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Thread: Toronto Film Festival Sept. 5- Sept 15, 2019

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  1. #16
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    D'Angelo day 9



    Ordinary Love (Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn, UK): W/O A two-hander with Lesly Manville and Liam Neeson of a couple whose relationship is tested when one gets a cancer diagnosis. He says the actors are "in fine form" but the film is what you'd expect, "a more tasteful, less distressing version of [Michael Haneke's] Amour, in essence." Amour wins. Pm this and the next he was just taking a chance due to a "cinematic dead zone" in the TFF scheduling.

    No. 7 Cherry Lane (Yonfan, Hong Kong): W/O/ Something like animated extra-slow expository porno, and not so as he'd want to stay over his requisite 40 mins.

    A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, USA): 45. He "submits" that Malick's "penchant for monumental montage could scarcely be less suited to the tale of one man’s self-abnegating act of conscience." This may have been the criticism advanced at Cannes - that the Malick style doesn't fit the subject. Malick "mostly eases off on the voiceover," but uses the rushing in and then out with the camera movie even for when the subject is in the penitentiary, " which "which is anti-intuitive enough to be arresting." But he found only the last moment of the condemned man's farewell to life "got to" him. D'Angelo follows the pattern of not stating what these movies are about, most of the time, so here is the Wikipedia summary: "The film depicts the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. " [This film comes out in the US in Dec.]

    Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles, Brazil): 57 This depicts a game of hunting people down for sport. D'Angelo felt it required him to know a lot more about Brazililan politics than he does. Indeed Peter Debruge in Variety felt as "if it’s meant to be analyzed more than enjoyed, and for which footnotes might actually have done more good than subtitles. " So, same opinion. [It's in the NYFF and I expect to see it there. It has a Metascore in the 70's and some of the main anglophone critics have liked it a lot, David Erlich, Peter Bradshaw, and AA Dowd, for instance. Despite their objections about the over-referentiality or artificiality, they were impressed by the sheer pizzazz, I guess. D'Angelo concludes, "May require a second viewing following extensive reading."
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-15-2019 at 06:39 PM.

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