Show notes
by Joel EdmistonWelcome to my coverage! TIFF is back and so am I.It is my eleventh time going hard at TIFF, my third time with a press badge. It's off to a good start. The energy is great. There are so many people downtown (perhaps too many -- also the Jays are in town this weekend and the Sky Dome is just blocks from festival street). I’ve met and spoken to a lot of neat folks. I love locking in, talking about movies with strangers. I have gotten more than 12 thousand steps every day and I honestly don’t know how that is because it feels like I’ve mostly just been watching movies.I’ll also bring up that this weekend has been busy for me beyond just doing TIFF. It may sound nuts, but I also filmed a short film with my friends this weekend. The timing just fell this way and for months I’ve been saying, “First two weeks of September are going to be nuts for me.” Anyway, I’m not sure if you care about all that, but it’s just some table setting if my writing seems even more unhinged than I normally am for my TIFF coverage. This festival’s original name was “The Festival of Festivals” and the idea was that it would play all the movies from throughout the world over the year. So, yes there’s been talk that Toronto doesn’t have that many exciting world premieres this year, but really that doesn’t really matter to me, because there’s still a ton of International/Canadian premieres that come here and I get to see them early and then I get to write about them and you get to read that writing and we are happy, right? RIGHT?Oh, I just realized I forgot to write about Fjord. Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fjord. I saw it and I forgot to write about it. This may sound profoundly lazy, but I don’t really feel like writing about it. This may tell you how I feel about it. I didn’t like it very much. Other people did. So don’t take my word for it. But anyway, there are other ones I did like.Tender Loving Care (dir. Mike Leigh)For my first screening of the fest, I was between a Taiwanese/Japanese action and a British dramedy. Both were before 9AM, to watch with my first coffee of the day. In years past, I’d likely have chosen the action movie, Arrested Memory, and then would have spent the rest of a five-movie day on edge, fists clenched, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I’ve learned I need a soft jumping off point for a festival and Mike Leigh is the perfect guy for that. I say that knowing that his movies are often caustic, but I predicted that with a title like Tender Loving Care, I was in for something more like Another Year than Naked or Hard Truths. I was right. This is lovely, warm, and at times heartbreaking (but gently so). It stars Kate O’Flynn as Amy, a social worker recently out of a break-up, who moves in with her best friend, Rosie, also a social worker. There’s not too much else to say about the plot. Amy and Rosie talk with each other, visit Amy’s parents, drink wine, tea, sing and dance in their kitchen. My favourite parts are when we see them at work. They’re both very good at their jobs. My parents are both in that line of work. It takes a special person to make their whole job just being there for someone, especially with funding cuts and societal changes that just make their jobs harder for less money (which the movie brings up but doesn’t linger on for long). Amy and Rosie see various clients and, despite whatever they are going through personally, they are always empathetic, patient, and communicative. It really is a superpower (a rare one) and I appreciated seeing it depicted so affectionately. I’m very proud of my parents and the work they do. A few days later, I’m still thinking about this movie and it is what I say when people ask “What’s the best movie you’ve seen so far?” It’s about good people showing up for each other, good people who just want the people they love to be happy. I highly recommend starting your day with this movie.Toy Gun Bandit (dir. Rémi St-Michel)It’s easy to get starry-eyed, seeking to fill my schedule with the buzziest titles, the flashiest stars, the most exciting creatives. I try to remember to leave room for discovery. I, of course, a hot-dog-brained genre guy, will gravitate towards things that will make my blood pump a bit, keep me awake through these long days of seeing a thousand movies. The premise of this small, Québécois thriller intrigued me: a chaotic 15-year-old, chasing thrills, stumbles into a life of crime. As a personal aside, I am glad I chase my thrills through the movies, because as this film (as well as countless others) illustrates, crime does not pay. As my parentheses may have indicated, this movie gets swallowed up by its genre and struggles to find a reason for itself. The main character, Félix, has a chaotic edge that many coming-of-age stories don’t often highlight. This kind of guy is usually the villain, or even the comic-relief best friend. He’s played by a fearless young actor named Félix Munger, whose performance is my favourite part of the movie. His unpredictability is the driving force of the tension, which is why I was disappointed when the movie fell into such predictable territory. However, I will say, I loved the specificity of its environment. I have been around the outskirts of Québec City recently, and I remember being caught off guard by its unassuming cinematic potential. Toy Gun Bandit depicts that well, with abrasive, off-kilter characters screaming Québec swears (which if you are unfamiliar with, Google tabarnak, câlisse, and thank me later) in stark, cold, concrete settings. There are a lot of parking lots, which may speak to the film’s low-budgetness, but they feel accurate to the life of a fuck-up teenager.Woman Unknown (dir. May el-Toukhy)A few minutes into this one, I felt trapped. A feeling of “what have I done walking in here?” washed over me. This is an extremely upsetting, post-war Danish drama. I’ve never walked out of a movie. This one was certainly daring me to, and that’s not because it is by any means bad. It is the kind of movie that makes you feel for its main character and then puts them in the worst possible situations you can imagine and then you just have to watch. The thought of going to the Cannes Film Festival fills me with a lot of dread, because while this did not premiere there (actually this was at Venice and it won the big award), this is the kind of movie I imagine I will watch over and over again if I were to go there. I’ve found that this year especially, what with all we have going on, the upsetting movies have been particularly upsetting. I’m reminded of that one year at the Oscars, when Jon Stewart asked all the filmmakers if they needed a hug. Woman Unknown is set in Copenhagen immediately after the war, with much Nazi punishment and paranoia going on in the streets. A maid, Marie (played by Mathilde Arcel), is set to be married to her employer, a widower who runs a lucrative glove manufacturing business. It's a repressed and patriarchal life, one that seems very unpleasant for her, but when her situation is threatened by secrets from her past, her fear indicates that whatever life she escaped from was somehow much worse. There’s a lot here about how women — particularly their bodies — were and are treated as objects in war. Much of that is portrayed brutally and explicitly. I found the most effective scene to be suggestive, rather than literal: at a dinner party, Marie holds out her gloved hands for her fiancé’s coworkers. As they examine and caress the gloves, one of them says “So this is the new model?”The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (dir. Noah Segan)Not all movies need to blow you away. Some can be perfect for what they are, but still only be three stars. Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a jazzy crime drama about aging out of the times, but trying to set something comfortable up for the ones you love. In other words, it’s about retirement. John Turturro plays a sturdy, steadfast pickpocket who robs the wrong guy and has to spend a day ripping around the big apple to make amends. Steve Buscemi shows up; Giancarlo Esposito, too. It’s got a great soundtrack. There’s a cameo at the end by someone who has done too many cameos like this for it to feel special. There are some other nice little supporting performance and great NYC photography. What else can I say? It’s pretty good. The kinda movie you go see with your gf, bf, partner, spouse, first date, second date, etc., on a Thursday night after a dinner out (could be a fancy dinner, could be pizza, burgers, whatever), maybe a glass of wine or Coke Zero or Iced Tea or whatever, maybe you get dessert (cake, ice cream, brownie, fruit salad, or something else or all of the above) and then ya you see the movie, cuddle a bit, have a few laughs and then on your way home, you turn to each other and say “that was pretty good” and then next thing you know you’re at work the next day telling all your coworkers how “pretty good” the Turturro movie is and you may not know it, but you have set off a chain of all your coworkers on their own The Only Living Pickpocket in New York dinner-and-a-movies with their gfs, bfs, partners, spouses, first dates, second dates, etc.God Bless You, Mr. Kopu (dir. Alex Liu)I’ve got stock in Simon Rex. Give this guy a juicy character and he will absolutely nail it. Ever since Red Rocket, he’s been popping up in small stuff and he’s always my favourite part. This one has delights beyond Rex but I’m not sure I’d be recommending it without him. At points he reminded me of Dennis Hopper — fast-talking, know-it-all energy, edgy, enigmatic. It’s pretty thrilling to watch. He plays a sleazy American cleaning-supply salesman who travels to New Zealand to take new recruit Maf Kopu under his wing, teaching him some very unorthodox sales tactics. I won’t get into what these methods are, because I’m afraid it’d be a spoiler, but it’s a pretty original idea and works well as an allegory for colonialism. Maf is Tongan, new to the mainland, and begins to feel guilty that his company is targeting poor minority communities to sell their overpriced product. He’s played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who, despite his large stature, convincingly plays Maf’s meekness and insecurity (this guy played the main Predator in Predator: Badlands, which I’ve just found out now -- I’m not surprised, he’s a huge guy). There’s a twist at the end, which I admit I didn’t see coming, but it left me with a lot of questions, and I don’t mean the juicy kinda questions that movies are meant to leave us asking. I mean the type of questions that make me feel like an asshole or like I’m on CinemaSins, being like “Well if that happened then this other thing doesn’t make fuckin’ sense” and honestly I don’t love being that guy. These guys are funny together though and I was compelled throughout, plus there’s some violence along the way that’s well-choreographed.The Stunt Driver (dir. Michael Dowse)I’m curious what Americans will make of this Telefilm-funded movie with CBC nostalgia all over it, but I loved it. We’ve had some success stories here in Canada in the last year with Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie and Heated Rivalry, but this one, by the great Canadian director Michael Dowse, is even more specific about its Canadian identity. I don’t even know if Dowse has had a crossover hit (by which I mean something that people outside of Canada even know about), other than The F Word (which is mainly known for its name change to What If and a scene where Adam Driver proclaims that he just got laid and now he’s eating nachos). His movies, FUBAR and It’s All Gone Pete Tong, were perennials on MuchMusic (our MTV kinda), and I have a fondness for both of them beyond the nostalgia. Dowse has always been excellent at balancing broad, crude humour with a lot of heart and warmth that he saves for the moments where it will most catch you off guard.In The Stunt Driver, he revs his talents full throttle. As bombastic stunt-driver Ken Carter (also known as the Mad Canadian), Jay Baruchel rips into his best performance ever, pumping pathos and depth into a character who could easily be played like Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby, or even Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, the golfer in the show we all remember from two months ago, The Hawk. He’s got a goatee, a beer belly, a Canadian accent that reminds me of how my dad’s friends talk at 1AM around a campfire, but he’s passionate, charming and although his fear of jumping the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car is often played for laughs, it’s a fear that’s relatable, one that goes beyond a fear of dying violently in the car — it's a fear of people not liking him, a fear of not being worthy of their love. This one is based on a documentary, The Devil at Your Heels, that I really have been meaning to watch for fuckin’ years, but I just haven’t got to it. I even put it at the top of my list for pre-fest home-watches, but I instead watched Bad Lieutenant, which I’d never seen and wanted to watch before Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo on Monday (which you’ll hear about in the next round-up). Anyway! I am tempted to go and take out all that stuff about not being sure if Americans will like this, but I might keep it in, because it speaks to our inferiority complex, which this film dramatizes compellingly through Carter’s relationship with Evel Knievel (who is played by Ben Foster, an actor who I normally have an allergy to, but thought was great in this small role). So, American readers (and every non-Canadian, I should say), check this one out, come on back here and let me know what you think. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (dir. Bassam Tariq)As I’ve been talking about this one, I keep comparing it to Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, which is catching people off guard. “The new movie starring two-time academy-award winner Mahershala Ali reminds you of that crazy Nic Cage movie?” The two things I say to that are: first of all Nic Cage has an Oscar (yes, maybe not two, but he deserves more, maybe even for Mandy) and second of all, you may think Mandy is just an insane revenge movie, and it is, but, my friend, it’s so much more. Just like Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, you may think it’s a meditative drama, and it is, but it’s so much more, MY FRIEND. It’s the kind of movie that can’t be pinned down. It’s at once a hyper-violent, revenge phantasia and a tender drama about a family learning to lean on each other. It has moments of prayer and transcendence and the next scene gives us chaos, jaggedness, and grit. You may say “Ah, sounds like a tonal mess” and hey, you might be right, but I think it pulls off the balancing act. There’s a very sharp script here and a performance by Ali that makes you never want to look away. He plays Latif, a hitman whose personal life is disrupted and suddenly has to juggle his blood, breast milk, and blades, all while finding time to pray (he is a devout Muslim). I’ll also point out that while he is juggling all this, he’s also pulling off an incredible wardrobe. Every fit he wears is remarkable. Between juggling seeing all these movies, making a short film and trying to eat three meals a day, I’ve struggled with even remembering to wear socks. OK, back to the Mandy comparison. I bring it up because I am curious what kind of reaction this will get. Certainly it’s being marketed differently. I can see it being too genre-forward for the serious-brained moviegoers, and perhaps too contemplative for the action crowd. It’s not John Wick, but it’s also not Moonlight. If you’re open to the hybrid, your open hearts will be rewarded. Not every movie can be everything, but this one certainly has a lot.Rogue Trooper (dir. Duncan Jones)I am not planning on saying a lot about this one, as I didn’t enjoy it very much, but also am not angry enough at it to say a bunch of mean things, and you know even if I was, that’s not really my style. I really like Moon and Source Code and have been waiting for Du…
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