TIFF 2012: Part 5

Men at Lunch & The Central Park Five

By coincidence, I saw these two New York-centric documentaries back-to-back.  

The former is about the famous 1930’s photograph of the construction workers sitting on a steel beam, casually having lunch despite the dangerous position that they’re in.  The latter deals with a criminal case in the 1980’s where five teenage boys were wrongly convicted for the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park.

Both of them portray New York as a place where many cultures come together, and sometimes clash, but I thought The Central Park Five did a better job of it.  The five subjects are all very well-spoken, and through their interviews, you come to understand the racial tension that existed in New York at the time.  By the end of the film, it’s a real relief that they were exonerated, but at the same time, you still feel angry and sad that they wasted so many years in prison.

Men at Lunch, on the other hand, does not have the same narrative strength.  Essentially, it tries to tell the story of who those men on the beam were, but since nobody knows their identities for sure, it settles for making them into symbols of the many Irish immigrants who worked in construction at the time.  That’s fine, but the film gets a little repetitive, and keeps telling us how brave they were, how hard life was during the Depression, how the construction workers shaped New York as a city, &c.  I found it especially awkward when they tried to draw a connection between those men, and the men who are working now to build the new World Trade Centre tower.  The 9/11 scenes seemed a bit out of place and exploitative to me.

Rating:

Men at Lunch: 5/10

The Central Park Five: 7/10

Thale

Towards the end of the festival, I get a little tired.  I might have enjoyed this one more if I saw it earlier in the week.  I realize that it’s a low-budget movie, and I respect what they did technically.  Thale has some cool horror moments and some cool action moments, but maybe that’s the problem: it doesn’t feel like either a horror film or an action film.  I couldn’t really get into the story because I didn’t know what the characters were after.  But again, I was pretty tired.

Rating: 5/10

Tai Chi 0

This, on the other hand, was a much more suitable pace for a weary festival-goer.  It’s basically a Chinese kung-fu film, mixed with the style of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (e.g., whenever someone does a kung-fu move, the name of the move is shown in stylized text on the screen), with some steampunk thrown in.  Cartoonish action at its finest.  It’s the first film in a 2-part series, so structurally, it’s a bit off: what you think will be the final battle is actually just setup for the sequel, which makes the previous battle the actual final battle, and a little unsatisfying.

Rating: 7/10

TIFF 2012: Part 4

I’m going to go with a shorter, “rapid-fire” format today.  I’m just tired, okay?

Disconnect

Reading the description, I was a bit concerned that this would turn into a morally unsubtle “the Internet is bad” type of story.  I was pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t focus too much on the Internet itself; the Internet just a device to incite events and get the story going, and then mostly stays out of the way.  The focus stays on the characters, which is as it should be.  The characters sometimes behave in unrealistic ways in order to increase the drama, but I thought it was effective and was caught up in the film.

Rating: 7/10

Antiviral

A lot of the pleasure of watching this film comes from trying to figure out how the premise works.  I didn’t read the description beforehand and I don’t know what it gives away, but I’m glad I went in not knowing anything.  Unfortunately, once the premise is set up in the first act, the movie didn’t do much to keep me interested.  There are some cool and creepy visual moments, but I couldn’t really understand any of the character motivations, and I didn’t really care what happened to them.

Rating: 5/10

As If We Were Catching a Cobra

A documentary about political cartoonists working during the Arab Spring sounded like an interesting premise, but the execution was a bit lacking.  All the film is is a series of talking-head interviews with various cartoonists and artists.  There was nothing really visual or cinematic going on, so it’s just watching people talk and reading lots and lots of subtitles.  It was too much for me for an early morning screening, so I walked out, which is a rare occurrence for me.  Maybe this material would make for a good book, though.

Rating: waived because I didn’t see the whole thing.  But really it’s like a 3 or a 4.

The Bay

I keep telling myself that I’m tired of the whole “found footage” thing whenever I see one (I keep watching them though), but this one felt like a fresh experience.  Usually, found footage films have to jump through hoops to justify why there are cameras present, or they just don’t justify it and everyone is left thinking “why don’t you put down the camera?!” the whole time.  The Bay avoids this by mixing different camera sources, e.g. A TV news crew, security cameras, police car dashboard cameras.  Because of this variety, it often feels more like a well-edited suspense film than a found footage film.  It definitely kept me in suspense, although in hindsight, the “monsters” themselves are a little bit silly.

Rating: 7/10

Smashed

Good performances all around, but I thought this story about a young woman with a drinking problem oversimplifies its characters.  I didn’t feel like there was much depth to them beyond whether they are drunk or sober, and what they think about other people being drunk or sober.

Rating: 5/10

Much Ado About Nothing

Wesley and Fred.  Enough said.

Rating: 8/10

TIFF 2012: Part 3

Blancanieves

I’m going to have trouble talking about this film (actually talking, verbally, I mean, not writing about it), because I can’t pronounce the title properly.  It’s Spanish for “Snow White.”  Maybe I’ll just call it “Snow White,” okay? Okay.  So anyway, the movie is an adaptation of the Snow White story, transplanted into 1920’s Spain, and in particular, into the world of matadors.  It was the “Golden Age of Bullfighting,” the director said in the Q & A.

The fairy tale reference is both a benefit and a detriment to the film, in my opinion.  While it does add an other-worldly quality to the characters (especially the bullfighting dwarves), some elements felt like they were shoehorned in, like the poison apple, and the eternal slumber.  I thought the story was strong enough to stand on its own without having to hang it on the framework of an existing fairy tale.

Rating: 7/10

Byzantium

There’s something a bit cheesy about the whole vampire thing, and how they’re supposed to be all mysterious and ethereal and romantic.  Byzantium has that cheesiness, especially during the flashback scenes, which tell the origin story of the two main vampire characters.  The Victoria-era costumes and sets are well-produced, but they’re, you know, cheesy.  I think it might have bothered me more if I hadn’t recently been watching a lot of similarly historical scenes done with a lower budget on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (lower budget = more cheesy).

Stylistically and visually, I enjoyed the film, but I had some problems with the narrative.  The aforementioned flashbacks are interspersed throughout the film, and the origin story arc is supposed to parallel the modern-day storyline. But about halfway through, I had already pieced together the mechanisms of how the characters became vampires, and after that, I was just waiting for what I already knew would happen to play out.  As a result, I thought the flashbacks were starting to get in the way of the present narrative, and slowed down what is already a deliberately-paced movie.

Rating: 6/10

No

Speaking of cheesy, the 80’s were.  Cheesy.  Specifically, the media output of the 80’s (e.g. TV commercials, movies, etc.), when watched today, can often evoke cringes and bursts of awkward laughter.

The subject matter of No could have made for a very dark film—it follows a group of advertisers as they create TV commercials encouraging voters to vote against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile’s 1988 referendum—but the fact that the commercials they create are 80’s commercials adds a lot of humour.  There is a real danger involved (any election organized by a dictatorship is going to be fraught with corruption and threats) but when the anti-Pinochet “No” advertisers express their incendiary political ideas of freedom and democracy through commercials featuring dancers dressed in Day-Glo Spandex leotards, backed by synth-pop beats, it’s hard not to laugh at the contrast.  The filmmakers behind No have perfectly achieved a balance between humour and solemnity.

Rating: 8/10

TIFF 2012: Part 2

Dead Europe

Not too much to say about this one, other than that it’s not very good.  The story follows an Australian man as he travels to Greece to spread his immigrant father’s ashes.  He discovers some secrets about his father’s past, which are supposed to be dark and troubling, but we never really learn why the father acted the way he did.  The film instead relies on some unsubtle arguments between characters to establish that yes, there are disagreements between Palestinians and Jews, and between Catholics and Jews, and that yes, these disagreements are a part of European heritage and history.  Then we are just meant to transplant this information into our understanding of the father’s actions, and feel moral outrage or anger or something.  But there’s no real connection between the characters and the dreadful racist things they say, so I ended up not feeling anything at all.

Rating: 4/10

The Sessions

Not too much to say about this one either, other than that it’s very funny.  The three stars (John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy) are great, and funny.  It was so funny that I feel like I missed half the lines in the movie because the sound of the crowd laughing drowned out the dialogue.  I should watch this again at home so that I can actually hear what’s being said, and it will probably be even funnier.  Did I mention it’s very funny?

Rating: 8/10

The Girl from the South

If this was a Hollywood biopic and not a documentary, it might have gone a certain way: a youthful, idealistic girl engages in political activism (in this case, it’s for the reunification of Korea); gets the attention of the government in a bad way; overcomes hardships (like being in prison) while continuing to fight for her cause; and eventually becomes a hero, and a symbol for what’s right in the world.

The beginning of this documentary feels like it’s going to follow that plot.  The director, José Luis García, was in North Korea during a youth festival in the 80’s and filmed the “girl from the South”, Lim Su-kyung, during her press conferences and rallies.  The archival footage is very well-shot, and I kept wondering why this movie was only being released now.  It turns out that the more interesting part of the story occurs in the present day, when the director returns to Korea.  I think he is hoping to find that the girl (now woman) is still continuing her activism.  While Lim does still do a political radio show on the Internet, she’s become more subdued, and private.  She seems not to want to be on camera, and keeps taking the filmmaker to dinners in large groups, so as to avoid talking to him directly.  When García finally gets to interview her, it’s like pulling teeth as she keeps deflecting his questions.  She certainly still has her political opinions, but she’s no longer the charismatic and gregarious girl that she was as a student.

In a way, the movie becomes a story of how a person can change.  Lim does not live up to the symbol that she was supposed to be.  Whether it was the suffering she went through in prison, or the tragic accidental death of a family member, or just age, something changed her and made her into a real person, and not a stock character in a film.

Rating: 7/10

TIFF 2012: Part 1

The Deep

When I mentioned to my friend that I was seeing an Icelandic movie about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, he said, “So it’s like Cast Away, but cold.”  For about the first half of the film, this isn’t far from the truth.  Following an exciting marine action sequence depicting the accident, we see the man alone in the cold and dark ocean, struggling to swim.  The feeling of isolation is very powerful.  To combat loneliness, he even talks to a bird (instead of a volleyball).  Throw in some 127 Hours-style flashbacks and hallucinations, and it’s a dramatic, harrowing experience.

The second half is more subdued, and follows the aftermath of his ordeal.  There are two threads going on: one deals with his feelings of survivor’s guilt, and the other deals with the scientific improbability of his survival in low temperatures.  Neither of these threads is particularly satisfying (and the latter’s conclusion essentially boils down to this: he’s fat, and that’s why he survived).  The aftermath lacks tension, and has the feeling of a denouement, but lasting for half the duration of the film.

Rating: 6/10

Shanghai

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the whole of this film because I had to get to my next screening.  (When planning a schedule for TIFF, I seem to forget that I can’t teleport directly between seats in two non-adjacent theatres.)  Therefore, I can only comment on the setup of the film, which isn’t about Shanghai at all, but rather an Indian town that is about to be heavily developed by a large architecture/construction conglomerate.  There are those who oppose the builders because the locals will be losing their land, and the leader of this opposition group is involved in a motor vehicle accident which is probably not an accident.

From there, a small ensemble of characters try to find out what happened and who’s behind it, &c.  (During the investigation, the accident is replayed several times from different perspectives, which I morbidly enjoyed perhaps more than I should have.)  The setting, interconnecting plots, and political intrigue reminded me of the novel Sacred Games in a good way.

I guess I can only credit the film for making it hard to leave early.  I really wanted to find out what happened…

Rating: waived

9.79*

I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard that ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series is well worth watching, “even if you don’t like sports,” as is often made a point of.  After seeing this film about the 1988 men’s 100m Olympic final, I can see why.  It’s well-paced, and combines humour and drama so that by the time the race is shown (for the second time; the film opens with the race, and then repeats it later after introducing the participants and the various relationships and rivalries between them), you really feel what’s at stake, or at least what the runners feel is at stake.

Everyone must have been aware going in to the film that Ben Johnson later lost his medal and record because of his use of P.E.D.s, and in the queue before the movie, my friend and I were talking about who was guilty (Johnson) and who was innocent (Carl Lewis) and how wouldn’t it be ridiculous if Johnson himself showed up for this?

“He would get booed out of the theatre,” I said, and I meant it.  He was a cheater and a villain, after all.

To our surprise, he really did show up for the Q & A after the film, and received a somewhat enthusiastic round of applause.  I found myself applauding too.  Not that I have any great love for the man, but maybe the film showed that the situation was more complex than I previously thought, and that there were circumstances outside of Ben Johnson’s control, and maybe the morality of sports doping in general is not so black and white anyway, and besides, at least the guy told the truth in the end. To make one rethink one’s assumptions is all one can really ask for from a documentary film.

Rating: 7/10

Review: Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Frankly, I'm surprised I finished this book. I sort of saw it as part of my current project to work my way up to reading Infinite Jest. (Which is currently sitting on my dining room table. I'm afraid to shelve it lest the lack of a visual reminder will make me forget that I have it. It is also my hope that visitors will be impressed by the sight of the thing.)

Anyway, I figured I would read a bit of Everything and More, see what it's like, and skim through the rest when the math got too hairy. Now, I'm not claiming that I understood all of the math and that it didn't get hairy, or that I never skimmed through any of it at all, but I did follow the general gist for most of the way, or at least enough that I never felt like slamming the book closed and hurling it across the room.

This I credit to DFW's writing style. I don't think I've ever read anything where the text was so aware of its being read. There are constantly little asides and apologies (many in Wallace's trademark footnotes) about how difficult a particular section is, how you might want to re-read this or that paragraph, how it's all going to be OK in the end. These constant conversational reassurances do a lot to encourage the reader (me, at least) to keep going, despite the difficult math.

And there is a suspense to it all too. Cantor is mentioned near the beginning and is set up to be the Hero of the Story, the one whose theories are the ultimate culmination of everything I'm reading, and I genuinely felt the urge to know what Cantor did, like wanting to find out who the killer is in a mystery novel. Wallace does a good job of reminding us how each theory through history will be relevant to Cantor's transfinite numbers, while making each theory interesting to learn about on its own. And while the actual proofs and formulae are explained well, I found the most enjoyment in the connective tissue about the like societal and cultural and historical contexts around each discovery, e.g. the geometric rigidity of the Greeks, the need to develop and accept infinitesimals in physics and science during the time of Newton and Leibniz, &c. I actually wish he had focussed on those contexts more, and I think he probably could have written a thousand-page book (it amazes me how much research must have gone into this as is). I would probably have still read it all.



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Review: Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Perdido Street Station is a great mix of setting, plot and character. I admit that for the first few chapters, I was a little weary. The main plot hadn’t kicked in yet, and I was just getting introduced to the characters, so it felt like the book was spending a lot of time describing the setting. I think it’s a weakness in my reading habits that setting doesn’t capture my attention as much as plot and character development, so I found myself starting to skim over some of the longer descriptive passages. However, the city of New Crobuzon is so unique that whenever my attention started to waver, some imaginative element of the world would pull me back in.

Once the plot started to get going, it really absorbed me. Almost every scene introduced an interesting new element, which made the world seem like it was constantly expanding.

If I had one problem with the book, it’s that there were maybe too many ideas. The fantasy setting was established early on, and it’s a world where anything goes, and anything can happen. This was cool most of the time because there was always a sense that something unexpected would happen. However, there were subplots and tangents which seemed to me like they were just put there to introduce a crazy idea. The meeting with the Ambassador from Hell comes to mind; there’s great imagery in that scene, but the character of the Ambassador, and the fact that our protagonists can freely communicate with Hell, never show up again.

This is a minor criticism, though, and overall, I enjoyed Perdido Street Station very much.



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Review: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I spent my time with this book alternately impressed and frustrated at the writing style. The first-person narrator and title character is a chimpanzee named Bruno who has learned how to speak. It's clear that from the process of learning language, he has fallen in love with it, so I guess it makes sense that the narrative is written in such a flowery style. It does read well in some parts, but at the same time, it feels like the author is trying too hard to use big words.

It was nearer to the end when I started to lean more towards frustration. Bruno's friend Leon is introduced. I expected that the dialogue between the two would take a more casual tone than Bruno's elaborate first-person narration. After all, no one talks like that in real life. But, it turns out that Leon is a Shakespearean actor, and he does talk like that.

I realize that in the world of the story, this can be explained by saying that Bruno's speaking style throughout the entire narrative is influenced by his time with Leon. That makes logical sense, but it was still a decision by the author to have them talk that way. It made Leon seem not like a real character, but rather a device to deliver more fancy writing.

The book worked best when it focussed on Bruno's icky but somehow touching relationship with Lydia. Unfortunately, it lost me once it became about his adventures with Leon. I would like to judge the book as a whole, but this is a case where the final impressions took away from my earlier enjoyment.



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