Off Topic - Toronto International Film Festival Reviews - Long

Toronto International Film Festival, 2003.

This year's crop films was generally excellent. Naturally, seeing less than
ten percent of what's shown means I've had an incomplete sampling but if the
rest were up to the standard of the ones I did see, it had to be among the
best. I've written up my reviews in the order in which I saw the films. I
hope you enjoy the films you do see and find the reviews helpful.

The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

This is a documentary which permits two of the only seven survivors of a Khmer
Rouge prison in which tens of thousands of Cambodians were systematically
tortured and murdered by their countrymen during the seventies to confront some
of their torturers and jailers. The director is also a survivor (and escapee)
of another prison who managed to get to Paris and safety. In this low-key but
powerful film, you learn of the unlikely survival of these two men, one an
artist whose paintings were admired by his captors and who thus survived the
terrible purges of the time. The jailors demonstrate their activities of
torture, beatings and eventually killing of their male and female prisoners as
well as of children and their only defense is the Nazi-like "following orders"
even when one of the survivors directly asks them "and what did little children
possibly do to deserve killing?" They all simply state that they were
indoctrinated to believe that the prisoners were "the enemy" and that they,
also terrified (and one must believe them) were afraid to do other than what
they did. The sang froid of these murderers is astounding. The film is
important, chilling.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

The film from the novel by Mordecai Richler was first released in the early
seventies, one of Canada's first smash-hit feature length films. I saw it at
that time and saw it again at the retrospective of the Film Festival and was
amazed and pleased at how well it stood up. It is a coming of age film about a
Jewish young man in Montreal who has nothing and wants everything. His Zayde
(grandfather) tells him that without land, a man is nothing and Duddy at
nineteen starts to put together his portfolio, beginning by accumulating the
land around a lake. His methods are original, to understate the case and he is
an interesting mix of coldhearted chiseler and finagler and warmhearted young
man trying to keep his friends and family prospering. In the end he gets his
way and makes his fortune, leaving some damage behind and disillusioning some,
including his grandfather. It would be a good thing if this retrospective
brought new life to this marvelous film.

Bon Voyage

This is a French film about a difficult period in French history - the
beginning of the German occupation and the damage done to France by Petain with
his surrender to the German forces. The story is complex and the film runs
from serious to farcical, without pause for breath. The story is complex with
turns at every step, with murder, romance, espionage and courage by some
unexpected and sudden heroes. Just to tempt you, there is a beautiful movie
actress who kills her lover, then calls upon an admirer to help her dispose of
the corpse. En route to depositing the body in a canal, there is an automobile
accident and the trunk pops open, leaving the protagonist with a body to
account for. He ends up in jail, escapes when prisoners are being moved out of
Paris because of the imminent invasion by the Germans… well, that's just the
first twenty minutes of the film. You can only imagine what two hours will
bring. Fabulous performances by a stellar cast, last-minute escapes and
rescues enough for five films and yet it all fits together perfectly. The
choreography of this film is impeccable and you will scarcely pause for breath
until it all comes to a happy but unexpected ending (what else?). Don't be
sleepy when you see this one - you don't want to miss a single twist of the
plot.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

I told my companion that I expected we'd be practically alone in this film,
which I chose because I'd seen a one-day-old camel in Morocco many years ago.
What a pleasant surprise to find that the film was sold out and that there were
150 more people on line hoping for seats to come and see it. The hype was that
this is a great film and that's also the truth of it. Made by three young
German filmmakers (their first and student effort), it is a 90 minute
combination documentary and feature film.

Imagine you are in a nomadic tribe for which camels are of the utmost
importance. Now imagine that a camel has a very difficult birth and then
rejects her calf. This is in fact what has happened and we are fortunate to
join this extended family in the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia as they live
their lives and solve the problem of the rejected calf. In the access to the
family, this is a pure documentary and we are invited into their tents and
along on their rides, sharing their lives and the incredible scenery where they
live. Shots of desert with snow capped mountains behind them abound and the
beautiful people with their interesting lore are ours for a time to behold. It
is amusing to see the twentieth century mixing with the very primitive lives
and customs of these people as they put on glasses, use an obviously commercial
needle to sew hides but also weave camel hair into ropes and ride on camels to
get to a larger village when they need to. And eventually they obtain a
satellite dish and a TV!!

The Fog of War

This expression is a turn of phrase by Robert McNamara and this documentary
film is an extended interview with the mid-eighties man who was a power figure
in the sixties, acting as Secretary of Defense for JFK as well as for LBJ. He
holds back very little (except for private family material at which he hints)
about the wars and near wars of those years, making it abundantly clear how
very close we were to nuclear war on more than one occasion but in particular
being very clear on that point during the Cuban missile crisis. For someone
who remembers weeping with fear in her car during President Kennedy's speech at
that time, this was a very powerful film indeed. Just as a taste of what is in
it, McNamara remembers asking Castro three questions after the crisis was
resolved: Were the missiles in Cuba ("Yes"). Did Castro recommend to
Khrushchev that they be used? ("Yes"). And did Castro believe that if they had
been used, Cuba would have been destroyed ("Absolutely yes"). I strongly
recommend that anyone who lived in those times or finds them as interesting as
I do make a point of seeing this important film.

The Human Stain

This is an unfortunate interpretation of what I can only assume is an
unfortunate novel by Philip Roth with the concomitant of very unfortunate
casting. Try to imagine if you can Sir Anthony Hopkins playing a light-skinned
black man originally from New Jersey who is passing as a white, Jewish
philosophy professor. Does it sound like a mismatch - well, that's only the
beginning of the poor choices exhibited by the filmmakers. Nicole Kidman, with
her perfect skin and incredibly expensive and perfect teeth plays the beaten-up
divorced wife of a physically abusive man. Huh? It doesn't improve at any
point, with the rest of the cast seemingly somewhat embarrassed by the whole
business. I could not get past the incredible amount of suspension of
disbelief required for the eminently British Hopkins to be imagined to be black
and passing for Jewish. Let us draw a veil over the rest of the film. It's
kinder that way.

The Event

The Event is Danny's goodbye party. Danny is a young New Yorker with AIDS.
Since he has started to have brain tumors, he has decided that he, not nature,
will determine the time of his exit from the world. Danny's friends and family
support him in this with only the exception of his older sister The outcome of
this Event is astounding, however; a District Attorney hears of it from the
older sister and an investigation with the possibility of criminal charges is
begun. The film traces all the events surrounding the Event and the
investigation. It is a well-plotted and very well realized film with only two
weak links; the woman who plays the DA and the woman who plays the younger
sister. Olympia Dukakis, as the Jewish mother of the young man, is simply
magnificent. Hers is an Academy Award performance and despite the fact that
this theme has been explored perhaps too often in film, for her performance
alone, you should see this film.

Touching the Void

This is a true story, a documentary about perhaps the single most amazing
rescue in the history of mountain climbing. Two climbers were attempting a
first, a climb up a very difficult face of an Andes cliff in Peru when one
slipped and severely broke his leg. This would normally spell death for one or
both of the climbers but his partner made an incredible series of descents,
paying out rope for him to drop 150 feet at a time and then descending to meet
him and begin again. This worked well until once there was nowhere to land -
the injured climber was suspended over a crevasse and there was simply nothing
for the rescuer to do once this became apparent but cut him loose lest they
both be dragged to their deaths. Then began, for the injured climber, an
incredible journey, where, with a leg so badly broken that merely touching it
to the ground spelled agony, he dropped to the bottom of the chasm, then
climbed out and followed the footsteps of his companion back to their camp.
This has been documented in a book by the same name. The film goes way beyond
the book, incorporating the inner thoughts of the two men (they are there on
film) as well as two actors who reenact the events. It is, for anyone like me
who finds mountain climbing endlessly fascinating, a film definitely not to
miss.

Alila

This is a slice of life film about assorted tenants in a decidedly slummy
apartment building in Tel Aviv. The stories are thin but the characters are
interesting and well realized. It just didn't offer enough of a story line
(it's done in the Love Boat tradition, skipping from story to story, all
finishing at the end) to hold my interest. I judge a film partly by whether I
care passionately about what happens to the characters in it and this one
failed that test absolutely.

Girl With a Pearl Earring

This thin period piece is from a thin novel of the same name. The story refers
to a Vermeer painting and how it came to be. The cinematography is
magnificent, with incredible lighting to create the conditions for Vermeer to
produce his wonderful art. The protagonist is virtually silent for the entire
film, perhaps as servants in the seventeenth century were required to be but an
actress simply being still and looking at a camera soulfully does very little
for me. Even if she is a beautiful actress, Scarlett Johansson, with
bee-stung lips that I am sure put men in mind of a particular variant of
lovemaking (are they natural or enhanced with collagen - your guess is as good
as mine).

Out of Time

This thriller, starring the marvelous Denzel Washington, has a new and
different story (no, I won't tell) and is choreographed incredibly well, a must
in this case. There is a good mix of romance (beware!!), greed, danger and
great detective work. If it had presented itself as a novel, I'm sure I would
not have put it down after the first paragraph and I was exactly that gripped
by it as a film. Excellent cast, terrific direction, what more could you ask
for?

Veronica Guerin

This eponymous film is about an Irish newspaper reporter (wonderfully realized
by the wonderful Cate Blanchette), who gets herself committed to breaking a
story about dope dealers at the very top levels. It is from a true story with
a tragic ending. In classic rapportage style, the story is told as it happened
and it is a gripping story, very well told indeed. The acting is sensational.
It leaves us with the question of why some people are willing to risk all
knowing that the probable outcome will be to substantially shorten their lives
in aid of an obsession. This woman was well and truly warned of what would
(and did) happen. The only good outcome was that the Irish government, once
she died in the line of duty, did in fact act to bring these people to justice.
If only it hadn't taken such a terrible loss to do it.

The Company
This Robert Altman film left me breathless. There is virtually no plot but the
theme, played by members of the Joffrey Ballet, including the marvelous Neve
Campbell,, is how ballets go from rehearsal to performance. Don't think there's
anything smooth about rehearsals; they are so often marred by temperament on
the part of a dancer, the choreographer, the artistic director The
performances are spectacular, including one which is developed over many
rehearsals and explanations of a completely new ballet, "The Blue Snake." The
artistic director of the Company is a marvelous, temperamental Italian (his
meetings are something to behold) who is also the dancers' most loyal fan, a
one-man claque who shouts "Bravo!!" after each performance to begin the
audience's applause. One performance in particular is simply spectacular as it
was done during a violent thunderstorm with the dancers showing incredible
poise. If you love ballet or even if you like ballet (I'm not really a
balletomane) you should not miss this incredible film.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

This is a marvelous French animated feature. The story is very French, with
three cyclists in the Tour de France being kidnapped by the baddest bad guys
you've ever seen and their eventual rescue by the grandmother of one cyclist
and the aging Triplets, a former Burlesque act. The animation is charming and
the details are fabulously funny, including car licences that read "In Vino
Veritas." You need to see the frog's legs served at dinner when they do their
dance!! I particularly loved the architecture and the wonderful, tall ocean
liners that became involved in the chase along with various other bizarre
conveyances. If this comes to town, make time for it. There's no language
issue as most of the French is minor and unimportant and there are no
subtitles.

Pere et Fils

This title translates to "Father and Son" and it is about a father and his
three sons. The father is sick and tired of the sons' feuding and fussing and
decides to trick them into taking a vacation with him by pretending he has a
potentially fatal disease. As you can imagine, this would work only in a
comedy and this one, directed by a French stand-up comedian of 25 years'
experience, is a riot. The timing is perfect, the characters are all flawed
but lovable and the story flows from Paris to Quebec province and keeps you
interested and laughing all the way. The audience agreed with my review - it
was obvious by the sound of belly laughs through the entire film. The French
really know how to do comedy and this film is no exception.

In the Cut

This is a thriller from a novel written by a woman and realized by a woman
director. In this case, the women out-thriller the men!! The murders are
particularly bloody and the sex is particularly frequent and blunt, with lots
of female and some male nudity, a rather graphic scene with a blow job in
progress and even a telephone sex scene that is quite hot. If this is your cup
of tea, then this film will be worth seeing. There are the usual plot twists
and a rather banal "unexpected" ending but it is not for this one would see
this film - it is for the action. And there is plenty of it.

South from Granada

This is a Spanish film, a romance that involves the small-town Spanish
population (with some animosity left over from the Civil War), and an English
war hero who wanders into town seeking a home where he can peacefully read his
books and write his poetry. Unfortunately for the rather weak plot (which goes
on and on and on), the acting with two exceptions is quite weak. All the
British actors (about five) looked surprised to be in a film and acted just
that way - jerkily and poorly. The Spanish cast was much more accomplished and
the second lead male was really wonderful. I doubt this film will get to your
town anytime soon but if it does, only see it if romance is your thing.

Christmas

It wasn't Christmas at the theater where this film showed. The New Zealand
film dealing with a mixed Maori/Caucasian family obviously had had much bad
press and the house was only half full. Within half an hour it was quarter
full and by the end only the stubborn few remained. It is a home brewed
extremely low budget ($12,000 U.S.) effort that has no sparkle whatsoever.
Lots of fecal matter, though, with many scenes filmed in the bathroom of the
house borrowed from the director's family. A scatological wonder, there was
little enough of redeeming value offered in the film that I left quite early,
not eager to see what wonders would supplant the ones I had already suffered
through.

Rosenstrasse

This is a film about a true story from the Holocaust. It relates to a former
synagogue on Rosenstrasse in Berlin which was changed to a men's prison. The
Jewish husbands of Aryan women were at first protected from deportation but at
some point, the Nazis changed their minds and began arresting and deporting
such men. What happened after that is the subject matter of this flawless
film. The action begins in New York City, where the husband of a survivor has
died. She has never told her daughter the story of her survival after her
parents were taken by the Nazis. The daughter determines now to go to Germany
and pursue that story, which she manages to do by pretending to be writing an
article about Aryan wives of Jewish men at that time. Eventually it becomes
clear to the savior of her mother, such a wife, that there is more to this than
the collecting of a story and it all comes out. This film was simply
perfection from start to finish and despite my concern about seeing yet another
film about the Holocaust, I came away knowing that this was one of the best
films of this or any other year.

A Talking Picture

The director of this film is Portugal's great Manoel de Oliveira, now in his
nineties. The film starts out very interesting. A Portuguese mother and her
daughter are on a cruise ship, headed to Bombay where they are meeting her
husband. The cruise gives the mother, a history professor at a university, an
opportunity to visit places she has only read and taught about and to teach her
daughter about these places. They meet several men, an actor, a priest, who
are able to further explain things the mother doesn't know and this part of the
film, while langorous, is quite entertaining as you see sights in Greece,
Egypt, etc.. Then we segue to a second part, really rather strange, where the
Captain of the cruise liner, played by John Malkevich, along with three great
women of the day, played by Catherine Deneuve, Irene Papas and Stefania
Sandrelli, engage in a dialogue (in four languages, each speaking his or her
own language) about philosophy. Malkevich's Captain is a nelly gay man and he
simply does not fit with these other three sophisticated women. So the long
scenes with those four are confusing and weird. Then, as if the director had
run out of time and money, there is a totally bizarre ending and that's it.
I've always said that they don't know how to end movies - this is a classic
example of that failing. The Captain is called away and returns, telling his
women companions that they must get their lifejackets because a terrorist has
left a bomb on the ship. And off they all go except for the mother and
daughter who are delayed because the daughter has left her doll in the cabin.
Boom!!

Dying at Grace

Grace refers to Toronto's Salvation Army Grace Hospital which has a very
well-known hospice unit. The director, Alan King, took his cameras to the
hospital and, with the permission of five patients, attended the ends of their
lives. There is no voice over and no subtitles, the scenes simply speak for
themselves. Interspersed with views of the patients and their families and
friends are short scenes where the nurses, at night, record on tape the events
of the day vis-Ã*-vis the medical progress of the patients. It is a
fascinating look into death and dying, at how we die. My only issue with the
film was that it is simply too long; at two hours, fifty minutes, it is in the
end simply difficult to watch straight through.

Nathalie

The French have a way of writing excellent films on love in all its aspects.
This one explores infidelity, with a very new twist. A woman discovers, by
listening to the voicemail on her husband's cell phone, that he has been
unfaithful to her. He insists it was only once and meaningless. She is
untrusting and she hires a prostitute to flirt with him and lure him into an
affair. She and the prostitute meet often to allow her to have all the details
of this affair. How it ends is the twist and I'll leave you to see the film
and find out. Beautiful performances by Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart and
Gerard Depardieu complete this film.

The Republic of Love

This is, as the title suggests, a romantic comedy. It is directed by the very
talented Deepa Mehta, who has had numerous films at the Festival over the years
including one I missed last year, Hollywood, Bollywood. The story takes place
in Toronto (appealing for me) and the story is typical for the genre, boy meets
girl, boy loses girl, all forgiven. What was interesting was the identities of
the boy (a midnight disc jockey-cum-talk host) and the girl (a museum curator)
and what was simply wonderful was the music, by an Indian composer.

Good Morning, Night

This is a docudrama about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime
Minister, by the Red Brigades in 1978. The kidnappers are young people; Moro
is quite old at the time. The interest revolves around dialogues between the
kidnappers and Moro, done in a very even-handed way by the director, Marco
Bellocchio, so that you never know where his sympathies lie. There is only one
of the Red Brigades who begins to doubt the validity of the kidnapping and
assassination of the Prime Minister and her concerns provide the strong voice
the film needs for a direction.

Kamchatka

Kamchatka is a country on the board of a game of Risk (or the Spanish
equivalent) The game is played by a father and his older son during their
period of hiding out from the Argentinian Junta which destroyed so much of the
intellectual classes in that country during the tenure of that military regime.
The father is a lawyer, the mother a laboratory scientist, the boys, about
eight and six years old. The children are aware of some of the dangers to
their family because they have to change their names, stay in an unfamiliar
house and avoid contact with their old friends. What turns the tide against
the family is when the older boy, desperately missing his friends, goes into
town and visits a friend's home After this event, the net closes even tighter
and eventually, the children are left with the grandparents while the parents
attempt to escape. You won't want to miss this gripping film.

The Snow Walker

This excellent film is made from a story (in a collection by that name) written
by Canada's Farley Mowat. The story revolves around a bush pilot, Charlie
Halliday, who flies from Yellowknife to make a delivery of oil tanks. He
encounters an Inuit family with a sick, tubercular, young woman. He is
persuaded (by a bribe of walrus tusks, very valuable ivory) to take her to the
hospital in Yellowknife. The plane crashes and Charlie and Kanaalaq are
stranded on the tundra. He leaves the plane to attempt a walk to a village
some 200 miles away. When he doesn't return, the woman seeks and finds him at
the brink of death. Her knowledge of survival cures him and her hunting skills
allow her to make winter garments for him of the fur of animals they kill for
food.

The scenery is bleak (it was filmed around Churchill, Manitoba and other arctic
locations) the music wonderful and the acting by Barry Pepper as Charlie and a
young, new Inuit actress, Annabella Piugattuk, is simply incredible. A
must-see.


The Boys From County Clare

John Irvin's charming romantic comedy about love between musicians in rival
Irish ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) bands led by feuding brothers is a delight
from start to finish. The Irish take their music very seriously (not to
mention their love affairs) and the music fair, a competition, is as much a
player in this film as any of the actors. You'll be tapping your toes
throughout this film, enjoying the singing, dancing and romancing that make it
a winner.


Easy

This is another romantic comedy but it is about half an hour too long and five
subplots too complicated. The heroine is serially promiscuous and we meet
several of her boyfriends with the usual formula for romance. Problem is there
are so many boy-meets-loses-regains-girl episodes in the film that after a
while you simply cease to care. Not recommended.

Shattered Glass

In light of the recent New York Times Jayson Blair scandal, this is a very
timely story. It is a docudrama about a very real event, the fabrication of
stories in The New Republic magazine by Stephen Glass. Glass, indeed, has
recently published a book about his exploits. Although stories are typically
very carefully vetted by the editorial staff to assure that the facts are
accurate and the stories are true, the writer's notes are (or were) accepted as
proof of veracity especially when they are fleshed out with phone numbers, web
page addresses and the like. Glass probably spent more effort preparing his
fake materials than would have been required had he actually researched
stories. It is eternally fascinating how brilliant people can be lured into
spending more energy on criminal activity than would get them equivalent or
better rewards by legitimate effort. The film is very well acted and
definitely worth seeing.

Danny Deckchair

This Australian romantic comedy, a first feature film by American expatriate,
Jeff Balsmeyer, is totally charming and very well realized. Danny is a
dreamer, a quirky construction worker married to Trudy, an ambitious real
estate agent. When his vacation camping trip is canceled because Trudy has to
work (not the first lie she has told him), he gives a "barby" and decides to
try out his latest invention, a flying chair. He blows up balloons with helium
until the chair lurches and jumps up with him in it. He's having an
interesting time flying a great distance from home until he's hit by fireworks
and the chair quickly descends, dropping Danny into a (naturally beautiful)
woman's front yard. Turns out she's a spinster policewoman (well, she tickets
parked cars) and Danny is adopted into a new life in a new town. You'll enjoy
this one - I did, start to finish.



___|___ AT HOME
////////\ _
//////// \ (' IN VEGAS
| (_) | | (^)
ldb

In article , Karen
Allison wrote:

Toronto International Film Festival, 2003.

Film reviews don't belong in this newsgroup and putting "off topic" in
the subject line does not make it okay.

--
Charles

Film reviews don't belong in this newsgroup and putting "off topic" in
the subject line does not make it okay

My, my, your delete button must be broken.



___|___ AT HOME
////////\ _
//////// \ (' IN VEGAS
| (_) | | (^)
ldb

Which ship docks in Toronto???

On 15 Sep 2003 04:55:56 GMT, ojunk (Karen
Allison) wrote:

Toronto International Film Festival, 2003.

This year's crop films was generally excellent. Naturally, seeing less than
ten percent of what's shown means I've had an incomplete sampling but if the
rest were up to the standard of the ones I did see, it had to be among the
best. I've written up my reviews in the order in which I saw the films. I
hope you enjoy the films you do see and find the reviews helpful.

The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

This is a documentary which permits two of the only seven survivors of a Khmer
Rouge prison in which tens of thousands of Cambodians were systematically
tortured and murdered by their countrymen during the seventies to confront some
of their torturers and jailers. The director is also a survivor (and escapee)
of another prison who managed to get to Paris and safety. In this low-key but
powerful film, you learn of the unlikely survival of these two men, one an
artist whose paintings were admired by his captors and who thus survived the
terrible purges of the time. The jailors demonstrate their activities of
torture, beatings and eventually killing of their male and female prisoners as
well as of children and their only defense is the Nazi-like "following orders"
even when one of the survivors directly asks them "and what did little children
possibly do to deserve killing?" They all simply state that they were
indoctrinated to believe that the prisoners were "the enemy" and that they,
also terrified (and one must believe them) were afraid to do other than what
they did. The sang froid of these murderers is astounding. The film is
important, chilling.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

The film from the novel by Mordecai Richler was first released in the early
seventies, one of Canada's first smash-hit feature length films. I saw it at
that time and saw it again at the retrospective of the Film Festival and was
amazed and pleased at how well it stood up. It is a coming of age film about a
Jewish young man in Montreal who has nothing and wants everything. His Zayde
(grandfather) tells him that without land, a man is nothing and Duddy at
nineteen starts to put together his portfolio, beginning by accumulating the
land around a lake. His methods are original, to understate the case and he is
an interesting mix of coldhearted chiseler and finagler and warmhearted young
man trying to keep his friends and family prospering. In the end he gets his
way and makes his fortune, leaving some damage behind and disillusioning some,
including his grandfather. It would be a good thing if this retrospective
brought new life to this marvelous film.

Bon Voyage

This is a French film about a difficult period in French history - the
beginning of the German occupation and the damage done to France by Petain with
his surrender to the German forces. The story is complex and the film runs
from serious to farcical, without pause for breath. The story is complex with
turns at every step, with murder, romance, espionage and courage by some
unexpected and sudden heroes. Just to tempt you, there is a beautiful movie
actress who kills her lover, then calls upon an admirer to help her dispose of
the corpse. En route to depositing the body in a canal, there is an automobile
accident and the trunk pops open, leaving the protagonist with a body to
account for. He ends up in jail, escapes when prisoners are being moved out of
Paris because of the imminent invasion by the Germans… well, that's just the
first twenty minutes of the film. You can only imagine what two hours will
bring. Fabulous performances by a stellar cast, last-minute escapes and
rescues enough for five films and yet it all fits together perfectly. The
choreography of this film is impeccable and you will scarcely pause for breath
until it all comes to a happy but unexpected ending (what else?). Don't be
sleepy when you see this one - you don't want to miss a single twist of the
plot.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

I told my companion that I expected we'd be practically alone in this film,
which I chose because I'd seen a one-day-old camel in Morocco many years ago.
What a pleasant surprise to find that the film was sold out and that there were
150 more people on line hoping for seats to come and see it. The hype was that
this is a great film and that's also the truth of it. Made by three young
German filmmakers (their first and student effort), it is a 90 minute
combination documentary and feature film.

Imagine you are in a nomadic tribe for which camels are of the utmost
importance. Now imagine that a camel has a very difficult birth and then
rejects her calf. This is in fact what has happened and we are fortunate to
join this extended family in the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia as they live
their lives and solve the problem of the rejected calf. In the access to the
family, this is a pure documentary and we are invited into their tents and
along on their rides, sharing their lives and the incredible scenery where they
live. Shots of desert with snow capped mountains behind them abound and the
beautiful people with their interesting lore are ours for a time to behold. It
is amusing to see the twentieth century mixing with the very primitive lives
and customs of these people as they put on glasses, use an obviously commercial
needle to sew hides but also weave camel hair into ropes and ride on camels to
get to a larger village when they need to. And eventually they obtain a
satellite dish and a TV!!

The Fog of War

This expression is a turn of phrase by Robert McNamara and this documentary
film is an extended interview with the mid-eighties man who was a power figure
in the sixties, acting as Secretary of Defense for JFK as well as for LBJ. He
holds back very little (except for private family material at which he hints)
about the wars and near wars of those years, making it abundantly clear how
very close we were to nuclear war on more than one occasion but in particular
being very clear on that point during the Cuban missile crisis. For someone
who remembers weeping with fear in her car during President Kennedy's speech at
that time, this was a very powerful film indeed. Just as a taste of what is in
it, McNamara remembers asking Castro three questions after the crisis was
resolved: Were the missiles in Cuba ("Yes"). Did Castro recommend to
Khrushchev that they be used? ("Yes"). And did Castro believe that if they had
been used, Cuba would have been destroyed ("Absolutely yes"). I strongly
recommend that anyone who lived in those times or finds them as interesting as
I do make a point of seeing this important film.

The Human Stain

This is an unfortunate interpretation of what I can only assume is an
unfortunate novel by Philip Roth with the concomitant of very unfortunate
casting. Try to imagine if you can Sir Anthony Hopkins playing a light-skinned
black man originally from New Jersey who is passing as a white, Jewish
philosophy professor. Does it sound like a mismatch - well, that's only the
beginning of the poor choices exhibited by the filmmakers. Nicole Kidman, with
her perfect skin and incredibly expensive and perfect teeth plays the beaten-up
divorced wife of a physically abusive man. Huh? It doesn't improve at any
point, with the rest of the cast seemingly somewhat embarrassed by the whole
business. I could not get past the incredible amount of suspension of
disbelief required for the eminently British Hopkins to be imagined to be black
and passing for Jewish. Let us draw a veil over the rest of the film. It's
kinder that way.

The Event

The Event is Danny's goodbye party. Danny is a young New Yorker with AIDS.
Since he has started to have brain tumors, he has decided that he, not nature,
will determine the time of his exit from the world. Danny's friends and family
support him in this with only the exception of his older sister The outcome of
this Event is astounding, however; a District Attorney hears of it from the
older sister and an investigation with the possibility of criminal charges is
begun. The film traces all the events surrounding the Event and the
investigation. It is a well-plotted and very well realized film with only two
weak links; the woman who plays the DA and the woman who plays the younger
sister. Olympia Dukakis, as the Jewish mother of the young man, is simply
magnificent. Hers is an Academy Award performance and despite the fact that
this theme has been explored perhaps too often in film, for her performance
alone, you should see this film.

Touching the Void

This is a true story, a documentary about perhaps the single most amazing
rescue in the history of mountain climbing. Two climbers were attempting a
first, a climb up a very difficult face of an Andes cliff in Peru when one
slipped and severely broke his leg. This would normally spell death for one or
both of the climbers but his partner made an incredible series of descents,
paying out rope for him to drop 150 feet at a time and then descending to meet
him and begin again. This worked well until once there was nowhere to land -
the injured climber was suspended over a crevasse and there was simply nothing
for the rescuer to do once this became apparent but cut him loose lest they
both be dragged to their deaths. Then began, for the injured climber, an
incredible journey, where, with a leg so badly broken that merely touching it
to the ground spelled agony, he dropped to the bottom of the chasm, then
climbed out and followed the footsteps of his companion back to their camp.
This has been documented in a book by the same name. The film goes way beyond
the book, incorporating the inner thoughts of the two men (they are there on
film) as well as two actors who reenact the events. It is, for anyone like me
who finds mountain climbing endlessly fascinating, a film definitely not to
miss.

Alila

This is a slice of life film about assorted tenants in a decidedly slummy
apartment building in Tel Aviv. The stories are thin but the characters are
interesting and well realized. It just didn't offer enough of a story line
(it's done in the Love Boat tradition, skipping from story to story, all
finishing at the end) to hold my interest. I judge a film partly by whether I
care passionately about what happens to the characters in it and this one
failed that test absolutely.

Girl With a Pearl Earring

This thin period piece is from a thin novel of the same name. The story refers
to a Vermeer painting and how it came to be. The cinematography is
magnificent, with incredible lighting to create the conditions for Vermeer to
produce his wonderful art. The protagonist is virtually silent for the entire
film, perhaps as servants in the seventeenth century were required to be but an
actress simply being still and looking at a camera soulfully does very little
for me. Even if she is a beautiful actress, Scarlett Johansson, with
bee-stung lips that I am sure put men in mind of a particular variant of
lovemaking (are they natural or enhanced with collagen - your guess is as good
as mine).

Out of Time

This thriller, starring the marvelous Denzel Washington, has a new and
different story (no, I won't tell) and is choreographed incredibly well, a must
in this case. There is a good mix of romance (beware!!), greed, danger and
great detective work. If it had presented itself as a novel, I'm sure I would
not have put it down after the first paragraph and I was exactly that gripped
by it as a film. Excellent cast, terrific direction, what more could you ask
for?

Veronica Guerin

This eponymous film is about an Irish newspaper reporter (wonderfully realized
by the wonderful Cate Blanchette), who gets herself committed to breaking a
story about dope dealers at the very top levels. It is from a true story with
a tragic ending. In classic rapportage style, the story is told as it happened
and it is a gripping story, very well told indeed. The acting is sensational.
It leaves us with the question of why some people are willing to risk all
knowing that the probable outcome will be to substantially shorten their lives
in aid of an obsession. This woman was well and truly warned of what would
(and did) happen. The only good outcome was that the Irish government, once
she died in the line of duty, did in fact act to bring these people to justice.
If only it hadn't taken such a terrible loss to do it.

The Company
This Robert Altman film left me breathless. There is virtually no plot but the
theme, played by members of the Joffrey Ballet, including the marvelous Neve
Campbell,, is how ballets go from rehearsal to performance. Don't think there's
anything smooth about rehearsals; they are so often marred by temperament on
the part of a dancer, the choreographer, the artistic director The
performances are spectacular, including one which is developed over many
rehearsals and explanations of a completely new ballet, "The Blue Snake." The
artistic director of the Company is a marvelous, temperamental Italian (his
meetings are something to behold) who is also the dancers' most loyal fan, a
one-man claque who shouts "Bravo!!" after each performance to begin the
audience's applause. One performance in particular is simply spectacular as it
was done during a violent thunderstorm with the dancers showing incredible
poise. If you love ballet or even if you like ballet (I'm not really a
balletomane) you should not miss this incredible film.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

This is a marvelous French animated feature. The story is very French, with
three cyclists in the Tour de France being kidnapped by the baddest bad guys
you've ever seen and their eventual rescue by the grandmother of one cyclist
and the aging Triplets, a former Burlesque act. The animation is charming and
the details are fabulously funny, including car licences that read "In Vino
Veritas." You need to see the frog's legs served at dinner when they do their
dance!! I particularly loved the architecture and the wonderful, tall ocean
liners that became involved in the chase along with various other bizarre
conveyances. If this comes to town, make time for it. There's no language
issue as most of the French is minor and unimportant and there are no
subtitles.

Pere et Fils

This title translates to "Father and Son" and it is about a father and his
three sons. The father is sick and tired of the sons' feuding and fussing and
decides to trick them into taking a vacation with him by pretending he has a
potentially fatal disease. As you can imagine, this would work only in a
comedy and this one, directed by a French stand-up comedian of 25 years'
experience, is a riot. The timing is perfect, the characters are all flawed
but lovable and the story flows from Paris to Quebec province and keeps you
interested and laughing all the way. The audience agreed with my review - it
was obvious by the sound of belly laughs through the entire film. The French
really know how to do comedy and this film is no exception.

In the Cut

This is a thriller from a novel written by a woman and realized by a woman
director. In this case, the women out-thriller the men!! The murders are
particularly bloody and the sex is particularly frequent and blunt, with lots
of female and some male nudity, a rather graphic scene with a blow job in
progress and even a telephone sex scene that is quite hot. If this is your cup
of tea, then this film will be worth seeing. There are the usual plot twists
and a rather banal "unexpected" ending but it is not for this one would see
this film - it is for the action. And there is plenty of it.

South from Granada

This is a Spanish film, a romance that involves the small-town Spanish
population (with some animosity left over from the Civil War), and an English
war hero who wanders into town seeking a home where he can peacefully read his
books and write his poetry. Unfortunately for the rather weak plot (which goes
on and on and on), the acting with two exceptions is quite weak. All the
British actors (about five) looked surprised to be in a film and acted just
that way - jerkily and poorly. The Spanish cast was much more accomplished and
the second lead male was really wonderful. I doubt this film will get to your
town anytime soon but if it does, only see it if romance is your thing.

Christmas

It wasn't Christmas at the theater where this film showed. The New Zealand
film dealing with a mixed Maori/Caucasian family obviously had had much bad
press and the house was only half full. Within half an hour it was quarter
full and by the end only the stubborn few remained. It is a home brewed
extremely low budget ($12,000 U.S.) effort that has no sparkle whatsoever.
Lots of fecal matter, though, with many scenes filmed in the bathroom of the
house borrowed from the director's family. A scatological wonder, there was
little enough of redeeming value offered in the film that I left quite early,
not eager to see what wonders would supplant the ones I had already suffered
through.

Rosenstrasse

This is a film about a true story from the Holocaust. It relates to a former
synagogue on Rosenstrasse in Berlin which was changed to a men's prison. The
Jewish husbands of Aryan women were at first protected from deportation but at
some point, the Nazis changed their minds and began arresting and deporting
such men. What happened after that is the subject matter of this flawless
film. The action begins in New York City, where the husband of a survivor has
died. She has never told her daughter the story of her survival after her
parents were taken by the Nazis. The daughter determines now to go to Germany
and pursue that story, which she manages to do by pretending to be writing an
article about Aryan wives of Jewish men at that time. Eventually it becomes
clear to the savior of her mother, such a wife, that there is more to this than
the collecting of a story and it all comes out. This film was simply
perfection from start to finish and despite my concern about seeing yet another
film about the Holocaust, I came away knowing that this was one of the best
films of this or any other year.

A Talking Picture

The director of this film is Portugal's great Manoel de Oliveira, now in his
nineties. The film starts out very interesting. A Portuguese mother and her
daughter are on a cruise ship, headed to Bombay where they are meeting her
husband. The cruise gives the mother, a history professor at a university, an
opportunity to visit places she has only read and taught about and to teach her
daughter about these places. They meet several men, an actor, a priest, who
are able to further explain things the mother doesn't know and this part of the
film, while langorous, is quite entertaining as you see sights in Greece,
Egypt, etc.. Then we segue to a second part, really rather strange, where the
Captain of the cruise liner, played by John Malkevich, along with three great
women of the day, played by Catherine Deneuve, Irene Papas and Stefania
Sandrelli, engage in a dialogue (in four languages, each speaking his or her
own language) about philosophy. Malkevich's Captain is a nelly gay man and he
simply does not fit with these other three sophisticated women. So the long
scenes with those four are confusing and weird. Then, as if the director had
run out of time and money, there is a totally bizarre ending and that's it.
I've always said that they don't know how to end movies - this is a classic
example of that failing. The Captain is called away and returns, telling his
women companions that they must get their lifejackets because a terrorist has
left a bomb on the ship. And off they all go except for the mother and
daughter who are delayed because the daughter has left her doll in the cabin.
Boom!!

Dying at Grace

Grace refers to Toronto's Salvation Army Grace Hospital which has a very
well-known hospice unit. The director, Alan King, took his cameras to the
hospital and, with the permission of five patients, attended the ends of their
lives. There is no voice over and no subtitles, the scenes simply speak for
themselves. Interspersed with views of the patients and their families and
friends are short scenes where the nurses, at night, record on tape the events
of the day vis-à-vis the medical progress of the patients. It is a
fascinating look into death and dying, at how we die. My only issue with the
film was that it is simply too long; at two hours, fifty minutes, it is in the
end simply difficult to watch straight through.

Nathalie

The French have a way of writing excellent films on love in all its aspects.
This one explores infidelity, with a very new twist. A woman discovers, by
listening to the voicemail on her husband's cell phone, that he has been
unfaithful to her. He insists it was only once and meaningless. She is
untrusting and she hires a prostitute to flirt with him and lure him into an
affair. She and the prostitute meet often to allow her to have all the details
of this affair. How it ends is the twist and I'll leave you to see the film
and find out. Beautiful performances by Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart and
Gerard Depardieu complete this film.

The Republic of Love

This is, as the title suggests, a romantic comedy. It is directed by the very
talented Deepa Mehta, who has had numerous films at the Festival over the years
including one I missed last year, Hollywood, Bollywood. The story takes place
in Toronto (appealing for me) and the story is typical for the genre, boy meets
girl, boy loses girl, all forgiven. What was interesting was the identities of
the boy (a midnight disc jockey-cum-talk host) and the girl (a museum curator)
and what was simply wonderful was the music, by an Indian composer.

Good Morning, Night

This is a docudrama about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime
Minister, by the Red Brigades in 1978. The kidnappers are young people; Moro
is quite old at the time. The interest revolves around dialogues between the
kidnappers and Moro, done in a very even-handed way by the director, Marco
Bellocchio, so that you never know where his sympathies lie. There is only one
of the Red Brigades who begins to doubt the validity of the kidnapping and
assassination of the Prime Minister and her concerns provide the strong voice
the film needs for a direction.

Kamchatka

Kamchatka is a country on the board of a game of Risk (or the Spanish
equivalent) The game is played by a father and his older son during their
period of hiding out from the Argentinian Junta which destroyed so much of the
intellectual classes in that country during the tenure of that military regime.
The father is a lawyer, the mother a laboratory scientist, the boys, about
eight and six years old. The children are aware of some of the dangers to
their family because they have to change their names, stay in an unfamiliar
house and avoid contact with their old friends. What turns the tide against
the family is when the older boy, desperately missing his friends, goes into
town and visits a friend's home After this event, the net closes even tighter
and eventually, the children are left with the grandparents while the parents
attempt to escape. You won't want to miss this gripping film.

The Snow Walker

This excellent film is made from a story (in a collection by that name) written
by Canada's Farley Mowat. The story revolves around a bush pilot, Charlie
Halliday, who flies from Yellowknife to make a delivery of oil tanks. He
encounters an Inuit family with a sick, tubercular, young woman. He is
persuaded (by a bribe of walrus tusks, very valuable ivory) to take her to the
hospital in Yellowknife. The plane crashes and Charlie and Kanaalaq are
stranded on the tundra. He leaves the plane to attempt a walk to a village
some 200 miles away. When he doesn't return, the woman seeks and finds him at
the brink of death. Her knowledge of survival cures him and her hunting skills
allow her to make winter garments for him of the fur of animals they kill for
food.

The scenery is bleak (it was filmed around Churchill, Manitoba and other arctic
locations) the music wonderful and the acting by Barry Pepper as Charlie and a
young, new Inuit actress, Annabella Piugattuk, is simply incredible. A
must-see.


The Boys From County Clare

John Irvin's charming romantic comedy about love between musicians in rival
Irish ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) bands led by feuding brothers is a delight
from start to finish. The Irish take their music very seriously (not to
mention their love affairs) and the music fair, a competition, is as much a
player in this film as any of the actors. You'll be tapping your toes
throughout this film, enjoying the singing, dancing and romancing that make it
a winner.


Easy

This is another romantic comedy but it is about half an hour too long and five
subplots too complicated. The heroine is serially promiscuous and we meet
several of her boyfriends with the usual formula for romance. Problem is there
are so many boy-meets-loses-regains-girl episodes in the film that after a
while you simply cease to care. Not recommended.

Shattered Glass

In light of the recent New York Times Jayson Blair scandal, this is a very
timely story. It is a docudrama about a very real event, the fabrication of
stories in The New Republic magazine by Stephen Glass. Glass, indeed, has
recently published a book about his exploits. Although stories are typically
very carefully vetted by the editorial staff to assure that the facts are
accurate and the stories are true, the writer's notes are (or were) accepted as
proof of veracity especially when they are fleshed out with phone numbers, web
page addresses and the like. Glass probably spent more effort preparing his
fake materials than would have been required had he actually researched
stories. It is eternally fascinating how brilliant people can be lured into
spending more energy on criminal activity than would get them equivalent or
better rewards by legitimate effort. The film is very well acted and
definitely worth seeing.

Danny Deckchair

This Australian romantic comedy, a first feature film by American expatriate,
Jeff Balsmeyer, is totally charming and very well realized. Danny is a
dreamer, a quirky construction worker married to Trudy, an ambitious real
estate agent. When his vacation camping trip is canceled because Trudy has to
work (not the first lie she has told him), he gives a "barby" and decides to
try out his latest invention, a flying chair. He blows up balloons with helium
until the chair lurches and jumps up with him in it. He's having an
interesting time flying a great distance from home until he's hit by fireworks
and the chair quickly descends, dropping Danny into a (naturally beautiful)
woman's front yard. Turns out she's a spinster policewoman (well, she tickets
parked cars) and Danny is adopted into a new life in a new town. You'll enjoy
this one - I did, start to finish.



___|___ AT HOME
////////\ _
//////// \ (' IN VEGAS
| (_) | | (^)
ldb

In article , Karen
Allison wrote:

My, my, your delete button must be broken.

This is a cruise newsgroup. We should not have to be pressing any
delete buttons.(which by the way, since I read newsgroups online, I
don't have, and would not apply) Please read the rec.travel.cruises
newsgroup charter. Certainly things do drift off topic from time to
time, but film reviews from the Toronto Film Festival are blatantly off
topic and you have no excuse to post such. I am sure you can find a
newsgroup where they belong, instead of posting off topic crap here.

--
Charles

This is a cruise newsgroup. We should not have to be pressing any
delete buttons.(which by the way, since I read newsgroups online, I
don't have, and would not apply)

Charles, you are a real work of art. I have been reading your postings for
years now and still have a hard time believing how prickly you are. You are my
hero 8}

Of course, it is also easy for me to tell why you cruise as a single.

Mike

Funny you should ask....there are several:
http://www.greatlakescruising.com/itineraries.html

Jeff



wrote:

Which ship docks in Toronto???