Toronto Film Festival Sept. 5- Sept 15, 2019

[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)..

[Chris Knipp]

Yesterday at Toronto with the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who finds three pretty good ones.


NORTON IN MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN

Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton) 3/5 stars, "respectable if heavy going" - Peter Bradshaw. This " adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s bestselling novel about a New York private detective with Tourette syndrome" which is "as loving as it is laborious, maybe" writes Bradshaw: Norton produced, wrote the adaptation, directs, and stars. At the coming New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct. 13) it will be the Closing Night Film. shown Oct. 11. Metascore 62%. It's got Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe and period New York and looks like it might be fun.

The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles) 3/5 stars (Bradshaw) "nthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce find some tremendous actorly form in this humorous, indulgent, lop-sidedly sentimental “Pope-off” which becomes a Pontiff bromance written by Anthony McCarten and directed by Fernando Meirelles." Sounds very complicated to me, you might need to be a bureaucracy-conscious Catholic to like it.

Lucy in the Sky (Noah Hawley) again 3/5 stars from Bradshaw. " Noah Hawley’s intriguing film, based on a true story, is about the effects on those who go to space of coming back to Earth’s quotidian reality" focused on a woman of NASA played by Natalie Portman. Bradshaw liked it, but not many other critics did. The Metascore of 37 makes it look like a clinker.

[Chris Knipp]

More, and final, D'Angelo TFF '19 reviews.


VIRGINIE EFIRA IN SIBYL

He saw Motherless Brooklyn too and gave it a 60. Substituted it at the last minute for Soderbergh's The Laundromat "which hasn’t been very warmly received[Metascore 56%] and will be readily available on Netflix soon whereas this he'd have to "shell out $10-12 to see at home." He thinks liking it so much is partly a function of organizing his festival viewing around "challenging art films," so something mainstream and enjoyable (relatively) comes as a relief. But he had a good time and was impressed with Norton's technique, though hearing the film violated the novel in various ways.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci, UK): 35. He feels Dickens has too much plot, and felt it was being "projectile-vomited" at him "for two solid hours."

I was exhausted after roughly 15 minutes, and stared glassy-eyed at the rest, springing to life only when Peter Capaldi and Hugh Laurie occupy the screen simultaneously and my brain needed to expend extra effort in order to keep track of which one is which.

[But the Guardian review gave it 4/5 stars and the Metascore is 73.]

The Moneychanger (Federico Veiroj, Argentina/Germany/Uruguay): 48. He found the exposition neglected the money-laundering complexities of the main character and treated the viewers like idiots. "Granted, the film is primarily a character study, not a procedural, but Daniel Hendler never makes this worm interesting enough that we become invested in seeing him turn. Only Dolores Fonzi, as the moneychanger’s scarily pragmatic spouse, provides any real charge."

[The trailer looks both bolder and more conventional than Veiroj's previous films.]

Sibyl (Justine Triet, Belgium/France): 63 [I'm so glad he liked this so much: Amerivcans have not seemed to particularly "get" Triet's previous films.] "Stupendously diected from the very first shot." Triet "shoots like an editor and repeatedly took my breath away with simple cuts..E ven the "ruthlessly configured" "expository flashbacks" satisfied him. Some plot elements went totally astray for him, but Virginie Efira "looks like a potential breakout" and "Triet’s so blatantly gifted that I’ll follow her anywhere for a while." He has not seen her previous ones. We'll see if he sees them and how he reacts.

[Chris Knipp]

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."

[Chris Knipp]

D'Angelo day 10


A WHITE, WHITE DAY (Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur)

[TFF '19 is over, but D'Angelo's Patreon reviews have another installment - in which he shows his tendency to have strong prejudices and enthusiasms. He turns out to hate Israeli director Nadav Lapid with a passion and to have a new favorite in the Danish director Hlynur Pálmason, whose debut Winter Brothers, shown in last year's New Directors/New Films, didn't seem to jell for me, despite evident talent. He likes the subtle Palestinian director Elia Suleiman a lot already, and this was Suleiman's first feature in a decade.]

TIFF 2019: Day 10

It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman, Canada/Germany/France/Qatar/Turkey/Palestine): 71. "More of the same," "bemused impassivity (or impassive bemusement)" D'Angelo begins, but with Suleiman's first venture to other lands beyond Palestine - to Paris and New York. The humor for Paris are the best, doubtless because Suleiman lives there; and he said in the Q&A it's all or mostly true. Culture-clash gags are occasionally too facile, but that's counterbalanced by some of the director's "most exquisitely choreographed absurdity." We had descriptions of this film from Cannes.

A White, White Day (Hlynur Pálmason, Denmark/Iceland/Sweden): 76 D'Angelo calls this "a below-the-radar triumph," because he hadn't known or expected anything from it, having not been immediately won over by the opening of Palmason's debut Winter Brothers. But here, he was won by the first two shots: a car in very bleak weather, and a house in multiple seasons. The film later becomes "a forbidding character study, addressing stifled grief in some of the most hauntingly oblique ways I’ve ever seen without ever losing sight of human complexity." Sequences so good he gets "chills" thinking about them, only reservations about a last scene that seemed superfluous. On verra. Hlynur Pálmason must like whiteness, since his debut notably takes place in a limestone plant. This debuted at Cannes and has won awards. See my Filmleaf ND/NF review of Winter Brothers.

Synonyms (Nadav Lapid, Germany/France/Israel): 28. He starts by declaring Lapid "my least favorite 'name' director (by international-fest standards) currently working with whom I did not attend college". (A subscriber comments the one he dislikes more with whom he did attend college - NYU Film School - was probably Harmony Korine.) He hated everything about Synonyms: many individual scenes that he thinks bad; the new star Tom Mercier; the idea of having problems with one's nationality; Lapid's "sensibility"; the passivity of "Labid's generic French characters"; implausible aspects of the place where the protagonist too easily takes up residence immediately upon arrival in Paris from Israel - and he came in aware he'd disliked all three of Lapid's previous features. D'Angelo has talked about liking to see films with zero prior information but here he was elaborately prepared to hate every minute - which I understand, but shows inconsistency. Jay Weissberg's Variety review (at Berlin, where as D'Angelo notes, it won the Golden Bear) called this movie "deliriously unpredictable and enthrallingly impenetrable." It has a Metascore of 85% and an AlloCiné press rating of 3.4/5.0, only average, but the interesting top score is from the nearly impossible to please Cahiers du Cinéma. Synonyms is in the Main Slate of the NYFF.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (J-P Valkeapää, Finland/Latvia): W/O "Exotica played straight, as a surgeon uses sessions with a dominatrix to cope with lingering grief and guilt over the accidental death of his wife. Nothing about the first 35 minutes looked particularly interesting to me, and the 'meet cute' is so clumsily engineered that I had little faith in Valkeapää’s facility. (Didn’t help that I’d previously bailed on his last film, They Have Escaped.)" [His full comment.]