WIFF capsule reviews (2)

More capsule reviews from the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF), now on until Nov. 8

DAY 4: Parallel Tales (Asghar Farhadi) is a kind of Hitchcockian dream; indeed think Rear Window, of spying on  neighbours. The great Isabelle Huppert plays a writer obviously lost for ideas but her lack of ethics boomerangs in this sometimes convoluted tale......Minotaur (Andrey Zviaguintsev) is a slick well-made film, the first I've seen that posits Eastern Europe daily life with the background of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A business and family man is corrupted by the authorities.....Maigret and the Dead Lover (Pascal Bonitzer) stars the Denis Podalydès as the debonair inspector Maigret investigating a murder that forces him further down the rabbit hole in this stylish whodunnit.....

DAY 5: Lost my tickets (!)

DAY 6: Closing Night was a delightful surprise even though it was about a morose topic - Alzheimer's and medically-assisted suicide. All three well-known stars (Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts and Dianne Wiest) put on terrific performances, and I couldn't take my eyes off Watts's character April; I never realized how good this actress is.....Preston Chase's Police Detective Parker tells the story of Windsor's first Black police officer whose contribution to the community went well beyond his colour barrier breaking as he became known as Uncle Al for his charitable work. A well-made valuable contribution to Windsor's role in Canada's Black history.

DAY 7: Bookends (Mike Doyle) is a charming dramedy about a gay millennial novelist's romantic breakup forcing him to live with his conservative Jewish grandparents in, of all places, a retirement community. You can imagine the humourous clashes.....Draw Me a Bridge, like Police Detective Parker, is a valuable contribution to Windsor's cultural history and made surprisingly (to me) by former Governor General Michaëlle Jean and her filmmaking husband Jean-Daniel Lafond. It traces the building of the Gordie Howe bridge with wonderful aerial shots of the stunning new crossing; the crew had rare access to the bridge during construction in this filmmakers' love letter to Windsor - and Detroit. 

DAY 8 - Paolo Virzì's Five Seconds is two stories in one, a middle aged man's coming to terms with his near past and his ambivalence towards a ground of new neighbours, where resolutions are found in both cases in this well-acted drama.....Sabine Lidl's Siri Hustvedt - Dance Around the Self, sheds appropriate light on the wife of now deceased but famous writer Paul Auster, a significant novelist in her own right whose attention is more than due in this well-crafted documentary about her stories and Norwegian heritage.  

 

 

Is she brilliant or crazy?

You Can See Everything (now screening at commercial theatres) is one of the most astonishing documentaries I’ve seen. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s immersion – and it was actually a physical immersion – into the lives of infamous medical test device Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her family, is a study itself of the documentary-making process, interviewing techniques and rudimentary basics of journalism breaching people’s private and public boundaries. Holmes was sentenced 11 years for committing fraud by falsely leading investors to donate millions in what she claimed was a small portable device that, with a drop of blood, could home diagnose a range of illnesses. For some reason – the film doesn’t explain – the documentarians were asked by her family (her husband Billy Evans and children are also featured) to actually live with them in their beachfront home in southern California, in the 34 days leading up to when she was to report to a minimum-security prison in Texas. Perhaps the reason she did is because she sees herself as completely innocent. It’s this claim that the filmmakers explore. Well, Fielder, anyway, since he’s the one on camera. Fielder assumes the role of investigative reporter confronting Holmes on her device’s legitimacy and morality in touting a medical breakthrough. Yet she has no doubt the unit (“Theranos” the name is a combination of “therapy” and “diagnosis”) has scientific validity, it just must be fine-tuned. And she's optimistic she will try to re-introduce it again. Holmes shows no guilt or reflection. As per her photos she is wide-eyed, smiling and almost giddy with the euphoria over the supposed scientific breakthrough, illegal as it was. But she’s also of a strange psychological makeup. She’s brilliant scientifically but can’t grasp basic concepts, as when Fielder asks her the meaning of the famous Abbott and Costello skit Who’s on First? It’s a puzzle to her and she defends herself by saying, “I’m literal.” The film widely benefits from a terrific hauntingly abstract score and inventive extreme close-up facial shots, and Fielder is as much a character as Holmes as he pries, confronts, doubts and yet empathizes with her. The film is almost three hours and flies by as we’re immersed in the world of this journalistic dynamic.

WIFF capsule reviews (1)

Capsule reviews from the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF), now on until Nov. 8: 

DAY 1: Neil Labute’s Murderous comes across like a stage play (a genre which he also writes) with stilted dialogue, which I find typical of theatre. But it’s absorbing and that’s all that matters. A successful writer & filmmaker (Gia Crovatin) living remotely is visited by various people (an ex-lover (Kevin Kilner) to begin with) who all want something from her……La Gradiva is a first time outing for Marine Atlan in this cinéma vérité of a group of students on a bus trip to Naples and Pompeii. Personal conflicts as teacher (Antonia Buresi) tries to keep them in line while professing the glories of antiquity. A partial “gay film” the subsidiary story is the rocky relationship between Toni (Colas Quignard)  and James (Mitia Capellier-Audat).…..Queen at Sea (Lance Hammer) has a great cast in Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall, about a daughter (Bincohe) struggling with her mother’s dementia and father’s insensitivity. Binoche is superb as always, this time as the reflective daughter trying to support her mother while guard railing her dad. However a sub plot about her daughter (Florence Hunt) and her boyfriend added nothing…..I was really expecting more from Rose (Markus Schleinzer) with Sandra Hüller the lead to this unconventional historical storyline about gender as well as having been filmed in gloomy black and white. But it came across as a rather prosaic story only reaching tension towards the end.....

DAY 2: John Turturro, who always seems to have an edge, was the main reason I went to see The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (Noah Segan). And while he's good enough the picture soon loses any novelty and becomes another made-for-TV dramedy as his character's life takes a turn.....Run Terry Run, with filmmaker Sean Menard (and even Terry's bro Darrell) in attendance, is a riveting emotional rewind in time to 1980, and a very different Canada, charting the Canadian hero's ill-fated run across the country. It's so good Cineplex picked it up.....

DAY 3: Israeli film Dead Language (Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun) is a hard nut to crack in this absorbing feature about a woman alienated from her marriage and whose romantic quests boomerang....The more I see of Ethan Hawke the more I'm convinced he's one of the best actors of our time. And here's another superlative performance in Padraic McKinley's The Weight also starring Russell Crowe. It's worth seeing if only for Hawke's character Murphy's grit.....Quebec nationalist and feminist chanteuse Pauline Julien was as iconic as they came during the years of that province's Quiet Revolution. In this biodrama of the same name by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Suzanne Clément captures much of her character. But as a sometime student of Quebec politics I didn't know her SO was famous QC cabinet minister and poet Gérald Godin.....WIFF Local Shorts 1 gave us five locally made movies from 47 submitted, showing some of the technical prowess of budding local cineastes. These were: Fruitball (Jett Shields), a funny spoof on brotherly competition, Luna (Julia MacDonald), an absorbing exploring of mood and human attraction (and winner of best local short), Mingoya: Land of Ornithologists (Juan Esteban Quintero & Nelsy Niño), a glittering animation about Colombia's bird culture, Subjkt (Julian Ferro), an inventive digital horror lost in an old school Commodore, and A Young Doctor's Friend & Guide, a humorous absurd take on, yes, castration - you have to be there.....Influenced (Rachel Israel) is an intended hilarious send up of self-absorbed nouveau niche Manhattan Upper East Side femmes. Think Sex & The City sideways. Still, its over the top antics left me bored and an hour and half I'll never get back....Peter Asher (Dayna Goldfine & Daniel Geller) is a superb doc about Brit Invasion star Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon fame, who went on to become one of the top music producers in the world. It covers everything from Swinging Sixties' London to the 70s and 80s southern California pop music scene - highly engaging and highly enjoyable. 

Too many choices, and up in London

The problem I have is too much choice. It never used to be this way. At one time – far far before the internet – there were movie houses. You’d see a new movie advertised in the newspaper or read about it in an entertainment magazine. And think, hey I’d like to go see it. So, you went out on a Friday or Saturday night, hit one of unnumerable bricks and mortar theaters – or even a drive-in – plucked your $7.50 (or less) down, and walk in and behold the silver screen in front of you. Now, there is seemingly unlimited choice. Netflix, YouTube, AmazonPrime, AppleTV+, Crave, Criterion Channel, you get the point. But I hardly watch them, or not nearly as much as someone who enjoys film might expect. In reality the choice could never be better. And all at my fingertips, in the comfort of my home, and I can interrupt at will, and never miss a scene or piece of critical dialogue. And, and…. But I’m reluctant to watch. Part of this is time. When I'm at home I have a lot of other things to do than watch movies however much I may like them in theory. The same for TV, and I haven’t owned one in two decades. I simply have other priorities – like work, household duties and, yes reading – which to my mind is a better experience than all the hours of celluloid – did I say that? Don’t get me wrong, I love movies. It’s just the context in which to see them. I would probably run to a theatre showing a film by an obscure Eastern European cineaste than, alas, watching on Criterion Channel, as much as I love that network and forever will hold a subscription to it.  It’s the reason I simply love driving to the cineplex as much as possible. Or for that matter book 50 films at this year’s Windsor International Film Festival. Because I like to be in the traditional viewing space for cinema, and that would be a physical theatre. This creates an event – excitement - which I can share with other people, something I simply can’t get sitting in front of a screen.

There’s the Windsor International Film Festival opening Oct. 29. And then up in London there’s the Forest City Film Festival, getting underway Oct. 15. Now in its 11^th year it will screen 100 films over 11 days, the same time frame as the Windsor fest. It’s not a fest to snub, as great as WIFF is. London will have more than 10 movies that screened at Cannes and an equal number that were at Toronto. Canadian actor Jay Baruchel will head up the guest list with his opening night The Stunt Driver. There are also several films screening in London that will also be shown at WIFF including Rose, Tender Loving Care, Ladies and Gentlemen Brian Mulroney!, Run Terry Run, Fjord, The Debut and The History of Concrete. You might want to take a trek up the 401 to take a few films in, combining the visit with a perfectly fine southwestern Ontario autumn weekend.

LaBute, Hüller, Hawke, Turturro, Mangiu, Almodovar, Huppert - seven of dozens of reasons to attend this year's WIFF

This week's Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) (Oct. 29 – Nov. 8) press conference was also the official kickoff to ticket sales. Another can't-wait-for event is on tap. There will be 232 films shown (one more than last year!), 47 shorts and more than 300 screenings, 181 from world festivals, 128 in pre-theatrical release and 51 per cent Canadian programming (in a festival that shows more francophone films than any other!) and of course slates of local films in a festival that pays true tribute to its community. But, quipped always ebullient ex director Vincent Georgie, “there’s no 51st state."

So here are a handful of the 50 films I’ve selected and the reasons why:

I’m always interested in what director Neil LaBute puts out and his Murderous quirky psychological thriller looks enticing. You can’t find a better actress today on the world stage (or should that be celluloid or digital) than Germany’s Sandra Hüller so I’m expecting a knockout performance in this gender-obscuring 18th century tale, Rose, by Markus Schleinzer. John Turturro is one of those actors I’d see in anything and so here in Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Likewise Ethan Hawke, and with Russell Crowe in Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, you’re getting a double-whammy. How could I resist a documentary about 1960s Brit Invasion musical artist Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon fame in Peter Asher: Everywhere Man (Dayna Goldfine, Daniel Geller)? Maigret and The Dead Lover (Pascal Bonitzer) seems a smart French drawing-room thriller. Once Upon a Time in Harlem (William & David Greaves) looks back on NYC’s Black “Renaissance” artistic elite. Another doc, Captain Newfoundland (Mike Feehan, Jamie Miller) is about the Newfie businessman and eccentric Geoff Sterling, who one time ran a

radio station in Windsor. Another doc, Draw Me a Bridge (Jean-Daniel Lafond) is all about the symbolism of the Gordie Howe Intl Bridge to Windsor and Detroit – how can I resist? La Bola Negra (Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo) is the most talked about film this festival and won People’s Choice in Toronto. It’s also Spanish, a country that makes great films. Fjord, by interesting Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, takes aim at the hypocrisy of political correctness, a rare take in the film world. I’ve always been fascinated in the spousal novelist of contemporary US author Paul Auster, sadly now deceased, so can’t wait to see her in Sabine Lidl’s Siri Hustvedt – Dance Around the Self. Sender (Russell Goldman) seems like the perfect midnight offbeat surreal thriller. Of course, I will go see Spanish master Pedro Almodovar’s latest Bitter Christmas. And not least, my perennial French crush Isabelle Huppert in Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales......Check out the full festival lineup at www.windsorfilmfestival.com

Helsinki film lovers and the death of a Montreal festival icon

A delight about my stay in Helsinki over the past week was that my hotel was located immediately across the street from perhaps that city’s only art house theatre Cinema Orion. The elegant theatre dates from 1928 and is run by a non-profit association. Between touring around the city and a one-day visit across the Baltic to Estonia I was able to get at least one screening in, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun) a, well, campy horror flic starring Gillian Anderson. Not really my cup of tea although it did have some funny moments and I’ve always had a crush on said Anderson, here with long flowing blond locks. Also on tap were Oasis: Don’t Look back in Anger (Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace) and Pedro Almodovar’s Autofiction. There was also a monthly series of classic Finnish films, with the first, Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988) drawing a throng lined up down the block. And no sooner did I leave the screening than someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a fellow Canuck, who’d overheard me tell the usher how great the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) was. Brynna was from Gimli MB and living in Helsinki three years, loving the place and agreeing with my very positive comments about the city from its calm urban character (little traffic, well planned parks and pedestrian and bike paths) to the sophisticated respectful Finnish people. By the way, the Helsinki Intl. Film Festival is coming up Sept. 17 – 27. If you’re going…

Very sad news that the founder of Montreal’s one-time great festival, Festival des films du monde,  Serge Losique has died. I attended the very first fest in 1977 (then rivalling Toronto’s, which started a year earlier) and was there for virtually every year since, regardless of where I lived in Canada. His cinematic biography traces to when he attended the Sorbonne in Paris where in the early 1960s, he rubbed shoulders with some of the greats of the French Nouvelle Vague especially Jean-Luc Godard. Back in Canada he was a major educator of cinema. The festival became hugely popular in Montreal and always ran in the 10 days prior to Labour Day, an end of summer big exclamation point. But in its last decade it fell on hard times, with allegations of financial mismanagement and sponsors withdrawing. In the last year I attended it lost a major multiplex and small theatres scrambled to reschedule films. Critics unrelentingly decried Losique for being a virtual dictator and creating a chaotic festival that was “uncurated” with titles simply acquired wherever he could get them. Its last year was 2019. 

And finally, when in Finland I stumbled upon one of the country’s major commercial cineplexes FinnKino and – wow. Not only was the lobby massive and high-end it featured wall-length self-serve glass-enclosed cabinets of prepared popcorn and hundreds of types of candy. Nothing like this in Canada!

Sympathy for the Coyote

Coyote vs. Acme is a “live-action animated” movie (meaning it combines cartoons with regular people). It’s a great premise. Anyone who’s a devote of the Bugs Bunny set of cartoons – and who isn’t (okay, maybe Gen Z etc.) – will love the idea. Wile E. Coyote of course is always outwitted by the “beep beep” Road Runner. All Coyote wants is a decent roast after all. And he can never get it. But he’s tireless, tireless. And he has invented innumerable schemes and contraptions to catch his prey only to, literally, fall flat on his face, or experience any number of ignoble endings - crashes, explosions, anvils dropped on his head. But, hey, he’s a “toon” so impervious to death, a cartoon version of picking yourself up and dusting yourself off. The problem – and the point of this movie – is that Coyote relies on so many supposedly innovative products from the Acme Corp. And of course, they don’t work or, uh, literally backfire. So what to do? Well, sue the pants (flaming as they may be) off them. The movie is the first “live-action animated” picture featuring Bugs Bunny type characters since 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Roger Zemeckis). And it’s more than a welcome genre, as few films as there are. In the picture, Wile E. teams up with a cartoon lawyer (he, uh, represents toons) Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a down and out real life lawyer whose office is in a strip mall in, yes, Albuquerque NM. Avery is scared sh-less to go up against the powerful Acme Corp. – literally the biggest corporation in the world (even the picture's maker Warner Bros. is a subsidiary!) -  and its uber bullying lawyer Buddy Crane (John Cena) but his staff and not least a frustrated goading Coyote (who doesn’t speak of course, only make faces and hold signs), push him on. I can’t criticize the mixture of cartoon and real-life actors - I always find this ingenious - but I did find the movie a little slow. And the theatre I was in (packed on a matinee Saturday with Cineplex offering $7 admission) got few laughs even from the kids. Still, I give the filmmakers E for effort. The “trial” that takes place between Coyote and Acme is also an analogy for big corps everywhere that make shoddy products, and makes one think of the 1970s era tobacco companies which conspired to push cancer-causing cigarettes on the populace. And Coyote, always depicted as a villain, is depicted somewhat sympathetically here, given his untiring efforts to capture Road Runner – more a frustrated inventor always rigging gadgets or at his blueprint table. As I say, a fun premise but a little tiring, unlike, uh, Coyote’s endless quest.