Men at Lunch & The Central Park Five

By coincidence, I saw these two New York-centric documentaries back-to-back.

The former is about the famous 1930’s photograph of the construction workers sitting on a steel beam, casually having lunch despite the dangerous position that they’re in. The latter deals with a criminal case in the 1980’s where five teenage boys were wrongly convicted for the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park.

Both of them portray New York as a place where many cultures come together, and sometimes clash, but I thought The Central Park Five did a better job of it. The five subjects are all very well-spoken, and through their interviews, you come to understand the racial tension that existed in New York at the time. By the end of the film, it’s a real relief that they were exonerated, but at the same time, you still feel angry and sad that they wasted so many years in prison.

Men at Lunch, on the other hand, does not have the same narrative strength. Essentially, it tries to tell the story of who those men on the beam were, but since nobody knows their identities for sure, it settles for making them into symbols of the many Irish immigrants who worked in construction at the time. That’s fine, but the film gets a little repetitive, and keeps telling us how brave they were, how hard life was during the Depression, how the construction workers shaped New York as a city, &c. I found it especially awkward when they tried to draw a connection between those men, and the men who are working now to build the new World Trade Centre tower. The 9/11 scenes seemed a bit out of place and exploitative to me.

Rating:

Men at Lunch: 5/10

The Central Park Five: 7/10

Thale

Towards the end of the festival, I get a little tired. I might have enjoyed this one more if I saw it earlier in the week. I realize that it’s a low-budget movie, and I respect what they did technically. Thale has some cool horror moments and some cool action moments, but maybe that’s the problem: it doesn’t feel like either a horror film or an action film. I couldn’t really get into the story because I didn’t know what the characters were after. But again, I was pretty tired.

Rating: 5/10

Tai Chi 0

This, on the other hand, was a much more suitable pace for a weary festival-goer. It’s basically a Chinese kung-fu film, mixed with the style of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (e.g., whenever someone does a kung-fu move, the name of the move is shown in stylized text on the screen), with some steampunk thrown in. Cartoonish action at its finest. It’s the first film in a 2-part series, so structurally, it’s a bit off: what you think will be the final battle is actually just setup for the sequel, which makes the previous battle the actual final battle, and a little unsatisfying.

Rating: 7/10

I’m going to go with a shorter, “rapid-fire” format today. I’m just tired, okay?

Disconnect

Reading the description, I was a bit concerned that this would turn into a morally unsubtle “the Internet is bad” type of story. I was pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t focus too much on the Internet itself; the Internet just a device to incite events and get the story going, and then mostly stays out of the way. The focus stays on the characters, which is as it should be. The characters sometimes behave in unrealistic ways in order to increase the drama, but I thought it was effective and was caught up in the film.

Rating: 7/10

Antiviral

A lot of the pleasure of watching this film comes from trying to figure out how the premise works. I didn’t read the description beforehand and I don’t know what it gives away, but I’m glad I went in not knowing anything. Unfortunately, once the premise is set up in the first act, the movie didn’t do much to keep me interested. There are some cool and creepy visual moments, but I couldn’t really understand any of the character motivations, and I didn’t really care what happened to them.

Rating: 5/10

As If We Were Catching a Cobra

A documentary about political cartoonists working during the Arab Spring sounded like an interesting premise, but the execution was a bit lacking. All the film is is a series of talking-head interviews with various cartoonists and artists. There was nothing really visual or cinematic going on, so it’s just watching people talk and reading lots and lots of subtitles. It was too much for me for an early morning screening, so I walked out, which is a rare occurrence for me. Maybe this material would make for a good book, though.

Rating: waived because I didn’t see the whole thing. But really it’s like a 3 or a 4.

The Bay

I keep telling myself that I’m tired of the whole “found footage” thing whenever I see one (I keep watching them though), but this one felt like a fresh experience. Usually, found footage films have to jump through hoops to justify why there are cameras present, or they just don’t justify it and everyone is left thinking “why don’t you put down the camera?!” the whole time. The Bay avoids this by mixing different camera sources, e.g. A TV news crew, security cameras, police car dashboard cameras. Because of this variety, it often feels more like a well-edited suspense film than a found footage film. It definitely kept me in suspense, although in hindsight, the “monsters” themselves are a little bit silly.

Rating: 7/10

Smashed

Good performances all around, but I thought this story about a young woman with a drinking problem oversimplifies its characters. I didn’t feel like there was much depth to them beyond whether they are drunk or sober, and what they think about other people being drunk or sober.

Rating: 5/10

Much Ado About Nothing

Wesley and Fred. Enough said.

Rating: 8/10

Blancanieves

I’m going to have trouble talking about this film (actually talking, verbally, I mean, not writing about it), because I can’t pronounce the title properly. It’s Spanish for “Snow White.” Maybe I’ll just call it “Snow White,” okay? Okay. So anyway, the movie is an adaptation of the Snow White story, transplanted into 1920’s Spain, and in particular, into the world of matadors. It was the “Golden Age of Bullfighting,” the director said in the Q & A.

The fairy tale reference is both a benefit and a detriment to the film, in my opinion. While it does add an other-worldly quality to the characters (especially the bullfighting dwarves), some elements felt like they were shoehorned in, like the poison apple, and the eternal slumber. I thought the story was strong enough to stand on its own without having to hang it on the framework of an existing fairy tale.

Rating: 7/10

Byzantium

There’s something a bit cheesy about the whole vampire thing, and how they’re supposed to be all mysterious and ethereal and romantic. Byzantium has that cheesiness, especially during the flashback scenes, which tell the origin story of the two main vampire characters. The Victoria-era costumes and sets are well-produced, but they’re, you know, cheesy. I think it might have bothered me more if I hadn’t recently been watching a lot of similarly historical scenes done with a lower budget on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (lower budget = more cheesy).

Stylistically and visually, I enjoyed the film, but I had some problems with the narrative. The aforementioned flashbacks are interspersed throughout the film, and the origin story arc is supposed to parallel the modern-day storyline. But about halfway through, I had already pieced together the mechanisms of how the characters became vampires, and after that, I was just waiting for what I already knew would happen to play out. As a result, I thought the flashbacks were starting to get in the way of the present narrative, and slowed down what is already a deliberately-paced movie.

Rating: 6/10

No

Speaking of cheesy, the 80’s were. Cheesy. Specifically, the media output of the 80’s (e.g. TV commercials, movies, etc.), when watched today, can often evoke cringes and bursts of awkward laughter.

The subject matter of No could have made for a very dark film—it follows a group of advertisers as they create TV commercials encouraging voters to vote against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile’s 1988 referendum—but the fact that the commercials they create are 80’s commercials adds a lot of humour. There is a real danger involved (any election organized by a dictatorship is going to be fraught with corruption and threats) but when the anti-Pinochet “No” advertisers express their incendiary political ideas of freedom and democracy through commercials featuring dancers dressed in Day-Glo Spandex leotards, backed by synth-pop beats, it’s hard not to laugh at the contrast. The filmmakers behind No have perfectly achieved a balance between humour and solemnity.

Rating: 8/10

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15. Ten Year

It had some good laughs and an impressive cast, but the story is quite predictable, and it really strains believability that so many attractive people would be in the same high school class. Especially in a small town. No offense to people who live in small towns.

14. Trishna

The improvised dialogue was a little awkward at times. Also, the title character is too passive; she goes through most of the movie just saying “OK,” and “Yes, sir.” The director said that her passivity was intentional; be that as it may, it’s frustrating to watch. The cinematography is beautiful, and shows India in a very realistic way.

13. I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful

This documentary really makes you feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina, not just in the immediate aftermath, but for several years afterwards, all the way up to now. It might have made for a depressing film, but Carolyn Parker has a big personality and it’s just fun to watch and listen to her talk.

12. The Sword Identity

The key to enjoying this martial arts movie is suspension of disbelief. In this world, people can easily knocked unconscious by a single blow, and it’s possible to fight off waves of attackers by hiding behind a curtain. It’s not your typical kung fu movie in that it doesn’t focus on the fights and the choreography. The fight scenes are over in a flash and some of them even happen off-screen. It’s really about what the fights mean to the characters; all of them have strong ideals about honour and justice, and that’s what lifts the film above the ridiculousness of the action.

11. Machine Gun Preacher

As a non-religious person, I had a bit of trouble getting excited about the main character’s initial transformation from ex-con to preacher. I can’t fault the film for that if it’s true to the real-life story; it’s just not something I can identify with. It’s not a problem once he starts fighting for African orphans because religion is pretty much out of the picture in those situations. Gerard “Tonight We Dine in Hell” Butler gives an intense performance, but I wish he had done it all in his native Scottish accent, authenticity be damned.

TIFF is over and I’m only now starting to process all the films I saw. Over the next week or so, I’ll count down the movies that I saw, and give a short review of each one.

So, let’s start at the bottom of the list. Except for the two worst entries, even this lowest stratum of films held my interest and gave me something to think about. I’m just open-minded that way.

-. The Story of Film: An Odyssey

I’m not including this in the ranking because I didn’t see the whole thing, and it’s not really a movie. It’s a 15-hour documentary, more like a miniseries than a feature. They were showing it in segments, and it was free, so I decided to pop in on the last day. It’s not hard to describe: imagine watching short scenes from many films, while a guy with a cool Irish accent describes what’s interesting about each one, and why it’s significant in the history of cinema. I got so hooked that I skipped another film, and stayed until the end of this one. I might watch the rest of it on DVD one day.

19. The Moth Diaries

Just because the word “Diaries” is in the title, doesn’t mean you can constantly rely on diary voiceovers to advance the plot. At one point, the main character writes in her diary, “That girl is weird, she must be a vampire!” and we’re supposed to go along with it completely. It would have been far more effective to leave some doubt for the audience, and drop some hints along the way instead of telling us outright what the main character is thinking.

18. Mr. Tree

My biggest problem with this film is that the title character’s quirky stupidity is inconsistent. In some moments, he seems to be mentally disabled, and in others, he’s writing extremely poetic text messages. On top of that, the main conflict of the story doesn’t really kick in until 15-20 minutes before the end, so it really drags on in the middle.

17. Among Us

I think this is a film that tries to replace drama with structure. It shows the story three times from the perspective of different characters, and it keeps you guessing because each viewpoint is incomplete. However, while watching it, my mind started to mentally re-edit the film in chronological order. If seen in that order, I think it would be clear that nothing really compelling actually happens.

16. The Loneliest Planet

I liked the idea behind this film, which is basically about how one event can change a relationship. The event occurs near the half-way point, which divides the movie into “before” and “after” halves. The crucial moment is depicted really well. However, the film is two hours long; I think a 90-minute runtime have sufficed to tell the story. Also, Gael Garcia Bernal (man crush?) doesn’t get to do much except for walking and looking sad.

Girlfriend

The story follows a man with Down’s syndrome living in a small town. The actor had good screen presence and was quite funny in many of the scenes; it’s not often you see a developmentally challenged person in a lead role in a film, so I appreciated his efforts. Because I’m not used to seeing a character like this, it kept the movie interesting in what would otherwise be a somewhat standard soap opera plot. The ending was controversial because of the actions of the titular girlfriend that our protagonist is romantically pursuing. I know it was controversial because it prompted perhaps the silliest audience question I’ve ever heard in a director Q&A session: “Why did it end like that?“

3 out of 5

Fire of Conscience

Hong Kong action movie in the vein of John Woo’s classics. While not as over the top as Woo’s films, it still had some decent shoot-out scenes and an engaging detective story. The highlight was a totally random childbirth sequence in the midst of explosions and fire. The experience was also made more entertaining by the man sitting in our row who would bust out in raucous laughter whenever grenades appeared on screen. Apparently an aficionado of grenade-related humour.

2.5 out of 5

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And that’s it until next year.