TIFF: A Funny Man, Love and Bruises,... Anatolia

Amir, here, back with more coverage of new TIFF films. The Toronto International Film Festival is winding down but luckily I have a couple of big name movies still scheduled. Here's a few from the last two days.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This Cannes grand prix winner is a slow-paced police procedural in which a doctor, a prosecutor and a group of other police agents drag an alleged murderer along with them in the rural Anatolia region of Turkey so he can show them where he’s hidden his victim’s body. More than half of this gorgeously shot film is spent during the night and I for one wished the morning never came. Gokhan Tiryaki’s impeccable lighting and the varied range of shots he creates in the limitless but monotonous locale of the film easily tops my personal list of best cinematography of the year. 

There’s more to the film than the actual nightly search as Ceylan gives us indications that we should question the nature of the crime. Supernatural observations, spirituality and religious themes of guilt and faith all play a part in this hypnotic film. At two and a half hours, Anatolia won't be for everyone, but if you’re willing to go along with Ceylan’s delicate look into the social structure of Turkey and his humanistic approach to this crime tale, the end result is incredibly rewarding.

The cast of "A Funny Man" (Nikolaj Lie Kaas in the center)

A FUNNY MAN (dir. Martin Peter Zandvliet) 

The director’s follow-up to Applause (for which Paprika Steen was a medalist right here in Nathaniel's film bitch awards) is a biopic about Dirch Passer (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), one of Denmark’s best known comedians. Once again, Zandvliet has given us an insightful look into the troubled life of an artist, one who’s always faced with the struggle of transitioning his successful comedic career into that of a serious dramatic actor. Much of the film is similar to what we often see in biopics that cover the bulk of the protagonist’s life, but don’t let that throw you off. A Funny Man is an emotional film that can make you laugh, cheer and cry at the same time and there are truly great performances in it. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (of Brothers and The Idiots fame) is a marvel as the late Passer and embodies both his comic genius and his dramatic talents to the same effect. Even better is Lars Ranthe as his partner Kjeld whose subtle turn in this demanding role is sensational. Both actors would have been easy gets for Oscar nominations had this film been in English. The film’s real champ for me, however, is Sune Martin, whose soothing, gentle score is even better than the eccentric work he did for Applause.  

LOVE & BRUISES (dir. Lou Ye)

This was the beginning of my most disappointing day at TIFF. I was excited to see this for Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete) but my enthusiasm died down just a few minutes into the film. Ye’s hollow and underdeveloped love story between Hua, a Chinese teacher (played by Corinne Yam) and Mathieu, a French construction worker (played by Rahim) who meet by accident on the street of Paris was anything but lovely. One-dimensional characters, a sexist and judgemental view of relationships and an inconceivable plot make it one of the weakest scripts of the year.

Rahim tries but the script gives him very little to work with. Worse still, the film gives us a whopping total of ZERO reasons to like Hua’s character who’s inexplicably adored by almost every man she meets. Though, I'd add that my reasons for disliking Hua all relate to how flatly written the character is which is entirely different from the misogynistic reasons the film itself seems to hate her. Lest you think sexism is the film’s only fault, its on-the-nose depiction of social class division is surprisingly even more distasteful. I’d give this film a straight "F", but I’d probably listen to Peyman Yazdanian’s score out of context, so a "D-" would be fair. 

CUT (Amir Naderi)

I’d like to say it was the after-effect of the previous screening that made me abandon this halfway through, but Cut was no masterpiece either. The film opens with a sequence that begs for our sympathy as a cinephile walks the street yelling “they’re killing pure cinema. Today’s films are only for entertainment” into a megaphone. Then, in a contrived turn of events, he becomes a human punching bag for inexplicably violent men in order to pay his deceased brother’s debts. The film’s subpar production values and mediocre acting weren’t helping its cause but I shouldn't express opinions on a film I haven’t watched in full. Perhaps a miracle of improvement happened after I left?  

>Final Weekend: back-to-back screenings of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis follow-up and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights which has just been picked up for distribution (albeit in 2012), actressy musicals and Joachim Trier still to come.

 

Ask Nathaniel...

I've had allergies or a cold or something all week so i'm slooooow with the writings and the thinkings and the typings and the abilities to do sentence endings due to my whiny hypochondria uncomfortableness. Drive is hard to write about without effusive drooling y'all... and drooling is uncomfortable when you have a sore throat unless your drool is made of chamomile tea. 

We haven't done one of these Q&As in a while so here goes. You ask the questions, I choose 10 or so to answer on Monday or Tuesday. (No cheating with multi-parters or questions that would require encyclopedic volumes to answer like "name the 100 fiercest hair whips in the movies"). Ready. Set. Go....

Cinema de Gym: 'Role Models'

Editor's Note: In Cinema de Gym, Kurt writes about whichever piece of whichever movie was playing while he cardio'ed. I wish my gym would play movies.

Kurt here. I've just moved from my suburban Philadelphia stomping grounds to a cozy new place in Brooklyn (yay!). Thus, no more weekly trips to the treadmill screening room, which, even if it had followed me here, would likely fall outside of my new monthly budget. But, fear not! I logged a lot of hours in that offbeat movie house, and though my scale might not reflect that (what gives?), I've compiled quite a lengthy list of gym films du jour. So, rather than bag the column, I'm going to burn through that Cinema de Gym queue, with a promise that my memory is sharp. 

Anyhoo, our title for today is Role Models, the 2008 Seann William Scott/Paul Rudd comedy about two dudes forced to mentor young kids as a means of community service. The segment I saw didn't reveal what crime led these guys to do the time, but it did feature a pre-Glee Jane Lynch as a characteristic ball-buster, her oppressive lectures showing more than just shades of Sue Sylvester. If not the probation officer of Scott and Rudd's characters (I couldn't tell), Lynch at least plays the woman running the role-model program, and she's rather candid about her history with drug addiction, the freedom from which has given her purpose, but hasn't much mended her social skills. Used to underscore a subversive tone that paints the legal system as bogus and chaotic, Lynch's slave driver seems wholly unequipped to work with kids, despite a constant assurance of her firm belief in the whole babysitting-as-rehab plan. She pairs Scott and Rudd with Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson) and Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), respectively, two kids whose lives are suffering from a lack of positive parental influence. Augie, specifically, lives with his small-minded mom and her smaller-minded boyfriend, both of whom take cruel, alternating shots at Augie's obsession with medieval role-playing.

However improbable, I liked the whole real-life world of warcraft the film cooks up as Augie's pasttime, a population of devoted, armor-wearing super dorks who turn a neighborhood park into their own Middle Earth, complete with duels, a king (Ken Jeong) and social hierarchy. It's a preferable second life for Augie, but his family's shortcomings render him defenseless when it, too, reveals itself to be a harsh place. Which is of course where Rudd comes into play, joining the club of tunic-wearing plastic sword wielders, and finally confronting Augie's troubles at the source. A dinner scene with Augie's parents has an appropriate, if obvious, gratification, with Rudd offering us vicarious jollies by telling the ignorant adults that they're deadbeats who don't have a clue who their son is. It's the scene in which everyone hears what they need to hear, including Rudd's character, who, if we're going by typical plot logic, fulfills his community service at that very point. 

I didn't get to see much of Scott and his foul-mouthed terror, who, as you may know, launched a mini-career as a go-to foul-mouthed terror following his performance in this film. Scott's current lack of work had me missing his presence (a recent stint in rehab offers some explanation for the career dip), and I'm sure if he'd appeared more often I would have had more laughs. The third feature effort from multi-hyphenate David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer), who's got a new one dropping in 2012 with Rudd and Jennifer Aniston, Role Models didn't strike me as all that funny, but it works in concept, and it suggests more emotional ambition than a lot of other titles of its ilk (which are legion, to be sure). Had the Lord of the Rings wagon arrived about eight or nine years earlier than it did (I was 20 when the last film stormed the Kodak), I maybe, just maybe, would have gravitated toward a Renaissance-Faire realm like Augie's, and if my parents were the sort who mocked it, I'm sure I wouldn't have minded having Paul Rudd go to bat for me.

Conclusions?

1. While she's done wonders for Jane Lynch's career, one could argue that Sue Sylvester also highlights how filmmakers have long been typecasting this gifted comedienne.
2. Speaking of typecasting, wouldn't it be interesting to see Mintz-Plasse in a non-geek role? 
3. Jerk parents who put their petty interests before those of their kids are pretty high on my list of love-to-hate characters.
4. I can't say I'm a fan of Rudd's career, but I think I'd get pretty weak in the knees if he stepped in to be my hero.

Who's your role model?

Downton Abbey Returns. The Emmys Are Coming.

Pssssst. Don't tell any Kate Winslet fans* but I'm secretly rooting for Downton Abbey to totally own Mildred Pierce this weekend at the Emmys.

*oops. That's like everyone reading. And me.

Whatever, Downton Abbey is primo tv, obscenely addictive. Closing Statement: Mildred Pierce doesn't have Maggie Smith. I rest my case.

P.S. I'll be live blogging and tweeting the Emmys this weekend so check in, won'cha?

The Adventures of Simba Across the Third Dimension

Michael C. here.

As a dyed-in-the-wool 3D non-believer I can’t say I was thrilled at the notion of Disney combing through the vault, “improving” titles with the latest technological gimmick as an excuse to wring more cash out of their back catalogue. The idea reeks of George Lucas style revisionism. Yet having seen Lion King 3D (opening today) I now have to reconcile this position with the fact that I thought the whole thing worked beautifully. Maybe enough time had passed for the story to feel fresh again. Maybe I was just in a great mood the morning of the screening. But whatever the reason I can’t deny Lion King 3D did what Lion King IMAX failed to do for me, which was to break through my deep familiarity with the material and hit me on a gut level.

Hey, why mince words: I had a blast.

Lion King may be the most technically polished use of 3D I’ve seen, miles ahead of any other after-the-fact 3D conversions, and right up there with Avatar and Up which I consider the gold standard. The Disney team has clearly taken incredible care with their prized title in this their inaugural attempt to access the potential gold mine of retrofitting classics. The level of detail impresses. The snouts of the lions protrude slightly in front of their faces and African plains that were formally flat paintings now stretch convincingly into the distance. Zazu becomes a breakout star since he gives the depth of field a work out every time he swoops by in the foreground high above the action. At the screening I saw there was no hint of dimness or the dreaded multi-plane effect that plagues cheaper 3D conversions.. I can honestly say I’ve never felt the urge to peek out from under the glasses, which is pretty much the highest compliment I can give to the technical job. 

Ultimately, a third dimension will never make a bad script better or make a boring movie exciting. Lion King 3D works so well because Lion King 2D did. But still, when the movie is already playing like gangbusters I can't deny the added depth can help turn things up to 11 from time to time. "The Circle of Life" wows as if it was conceived with 3D in mind from the start, and the wildebeest stampede is predictably stunning. More surprisingly the added dimension also lends increased grandeur to simple scenes like an early heartfelt talk between Mufasa and son in a vast open field. In other scenes where the newfound depth doesn’t do much– "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", for example, doesn’t exactly pop – it’s easy enough to ignore. 

How viable this will be for other Disney classics remains an open question. The group of titles that would really justify the conversion is probably slim. I can’t say a 3D version of The Jungle Book would have me clamoring for tickets. If, on the other hand, they ever give Fantasia the same deluxe treatment they have given Lion King then sign me up.