Toronto Film Festival Sept. 5- Sept 15, 2019

[Chris Knipp]

D'Angelo day five
[Excerpts from his reviews below]



Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, USA): 66
Like The Squid and the Whale, perhaps a bit too emotionally straightforward to really rattle me—I tend to prefer Baumbach when he’s hiding behind brittle humor (though not when he pushes that into outright sourness). Consequently, the big knock-down drag-out toward the end, though beautifully acted by both Johansson and Driver, left a shallower wound than ... when and how Nicole should serve Charlie with divorce papers... [ With Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver.]

Bad Education (Cory Finley, USA): 62
... He’s a director-for-hire here, doing a creditable but unexciting job; had he made this prior to Thoroughbreds, I wouldn’t have been particularly curious to see what came next. True story’s a doozy, though, and screenwriter Mike Makowsky fashions it into a fairly incisive portrait of self-justification, taking care to note how all of the embezzlers—but especially Jackman’s vain superintendent—think of themselves as fundamentally decent ... [Benjamin Lee's 3/5 star review quoted above.]

State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa, Lithuania/Netherlands): 52
... consists entirely of footage shot during the several days that Stalin’s embalmed corpse lay on display in Moscow, leading up to his temporary burial in that dumb-joke staple, Lenin’s Tomb. ... Two hours and change of heartbroken Soviets was a lot more than I needed, frankly... Might work better as an installation that one could watch for as long or little as one likes.

Letter to the Editor (Alan Berliner, USA): 58
Half a dozen different films get thrown together here beneath the tattered umbrella of Berliner’s obsession with the New York Times, from which he’s been clipping photos since 1980. His gift for rapid-fire montage remains awe-inspiring... he also wants to mourn the impending loss of physical newsprint, and chide Trump for calling the free press "the enemy of the people" ... reminisce about ... Ground Zero on 9/11, and discuss the way that smartphones have made photojournalists of us all, and it all starts to feel undisciplined and incoherent and overlong (at only 89 minutes)... [All 7000 images are NYTims photos, he says so it's "worth seeing for that alone."]

[Chris Knipp]

Today's Toronto films (Tues., Sept. 10)


ADAM SANDLER IN UNCUT GEMS

The Aeronauts (Tom Harper). "Theory of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones reunite for a sweet tale of daredevil balloonists in Victorian England," reports Peter Bradshaw, giving 3/5 stars to this new English film. It's a fictionalized account of how scientist James Glaisher took to the skies in hot air balloons to do meteorology. Unfortunately the producer withdrew the film from iMax: aerial views of 19th century London are spectacular.

Ford vs. Ferrari (James Mangold) got a miserable 2/5 stars from Bradshaw, apparently a clinker starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale about the rivalry between the American and European car industries with self-regarding, dull, macho blocked-out characters."Christian Bale plays Ken Miles, the difficult, impulsive, grumpy but brilliant Brit hired by Shelby as his star driver – to the irritation of the pointy-headed, bean-counting suits at Ford, who want an obedient team player." So ". Tracy Letts plays Henry Ford Jr with gusto and Josh Lucas plays Leo Beebe, his creepy assistant."

Uncut Gems (Safdie brothers). Sounds like a surprise from the Safdie brothers, a 4/5 star winner starring Adam Sandler, says Benjamin Lee in the Guardian: "A towering performance from the often tiresome actor drives an anxiety-inducing film about a risk-addicted jewelry dealer" who is forever "caught in a trap of his own making." Well, not a surprise actually, very much on the pattern of Good Time, but with a warmer, more sympathetic (even if annoying) protagonist.

[Chris Knipp]

D'Angelo day 6

Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie, USA): 73
D'Angelo saw and loved the new Safdie brothers film too, giving it his highest TFF '19 score so far, a 73 and writing, "Watching it felt a bit like watching Philippe Petit walk the wire between the Twin Towers: exhilarating and nerve-wracking in roughly equal measure. I was pleasantly surprised by Sandler’s paternal gentleness in The Meyerowitz Stories, but it’s hard to imagine him ever topping this majestically self-absorbed performance."

Lee explains: [Sandler] "plays fast-talking jewelry dealer Howard Ratner, a man who spends his days frantically trying to make money while being followed by the men he owes money to, an exhausting lifestyle he can’t seem to escape.

This sounds all too like the Safdie brothers; but if Sandler can imbue it with humanistic warmth, that would make all the difference.

Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas, Belgium/Brazil/Spain/France): 43. D'Angelo almost cut it when he learned Assayas was gong to recut it. It's about Cuban spies, but boring. Imagine Carlos without Carlos, says D'Angelo. Yes, Edgar Ramirez is on hand, but playing "a dullard this time." "Whatever attracted Assayas to this particular story never found its way onscreen."

To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan/Qatar/Uzbekistan): 56
"Kurosawa does Coppola—Sofia, that is, removing Bill Murray’s character from Lost in Translation and making it about a young Japanese woman adrift in Uzbekistan. Fascinating change of pace..."

The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan, China): 38
He "rather liked both [Yinan's previous films] Night Train and Black Coal, Thin Ice" but found this "extravagantly empty" and "hated" it. Though "plenty of 'stuff' 'happens'—it's quite a busy film, in fact, replete with lengthy flashbacks and conflicting vendettas" nonetheless D'Angelo felt none carried "emotional weight" "and precious little of it offers much in the way of superficial pleasure, either." So there. I hope I like it better.

He also walked out after 47 mins. on a film about sudden deafness with 12-step overtones:
Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, USA): W/O)

[Chris Knipp]

Oscar bait? Or not?

Harriet (Kasi Lemmons) 4/5 stars from Peter Bradshaw: "Cynthia Erivo is sublime as legendary slave rebel [Harriot Tubman]" "the Spartacus of the American South." This is " somewhere between a slave-escape drama, an action thriller, a western and even an unexpected kind of superhero film." It " tremendously charismatic and muscular performance from Erivo, who may well be in the frame for awards." But Owen Gleiberman in Variety found it "more dutiful than inspired."

[Chris Knipp]

More from Toronto


STEEVE COOGAN IN GREED

Greed (Michael Winterbottom) gets 3/5 stars from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. It's a satire ("mocumentary") starring Steve Coogan as a "high-street fashion tycoon" that "presents a hideous carnival of obscene wealth, vanity and moral squalor." Sounds fun, though he says it hardly challenges Coogan's skill in this "shallow, if entertaining, role." Coogan looks very entertaining as this privileged egocentric creep. CLIP.

American Son (Kenny Leon), from a play by Christopher Demos-Brown and adapted by him (often a mistake) is a 1/5 star disaster, according to Bradshaw. It concerns racism shown when a black mother vs. her ex, a white FBI officer father, speak to a cop at a police station about their missing 18-year-old biracial son. But, says Bradshaw, the dialogue is "cardboard" and stagey and nothing convinces.

Mrs Fletcher (Nicole Holofcener. Introduction to a new HBO series which Benjamin Lee gives 4/5 stars to. It is an adaptation of a novel by Tom Perotta, whose work has tended to adapt very well (Little Children, Election, The Leftovers). This concerns a mother who faces empty nest syndrome and her popular high school jock son who goes off to college. Perotta worked closely with director Nicole Holofcener for the adaptation, which Lee considers a plus.

[Chris Knipp]

D'Angelo TFF '19 day 7


BINOCHE, HAWKE, DENEUVE IN KOREEDA'S TRUTH

He was not enthused about this set and said the NYFF selection committee "went a bit loco" in his view (the NYFF includes Saturday Fiction and Fire Will Come). Ratings and excerpts of his reviews for yesterday.

Saturday Fiction (Lou Ye, China): 42
Had assumed—quite happily, I confess—that Lou was basically over, as it’s been a full decade (and five features) since he last showed up in Cannes Competition or NYFF. For some reason, though, Kent Jones & Co. got excited about this laborious espionage thriller, which somehow squanders both Gong Li and monochrome... [Remember ScreenDaily said it was "confused" and Variety called it "muddled." D'Angelo says you only know who the bad guys are when the guns come out. It's those they're being pointed at.]

The Truth (Kore-eda Hirokazu, France/Japan): 53
Very much of a piece with Kore-eda’s recent work, though the comparative lack of cultural specificity makes it feel a bit generic. Deneuve’s diva, it retroactively occurs to me, presents something of a challenge for a Japanese filmmaker (though Kore-eda conceived this story himself)—such preening is considered far more gauche in Japan than elsewhere... [but] brittle mother-daughter dynamic suits Deneuve and Binoche quite well, and The Truth works best as an emotionally direct two-hander, à la Marriage Story but with two people who can never split up. Didn’t really need the usual intrusive tinkly score ...or Ethan Hawke just hanging around looking pleasantly surprised to be in a Kore-eda joint. [David Erlich reviewed a bit more favorably in Indiewire.]

I Was at Home, but… (Angela Schanelec, Germany/Serbia): 40
...In theory, I can appreciate this sort of syntactic, allusive approach, which is more or less what Haneke does in Code Unknown. But I genuinely don’t know the code, in this case, ... maybe I’m just too much the rationalist for this mode of filmmaking. Though I really dug the similarly amorphous Kékszakállú, so who knows.

Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe, Spain/France/Luxembourg): 41
Begins operatically (almost literally—Laxe uses the same haunting Vivaldi cue that recurs throughout Dogville...with monumental shots of trees being felled in a mist-shrouded forest; ends by fulfilling the title’s prediction, briefly metamorphosing into a documentary about containment measures. There’s just not enough going on in between, as we await the inevitable conflagration. I’d thought Laxe might be slowly building to the point where his ex-arsonist protag finally snaps...

[Chris Knipp]

What Toronto will mean to us.


SCARLETT JOHANSSON, ROMAN GRIFFON DAVIS IN JOJO RABBIT

TTFF '19 IS OVER. Topics to discuss include Fiona Apple in Hustlers, tour de force scenes by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story, the new take on a comic book and franchise character by Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, other new takes and comebacks in Jojo Rabbit, Renée Zellweger in Judy, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, Wesley Snipes in Dolemite Is My Name. Snipes and Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (about Mr. Rogers) will be Oscar possibilities. Other Oscar topics are shaping up.

Word is that Cynthia Erivo as Harriot Taubman in Harriot and Kristen Stewart as the ill-starred 1960s film star Jean Seberg in Seberg (Benedict Andrews), though neither film is reportedly great, could both be Oscar nominees.

Two of TFF '19's big premieres are in theaters near you this week: Hustlers (oscar buzz for JLo), The Goldfinch from the Donna Tartt Novel starring Ansel Elgort, but not getting good reviews (Metascores, Hustlers,79, The Goldfinch,[/I] 41). The NYTimes critic-picked Ms Purple, though I found it unconvincing. The Sound of Silence has Peter Sarsgaard and Rashida Jones; the child soldier drama Monos.

This week’s documentaries out (in New York) include America about a Mexican family; Cracked Up, about comedian Darrell Hammond; and Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in three Movements about a deaf family with a shared love of Beethoven.

Of course Mike D'Angelo's 2019 Toronto viewings and thumbnails and usual precise numerical ratings will add solid notes to refer to above and beyond the mainstream entertainment and awards-obsessions. Thanks for the Patreon reviews - but regrets that he doesn't have a gig as a correspondent and get to write those great daily roundups from the festival (and Cannes)..