TIFF: "Room" is a Total Knockout

Nathaniel popping in from TIFF for a short note from a simply delirious high before an attempt at desperately needed sleep. I've just seen Lenny Abrahamson's Room (adapted for the screen by the novelist herself Emma Donoghue) and it is incredible. I lost track of how many times I teared up and I kept realizing my face was freezing into long-held expressions of wonder or terror. And it's funny at times, too. Both halves of the story, 'inside and outside' you might call them, are entirely compelling. A

At the Premiere
The audience gave the director a long standing ovation tonight and stood right back up minutes later when he brought out the film's stars Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, who deliver one of the most symbiotic screen duets in memory. He is only eight years old but was seven when they filmed the picture and his work is easily on par with Quvenzhané Wallis's much ballyhooed turn in Beasts of the Southern Wild in terms of completely natural and riveting child performances. Brie Larson, as we already knew from Short Term 12, is a wonder with child actors, and she's just as Oscar-worthy this time in a complicated haunting role.

I spoke with the director at the after party briefly to congratulate him on how cinematic it was (somehow I expected something more stage-bound) and he asked if I'd read the book ("no") and that I should. He did worry a little about people reading the book directly beforehand and having a "double image" in their mind when watching. Donoghue, for her part, is thrilled with the film version. She said something along the lines of 'I don't want to denigrate my own craft, but there are some places only the cinema can go' on stage tonight.

Oscar Chances: Let's just say they'd better. This is not just an actor's film or a literary rooted triumph. The sound, cinematography, editing, design and music are all beautifully handled. As for Jacob Tremblay, if he's Oscar nominated he'll become the youngest male actor ever so honored* 

*this is an estimate. Justin Henry (Kramer vs Kramer, 1979 Best Supporting Actor) was 8 years and 270 days old  and Jackie Cooper (Skippy, 1931 Best Actor) was 9 years and 20 days old when they were nominated, so unless Jacob's birthday (unknown at this writing) was some time ago and he's already close to 9, he'll take the record away from them. It's the lead role but with child actors they nearly always push them supporting: think Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon who is in 93% of her movie but we'll see.

TIFF: Did Dheepan deserve its Cannes win?

Amir continues our coverage of TIFF '15 with a review of this year's Palme d'or winner, Jacques Audiard's Dheepan.

Whether Jacques Audiard’s latest film, Dheepan, benefits from the pedigree of its Palme d’or or becomes victim to raised expectations isn’t clear. What is already clear, however, is that the film’s reception has been truly baffling: on the one hand, the Cannes prize is one of the festival’s more curious decisions; on the other, the extent of vitriol that the film receives seems equally unwarranted. Dheepan is on the same emotional and stylistic wavelength as Audiard’s previous films, and it is about ten minutes -- admittedly a disastrous ten minutes — away from being on par with his best work...

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TIFF: "Phantom Boy" is a Delight

Our TIFF dispatches are off to a very slow start but it's only because both Amir and myself, Nathaniel, have been cramming so many screenings in on the first few days. For now, a brief animated diversion.

PHANTOM BOY 
French directors Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol were surprise Oscar-nominees just four years ago for A Cat in Paris and they're back with their second full-length feature. You could call this one A Cancer Patient in New York to mentally connect them but that doesn't have a catchy ring to it and wouldn't sell tickets to families.

The subject this time is a remarkable little boy in New York City who leaves his afflicted body in the hospital each night to regularly float above the city. He's become so adept at the astral projection that he helps other patients in the hospital when their spirits start wandering away. 

When his parents leave the hospital each night it's clear that this is now familiar routine as he follows them home where he sees more private moments. When they cry he tenderly averts his gaze from respect at their stiff-upper-lip efforts of composure in the hospital. 

If that makes Phantom Boy sound unusually dour for a cartoon, fear not. It's emotions may spring from its matter of factness about life and death and danger (such a welcome change of pace for a kid's movie) but, as befits a cartoon about a high spirited (sorry) young boy who wants to grow up to be a cop, it's also an funny adventure story. Consider the tagline.

He's eleven, he's invisible, he can fly, and he's got 24 hours to save New York.

Through a series of dastardly crimes and comic misshaps outside the hospital the boy becomes involved in the story of a policemen, also hospitalized, and a His Girl Friday type alpha reporter who are both out to stop a "disfigured" villain (his face is amusingly cubist as opposed to disfigured). The villain is threatening to wipe out New York City with a computer virus.

Though the story begins to feel a touch repetitive towards its derring-do finale, it is never less than pleasant with an engaging story and memorably odd beats. Sometimes the film straight up soars, particularly in its quieter moments when we go flying with the boy, reading a story to his baby sister, or marvelling at the way he slips in and out of his body, sometimes like it's as natural as stretching and other times like he's slipping on clothes that no longer fit as well. Running through the pleasantry and peaks is the always expressive traditional animation, sophisticated sight gags, endearing broadly sketched characters, and a really top-notch long-running joke that keeps threatening to abandon its punchline. Highly recommended.

Grade: B+
Oscar Chances: I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it among the nominees this year if it qualifies. But it's worth noting that their last film A Cat in Paris (2010) didn't show up in the Oscar race until a year after its premiere so this one may float towards the gold in 2016.

Two Guys and Two Gals from U.N.C.L.E.

Here is Kyle with a review of Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

 

Last week, if you told me that I’d be in love with a Guy Ritchie film, I’d have snatched you by your smoking barrels and given you what for. Yet here I am, utterly enamored of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In a summer bloated with franchises and (ugh) reboots that willfully avoid originality—save Mad Max: Fury Road, of course—Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a welcome demonstration that a flick can be fun without being dumb. The film subverts the formula of “action” blockbusters to make us feel tense or anxious most of the time. Fight/chase scenes are not suspenseful tent poles but undercut by humor or condensed through stylish montages. Indeed, style is the subject of the film; the narrative is so patently pat that it shifts focus to the way it’s told. It’s upsetting that audiences did not flock to it in its all-important opening weekend, though it may almost be a compliment these days that the name recognition of the original property is so low that it didn’t push audiences into theaters. If Man from U.N.C.L.E. succeeds—and I still hope it will—it will be based on its own merits, of which it has plenty...

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Review: The Gift

Jose here. In between making appearances in what seems to be every single movie being made, Joel Edgerton has been doing his homework and studying the creepy thrillers of Michael Haneke and Roman Polanski, since he emulates both auteurs’ styles in his directorial debut The Gift. The film stars Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall as Simon and Robyn, a married couple who have just moved into their new home in Los Angeles when they run into Gordo (played by multitasker Edgerton who also wrote the screenplay), a former high school classmate of Simon’s who wishes to befriend them, but lacks the social skills to figure out that Simon isn’t interested in welcoming into his life.

We learn that back in high school, Gordon went by the nickname Weirdo and was the constant target of pranks made by Simon and his friends. Suggesting that we never really leave our high school roles behind, we see how Gordo turned into a self-loathing underachiever, while Simon became a successful executive who married the most beautiful girl in town - a former bookworm - and made a career for himself by bullying people in the corporate world. As strange things begin to happen in Simon and Robyn’s home, we are led to believe that maybe Gordon is seeking payback for the psychological torture he endured at Simon’s hands, and yet there is also a more perverse feeling of karmic retribution that at times makes us root for the sociopathic underdog. If he is a sociopath to begin with…

Edgerton’s film is filled with so many nuances that we are never truly sure of who is playing who. He manipulates the very same genre conventions he’s borrowing from, and instead of presenting Gordo as the perpetrator, he makes us wonder if by assuming the “odd dude” is the villain, we’re not becoming bullies ourselves. Combining elements from Gaslight, Funny Games, Repulsion and Caché, Edgerton weaves a stylish thriller that poses complex questions about human behavior without ever taking itself too seriously. There are scares galore, countless steamy shower scenes with damsels in distress, and more asshole-y behavior from Bateman’s character than you can imagine, and yet the movie feels fresh in its delivery. Like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle if Keyser Soze had been the babysitter, The Gift playfully evokes some of the most beloved contemporary thrillers, not all of which are great films, but most of which prove to become irresistible on repeat viewings. Who knew Edgerton had this in him?