I didn’t watch Suck with 100% attentiveness because I was working as an usher/anti-piracy cop for the screening. (It really sucks watching a movie standing up and facing sideways.) But I did get enough of it to form an opinion. The movie is a comedy about a rock band where one of the members becomes a vampire.

I liked some parts, and I would have been laughing out loud had I not been wearing my professional volunteer mask. There is a scene—a flashback sequence involving Malcolm McDowell’s character, which incorporates footage of a young McDowell from some old movie—that was really well done. Ultimately though, the jokes were hit and miss, because it was kind of cheesy, goofy humour which doesn’t always work for me. But I can see this becoming a “cult favourite” type of film with a good fanbase. Oh, and it’s Canadian.

2.5 out of 5

Michael Caine plays Harry Brown, a retired widower living in a bad neighbourhood overrun by drug gangs. And then his friend gets hurt. And then he starts killing gang members. And then the cops get involved. That’s what I felt like when I was watching this movie… it was just a sequence of plot events. I never got a sense of the characters’ motivations and justifications for their actions. The characters were only there to move the plot along, and I didn’t care about them at all.

For example, there’s one scene where the police detective (played by Emily Mortimer) suddenly goes from being confused about the situation to being completely convinced that she’s solved the case, all based on what I think was a very vague piece of evidence. Up to that point, she was portrayed as a fair and thoughtful detective, but then abruptly jumps to a conclusion, only because that’s what was needed for the movie to set up its climax.

Overall, it was a disappointment. That being said, there are some moments of suspense that did work well, e.g., the scene where Harry goes to buy a gun from some nasty people. And Michael Caine delivers my favourite one-liner from the festival so far. After a shootout with a bad guy, he stands victoriously over his injured opponent and says: “You failed to maintain your weapon, son.” Brilliant.

2 out of 5

Two men kidnap a girl. That’s pretty much all I can say about The Disappearance of Alice Creed without giving away the various twists. What I found interesting about this film was that the three main characters are the only people in the whole movie. Also, almost the entire story takes place within 2 rooms in an apartment, and everything develops from the dialogue and interaction between the characters and the performances, which were great. In that sense, it’s kind of like a play. On the other hand, it’s shot with some stylish cinematography, which gives it sufficient “movie-ness” that you might not even notice how small the scope is. (Some people in the audience actually chuckled when the credits rolled and they realized that there were only 3 people in it.)

Excellent acting, great script, great style, and some very cool and unexpected twists. My favourite of the festival so far.

4 out of 5

I attended a press & industry screening¹ of this documentary about Daniel Ellsberg, a government official who, during the Vietnam War, leaked some top secret Pentagon documents (the “Pentagon Papers”) that proved that the war was based on government lies. Americans probably know the history of the event, but ignorant Canadian that I am, I was not familiar with it. So on one level, I enjoyed the movie as a history lesson. But what really drove the film for me was Ellsberg’s personality. (He narrates the film and is seen throughout in the typical talking head interviews.) When he speaks, you can tell that he’s absolutely committed to doing the right thing. More than that, he followed his words with actions—actions that put his own freedom at risk. I have great respect for this, and I think that he is a true hero.

On the negative side, I thought they overdid the portrayal of Nixon as a bad, bad man. The repeated use of sound clips of Nixon saying vulgar and awful things almost came off as unintentionally funny because it was so on the nose. (E.g. someone in an interview would say something like, “Surely, the government would not do XYZ.” Then it would cut to a tape of Nixon saying “By God, we better goddamn do XYZ to those sons of bitches.“) I would have preferred a little more subtlety. Minor criticisms aside, this was a very fascinating doc.

3.5 out of 5

The Warrior and the Wolf was a Chinese historical drama. The titular warrior hides out in a village during a break in the battle and meets a woman in the village and they develop a relationship. “The wolf” could metaphorically refer to any number of things and is open to interpretation, so I won’t give anything away by discussing it.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. While I found the basic plot satisfying, and the visuals nice to look at (especially one special effects shot of a desert sandstorm), there were some issues with the film that prevented me from really getting into it. First, I had a problem with the introduction in the first 20 minutes or so. It attempts to give the background of the war and the warrior’s involvement in said war in a non-linear way. It jumps back and forth in time and I had a hard time following what the current storyline was. I don’t have a problem with non-linear storytelling, but to use it to establish the foundation for the rest of the film didn’t work, and it affected the experience for the remainder.

The other big problem I had was with the relationship between the warrior and the village woman. It reminded me of the flashback sequence in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which was my least favourite part of that film). Boy meets girl, boy holds girl captive, boy rapes girl, girl inexplicably comes to love boy. Obviously within that culture and in that historical time period, gender roles were different, but I just couldn’t believe in that relationship.

At the end of the film, there was a Q & A session with the director and main cast. Someone asked a question regarding how the two stars of the film (Maggie Q and Joe Odagiri) and the director (Tian Zhuang Zhuang), who all speak a different native language, dealt with the communication barrier on set. The gist of their answers was that it wasn’t a barrier, and that the energy and the emotion of the film was understood by all, regardless of language. A nice sentiment, but unfortunately, I don’t think this energy translated to the screen. In the end, I think the movie felt like a series of well-done scenes, but didn’t come together into a coherent whole.

2.5 out of 5