worry grows along
with our disbelieving laughter. When all hell breaks loose and the
street is suddenly submerged in rising water, a resigned shrug on the
part of one worker brings the sense of despair to a comic high point.
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Rockets Redglare!
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Could have been made by Rockets himself, a binge documentary that
focusses on a fascinating character, flirts with respectability via
high-caliber connections (Buscemi, Dillon and Jarmusch all offer
glowing testimonials) but ultimately doesn't know when to stop,
becoming a shapeless conduit for an out of control persona that
would have benefitted greatly had anyone seen fit to guide its
formation.
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Terminal Bar
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More concerned with finding a stylish groove than in truly getting
across the nature of the infamous New York watering hole of the title.
Photographs taken of the bar's patrons over a 10-year period are the
film's undeniable highlight, but so little time is spent learning
about the people behind the pictures that they remain, much like
the bar itself, essentially unknown.
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Ten
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Ten conversations, ten revealing portraits of Iranian life as
experienced by women. As is typical of Kiarostami, it all comes
down to the perfect, ambiguous final scene -- an illustration of
emotional withdrawal, willing subjugation or life going on,
depending on your point of view -- that looks to the future
without explicitly pointing the way.
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We Faw Down
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Laurel & Hardy lose their pants ... again. Comes to life in the second
half as the boys try to convince their wives that they've been out at
the theatre together, not knowing that said venue has burned down while
they were out carousing. Laurel's comprehending/uncomprehending facial
expression -- alternately processing and rejecting information before
finally accepting it -- is the stuff of classic comedy, but even these
priceless moments are topped by the closing shotgun blast that unleashes
a torrent of cheating husbands from the surrounding apartment buildings.
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Liberty
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Can't a couple of guys just find a quiet place to take off their pants?
Perhaps the most blatant foregrounding of the homosexual undercurrents
that run through Laurel & Hardy's relationship, and all the funnier
for it. The duo practically hump one another as they crawl around a
towering construction site, eventually becoming one intertwined,
quivering mass of flesh wrapped around a single girder.
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The Milky Way
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Harold Lloyd as babbling nebbish, grounding the film to a halt with his
diversionary tactics, attempting to stall not only the other characters
from reaching their intended destinations but also the audience from
realizing that there's very little meat on this tale of an unlikely
boxing champion hitting the big time. Nevertheless, as a human ducking
machine and ultra-lucky klutz, the character's essential comic nature
comes through, although it's not nearly as funny as the hot blonde's
sarcastic commentary and the way it goes over the heads of pretty much
every character in the film.
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Big Business
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Escalating destruction is always funny, as
Sam Henderson might say.
Laurel & Hardy are door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen whose argument
with an uninterested customer begins with a little water play and ends
up with a completely gutted home. Most priceless moment: the way
every participant breaks down in tears when the police arrive.
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April 2003 |
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Notes: If the feature film listed is less than four years old, the year
that accompanies it is the year of its release in Toronto. If the feature
is older or if it has not been released in Toronto, the year listed
is derived from the IMDB. In the latter case, the year is preceded
by the characters 'nr'. TV movies are listed by year of first broadcast
and are preceded by the characters 'tv'. Years for short films
are retrieved from wherever I can find information.
Legend:
Confused by my idiosyncratic 5-star rating system? Here's an explanation.
tv = I saw the movie on television
video = I saw the movie on videotape
dvd = I saw the movie on dvd
ld = I saw the movie on laserdisc
infl = I saw the movie on a plane
instl = I saw the movie as a gallery installation
net = I saw the movie streamed on the internet
vp = I saw the movie projected from a video source
qba = print/video quality below average
r = repeat viewing -- I had previously seen the movie sometime in my adult life
pre = pre-release viewing -- I saw the movie in advance of its release to Toronto theatres
tiff = I saw the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival
fest = I saw the movie at a film festival other than TIFF
ot = I saw the movie outside of Toronto
orig = I saw the original-language version
dub = I saw the English-dubbed version
tntv = tentative grade; I was considerably distracted during the screening or missed significant sections of the film
zzz = I slept through a considerable portion of the film, so take my
grade with a grain of salt
| My Scale | What It Means | Letter Grade | 4-Star Scale | Pro/Mixed/Con |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 / 5 | All-time great | A+ | 4 | Pro |
| 4.5 / 5 | One of the year's best | A | ||
| 4.25 / 5 | Damn good | A- | 3.5 | |
| 4 / 5 | Very good | B+ | ||
| 3.75 / 5 | Quite good | |||
| 3.5 / 5 | Good | B | 3 | |
| 3.25 / 5 | Decent | |||
| 3 / 5 | Ok | B- | 2.5 | Mixed |
| 2.75 / 5 | Almost, but not quite | C+ | ||
| 2.5 / 5 | Has its moments | C | 2 | Con |
| 2 / 5 | Not good | C- | 1.5 | |
| 1.5 / 5 | Very bad | D | 1 | |
| 1 / 5 | Dire | F | 0 |
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