More picks for this year's WIFF

Here are my remaining picks for films at WIFF, which opened yesterday and continues until Sunday Nov. 6:

Farewell Mr. Haffmann - I have grown weary of WW II movies but France's foremost actor Daniel Auteuil brings me back; EO - a donkey with human characteristics, based on a Robert Bresson film, based in turn on a Dostoyevsky novel and directed by a Pole - sign me up; Subject - documentaries abound, and abound, and abound (how about one on the inventor of the pencil; maybe it already exists!) . But what about the ethics of exposing someone’s life to the camera's bright eye?; Corsage - an impassioned tale of a female imprisoned in a royal gilded cage;  Black Box - investigative intrigue exposing corruption in the wake of monstrous tragedy, sounds like a taut thriller; Zero Fucks Given - the fuselage curtain is pulled back on the world of flight attendants as portrayed by an especially ambitious one; I Didn't See You There - how the "able-bodied" community, despite best intentions, is so oblivious to the plight of  the disabled - ‘ride in my wheelchair for one day, will ya?’; Holy Spider - more relevant than ever given the recent controversial death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, sparking protests worldwide and we can only hope, but don't hold your breath, the downfall of the Mullahs; Spin Me Round - a "wacky comedy of errors" set in wine and sun-soaked Tuscany - why, of course!; The Lost King - English stalwarts Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan combine in this offbeat drama, Coogan alone is always worth the price;  Mau - a doc on the famous Canadian fashion designer Bruce Mau - you didn't know he was Canadian?; Lost Illusions - based on the Balzac novel it’s about the seething world of poets, writers, journalists  in the harsh salons of 19th Century Paris - delicious!; Decision to Leave - this Korean noir whodunnit, complex and sizzling, sounds like a winner; Hunt - also from Korea, an espionage thriller pitting the two Cold War Korea's against one another......And don't forget the various WIFF local shorts series made by area filmmakers and the always popular Mark Boscariol 48-Hour Flickfest, the 48-hours-to-make-a-movie marathon.

WIFF is like picking from a chocolate box

It's good to see the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) back in action. Three years is a long time to go without a film festival, and the WIFF is back with a vengeance, expanding the festival to 12 - count 'em 12 - whole days. It's amazing how this festival has grown and how Windsorites have taken to it. It's also a kind of mini Toronto International Film Festival - screening some of the same films - so saves us a laborious trip to the zoo which is Toronto and watch in our own relaxed back yard. Here are my film picks: The Last Bus – it stars starring Timothy Spall, who always marvellously plays archetypical irascible British characters; Deception - any film based on the personal tangles and subterfuges of a Philip Roth novel is sure to intrigue; Boblo Boats - for the same reasons everyone else who grew up in this area will want to attend; Haute Couture - because I love the fashion industry; Triangle of Sadness - this black comedy of a societal mashup has been drawing rave reviews; Rogue Agent - you've got to like anything of the British elegant spy drama genre; Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel - because anyone who has followed generations of beats, poets and rock artists who have made this cherished Manhattan hotel home would be interested; Salvatore, Shoemaker of Dreams - fashion again and because I thought my significant other would like it; Metronom - I've seen some very good Romanian films about the Communist era and expect this to be an equal; Pretty Problems - Wine, Sonoma Valley and a lost weekend, what's not to like?; The Killing of a Journalist - I've always been fond of films about Eastern European corruption - here, Slovakia – and their filmmakers depict it so darkly. One Fine Morning - just having Léa Seydoux in it is enough for me; The Divide - personal conflict mirroring societal trends has always been interesting; Hold me Tight - the fact it's directed by fave France's Mathieu Amalric and his personal take on an intense emotional drama; Howard's End - I can't even remember if I’ve seen this 30-year-old British manners classic but like fans of Dalton Abbey it's must viewing; The King of Laughter - let's see if acclaimed Italian actor Toni Servillo turns in another tour de force; Official Competition - anything Penelope Cruz is in and playing a crazed film director to boot even more so. 

Tomorrow I'll have my final round of picks for this year's festival. 

Sorry, Noah, this Eighties' bore fest doesn't work

More from the 51st edition of Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma, which wrapped up Sunday: 

Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, The Squid and the Whale) is one of my fave contemporary directors, perfect for capturing a certain Bourgeois Bohemian zeitgeist. So it was disappointing to see him pull a boner with his filming of Don DeLillo's novel White Noise. Set in the 1980's (though it looks like the 1970's) the movie is a satire on the American Dream. An unlikely bumbled-headed professor (Adam Driver) and his serene wife (Greta Gerwig) evacuate the family when an emergency grips their small Ohio town (the home of Oberlin College). Mom and dad are the incompetents while the kids take charge. But this film is a more than two-hour snooze fest. What about this plot makes you want to care? And all the trouble Baumbach went through to stage the Eighties and this mass evacuation...it makes me exhausted just thinking about it. The best scene, really, is the closing credits.....Hong Sang-soo's The Novelist's Film, from South Korea, is a quirky little picture that at once is absorbing as it makes you wonder what the point of it is. An aging novelist, Jun-hee (Lee Hye-young) has a series of chance encounters - really chance - during an afternoon walk. The most interesting, and entertaining aspects, of these is the subtle differences of misunderstandings or opinion that lead to larger questions about the way we live and what's important in life. One of her encounters, with an equally famous actress, finds the actress not currently performing. Another character calls that's a "waste."  But, pipes-up Jun-hee, "What is she wasting exactly?".....It's like they don’t make movies like this anymore. France's Quentin Dupieux's Smoking Causes Coughing is an absurd comedy that looks like a cross between old time TV sitcoms and comic books. The Tobacco Force is a group of avengers, in their blue latex suits, who nonchalantly fight monsters by spraying them with the chemicals found in cigarettes. Of course, they also take cigarette smoke breaks. On their breaks, they tell bizarre tales of intrigue and murder. Meanwhile their chief, with all the authority of a Foreign Legion commander, has a reptilian head and broadcasts from his bed alongside bored sex partners.....Finally, the festival has brought a retrospective of US director Walter Hill’s films. And on the final night it screened his The Warriors from 1979, a cult classic. This story of combating gangs over the course of a long New York night has the Coney Island Warriors targeted by all the others as they try to make their way from the Bronx back to Brooklyn, as daunting as crossing the Atlantic. Deborah Van Valkenburgh (TV's Too Close for Comfort) also stars as The Warriors’ hanger-on, Mercy. The whole thing's a fun romp filmed at a real time of New York City's graffiti-ridden subway cars nadir.   

All over the genre map

More from Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma:

In Maksym Nakonechnyi's Butterfly Vision Lilya, an aerial reconnaissance specialist with the Ukrainian army, is returned home after being captured by the Russians in the Donbas region. But not is all well on the home front with Tokha, her husband and also in the army, trying to come to terms with his own life, while Lilya decides whether to go ahead with her pregnancy. The country's conflict with Russia serves as metaphor for what the family finds on the ground. There are some good performances and also a glimpse into military drone technology....Anna Eriksson's W, from Finland, is a tour de force from the director, who wrote, edited, designed sets and costumes and scored the music to this post-apocalyptic psychological nightmare world. Ericsson is something of an avant pop star in Finland so this and an earlier film M continue to explore "concepts of future, time, immortality and ritual" (channeling) her own "fears, desire and subconscious." In the film, we're taken to a kind of Ice Station Zebra where the prisoners apparently had been seminal figures in the Before Times, but now are chained, tortured or left to die. In this End of the World world, seemingly deranged nurses are not there for the afflicted  and resort to punishing one another. Victims cry out, "There is no time without motion" or “I am a human, I am a system." These are cries of pain - psychological and physical - from a future with no remorse......Asian crime movies are a cult genre all their own and hence Hideo Gosha's 1974 Violent Streets from Japan. But, quite frankly, all the back and forth gangland attacks and murders - full of blood and gore of course - simply got monotonous after awhile (how many times did I look at my watch?)…..In porn director Bruce LaBruce's The Affairs of Lidia, a North American premiere, LaBruce is once again up to his playful satirical takes on homo and heterosexual sex, with charming befuddled characters who are of the most moment of contemporary moments: fashionistas, designers and models. Deadpan conversations about relationship mores are hilarious. Says Michanegelo, "What does ‘gay’ even mean now? We're not living in the 20th century." Prosaic encounters lead to sex - don’t you know? - with the “soft” porn being as much in images as the lightheartedness of those involved. The costumes are gorgeous, the ironies over the top and the score is so appropriately terrific by artist - yes - Vomit Heat. (Well worth getting the album, Second Skin.)

A film about Winnipeg partly inspired by Detroit

More from Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma:

Deco Dawson’s Diaspora is a film featuring 25 languages but only limited subtitles, those being for when the principal character, Eva (Yuliia Guzhva), a just arrived immigrant from Ukraine, is speaking. You might think that’s a problem, especially with the film’s more than two hour length. But the concept works beautifully and you don't even notice the time because this story about a newcomer trying to make it in an alien society is just so engrossing. We follow Eva from her arrival by taxi (by a driver who speaks a different language) to her landlord (who speaks another language) as she gets settled in. Then, as she explores Winnipeg’s North End, a once bustling but now dilapidated neighborhood of old stores and decaying factories - indeed very similar to parts of Detroit - Eva tries to start a new life. But everyone she encounters is an immigrant, from the convenience store clerk to a vacuum cleaner salesman to her boss at a textile factory. Again, no subtitles, just Eva (Guzhva arrived in Canada herself very similarly a decade ago) trying to understand what the other person is saying, communication (or non-communication) usually made up of a lot of hand signaling, body gestures and emotional inflections.  These vignettes are absorbing simply because we’re basically experiencing what Eva is experiencing  - the frustration, miscues and at times anger - “what a fucking joke this is, there’s never anyone anywhere!” - when she can’t find someone with whom to communicate. (Not to take anything away from the film but it did occur to me that some of these other immigrants would probably have had a default basic English vocabulary.)  In a question and answer session after the film, director Dawson said it was his intention to film the stark images of  Winnipeg much like Detroit’s desolate neighborhoods. Dawson has filmed in Detroit and an earlier 2001 short film of his, FILM(dzama), won Best Technical Innovation award at the 2002 Ann Arbor Film Festival…..Belgian director Fabrice du Welz’s Inexorable is a taut psychological thriller about a famous author and an obsessed fan. It is probably the slickest (in a good way), most well paced and produced film I’ve seen at the festival so far, with several thrilling moments as the movie builds to a crescendo. Excellent performances from  Benoît Poelvoorde (Marcel, the author) and Alba Gaïa Bellugi (Gloria, his admirer), who also starred in the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) perennial favorite The Intouchables (2011)....Lucas Delangle's Jackie Caillou is one of those films about mystical powers that can have a certain appeal to those who are fascinated by the spiritual or supernatural. I'm not, but I won't let that bias my review. Jackie (Thomas Parigi) inherits his grandmother's gift for magnetic healing and befriends a female with whom he has amorous relations. But his attempts to heal her go awry and lead to devastating consequences. I can't fault the film's acting or overall direction; it's just not my type of subject matter.

A wee black humour from the Emerald Isle

More from Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinema:

That’s just the way it is and if you don’t like it, well, too bad (say that in an Irish lilt!).  Poor Pádraic (Colin Farrell) shows up one day at his old friend, Colm’s (Brendan Gleeson) house, to go to the local pub for a pint, as they’ve always done. Except Colm has made a decision: ”I just don’t like you no more.”  Pádraic, he says, is “dull” and, with Colm getting on in years, wants to spend more time on things that really matter, like thinking about the world and his place in it. Pádraic, admittedly a bit of a simpleton, is devastated, and continues to pursue the friendship in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Inisherin being a small island off the Irish coast, the kind of place where everyone knows everybody’s business before they do. Colm will have none of it, threatening to cut off one of his fingers each time Pádraic approaches. One by one those fingers come off in this sublime black comedy that sends up Celtic and smalltown superstitions, and that will have you constantly chortling at the ridiculousness of it all......In Bertrand Bonellos’ Coma, Patricia Coma hosts an an-purpose advice video channel, where a viewer "may not be immortal but you will live better." From blending vegetables to dispensing German lessons and philosophical tidbits - "everything from your behaviour is compatible with determinism" - sometimes at the same time - Coma (Julia Faure) is discovered by a despondent teen (Louise Labèque), who becomes absorbed and obsessed. Meanwhile the teen's bedroom world, during Covid lockdown, transforms into one of fantasy. Her dollhouse of Barbie and Ken dolls act out romantic soap operas full of emotional weight. The film’s disparate storylines nevertheless work in this probe into the often hyper disconnected and traumatized world in which we live.....Charlotte Wells's Aftersun is a memoir, probably personal, about a trip she took with her divorced dad when she was 11 years old. It’s a sweet perceptive story about a smart kid - she asks why he still says “I love you" to his ex-wife - bordering on precociousness but who generally clicks with her father, who is trying to regroup in his own life. The scenes are very prosaic – a resort frequented by Brits in Turkey - but the acting by the two principal characters, Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as daughter Sophie, wins the day. My only complaint is the close-up hand-held camera shots - with sometimes screeching audio – that are just too disorienting and annoying. (Aftersun will screen this fall at the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF).) 

Unicorns and teddy bears, oh my!

More from Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma:

It was just such a short time ago. Remember the Covid lockdown? That surreal time when we were holed up in our own houses, cut off - by law - from the rest of the world and having to communicate with others online (thank goodness for technology)? It all comes back depressingly in Argentinian directors Alejo Moguillansky and Luciana Acuña’s El Edad Media (The Middle Ages). An artistic couple and their young daughter Cleo have to work out living arrangements in their small apartment, with dad trying to direct plays through video links and mom cartwheeling around the house to keep up her dance moves.  Unbeknownst to them Cleo is saving up to buy a telescope, and finds an ingenuous way of raising money. In the end, however, her transgression inspires all the family to make a major change…..In Canadian director Bruce LaBruce’s The Misandrists, be prepared to encounter the Female Liberation Army (FLA), a surrepticious gathering of terrorist women ready to overthrow the time dishonored patriarchy. This film is at once a send-up of political extremism and a serious dive into what makes up the philosophical and visceral elements of the women’s liberation movement - yes, the two themes can be compatible. LaBruce milks the absurdist tale for everything it’s worth and, as a filmmaker, no screen moment is left unturned.  For example, he makes great use of the ending credits and even after those have passed the movie hasn’t exactly ended. But beware: there’s some very explicit porn and a long scene of a medical procedure you’ll need a cast iron stomach to watch…..Get ready for a fight to the death in the animated Unicorn Wars, a Spanish-French co-production by director Alberto Vásquez. Is it true that teddy bears and unicorns, those most whimsical and enchanting beings of childhood imagination, can be real enemies? The Teddy Bear March has nothing on this film’s gentle beasts who seek their arch enemy in the Magical Forest which is anything but. Of course the story is an analogy of the human condition. And these teddies, cuddly as they seemingly are, just might not be the ones to have your children take to bed with them at night. 

In Montreal for the auteurs' festival

So I’m in Montreal for the 51st edition of the Festival du nouveau cinéma, which may be Canada’s oldest film festival. This year I’ll be here for the entire 12-day event.  The festival tends to specialize in edgier more auteur-focused films. But with the accent this year on the films of US director Walter Hill, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s heading into the mainstream….I've seen four films so far and the best was Swiss director Michael Koch’s A Piece of the Sky. Set in an Alpine Valley high in the Swiss Alps, people not from the area are known as “lowlanders” much like sailors refer to non-sailors as landlubbers. Meditative and extremely nuanced with plenty of close-up shots, this is a love story about an unlikely couple - an attractive barmaid and a laconic almost brutish farm laborer. The film’s meticulous pacing showing daily rural life among spectacular mountain vistas melds with the studied emotional trauma which characterizes the couple’s relationship. This is terrific acting with a story line that also upends any Swiss cliche,  and the only edit I’d make are the periodic scenes of a choir singing melancholy hymns to punctuate the storyline…..Grand Paris (Martin Jauvat)  is a stoner comedy, French style. Set in the far reaches of the Paris suburbs these slackers spend their days scoring dope, trying to pick up women and aimlessly riding public transit. One day they explore the excavation for a future train station for the Grand Paris Express, a plan to make Paris into an even greater world class city. They find a disc with hieroglyphic type writing, are mesmerized, and try to find out what it means. This leads them to a few other oddball characters, including one’s former McDonald’s boss (an amateur archaeologist) who try to decipher the encryption. The movie bristles with jokes as these two goofs can’t do much right. But their “find” leads to one type of extraordinary fulfillment, a high for the ages…..No Bears, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, is an oddball movie about a Tehran filmmaker going to the border of Turkey and making a film about escaping from Iran. (I found it odd that some of the women weren’t wearing hijabs.)  Played by Panahi the director finds himself caught up in village gossip, accused of taking a photo of a real life couple that are the target of a ferociously jealous man. This movie won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and I have trouble understanding why. It’s a confusing mashup of real (the director’s plight)  and fiction (his filming of the fictitious couple seeking escape).  Panahi is an Iranian dissident and has been jailed in that theocratic country. But it isn't the state that comes in for a drubbing here as does superstitious, antiquated village life…..Much anticipated has been US director Walter Hill’s (48 Hours, Streets of Fire) Dead for a Dollar. Hill was supposed to have accepted an award at the screening last night but was detained because of severe sciatica. The Western has a great cast of Willem Dafoe (who never disappoints; I get a kick just looking at his gnarly face!), Christoph Waltz and Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel). The movie opens with splendid crane shots of the vast New Mexican desert and there are scenes of sweeping vistas throughout. The accompanying art work (i.e., credits) is very well done. But there are problems - plenty. The acting is stilted partly because of a bad script. Waltz is too lightweight a personality to play a rugged bounty hunter though he does handle a gun well. Brosnahan, a suspected kidnapped society woman, pouts so much she must have got tired of it. There are tons of space, literally, between scenes - again the sweeping vistas - and the movie could have been tightened by a half hour (it’s 114 minutes long).  The dialogue is minimal and stiff. And there are scenes meant to be serious that make you want to laugh (two women behind me often giggled). And Waltz’s last line, understatedly saying he needs a drink after an OK Corral style shootout, is guffaw-making.