Toronto Film Festival Sept. 5- Sept 15, 2019

[Chris Knipp]

From the Guardian (Benjamin Lee)


STILL FROM HUSTLERS

Hustlers (Jessica Pressler) got 4/5 stars fromBenjamin Lee of the Guardian, who said watching JLo ((Jennifer Lopez) "steal" this "strippers saga" is a "vicarious thrill," "a slick, flashy, seductively entertaining segue from one season to the next" (summer to fall). A drama about a group of strippers drawn into crime robbing customers and stealing their credit card info.

Rian Johnson's Knives Out: Like D'Angelo, the Guardian's Lee loves this one and gives it 4/5 stars, calling it a "meta" mystery homage to Agatha Christie. Johnson, working from his own script, outdoes himself here. Clearly a must-see for everybody.

The Friend (Gabriela Cowperthwaite). A fact-based but sanitized film from the director of Blackfish. Benjamin Lee gives it only 2/5 stars. "Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck play a couple dealing with cancer with help from a friend" in this " meandering drama," he says.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller) It's not just a repeat of the doc about Mr. Rogers but more a scoffer-converted tale of a cynical journalist sent to cover him who expects to see through him but leaves converted. 4/5 also from Lee. "Tom Hanks charms as Mister Rogers: The star takes on the beloved children's TV figure in a moving and engrossing departure from a traditional biopic." Warning: the story is only partly true.

[Chris Knipp]

More from the Guardian


NICOLE KIDMAN AND ANSEL ELGORT IN THE GOLDFINCH

The Goldfinch (John Crowley) Benjamin Lee gives 3/5 to this adaptation of Donna Tartt's 800-page globe-trotting novel: "meh." It's neither good nor bad, just okay, "neither a rousing success nor an embarrassing failure, falling somewhere in between, closer to admirable attempt." At least it avoids being an "ungainly mess" as "some had expected," its "many, many moving parts" "stitched together with an elegant hand."

(This is how I often feel about movies, that at best they fall somewhere in between rousing success and embarrassing failure.)

Owen Gleiberman in Variety calls The Goldfinch " the year's prestige literary adaptation" that's "scrupulously faithful, yet still misses the book's captivating essence." Vanity Fair calls it "dutiful" and "well mounted but tepid" with "not enough rough texture and feeling. "

The story line many know and is intriguing. A bombing at the Metropolitan museum, leads to a boy staling a painting while his mother is killed in the explosion. He keeps and is haunted buy the stolen secret treasure. It also has Jeffrey Wright and Sarah Paulson. Indiewire and The Globe and Mail both called Goldfinch "a disaster."


Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi) is a repetitive satire that plays all Nazis as silly morons, Hitler most of all, where Hitler is just a character's imaginary friend. In the Guardian Benjamin Lee gives this 2/5 stars but says Scarlett Johansson, who's on a roll lately (isn't she always?) "is the best thing about" this movie. Owen Gleiberman of Variety calls this a " feel-good hipster Nazi comedy" (which he thinks may be a first) and " a movie that creates the illusion of danger while playing it safe." The filmmaker directed Thor: Ragnarok .

Bad Education ( Cory Finley) From the director of Thoroughbreds is a "shaggy" retelling of a high school corruption story that Lee sees as solid but lacking except for a strong central turn by Hugh Jackman as an official determined to push the school to the bop, while Ailson Janney is a "dialed down" version of her "quippy, alcohol-soaked, Oscar- and Emmy-winning shtick," as an official who senses something fishy going on. 3/5 stars from Benjamin Lee.

[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.