The Eyes of Lara Mars look over a group of films from the Toronto film fest for AICN's readers. She gives us her views on DESERT BLUE, HOME FRIES, SIX STRING SAMURAI, APT PUPIL, LAST NIGHT, and I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED. Man, what a great film lineup, and you geeks have really responded well with lots of good reviews for us to share with the world. If a festival is in your neck of the woods write us about it, review the films, share the experience.
Last Night: Don McKellar's first full-length feature film, did well at Cannes, and was the opener for the Canadian Cinema series this year. The sun is going supernova, and the film explores the last moments in the lives of several different people and families (from 6pm to Midnight to be exact, which is when the sun is magically timed to blow up real good :-))
This is a really great movie. It has a very surreal quality to it, mostly due to the fact that nobody in the film seems very sad about the situation, just content. Its a good exploration of what people would do if they new the end was coming months in advance. You cant very well riot for weeks on end, can you :-)
It also had a really intense ending that was totally unexpected (One of the things I was thinking about before the movie was how they would end this movie without copping out, and they certainly did not).
Go see it, support our Canadian cinema :-)(And then go see Cube which I believe is now finally hitting movie theatres)
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Desert Blue: A story about a Desert town full of zany small-town characters, whose lives are turned upside-down when a Hollywood actress comes to town and gets stuck during a quarantine caused by the crash of a tractor-trailer. You see, the cargo of said trailer was the secret ingredient of the local Cola beverage, and may be lethal in its concentrated form.
What follows is a predicable, cliche-ridden story that really has very little going for it, except for a fairly good performance by Christina Ricci (who seems to be in every other film in the festival this year) as a teenager who is fascinated with blowing things up.
The only surprise in the entire film was the ending. I expected the credits to roll over the final shot, instead there was a fade to black first :-)
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I Woke up early the Day I Died: This is a movie spearheaded by Billy Zane (Produced/Starred in) that is made from an Ed Wood Jr. script that he wrote but never got financing for.
This movie has *NO* dialog, just some text from the shooting script superimposed on the screen at key areas. It features a really good industrial-type soundtrack (think Pi), that helped us all stay awake at 2:30 am :-)
I found it to be an interesting experiment and somewhat enjoyable, but ultimately I think the movie was a failure. The story really is quite shallow (due in no small part to there not being any dialog i'm sure), and really could not support a feature-length movie. I was at the midnight screening where the crowd tends to be really good (and where all the girls were swooning over Billy Zane in attendance), but it seemed like most of the crowd just wasnt into it.
Lots of cool cameos by Ron Perlman, Christina Ricci (Again), Sandra Bernhardt, etc etc. I think a lot of people here will like this one more than I did, though.
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Six-String Samurai: After all the hype you guys lavished on this one, I knew I had to check it out.
Sad to say, I was fairly dissapointed in this one. Maybe it was because my expectations were way too high, but I thought it could have been a lot stronger, for two reasons:
1)For a 90 min. action movie, this one was really slow paced, and
2)With the main actor having 17 overseas action movies under his belt, you would think they would have known a thing or two about shooting an exciting fight sequence. All the action seemed to happen out of view of the camera (probably for PG-13 reasons).
Still an okay film though. (BTW, I also got a seat beside the reserved section, one row in front. I saw the guy who posted the other review there, and was wondering what Jeffery had given him :-) )
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Broken Vessels: One of my favorite movies so far. This was a really fantastic movie about a pair of paramedics, one who is morally corrupt, and the other who, as his new partner, quickly becomes corrupted by him.
Not the greatest sounding premise, but it turns into a really great movie. Afterwards the director was asked for the inspiration for the film, and he responded that "Basically, I wanted to make a movie with an Ambulance in it". Gotta like that :-)
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Home Fries: Drew Barrymore's latest flick. Was expecting a chick flick (I guess because of the title's similarity to Fried Green Tomatoes :-) ), but was pleasantly surprised to get a fairly good comedy with only a hint of romantic subtext to it. Besides, Ya can't go wrong with a Busey in a comedic role as far as I'm concerned, and this movie was no exception. (Jake Busey)
BTW, it was also interesting seeing the enormous amount of security at this screening, far more than at anything else I've seen so far (most of the cast was there, including Barrymore,Busey, Luke Wilson, Catherine O'Hara). Again, more girls screaming and crying, but this time for Drew Barrymore :-)
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Apt Pupil: I saw Home Fries and Apt Pupil one after the other (in the same theatre even), which made for an, erm, interesting contrast in film genres :-)
Apt Pupil is perhaps *The* best movie I have seen this year. Fantastic from start to finish (Although the appearance of David Schwimmer got a few chuckles from the crowd). I don't really tend to get unnerved or creeped out at movies that often, but I did once or twice in this one. Excellent, excellent performances from the two lead actors (Ian McKellar, Brad Renfrow).
Thats it for now. I've got 2 movies left: 23 (a movie about a computer hacker from Argentina I think), and Cascadeur- The Amber Chamber (midnight movie in the same vein as a Jackie Chan flick, this one from Germany). Should be fun :-)
Lara Mars
