Welcome to TIFF 2020

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Wednesday, 24 June 2020 17:21

Written by Gilbert Seah

What will TIFF 2020 look like?

Click on link below....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5RxiL6CwlQ&feature=youtu.be

Film Review - Resistance

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Tuesday, 31 March 2020 16:06

Written by Gilbert Seah

RESISTANCE (UK/France/Germany/USA 2019) ***

Directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz

(Note: Though set in France, thee is hardly any French spoken.)

The closing credits read that we should not forget the WWII efforts of the RESISTANCE workers.  With that, one would find it difficult to fault a well-intentioned film that pays tribute to the Resistance fighters of the Nazi Regime.  Still, RESISTANCE is a flawed, if earnest look at too many stories told in a WWII setting.

The first and foremost is the story of the world’s most famous mime of all time, Marcel Marceau.  I was unaware that this person served in the Resistance saving thousands of Jewish children.  Thanks to writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz for bringing the information to light.  Jakubowicz researched his material from many books - on Marceau, on Klaus Barbie, the French Resistance as well as from the testimonies of contemporary survivors. 

RESISTANCE is clearly about paying tribute to Marceau and the Resistance fighters who have saved millions of children from those damned Nazis.  The story is told from the point of view of Marceau, who is also a talented theatre performer and painter.  His painting skills allowed him to forge passports.  Marceau falls in love with a local girl, Emma.  They get pulled into helping Jewish children.  They soon realize that the Nazis will get the children sooner or later and the only option was to move the children out of Occupied France.  Unfortunately, the film swings from one premise to another.  At one point, it is about Mareau’s entertaining skills, next it is a WWII action flick, then it attempts a biography of Marceau and then a tribute to the resistance fighters.  Of those mentioned, the latter stands out and forms the at least satisfying climax of the film.

Where the film works, is when it gets a bit emotional though the sappiness is thankfully held back.  The debate between Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) and Emma (Clémence Poésy) is particularly moving.  The opening segment where a young girl Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey) watches her parents killed by the Nazi’s and Marceau’s mime performance at the end are worthy of mention.

Eisenberg, the Oscar nominated actor (for THE SOCIAL NETWORK) with the motor-mouth surprisingly speaks much slower in this film, for obvious reasons.  Eisenberg speaks English with an odd Jewish slant, as do all the Fresh actors in English.  The Germans speak German.   Eisenberg could be better in this role but the script does not allow him to excel as in THE SOCIAL NETWORK.   Eisenberg does ok with the miming, but he is not that good.  But who can blame him?  No one could ever be better than Marcel Marceau.  Ed Harris has a cameo as General George S. Patton but his performance lasts no longer than 5 minutes.   Matthias Schweighöfer, who also is one of the film’s co-producers plays Klaus Barbie, the ruthless Gestapo agent who is shown with a nice quiet side with his family.

RESISTANCE feels pretty depressing, especially if watching during the COVID-19 self-isolation/lockdown all over the world.  One can feels for the Jewish isolation with regards to fear of an outside incontrollable threat.  RESISTANCE opens on iTunes March the 31st, so you will be able to see it.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3863133977?playlistId=tt6914122&ref_=tt_ov_vi

Hot Docs 2020

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Thursday, 14 May 2020 16:05

Written by Gilbert Seah

HOT DOCS (Virtual 2020) 

(article with be updated with intro and more capsule reviews)

ALL THAT I AM (Alt det jeg er)(Norway 2020) ***
Directed by Tone Grøttjord-Glenne

Emilie is a young 18-year old returning home to be with her mother and other siblings after living in foster homes for many years.  This is the tale of Emilie as she speaks out of the difficult sexual abuse she underwent under her stepfather who was eventually jailed.  ALL THAT I AM is a quiet and slow paced film that is by no means less effective.  Director Tone reveals her subject as an ordinary teen but with not with a ordinary past.  The past haunts her.  The film’s most difficult to watch segment is a quiet one where a young Emilie speaks of the abuse how he came into her three to four times a week.  It is the voice of a child on the background of the screen showing snowing outside.   Sexual abuse has never been more disturbing when examined from the victim’s point of view.  Well worth a watch.

Trailer: (unavailable)

BULLETPROOF (USA 2020) **
Directed by Jeff Chandler 

BULLETPROOF begins with an re-enactment (actually a poorly executed one) of a school shoot out.  From homecoming parades and basketball games to lockdown drills and active shooter workshops, the landscape inside the American education system has drastically changed. Chandler’s film weaves together incredibly uncomfortable moments that have become the new normal, Bulletproof is a cinematic meditation on fear and violence that asks the questions: What does it mean to be safe in school?   But his film is quite a boring affair that appears aimless.  One really wonders what the real message of the film is.  The film does not really shock or educate in terms of exposing information that audiences are not already familiar with.   Lynne Ramsey’s film WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, though fictional challenges audiences more thus being more effective.

Trailer: (unavailable)

CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (New Zealand/France 2019) ***

Directed by Justin Pemberton

Adapting one of the most groundbreaking and powerful books of our time, CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY is aimed to be an eye-opening journey through wealth and power, that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities.  The film begins with a brutal look at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, emphasizing beatings of protesting citizens in the process.  The music brightens up the mood to modern America and then back down to the depressing18th Century, where it is emphasized repeatedly how the ownership of land is owned by only too few of the wealthiest.  Permberton’s doc is an entertaining one, though too eager to please wth many pop-culture references coupled with interviews of some of the world's most influential experts.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1268956697?playlistId=tt5723056&ref_=tt_ov_vi

iHUMAN (Norway 2019) **
Directed by Tonje Hessen Schei

iHUMAN examines the explosion of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the opportunities and challenges it brings and its impact on the global community.  A.I. is a very relevant and interesting topic that unfortunately is not given a proper treatment by Norwegian director Tonje Hessen Schei.  A.I. as taken in the film from anything from robots to information gathering, with whereas leading AI textbooks define it as a narrower field of the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals i.e. a machine that learns from itself.  Director Schei includes in her film, conferences and lectures by famous people  including psychologists and scientists/engineers.  Still, there is nothing really eye-opening in the film that audiences don’t already know from the news of the world.  She also seems obsessed by impressing her audience with technology flashing lights and the like.   The film warns more on the evil of A.I. than its benefits.

Trailer: (unavailable)

THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF

THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF is a new documentary that shows the odd and personal relationship between a famous Czech painter, Barbora who moved to Norway and finally made it famous with her paintings before two of her best works were stolen from the art gallery.  The film’s premise: an artist befriends the thief who stole her paintings.  She becomes his closest ally when he is injured.  But then when her paintings were never found. The tables turn. The Norway and Oslo settings makes a welcome difference.  One question that audiences would wonder is which parts of the doc actually take place in real time and which are re-enacted.  The film proves the point that how detestable and unlikeable people might be they are still are lost souls that need to find solace.

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1709882905?playlistId=tt11296058&ref_=tt_ov_vi

THEY CALL ME DR. MIAMI (USA 2020) **

Directed by Jean-Simon Chartier

If the title this of this doc sounds cheesy, the film and the subject follows suit.  So, THEY CALL ME DR. MIAMI should be taken as a silly entertaining watch and not as a film that is more serious delivery a message or change the world.  Dr. Miami, otherwise known as Dr. Michael Salzhauer is a famous L.A. plastic surgeon practising in Miami who has used social media to further his practice.  But since he posts ugly surgical operations as well as promote himself as a demi-God,. He infuriates his peers in the plastic surgery field while enhancing his practice.  It is suggested at there is a 2-year wait for new patients.  His line: “I am falling in love with myself again…” says it all.   After 30 minutes of watching this egomaniac, even the silliness becomes a bore.  At one point, he plans a 3-storey mural himself with a sceptre on a horse.

Trailer: (unavailable)

Film Review: Bacurau

• Print
• Email

Details

Category: Cinéma - Movies

Published: Sunday, 29 March 2020 15:56

Written by Gilbert Seah

BACURAU (Brazil/France 2019) ***** Top 10

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles

If the name of one of the directors Kleber Mendonca Filho sounds familiar, the reason is that it belongs to the one who has directed two of the best known Brazilian films recently, the brilliant NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS and AQUARIUS.

Bucurau is the hit from Brazil that has been seen by more than 1 million Brazilians.  The film plays like a Sergio Leone western adventure coupled with a sci-fi mystery element in which an entire village is forced to take up arms to protect itself from extinction.  The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2019 sharing the prize with LES MISERABLES.

The welcome sign to the fictitious village of Bacurau reads: “If you go, go in peace”.  The film begins with a girl, Teresa (Barbara Colen) coming to the village, riding on the water truck to attend her grandmother’s funeral. 

BACURAU was filmed in the village of Barra in the municipality of Palelhas and in the rural area of the municipality of Acari, at the Sertão do Seridó region, in Rio Grande de Norte.

Something is amiss.  When a political candidate, Tony Junior (Thardelly Lima) enters the village, he is greeted with hostility, accused of shutting off water the village obtains from the dam.  This is the reason water has to brought by the water truck.  The truck shot with holes indicate that someone higher up wishes the village to disappear.  The climate gets worse.

Directors File and Dornelles build up audience anticipation very well, starting from the welcome sign to the village.  Then, things get dicier.  First the water truck is riddled with bullet holes from shots out of nowhere.  Then the local teacher, when attempting to show Bacurau on the map to his students find that the village has disappeared from the online map.  The cellphone signals then disappear.  Out of the blue, two strangers from motorbikes appear.  Are they intruders or just innocent tourists out to tour the country?  Bacurau runs 2 hours and ten minutes, is a bit slow moving but never boring for the above reason.

The directors also pay attention to detail, like a brief camera shot of a dog scratching itself as two bikers enter the village.  The flies on the food emphasize the heat, stink and the rural setting.

Sonia Braga, the sex bomb from past films like DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS and KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN appears in the supporting role of a doctor in the village.  Braga is now 70 but still commands a powerful screen presence.  Her character is given key lines and Braga is till a pleasure to watch.  Most of the villagers are played by non-professional from a similar village in the area.  Udo Kier, the German actor who is famous for play crazed madman has his role of a lifetime as an over-the-top crazed mercenary.

At one point in the film, a dialogue line goes: “You are staying here like the fag, Che Guevara.”  There is absolutely no reason for that gay decretory term and it is films like this one that creates the notion in people’s minds that comments like these are ok.  Still there is a queer element in the film that won it the Palm Queer award. 

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the partners of Kino Lorber, the film distributors are setting up virtual theatres in order for audiences to view the film

There are 2 Toronto theatres presently on this initiative: Details below: ($12 for a 5-day pass)

Trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi961003289?playlistId=tt2762506&ref_=tt_ov_vi