Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Eric Lurio's in Toronto right now, gearing up for the festival that's about to get underway, and he's already seen a number of films. Lucky dog. My girlfriend, who is from Argentina, has already informed me that it is my sacred duty to get us into the earliest possible LA screening of NINE QUEENS. Based on what Eric has to say about it, I must admit I'm interested...
They call Toronto's the "Festival of Festivals," and it may very well be that. It's the penultimate major film festival of the year, and if a major film is going to get a debut, it might as well be here.
All the big studios come, sometimes, because it's big, important, and close. Hell, it's less than a thousand miles from New York and an airline ticket is only around a hundred and fifty bucks round trip including taxes. So with the Loony (Canadian dollar) at only around 65¢ and ATMs not charging anything, this is a cheapskates paradise.
Not that I'm going to be going to all the parties and such. I'll try to get into at least one or two, but there's 300 or so movies to see and only ten days to see them.
So I cheated a little....The following reviews are done from pre-festival screenings, that means that I saw them back in NYC before I left. They've been having them here in T.O. as well, and I should be able to have seen five or six up here before they give out credentials on the 5th...So here they is: The first batch from best to worst:
Nine Queens
Written and Directed by Fabián Bielinsky
Every now and then, a film unexpectedly hits you. From out of nowhere, this thing comes along with so much talent behind it and so much fun to watch that it litterally flours you. "Nine Queens" is one of those.
We meet Juan(Gaston Pauls) and Marcos(Ricardo Darin) in the Argentine equivelant of a 7-11, where the former is passing bad hundreds to the unsuspecting cashier(Graciela Tenembaum). She goes off shift, and she and the manager(Gabriel Correa) return to find our trying it again on her replacement(MarÃa Mercedes Villagra). Then Marcos comes out of the background, where gun in hand, he arrests poor Juan.
Little do we know he's not a cop. Thus begins a friendship between two con men that gets twisty and more complicated as further down the road we go.
Beginning with a brief tour of the world of B.A., Marcos gives Juan and us a brief course in the art of the con. Then at his favorite hangout, Marcos gets a message from his sister Valeria(Leticia Bredice), who is straight as an arrow honest and hates her sibling's guts. Why did she call? Was it the lawsuit she's got against him?
No. Apparently, his old pal Sandler the forger(Óscar Núñez) was caught and had what appeared to have a minor heart attack at the ritzi hotel that Val works at. He asked her to call him. It seems that he was going to see the Spanish zillionaire Vidal Gandolfo(Ignasi Abadal) to try to sell him some extremely rare stamps, the unique "Nine Queens" which give the film it's name. He wants Marcos to sell them for him as the timeframe for the sale is only that day and Grandolfo is leaving the country the next morning.
But all Sandler's got on him are photos. How do Marcos and Juan [who needs the money to bribe his grifter father out of the klink] get the real forgeries?....ah, now that's the question!!
This film is full of wonderful bits. Pauls and Darren have great chemistry together and banter about like they were an old comedy team. There are come great bit parts, like Celia Juárez, as Sandler's not-as-deaf-as-she-pretends-to-be wife and Elsa Berenguer as Sandler's sister Berta are both hilarious, and there are lots of bits like theirs throughout the film.
This is the most fun I've had at a subtitled movie since "Crouching Tiger" a year back. See it.
No Man's Land-UA
Written and Directed by Danis Tanovic
The Bosnian civil war was the first real mess of the 21st century. With the fall of communism in 1989-90, Yugoslavia fell too. But Slobodon Milosovic wanted to keep power and sent his minions to keep it together by killing or expelling all who weren't of his Serbian ethnic group. The worst fighting was in Bosnia-Hertzogivina, where in 1994, a fictional group of Bosnian soldiers were lost in the fog. "He's probably taken us to the enemy lines." one soldier derisively says about their guide.
The fog lifts, and it's morning. The brave little band finds itself fifteen feet in front of the enemy Serbs, who expectedly blow them away...but not all. One of them, Chiki(Branko Djuric), jumps into a trench between the two sides, No Man's Land, where he expects to hide out until dark. His comrade Cera(Filip Sovagovic) also made it to the trench, but he's dead, or so we think.
Meanwhile, the Serb commander wants to find out if the machine gunners have succeeded in their job, so he sends an old veteran (Mustafa Nadarevic) and Nino(Rene Bitorajac), a new recruit fresh from basic training. They crawl over the trench and look for survivors, as Chiki hides in a room. They find what they think is Cera's body, which the old guy moves and digs a small hole where he places a particularly nasty mine. Then they place Cera on it. When the Bosnians try to move Cera...BOOM!! As soon as they finish, Chiki finds a rifle and kills the old guy and wounds Nino.
We now have two guys who speak the same language from different sides of a Civil war arguing about the politics of the situation. This could have made a fine play on it's own, but then Cera recovers from "death" and learns the awful truth, he can't move or he'll blow up and take the other two with him.
Now what appears to be a simple talkfest takes an interesting turn. Nino and Chiki make their presence known to the two sides, and they in turn contact UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeepers to find out what to do about the situation. While the situation is debated up and down the chain of command, Sergeant Marchand(Georges Siatidis) decides to take his white tank and give it a look-see, that is his job after all.
But the Colonel in charge(Simon Callow), not wanting any responsibility for anything without a full meeting of the UN General Assembly, orders Marchand back to base, leaving the three soldiers just sitting there. This has been followed by a Jane(Katrin Cartlidge), representative of the international media who's been monitoring the whole thing on her police scanner. The focus changes from the three soldiers and the conflict in Bosnia to the conflicts between the UN and the media and within the UN itself.
Tragedy mixed with farce, the way it always seems to be. The acting is great, especially the three former Yugoslavs who play the leads. The writing is brisk and smart and this is one fine film. Well worth a trip the art house.
Focus
Directed by Neal Slavin
Arthur Miller wrote dozens of plays but only one novel, a kafkaesque horror show about racism. A gentile all of a sudden looks Jewish and the world turns it's back on him. This takes place in the 1940s when this sort of thing could happen.
Lawrence Newman(William H. Macy) is a confirmed bachelor living with his mother in Brooklyn. He's on good terms with his neighbors, especially Fred(Meat Loaf), who lives next door, or at least he thinks he is. He's also a confirmed racist, which we find out at the very beginning when, as the head of personnel, he meets one Gertrude Hart(Laura Dern), who's looking for a secretarial job and allegedly looks too Jewish. She's politely shown the door.
Lawrence needs glasses, and after some prodding from his boss, he gets them. But somehow, he magically appears to look Jewish himself, and is given a demotion. based on looks alone. He quits.
As he looks for a job, he discovers the depth of antisemitism in NYC as he's turned down again and again. In fact, the only place where he could get work is a place in Jersey City run by Jews. Here he meets Gert once again, and a romance starts up that leads to marriage.
All well and good, right? Not really, the looks problem is felt back in the neighborhood, where Fred and a racist group called the "Union Crusaders" is busy persecuting a Jewish newsagent named Finkelstein(David Paymer), and soon they're after Lawrence too.
The more they face discrimination, the more antisemitic Lawrence and Gert get. It turns out that she used to be with the Union Crusaders as well and somehow she can't get the message across to them that she's a card-carrying Shicksa.
The photography gives the film a really creepy look, and that's exactly what this film needs, Macy is, in a word, brilliant. This is his movie, and despite that there's many characters in it, it's his film and his alone. He manages to bring true humanity to a character that's basically one-dimensional. Truly as good as anything he's ever done.
It's going to be worth a rental or matinee for sure.
Tape
Directed by Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater likes to take risks, looking at his oeuvre, there's only one "Hollywood-style" movie, "The Newton Boys." His others have been off-beat experiments, especially his previous one, "Waking Life" which is a genuine feature-length cartoon. While trying to get distribution for that one, he did another film, an extremely cheap rendition of a play by....which was filmed in a hotel room with a digital video camera. It has only three actors and, as stage plays usually are, is very talky.
The film begins with Vince(Ethan Hawke) burning off energy alone in his hotel room on the outskirts of Lansing, Michigan, where his old friend Johnny(Robert Sean Leonard) has a film opening. Vince has just broken up with his girlfriend, but that's not why he's decided to come all the way from Oakland, California. He has an ulterior motive.
It seems that back in high school, Vince was going out with Amy (Uma Thurman), who just happens to be an assistant DA in Lansing, but it was Johnny who happened to deflower her. Something that Vince has never forgiven. It seems that he thinks that it MUST have been rape, otherwise he'd have gotten....you get the idea.
With nothing really visual going on, the film relies on words, and Stephen Belber's are really good. Leonard tries to say calm as Hawke chews the scenery as he's never done before, it's a tit-for-tat cat fight between two old toms who've done this all before. It's both infuriating and enthralling, and when the subject of their debate finally shows up, Thurman manages to keep up with the two of them.
This really isn't one of those things that warrant the big screen. That being said, it would really make a fine TV show, and when it gets to cable next year it should definitely be seen. But it's not worth the ten bucks for a trip to the theater.
Mulholland Drive
Written and Directed by David Lynch
Back in 1999, David Lynch did a G-rated film for DISNEY. It had a straightforward plot, great acting and nice visuals. People were amazed. Now, three years later, he's back to being inscrutable.
Damn!!!
It's best to begin with Rober Forester, who plays Det. Harry McKnight. He's listed on the poster as a star, but has only two lines in the entire movie. It appears that despite the length of two-and-a-half hours or more, a great deal seems to have been cut out. Lynch has done miniseries before and apparently, this was going to be one too. But "Twin Peaks II" is something ABC, nor anyone else, is something we don't really need, but that's what we're going to get anyway....
We begin in a limo driving along Mulholland Drive in LA. A woman played by Laura Harring is sitting in the back. They stop at an unexpected place, a gun is pulled....then BANG! Beach Boys clones driving at full speed crash into the limo, killing everyone but the intended original victim, who wanders off with a purse full of money up to a bungalow colony on Sunset, and....
Meanwhile astoundingly perky Betty Elms(Naomi Watts) arrives at LA international airport direct from Deep River, Ontario [making her both a stereotypical Midwesterner AND a foreigner simultaneously-typical Lynch] accompanied by two disturbingly happy octogenarians who's identities were withheld from the press kit. Betty goes to her rich aunt's place, where she's going to be house-sitting while she tries to be a movie star.
She's met by Coco Lenoix (Ann Miller in her first role in decades) the nosy landlady, who warns her about the weird neighbors, but nothing can prepare her for meeting the amnesiac played by Harring in the shower. A picture of Rita Hayworth gives her a name, and soon Betty and "Rita" are the best of friends.
While Betty and Rita are trying to solve the mystery of the latter's identity, film director Adam Kesher(Justin Theroux) is having problems with the Castigliane brothers(Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti), who, on instructions (?) from the mysterious Mr. Roque(Michael J. Anderson) are demanding that the lead of his new musical extravaganza go to a certain Camilla Rhodes....
Then there's the weird guy telling his dreams to a shrink in restaurant...and what about Cowboy(Monty Montgomery)?
The answers to these and other questions are, in fact not answered, not merely to the satisfaction of this reviewer and many of his good friends, but at all. This is an infuriating film. Stylish, yes, well acted yes, but the humongous plot holes, and the fact that the last twenty minutes is an entirely different movie than that which proceeded it.
See this at you're own risk.
In The Bedroom
Written and Directed by Todd Field
WASPs suffering in New England has been the stuff of independent cinema for years. It's not pretty, and it's not always interesting, but it can lead to some really good performances.
Those performances are to be found in this otherwise turgid bout of navel gazing. It's been done so many times before in the world of independent cinema that it's become a cliché, and if it wasn't for the acting, this would be one of the most forgettable films of the decade.
Okay, the gist: We're in a medium sized town on the coast of Maine, where Frank Fowler(Nick Stahl), an architecture student, is fishing for lobsters during his summer break. We first meet him and his physician father Matt(Tom Wilkinson) in the latter's back yard, where Frank's girlfriend Natalie's(Marisa Tomei) son is having a birthday party of sorts. Natalie and Frank seem to have a good relationship, while that between her and Frank's mother Ruth(Sissy Spacek).
The reason is clear to see, she's far older than he is, and her soon-to-be ex-husband Richard(William Mapother) is still hanging around. Clearly, Richard is a villain, or else Natalie and the children(Camden Munson and Christopher Adams) would cringe every time he shows up. Clear enough, we know there's tragedy brewing.
Mom wants Frank to break up with Natalie, and he says that he will, while he tells Natalie the opposite. Meanwhile Frank and Richard snarl at each other. It's all rather tedious as Dad brings Frank along to play poker with his pals(Justin Ashforth, William Wise and Kevin Chapman). Will this tedium ever end? Well, it does, for a while...
As this is an American film, we've got to have blood and gore, and the hoped for happens, and then we get more tedium as Mom and Dad mourn the loss of a son. Lots of silence and longing glances while Richard gets out on bail. More slow burns as Spacek and Wilkinson look at each other. Then revenge.
Tom Wilkinson's been in lots of British productions. Some of them have been seen on Masterpiece theater. He's always there when they need a British general in films like "The Patriot" and others. In this he manages to spew out a decent New England accent and pretty much shoulders the entire movie by himself. A mighty feat indeed, but it's still not enough to wake you up. Pass this one by.
La Cienaga
Written and Directed by Lucrecia Martel
One thing you can do with movies is hurt innocent people and get away with it. This Lucrecia Martel has managed to do with this poor excuse for a film, which has managed to get into a number of international film festivals like this one, because self-conscious acts of navel gazing seem to be popular with those people who judge entries. Why I haven't a clue.
The skinny: Mecha(Graciela Borges) is an ugly, middle aged drunk who lives with her useless husband and brood of unlovable teenagers in what used to be a upper-middle class plantation house near the Argentine-Bolivian border. One daughter, Momi(Sofia Bertolotto) has the hots for Isabel(Andrea Lopez), one of the maids, who'm Mecha thinks is stealing.
Here's where the injuries start. Mecha is so drunk that she falls down on her glass of booze, therebye cutting herself deeplay just above her cleavage. This accident brings Jose(Juan Cruz Bordeu), the eldest son, back from Buenos Aires, where he's living with his girlfriend Mercedes(Silvia Bayle), whom everybody up in the boonies hates like poison.
So much of the film is of Mecha complaining to her cousin Tali (Mercedes Moran) and the kids getting hurt. One kid loses an eye, Juan gets the crap beaten out of him during carnival....there's no reason for it except for sadistic glee. Tali's husband(Martin Adjemian) wants nothing to do with these people, and he's, of course, abosolutely right.
...and unless you like boring films about nothing, so should you.
Thanks, Eric. Have a great time up there, and let's hear from anyone else who is gearing up for the fest. There's so much to see, and it's so easy for films to fall between the cracks. If you see something worth hollering... well... holler!!
"Moriarty" out.
