TIFF 2011 Review - The Raid (Evans, 2011) *****

Just over half way through Welch director Gareth Evans' Indonesian action opus The Raid, a small, wiry tough guy proclaims: "I don't like pulling a trigger on a gun, it's like ordering takeout." This, probably one of the most bad ass lines ever uttered in any movie, is indicative of the inventive brutality of one of the strongest straight-up genre action films made in the last decade. Premiering at Colin Geddes' Midnight Madness programme at TIFF 2011, The Raid is an unbelievable achievement of bone-crunching choreography, editing, camera work, bloodily satisfying special effects and a proper introduction to action star Iko Uwais.

Every good action flick has a simple, but effective plot structure to fix around set-pieces, and The Raid is no different: Uwais stars as Rama, a rookie member of an Elite SWAT team tasked with bringing down Tama, the most powerful drug lord in Jakarta who resides in an apartment block-slash-fortress containing what seems to be all the most dangerous junkies, killers and straight up criminal lowlifes in the city. Eventually their cover is blown, Tama puts a price on the heads of the team, and learn that the most senior member of the squad has sabotaged any hope of reinforcements. This is in the first 10 minutes of the film. The next 80 minutes is pretty much a non-stop bloodbath of over-the-top action set pieces as Rama tries to fight his way out of the building.

The Raid reminded me a lot of action/siege films like Die Hard and The Rock, but done with action choreography that maintains an efficiency and brutality that I haven't seen attempted in years. Here, Evans shows off an amazing ability to maintain a level of gut-wrenching suspense, while consistently thrilling and shocking the audience. We always feel that Uwais, while showcasing his unbelievable martial-arts intensity and agility, is fighting for his life in every one-versus-twenty man brawl (there's several). This is due to an unflinching bloodiness (with excellent make-up effects depicting some of the most brutal gunshots to the skull, throat stabbings, spine-crackings and neck breaks I've seen in a film in quite sometime, and there is a hell of a lot of them) working in tandem with camerawork that stays fluid and avoids the close-up shakiness seen in many a crappy action flick, and precise, visceral editing that stays noninvasive.

An instant cult classic, "The Raid" will eventually make it over to North American audiences (where it will be re-scored *gulp* by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park) that will absolutely devour it. This is an example of world class action cinema; a lethal concoction of exciting, bloody, shocking violence, efficient technical filmmaking, and a showcase for a new martial arts superstar in the form of Iko Uwais. Subtitles might be a drawback for some, but that never stopped the films of Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Tony Jaa from being successful. This is the kind of film that sets your adrenaline racing so fast that it takes a couple days just to get it out of your system.

INTERNATIONAL TRAILER

Review - Midnight In Paris (Allen, 2011) ***

Sometimes I wish I lived through the 1970s, in New York or Chicago, or even Detroit. I wish I could be there in the golden age of Funk and Soul music. A time when it took real musicianship and a real sense of substance to really make it big. But this kind of naivete really never takes me anywhere but back to my own sense of romanticism for that period in music. Such is the paradox in the great Woody Allen's latest film "Midnight In Paris", a charming and satisfying comedy with beautiful photography, a crisply written, tightly plotted script, boasting the finest Owen Wilson performance in a really long time and a thematic eloquence to boot.

Wilson plays Gil Pender, a successful Hollywood screenwriter of many funny, but forgettable films, vacationing in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams, who is absolutely stunning here, but in one-note role) and her vapid right-wing parents. Gil is absolutely smitten with Paris, and is immediately taken with the idea of throwing his cushy Beverly Hills life away in exchange for spending the rest of his days walking in the rain through Paris and writing novels. After a wine-drenched evening with Inez's pretentious, overly flirty friend Paul (Michael Sheen, donning a shockingly good American accent) and his wife, Gil finds himself inexplicably transported back in time to 1920s Paris, where he meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, among others that I won't reveal as to spoil the fun.

Devotees of Woody like to separate his films into a number of classes, including minor Woody, funny Woody and classic Woody. What's interesting about this film is that it is a mix of all three. He keeps a nice, steady pace to the proceedings here, lingering enough on character, theme and dashes of his trademark humor to keep things light and fairly engaging. I liked that the plot device of time travel exists not as a gimmicky bludgeon, but more as an extension of Gil's internal struggles as a hopeless romantic torn between the prospects of the seduction and nostalgia of the past and the constant uncertainty of the present. Each character is allowed a moment of memorable poignancy too, as seen in a surprisingly intense monologue about life, death and sex by Woody's version of Ernest Hemingway (played by Television vet Corey Stoll, who absolutely sinks his teeth in here.

Woody's better films of the past two decades (Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) are at their best when his leads are accompanied by strongly written, directed and acted supporting characters (see Penelope Cruz's Oscar for VCB as proof in the pudding). Here, we have the always ravishing Marion Cotillard as Adriana, Wilson's love interest who, like his character, longs for the beauty of an earlier era. Cotillard, always sumptuous, is radiant here. And like many of Woody's great female roles, Adriana's beauty and scars of the past are the direct cause of her tragic endgame (don't worry, it's not so bad).

In the end though, the film draws to a relatively light, but satisfying conclusion; it's a lesson of embracing the uncertainties rather than living inside a disguise of predictability. The subject matter here is certainly not as dark or cynical or relentlessly depressing as heavy Woody, but leaves a rather positive, uplifting aftertaste. It's nice to know that a filmmaker who has been around as long as Woody (he's 75) can still make films this poignant. "Midnight In Paris" is a short, memorable, romantic lark that has given me the opportunity to coin a new term: Just-plain Woody.

Review - Bridesmaids (Feig, 2011) ***

In an age of dime-a-dozen chick flicks that are completely superficial in their creative and commercial aspirations, director Paul Feig's "Bridesmaids" is refreshingly honest and hilarious, reminding us again of the power of the funny female and the enormous cinematic potential of star Kristen Wiig.

Sporting a terrific script from Wiig and Annie Mumomo, "Bridesmaids" takes us into the life of Annie (Wiig), a broke thirty-something who gets booty called on the regular by a rich asshole (another great Jon Hamm cameo), is about to get thrown out of her apartment by her half-witted British roommates and works a miserable job at a retail jewelery store.

When best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged, Annie decides to take up the reins of Maid of Honor and meets Lillian's bridesmaids: Becca, the too innocent for her own good newlywed (Ellie Kemper); perpetually boozy and jaded housewife Rita (Wendi-McLendon Covey); plus-sized party animal Megan (Melissa McCarthy, in the definition of a scene-stealing role); and of course Helen (Rose Byrne) the control-freak trophy wife of Lillian's fiancee's boss and ultimately the film's semi-antagonist, thwarting Annie's every endeavor with a transparent tinge of condescension.

Strung together by a loose, episodic structure similar to "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" (another Apatow production), the film maintains dramatic escalation by means of letting all of Annie's failures, missteps and awkwardness inform her inability to perform as Lillian's Maid of Honor; Wiig gives Annie a spectacular display of drunkenness on a flight to Vegas that is absolutely uproarious. We root for Annie because she's a smart, attractive woman and we know that her incompetence at this stage of her life is due to previous heartbreak.

Director Feig gets most of the credit for the film's substantive feel. He allows his female stars the ability to stay improvisational inside the bodies of these fleshed out, honest characters, and we love them all the more because of their natural reactions and attitudes. But this is also the film's weakest trait; some scenes are very fatty with dialogue and gags such as an engagement party one-up-a-thon between Wiig and Byrne get dragged out to an unnecessary length.

"Bridesmaids" is a blast and a great reminder that the female condition is a lot funnier and more nuanced than most (both gals and dudes) would like to believe. This is truly a breakout vehicle for Kristen Wiig and a solid entry in the realm of Apatow-style character driven comedies.

HOT DOCS 2011 - REVIEWS FROM TWITTER

Will I one day hopefully write long-form reviews of some of these? Probably. I'll have to see BEAUTY DAY one more time to confirm its greatness.

And now without further ado, by rating:

Beauty Day (Cheel, 2011) ***** A big, real story about a dude who lives life to the limit. Uproarious, tender and perfectly shot.

Black Power Mixtape (Olsson, 2011) **** Forgotten Swedish footage of black militant leaders is powerful, rousing & inspirational.

Project Nim (Marsh, 2011) **** Well paced, epic tale about an intelligent Chimp & tragic human flaws. An emotional rollercoaster.

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (Rapaport, 2011) **** Plays out like a great Tribe track: intense, funky and full of life.

Hell and Back Again (Dennis, 2011) **** Engrossing, brutal doc captures claustrophobic effects of war at home and on frontlines.

Kumare (Ghandi, 2011) *** - Inspiring Borat-like doc with solid yogic philosophy linked into plot and character. Funny & gorgeous.

Magic Trip (Gibney & Elwood, 2011) *** Impressively edited look at Merry Prankster's trip across US with a memorable LSD sequence.

A Simple Rhythm (Girard, 2011) ** Intelligent thesis hampered by wavy pacing. Neglects opportunity for more kinetic storytelling.

The Castle (D'Anolfi & Parenti, 2011) * Mind-numbingly slow & indulgent behind the scenes look at Milan airport misses the mark.

Review - Rango (Verbinski, 2011) ****

Not only is director Gore Verbinski's (Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, The Ring) first animated feature "Rango" a sensual pleasure of the highest order, it's a truly original surrealist-western adventure with pitch-perfect voice acting and brilliant thematic invention.

Johnny Depp voices the titular character; at first a nameless, identity deprived Chameleon with a penchant for dramatics, who through a set of extremely odd circumstances and well crafted tales of grandeur, ends up as the Sheriff in the town of "Dirt", a water-deprived, grungy, bizarre place inhabited by equally bizarre anthropomorphized Western film archetypes.

Depp, leading an (unexpectedly) brilliant voice cast including Isla Fisher, Harry Dean Stanton and Ray Winstone, is virtually unrecognizable here. Totally throwing himself into this role despite this being an animated film, Depp creates an entirely original voice; Rango is a three-dimensional (even though the film is not *GASP* presented in 3D), memorable and oddly sympathetic character, among the many others in this film.

Perhaps the film's biggest strength is the detailed and gorgeous rendering and animation, done by George Lucas' ILM in their first animated feature. The creatures populated throughout the film's desert environment, all strange desert morphs of western archetypes, including Bill Nighy's menacing chaingun-tail-equipped Rattle Snake Jake and a huge squadron of thieving redneck-like moles, all move with a believable grace. The cinematography and lighting, advised by Coen Bros favorite Roger Deakins, creates a lush, almost photo-real look to the environments and characters, and adds to the metaphysics of the film's original-but-classic western feel.

But while on the surface, this Nickelodeon-produced film may seem geared toward imagination-inclined kids, and it is, Verbinski has actually created a subtly self-reflexive story that is best swallowed by mature filmgoers who will swoon over the myriad Western/Sergio Leone allusions. And while the intense gunplay and surrealistic fever dream sequences may frighten younger viewers, "Rango" is a fun, gorgeous, metaphysical journey through Western film history, with a thematic resonance that is at once comforting and familiar, but ultimately deeply human.

Review - Four Lions (Morris, 2010) * * *

The word Jihad gets tossed around so much these days, who is to say what it actually means? Do we think of horrific violence perpetrated by bloodthirsty terrorists? Or perhaps some may think of their own personal quest for justice. Well the truth is that one's actions will always speak louder than the words that society has chosen to define them; the central premise behind UK comedy vet Chris Morris' hilarious and fascinating black-comic satire "Four Lions".

Following five bumbling Muslim men as they go through all the necessary steps to reach their goal of putting together the ultimate plan to blow themselves up and ignite the "final holy war", the film shares a kinship with such classic topical satires as "Dr. Strangelove" and even the Marx Brothers' screwball war comedy "Duck Soup". Each man is more bumbling than the last: There's protagonist Omar (Riz Ahmed), a loving family man with Jihadi aspirations, Barry, the token white extremist, Waj, the handsome idiot, Faisal, an impressionable fool, and Hassan, the new guy who is in way over his head.

Morris' film takes us through all the standard familiar staples of Jihad that we've all read about or seen in movies or documentaries, but somehow humanizes them by adding a thick layer of incompetence to the proceedings; the film opens with a hilariously inept attempt at an amateur Jihad-threat video. As the film progresses and the guys find themselves plotting a final grand plan to explode themselves amidst a populated London marathon, things take an inevitable turn for the darkly violent.

There are a number of moments in "Four Lions" that are poignant in their depiction of the human and political costs of terrorism; a scene involving snipers mistaking the bombers for civilians is terrifying but uproarious at the same time. Scenes like these give the film a unique power, but are rare and are mostly piled up near the end of the film. At 97 minutes, "Four Lions" is quite breezy and fast considering the subject matter. As a hilarious exploration of the inherent dumbness of extremism in modern society and a rare human take on the war on terror, Morris' film is a success. With the silliness toned down a bit and perhaps a sharper edge, it could have been a classic.

Review - True Grit (Coens, 2010) * * * *

It is pretty much resolved that the Coen Brothers could create a beautiful cinematic experience out of paint drying. In their latest opus "True Grit", the intrepid duo re-interpret a classic Charles Portis novel (already filmed in 1969 featuring an Oscar winning performance by John Wayne in the lead role) set in the Wild West and manage to inject it with enough heart, ugly beauty and trademark wit to create a piece of work all their own.

Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld plays 14-year-old Mattie Ross, a stern, focused young woman who embarks on a quest to avenge her daddy's death at the hands of Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin, again proving he's at his best working with the Coen Brothers). Along for the ride is Jeff Bridges in another hugely memorable performance as Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn, a surly but violently determined U.S Marshal, and LaBoeuf, an insecure Texas Ranger played with grace and a fair dollop of intensity by Matt Damon.

And while the acting as a whole is uniformly outstanding, the standout elements here are the uncompromising strength of the writing, direction, and sumptuous camera work from Roger Deakins. A scene involving Steinfeld's Ross bargaining with a nervous trader is just such classic Coen brothers and reminded me of the legendary gas station scene with Javier Bardem from "No Country For Old Men"; even in close personal exchanges, the Coens can put us through the emotional wringer with just a little pitch-perfect editing, finely tuned acting and crackling dialogue.

This is also an uncompromisingly violent film, despite its PG-13 rating. Thematically, the Coens plumb familiar depths here, but this film is almost like a populist "No Country For Old Men": The grey areas of human violence are once again explored, but where "No Country" was cold, detatched and contemplative, this film is personal, warm and quite human.

Some viewers should take discretion in that a lot of the dialogue (especially that of Bridges' perpetually drunk Cogburn) is unintelligible, but thanks to Steinfeld's measured performance and the Coens' meticulous attention to all the details, "True Grit" is the best old-school western in recent memory.

Review - Blue Valentine (Cianfrance, 2010) * * * *

I love movies that force me to follow them into an abyss of uncertainty or even a kind of mysterious ambiguity. Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" does exactly that, but in a much more emotionally manipulative way than most films that consciously leave plot details, or in this case, conclusions, unclear. The film takes the old adage that "love is blind" and forces us to hinge on both the negative and positive aspects of it.

Cianfrance, whom apparently spent numerous years writing the script and choreographing the visual style of the film, throws us into the lives of Dean (Ryan Gosling, in another bravura-knockout role) and Cindy (Michelle Williams, also fantastic, in an Oscar nominated role), a married couple with a small daughter, currently on the sexual rocks of their relationship. We move back in time with them too, witnessing the birth of their relationship; the passionate intensity that informed their early sexual encounters.

In both time-frames we are forced to consider a number of questions: In the earlier setting we ask what extent idealism is informing Dean and Cindy's early notions of true love, and in the latter, we begin to question what happens when that idealism fades away and reality sets in. Essentially, the film forces viewers to witness the creation of a prototypical version of love, then its destruction.

This film has been subject to some weirdly intense controversy regarding its sex scenes. In this reviewer's view, there is no controversy; the sex scenes in this film (especially the controversial one in question) are pretty much un-erotic for the viewer. They remain cold, and objective.

I saw this film too late, in early 2011. It's certainly one of the best films of last year and a very challenging, impeccably made, acted and written love-drama.

Let's hope Cianfrance is someone we can look forward to in the future.

-CC

Corey A. Caplan’s Annual Top 10 Cinematic Excursions of the Year (2010):

  

10. Inside Job


The financial crisis of 2008 screwed just about everyone, everywhere. By now most of us are vividly aware of the tale of the Wall Street greedsters and real estate hucksters that took the world down. But Charles Ferguson’s powerful and speedy documentary plunges us deep into the political underworld where real government ends and vampire capitalists begin. In doing so he creates one of the passionately angry docs of the year.

 9. Toy Story 3


I remember the day I saw the first “Toy Story” film. The story of that day is relatively banal and probably a little cheesy, but the point is that the super-geniuses at Pixar have done something that even some of our more accomplished filmmakers today struggle with: Recreating youth. Director Lee Unkrich’s film not only stays consistently rich and inventive with its imagery and narrative drive, but with its dedication to the warm center of the human heart as well.  

8. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Ever since this 24 year old Torontonian can remember, video games and movies and women and Rock and fuckin’ Roll have always been an integral part of his life. If only there was some sort of kick-ass film that could roll all those things together in a package that would inevitably be injected into his cerebral cortex...wait. Yeah, Edgar Wright just did that didn’t he? Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a movie that has defined a generation of kids. The scene where Scott Pilgrim (Brampton’s own Michael Cera) walks down his high school hallway, following his dream girl Ramona Flowers (a deliciously rebellious Mary Elizabeth Winstead)  to the tune of the fairy theme from “The Legend of Zelda” on SNES, melted my brain and sucked my emotions into a cinematic vacuum cleaner.  

  

7. The Ghost Writer

Say what one might about Roman Polanski, the guy still knows how to creep his way under our skin. His latest, with standout performances from the entire cast including Ewan McGregor, Olivia Williams, Kim Kattral and a never-better Pierce Brosnan, is a political-conspiracy-thriller with a plot that operates like clockwork. Polanski is still a master of understated detail and finesse. Released at the beginning of the year, it was passed over by the movie going public, but as far as star-studded art house pics go, this one is a barnburner.

6. 127 Hours

For years I’ve been saying “only Danny Boyle.” Only Danny Boyle could take a flick about Aron Ralston, an alpha-male-adventurer (and Phish fan) who gets his arm trapped in a boulder down in the unexplored depths of the Utah mountainscape - and eventually has to saw it off with a dull blade - and turns it into another visually masterful, kinetic and intelligent experience. Also James Franco delivers one of his best performances ever.

 5. Black Swan

No other actor or actress put themselves through the shit like Natalie Portman in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film: A psycho-sexual-ballet-horror-thriller where Ms. Portman is required to lose all the weight off her bones, dance like a professional, and experience an intensely schizophrenic episode, where reality meshes with pure unadulterated nightmarishness. Some have called it one of the trashiest films of the year, but I think it’s great because it’s one of the most trippy, philosophically beautiful, but yeah, trashy films I’ve ever seen. Also Portman and Mila Kunis get it on. Ticket price = earned.

 4. Winnebago Man

Watch this clip before reading this review: http://bit.ly/9MOVmB

Jack Rebney is the Winnebago Man. He’s also a human being. Director Ben Steinbauer started out making a documentary about the sociological effects and dangers associated with becoming an Internet celebrity and ended up gaining access to the soul of a once great, broken man who had lost faith in modern society. Rebney is an absolute character; a man who wields words with a brilliant voice and an even more brilliant vulgarity. A hilarious film that eventually becomes so upliftingly powerful, you won’t know whether to laugh or cry. Seriously.

 3. The Social Network

Absolutely no one thought this movie would work. On paper, director David Fincher’s team was stacked: Sorkin, Eisenberg and Timberlake were on board and ready to go. Only thing was, it was the “Facebook movie.” And due to the nature of the billion-dollar social network beast, that meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Then the movie came out and we were all caught off guard. That’s because the final product resembled something more of a adrenaline shot to the brain wrapped in an exquisitely shot, acted and written film about the nature of truth and communication in the digital age. If it were up to me, Fincher, Eisenberg and Trent Reznor would already have their Oscars.

2. Enter The Void

Inside every human mind is an ability to see things; but have you ever asked yourself what else there is to see beyond your own mind? Gaspar Noe’s trip-out of visually explosive proportions reaches new psychedelic heights and treads fascinating philosophical territories. The film, which entered the festival circuit at Cannes 2009 and has been dividing audiences (par the course for eccentric frenchman director, Noe) ever since, finally seeing a full release in late 2010.

Virtually unseen apart from art-house and Noe fans, the film follows Oscar (newcomer Nathaniel Brown), a drug dealer living in Tokyo with his Stripper sister Linda (Boardwalk Empire’s Paz De La Huerta). After an intense trip on DMT (one of the most powerful hallucinogens existing today) and some discussion about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Oscar is killed in a drug raid.

Disclosing that information however, does not give away much of this film’s “plot”; all of this happens in the first 30 minutes. What happens in the next two hours is a very strange but hypnotic trip through time, space, sex, drugs, life, death and ultimately, rebirth. Gaspar Noe worships at the feet of Stanley Kubrick; he is a filmmaker much more interested in taking his audience on a cinematic trip rather than a structural path. You might hate it, you might love it, you might fall asleep, but like Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, it is a trip worth taking a chance on.

1. Inception

In my review for Chessmaster Nolan’s superhero/crime opus “The Dark Knight” I proclaimed that Christopher Nolan scared me. Even though TDK was an absolute beast of a film, grossing over a billion dollars, something told me that he was capable of making something even “bigger.” His latest perfectly shot, perfectly acted, fully realized labyrinthine action-adventure wasn’t exactly a box office behemoth like TDK (despite the $823 mil it took in worldwide), but it did manage to solidify Nolan’s ability to step his game up successfully, even in the face of enormous critical and industry hype.

The plot and thematic implications of Inception are almost too complex to describe in a few sentences. One might be able to categorize it simply as just another “is this real?” flick with great production values and huge stars, but in reality it is so much more. It is an exploration of the effects time and altered consciousness have on the human mind...in a world where both can be manipulated quite easily. In this world, the lines between dreams and reality are routinely blurred, and those who control all the wealth, power and intelligence are the only ones who can walk those lines carefully (or can they?).

This is also a daring, but beautifully crafted, film. Longtime Nolan DOP Wally Pfister, Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, Editor Lee Smith and Director Nolan work together on an almost symphonic level to create some of the most gorgeously rendered city dreamscapes ever seen on film. Smith’s editing in particular is crucial to the piece; Nolan’s use of slow motion and viscerally jarring cuts only adds to the experience of moving through dream-time with these characters. Those who have seen the film can attest to the falling van sequence and its beyond-words intense value to the last 40 minutes of this uncannily brilliant film.

Christopher Nolan scares me. Not because he made the best film he’s ever made, stuffed with ideas and themes at once metaphysical, existential and ultimately, human. No. It’s because the next Batman film could possibly be better.