Archive for the ‘Film Festivals’ Category

  • 05 May

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    MSPIFF 2013 Review: 7 Boxes

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    Directors: Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schembori
    Writers: Tito Chamorro, Juan Carlos Maneglia, Tana Schembori
    Producer: Maneglia Schémbori Realizadores
    Starring: Celso Franco, Celso Franco, Lali Gonzalez, Nico García
    MPAA Rating: NR
    Running time: 100 min.
    Country of Origin: Paraguay

     

    It’s a hot day in the capital city of Paraguay and the exchange rate for US Dollars is running as high as the mercury in Asunción’s bustling marketplace. Narrow rows of stalls glutted with people, consumer goods, and hanging animal meat, all of which is for sale, barter, hustle, or theft. Enter Victor, a young kid who wheel-barrow’s purchases, stock, whatever around the market for a price, when he is not day-dreaming about being an action hero on TV. Pestered by his best friend Liz (a remarkably natural girl-power performance from young Lali González) to buy a used cell phone with video capability, and desiring to be the star of his own movie Victor takes a job carting around the eponymous crates from the brother of a pregnant friend of his sisters. If that three-degrees of separation relationship seems convoluted, it is a mere warm-up as the number of characters and their tangled web of interrelations and tangled webs of lies, frantic sales pitches and waves of delegation hit the ground running – often literally through the maze of the marketplace. Pile in a gang of other wheel barrow operators who get wind of the value of those boxes, a smitten police officer, a korean restaurant delivery boy, a lady-boy prostitute and a host of ‘owners’ of the boxes mysterious (but never a Maguffin!) contents and well, genre-film bliss.

    Initially Victor’s cargo has no tangible destination other to be moved around the marketplace, and the filmmakers delight in letting us into this world, a microcosm of the South American off-the-grid financial landscape in the same way that Fabian Bielinsky’s Nine Queens functioned as a metaphor for the collapse of Argentina’s economy. 7 Boxes is not a grifter-picture per se, but it is one is spirit. An honest-to-goodness pro-bono act by two random thieves is met with giddy celebration because it is unexpected and yet ironically appropriate. The filmmakers don’t rub our noses in their social commentary too much, though they clearly relish playing with the subject in an entertaining, wryly self-deprecating sort of way. Everyone is bumping into each other, connected yet compartmentalized, in the same way the boxes rattle and grind into one another without giving up their contents. The Boxes changes hands as often as peoples mobile phones which might require a flow-chart to keep track of them all, but the filmmakers communicate the information with a mastery of craft. To say more, plotwise, would be to spoil the surprise – actually surprises – of which there are as many as there are retail opportunities in the market. That the film is about something (more than Victor just getting on TV), has a fair bit of heart in its cutely romantic relationship which it tucks gently in between episodes of inventive kinetic energy, is all just icing on the cake. I live for smart genre-films like this one to be discovered at festivals.

    Apparently Paraguay cinematic output in the countries entire history amounts to about a mere twenty feature films in total. But do not let this gushing review lead you to believe that because films from the central South American country are rare they should be given a free pass. Quite the contrary: The storytelling confidence, the unaffectated acting, and above all a heightened grasp of plotting and logistics, on display in 7 Boxes is astonishing. It belongs in the company of Norway’s Headhunters and France’s Sleepless Night. That is to say there are a lot of balls in the air, and the film juggles them both effortlessly and inventively. Rare is the film that has me grinning like a fool as the chaos and bustle of all those casual seeming set-ups pay off; all the threads fold and tangle with one another. There is a Swiss watch sneakily clicking right along under its cracked concrete and corrugated steel veneer. Filmmakers Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori have got my attention, and they are, if I may say so, worthy of yours.

  • 04 May

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    Hot Docs 2013: Muscle Shoals

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    Tucked into the North-West corner of the state and hugging the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama is a slow-paced town of about 13000 people (if you sift it out of its Quad Cities region). But aside from its intriguing name (taken from the shallow areas of the river where mussels could be found), what makes this Southern city so interesting and worthy of an entire documentary about it? Three reasons spring to mind…

    The music…That swampy, bluesy, soulful music that pushes the rhythm section up front and then drags all of the vocalist’s deep seated, long buried emotions out into the open. Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Otis Redding and The Staple Singers all cut seminal sides of music here and influenced countless others – many of whom later came to Muscle Shoals themselves (Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, etc.). Duane Allman just about forced himself into the recording studio as a session guitarist and convinced Pickett to cover The Beatles “Hey Jude” – the results (a revelation to me in this film) becoming a template for The Allman Brothers. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (as tired as it has become from classic rock radio) has never sounded as fresh or alive than it did playing over the end credits of the film. It’s said that the black artists from this area of Alabama used styles from country music while white musicians incorporated blues & gospel elements. The results lead directly to the Muscle Shoals sound – reason enough to encourage a melting pot of cultures – which permeates every corner of the film. The soundtrack is stupendous and sounded staggeringly great in the confines of the Bloor Theatre.

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  • 02 May

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    Hot Docs 2013: Valentine Road

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    Director Marta Cunningham is glad I’m angry. The second showing of her fantastic documentary Valentine Road has just let out at Hot Docs and a few of us are milling about the lobby. She’s more than willing to discuss the film, but even happier to gauge people’s feelings and emotions after viewing it. Several of us mention the anger we feel at the sequence of events, the many points where warning signs were missed and the absolute failure of just about every adult in the film to do the right thing for the students in this particular school. She says that she hopes we hang on to that anger so that we can turn it into something positive – like taking action in regards to local issues or simply helping where we see fit.

    Well, it’s a few days later now and my anger has subsided somewhat – but not completely as it’s still hanging in there. Via its nuanced look at the complicated interactions and issues that led to the 2008 murder of a 15 year-old boy in his classroom, Valentine Road ensures that the feelings will linger. You may remember the case – a Grade 8 boy in Oxnard California named Larry King asks another boy in his class (Brandon McInerney) to be his valentine. A few days later, he lies dying near his classroom computer after Brandon shoots him twice with a gun he brought from home. It’s a horrible crime emanating from intolerance and lack of education, but it’s far from the whole story. Cunningham begins to introduce us to the many people involved in this story – friends, family, teachers, girlfriends, half-brothers, cops, lawyers – and takes us through the tragic backgrounds of both the slain boy and the killer. The cast of characters continues to grow as the film moves beyond the incident, through its aftermath and ever so slowly towards the trial. 3 full years go by from the time of the murder to when the trial finally takes place and then stumbles to a mistrial. A plea bargain is finally reached, but no matter how you view the story there’s bound to be something in it to get your back up.

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  • 28 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: Anita

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    I‘m a bit conflicted over my impressions of Freida Mock’s newest documentary Anita, so let’s see if I can work them out…

    First of all, let me be clear about the subject of the film – Anita Hill is clearly an incredible person. Intelligent, funny, brave and interesting, 20 years ago she became a lightning rod around issues that few people enjoy discussing even today. And yet, there it was on the news back in 1991: an entire panel of old white men talking about sexual harassment, penis sizes and pubic hair during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. As women were finally breaking down some barriers by garnering greater positions within the U.S. government, Hill’s grace under fire during her single 9 hour questioning session made her a role model for many women and brought more public attention and debate to the issues. Hill understood that harassment of any kind is primarily about control (perhaps being the youngest of 13 children helped her recognize this…) and she strongly felt that her prior experiences with Thomas’ repeated sexual advances and inappropriate closed door insinuations was relevant to him being given a lifetime position on the Supreme Court bench. In other words, “Speak Truth To Power”. The film documents a great deal of Hill’s lengthy appearance at the hearings via old news footage and shows us the road she traveled afterwards up until her present day role as a speaker and professor of public and social policy. Though she never wanted to discuss her history specifically in the classroom, she’s never shied away from it. “If I’m not public, it will be a sense of victory for them”.

    But the film let’s both Anita and the audience down in the telling of all these events. There are fascinating sections of her story (the condescending questions of senators at the hearing, the 25000 letters of hate/support Hill has received, the effect she had on the rise of female politicians at the federal level, etc.), but it’s told flatly, doesn’t always provide as much context as it could have, and mostly sticks to archival footage and current talking head interviews. It’s clear that Mock wanted to keep the focus on Hill, but as engaging as Hill is herself when speaking and discussing her family, career before/after the hearings and her hopes for the future, it sometimes feels similar to a 60 Minutes piece. That’s not in and of itself bad, but it’s disappointing. Particularly due to the excellent work Hill is currently doing with young women and the array of her peers that could have been pulled in for further positioning of her role in changing perceptions on harassment in the workplace. As I walked out, I mentioned to a friend that all the conversation I heard after the film was mostly about ideas Anita Hill had discussed in the extended Q&A (also attended by Mock) and not about the film.

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  • 27 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: William and the Windmill

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    What exactly is William and The Windmill about? Is it the story of a resourceful and ingenious young Malawi boy who builds a windmill from available detritus using diagrams in a book so his parents have a way to power their water pump during a particularly nasty African drought? Or is it the story of affluent white philanthropists (Including Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos’ parents Jacklyn and Mike) who are caught up in their own benevolent idealism? If you go and watch the second of William Kamkwamba’s Technology Entertainment Design (TED) talks – the first one is featured in the film, but at age 17 he is more deer in headlights than anything else – he comments on that experience in retrospect something to the effect of, “I’d never seen surround by so many azungu – white people. ” There is another exchange in the Ben Nabor’s documentary where the filmmaker asks William point blank what he wants for his life, rather than what other people want for his best interest. There is confusion to such a naked question, as William seems to perpetually wear a cloak of semi-dignified acquiescence. This moment might be best one in the film, which tells, but barely shows the event when William was 14.

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  • 27 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: Rent A Family Inc.

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    Ryuichi Ichinokawa’s wife doesn’t know what he does for a living. And she doesn’t really seem to care…”Without meaningful conversation, any relationship withers. I guess I just gave up on him. As long as we can pay the bills, I don’t care what he’s doing anymore.” He is either out at work, uncommunicative on the computer at home (when she says the above quote to the filmmakers, he’s right there in the same room on the computer and has no reaction) or sleeping. He thinks she has a negative attitude, stopped supporting him long ago and cares more about what her friends think than what he does. Short of his obsession with one day getting to Hawaii, they no longer have any ambition, hopes or dreams and assume the worst about each other. They are two very lonely people and Ryuichi wonders how much longer they will stay together after the kids have both gone off to school. So it may seem odd that the name of his company is “I Want To Cheer You Up Ltd”.

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    Ryuichi’s business provides the service of having himself or one of his extended team come and pose as a family member or friend for the client. Weddings tend to generate a lot of business as brides and grooms want to fill out their side of the aisle with additional people to show their worth (Ryuichi has even sat at an honoured guests table and even made a speech), but it seems like just about any situation might suddenly need a fake family member present. He’s played the husband for a woman trying to get her Ex to provide for her kids and a father for a girl whose boyfriend wants to ensure he has the right blessings before they move in together (her real Dad would never approve) while also having a team of about 30 other people who can take on any role required. The need for all this fakery seems to stem from many people’s concept of family honour and the need to represent a strong family and set of friends to others – which makes everything quite ironic when they use Ryuichi’s service to create layers of new secrets and lies.

    My initial interest in the film stemmed from it sounding like a real life version of the events in the Greek film ALPS (based around a team of people who take on the role of their clients’ family members to re-enact scenes from their life). As interesting as that facet of the film is, it’s actually a stronger match with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata – the story of a man who can’t bear to tell his family he lost his job. Ryuichi is still very much a follower of the patriarchal society and is searching for his validation and respect through his customers since he doesn’t appear to get it at home (he talks about how they used to celebrate Father’s Day, but don’t anymore…). He claims that he simply wants to make his clients happy and help steer their lives in the right direction – mostly due to the fact that he is deeply unhappy himself and doesn’t see a way out. A fascinating look at one man’s broken dreams and the broader implications of a culture that places importance on what other people think of you.

    Upcoming Screenings:

    Sun, Apr 28 9:00 PM
    Scotiabank 4

    Tue, Apr 30 1:00 PM
    The ROM Theatre

    Sun, May 5 1:00 PM
    Scotiabank 3

  • 26 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: Shooting Bigfoot

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    Director Morgan Matthews states right up front that he used to be keenly interested in Bigfoot in his younger days. Years later, that interest has now flipped and turned into a deep curiosity of the people that continue to search, track and believe in the hairy Sasquatch. He follows along with three separate teams – the deluded but honest believers, the opportunist business man and the liar – while they go through their paces to gain any evidence of the long-elusive beast. Early on it looks like the film might be just like any other let’s-go-talk-to-crazy-people doc (filled with energy, but not shedding any interesting light on anything), but shortly after all three expeditions are arranged and we’ve jumped between each team’s early preparations with Matthews, we cut to the director lying in a hospital bed. Suddenly we have a different movie on our hands…

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    Though Dallas and Wayne seem a bit unsteady, they appear to honestly think they have the largest amount of compelling evidence anyone could come across. Sure it’s mostly blurry photos, recordings of sounds and anecdotes, but they’ve devoted their lives to it. They truly seem kindhearted, but a little bit lost and possibly even desperate. Tom and his professional team, on the other hand, have trucks filled with equipment and have made numerous videos of their exploits. They feel they are “this close” to finally nabbing one of the pesky critters. He is easily angered by any kind of intimation that perhaps he may have previously exaggerated some of their findings (actually, many things easily anger him) and he’s wary of the camera always being on. The third team is a solo hunter named Rick and his part-time vegetarian intern named Briana. He happens to have some history with Tom: a widely reported hoax by Rick and a friend was initially supported by Tom until proof of the fraud was made public. Rick has now reinvented himself as a professional tracker of Bigfoot and Matthews joins him on a several days-long jaunt through the deep woods.

    The film becomes more and more engaging as we learn more about these people, their techniques, self-delusions and possible deceptions. It’s all the more intriguing since you know that Matthews is going to face an ordeal of some variety, but with which team? None of them escape looking silly – Rick tripping in the woods while he wears cowboy boots, Tom’s admission after a particularly stressful moment that he’s had 7 stints in his heart, Dallas calling for Bigfoot using a “shamen language” – but there’s also a more serious tone that slides under the entire film as the teams come across numerous other people living in rather desperate and terribly sad ways. Guns seem to be easily acquired, the economy hasn’t rebounded for any of these folks and basic needs are a struggle to acquire. It’s a clever mix of myth debunking, suspense, silly fun and state-of-a-decaying-nation profile. So how does it end? Well, like Bigfoot itself, you’ll just have to see it to believe it.

    Upcoming screenings:

    Tue, Apr 30 8:29 PM
    TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

    Wed, May 1 11:59 PM
    Bloor Hot Docs Cinema

    Fri, May 3 9:30 PM
    The Royal Cinema

  • 26 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne

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    HIt takes a certain amount of chutzpah to walk into a jewelry store and pull a pure short-con swindle. Doris Payne, now in her early eighties, remains as wiry and razor sharp as she ever was, pulling one jewel heist or another around the world as she has been for the past 60 years. Delightfully no-tech, she uses sleight of hand, the expectations of the clerk and a chameleon ability to role-play – meaning she’s a wonderful liar! And there is something rather magnetic (on screen anyway about a magnificent liar.) Payne has her own level of fame and notoriety in the criminal world, and even at her advanced age, is far from feeling too old to retire from her unusual lifestyle. But the world, now bursting with technology and chain department stores featuring ubiquitous surveillance, has passed by her criminal moment.

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  • 26 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: We Cause Scenes

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    Having seen numerous examples of their good-natured public pranks online, We Cause Scenes was pretty much exactly what I wanted in a documentary covering the history of Improv Everywhere. Aside from a few minor blips along the way, there’s no backstabbing, terrible secrets or battles against demons to derail them. Just the uplifting story of one guy, a whole pile of his friends and how they wanted to bring a bit more happiness to people’s everyday lives. They were also ahead of the curve in that they got on the web in the early days of blogging, had tons of video ready to go when YouTube started and jumped in with both feet to High Def. It’s easy to see why they’ve built their following – mission by mission – from local friends to similar groups doing similar events around the world.

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    The first I heard about this merry band was the Best Buy gag: a sizable group of people all wearing blue shirts and pale khakis (the same look as the uniform of Best Buy employees) each entering a single Best Buy store and simply standing around and lingering…If asked a question or mistakenly considered to be an employee, they would just say they were waiting for someone. It’s a funny concept and, as it played out in an edited YouTube video, an even funnier implementation. Granted, it perturbed several actual Best Buy employees and managers, but the overall impact was to put smiles on the faces of a pretty large chunk of random shoppers that day. And that was always the ultimate goal: do something that for people who saw it, turned into “their” story and experience which they could race back and tell their friends about.

    Charlie Todd (the brains behind the operation) and some friends started doing things on the cheap – the no-pants subway rides, having a costumed Princess Leia suddenly encounter Darth Vader on the subway, having jockeys pretend to race on a carousel, etc. – and these were the perfect way to build the audience initially to get people invested in what they were doing. The film plays out somewhat like a DVD commentary on their gags – there’s nothing wrong with that as it kept a smile on my face for most of it – but it also might have been more interesting to dig further into reactions to these events, issues when they backfire, how stores and authority figures react, etc. It’s a minor complaint in that the film already touches on these subjects and its good will is in abundant supply. I initially had a few worries that the troupe might have been involved in more pranks involving the embarrassment of their victims, but fortunately they stay true to their maxim – bring some unexpected joy to random strangers.

    Upcoming Screenings:

    Fri, Apr 26 9:30 PM
    The Royal Cinema

    Sun, Apr 28 2:00 PM
    Isabel Bader Theatre

    Sat, May 4 5:30 PM
    Hart House Theatre

  • 26 Apr

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    Friday One Sheet: Not Criminally Responsible

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    With Canada’s Hot Docs festival underway, I feel it is worth highlight good poster design for documentaries. Playing this years festival is one called NCR. It is aa film about a woman who was stabbed by a man who wasn’t in his right mind at the time. The defense in court used to be called criminal insanity, but is now called, ‘Not Criminally Responsible’. The poster for the image, emphasizes us looking down on a person in a padded cell. A real flair for typography, not only with words providing the wall paper (these cases where someone avoids prison for hospital care are always talked about) and the letter C in the title is encircling the head of the person like a broken halo. A great design overall.

  • 25 Apr

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    MSPIFF 2013 Review: The Hunt

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    Director: Thomas Vinterberg
    Writers: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm
    Producers: Sisse Graum Jørgensen, Morten Kaufmann, Thomas Vinterberg
    Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Lasse Fogelstrøm
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 115 min.
    Country of Origin: Denmark

     

    There is no arguing the craft on display in Thomas Vinterberg’s small-town, big-drama The Hunt. Mads Mikkelsen turns in the performance of his career (and if you look back on his career so far that is an impressive feat) as Lucas, a volunteer teacher at a kindergarden school who is accused and, later, ritually abused by his own friends & neighbors after one of his students, young Klara (in a fit of childish pique) accuses him of ‘pointing his willie’ at her. The cinematography, all warm and woody prior to the accusation and all white and frigid when the milk is spilt. The supporting characters all play their parts to whip the audience into a conflicting bit of rage at how a) we hate pedophiles and b) how we hate to see others rush to judgement. Sure, it feels OK when we do it.

    When I see the Zentropa logo come up in front of a film, my knee-jerk reaction is that the film will be a provocation. After all, Lars von Trier is not only one of the co-founders of the company that deals in that sort of cinema but he created the Dogme95 movement with Vinterberg as well. Their previous film, Dear Wendy, springs to mind as something that is both hysterical and hysterically funny. The Hunt is not that exactly, its satire more sublimated; it aims to tickle a slightly more refined dramatic palette. But it is guilty of leading the witness, both literally in one particular interrogation in the film, and figuratively as it piles on a lot of emotional baggage instead of letting Mikkelsen’s fab performance stand on his own.

    Lucas is going through a chilly divorce with custody of his teenage son in the balance, but otherwise he is a ‘head held high, feet on the ground’ sort of guy in town and a central figure in the circle of men (who hunt) in the rural community. In particular, his best friend Theo, who is father of Kayla, has a long standing friendship based partly in male goofing off, but warm and trusting. He is tentatively dating the only non-local (English speaking) woman at the kindergarten school and he seems to have the most fun at the school with the kids. Hell, it’s Christmas! If you’ve watched movies before, then you know where this is going. You will intuitively feel the beats of this story, even as Vinterberg does his best to keep the audience on its toes with weird indicators and ominously misleading bits foreshadowing.

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  • 25 Apr

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    Hot Docs 2013: The Manor

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    Prior to the screening, I must admit that it was a bit eyebrow raising that the Hot Docs Film Festival planned on opening with a film about a strip club, and the dysfunctional Jewish family that runs it, in rural Guelph, a tiny University town just outside Toronto. Was the festival going for titillating, or as the programme intimated, a bit of character driven slice-of-life, in lieu of the usual activism, art and social issues with their opener. A film from a first-time director, no less. Of course, now having seen the film, indeed, it is a great choice for an opener, which relies less on showing gyrating strippers and the peeler bar itself, and far more about the effect of putting a family unit (and business) in that environment for so long a time. While not a social finger wagging type of film at all, it does demonstrate the rather profound effect that the breadwinning business has on each family member appetites and values, both literally and figuratively. Slotting The Manor as the kick-off film shows a festival gleefully breaking with tradition, just as it hits its 20th year, and delivering something subversively crowd pleasing, at least for those with a twisted sense of humour.

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