Mountains (2023) Toronto 2023

Haitian immigrant tries to deal with what life is throwing at him as he looks to deal with his job in demolition, the need for a bigger house and a family moving in directions that he is uncertain of.

Nicely acted film is look into a world that most of us are unfamiliar with. We do not see usually the Haitian immigrant experience on screen and as a result the discussions and monologs don’t come across as versions of things we’ve seen before. For an example a sequence in the second half where Xavier,Sr talks to his son about his experience coming to America really hit home.

While I do not have a great deal to say about the film, due in large part to it still replaying in my head, I really liked it and have no problem recommending it to anyone who wants to see a hidden gem .

YOUTH (SPRING) Toronto 2023 NYFF 2023

Wang Bing’s award winning look at the young people working in a Chinese sweatshop. We watch as they work, joke, fall in love and plan their future.

This is an observational look at a group of co-workers who will work their way into your heart. As I’ve always said, while we work to make money, the reason we stay is the co-workers and it’s easy to see why these people hang together, they make each other laugh. While the film isn’t all fun and games we do get a sense of why they  get along.

Running just under four hours a film like YOUTH may sound like a tough slog, but it really isn’t. I was given a chance to see the film before Toronto and I thought I might break the film up into pieces, but quite honestly outside of a bathroom break I watched the film from start to finish. I was quite simply too invested in the people on the screen to walk away.  The best thing description of the film was I went into the film out of an obligation to cover it because it was at Cannes, and Toronto and New York and I can out of it enjoying the hell out of it because it connected me to some people who made me laugh and smile and feel connected to humanity.

Don’t go into this film expecting grand story lines but rather go in expecting to just see life happen. Races are run, jokes told, plans are made, clothes are sewn together, people come and go. This is life happening at the speed of life, which means it’s a leisurely affair.

I enjoyed this film a great deal. Not only did the film make me feel but it made me ponder about life as lived, by me and by others.

Recommended.

National Anthem (2023) Toronto 2023

NATIONAL ANTHEM is the story of Dylan, a young man living at home with his mom. He is helping to raise his younger brother. He is putting money aside to by a RV so he can hit the road and see the world. Working odd jobs, he takes a two week job at a ranch way out of town and falls in with the people of living there. They are a collection of LGBT people who drifted in over time.  Entranced by Sky he slowly becomes friends with everyone at the ranch as he tries to find his place in the world.

NATIONAL ANTHEM is good time with great people. This was like hanging out with some of your best friends over the course of a several weeks. It’s a beautifully crafted collection of people who bleed off the screen in ways that will leave you insisting that these aren’t performances but people you know. Hell, by the time the film was done I wanted to leave the theater and go find the ranch.

Deliberately paced this film takes its time going where it’s going. Honestly I am glad I saw this at a screening instead of via a link because I was forced to allow the film to happen. I couldn’t get distracted in the dark theater so I had the time to fall in love with everyone on screen.

The film has several lines of profound wisdom floating through it which made me love it more. Lines like “She loves you but she needs him” and “You’re not boring you just haven’t found your people yet” kind of put things in my own life into perspective.

On the downside the film doesn’t really have a strong narrative drive. Yes, there are some questions of romance and some family conflict with Dylan, but at the same time there are no big “problems”, life kind of happens and Dylan and friends drift through it. I kept waiting for something big to happen but it never did despite the film constantly angling that it would.

Still I love the film and I would love to show this to any LGBT kid who didn’t think they will find a place.

If you think you can go with its mellow rhythms or if you want to meet some characters who will become your new best friends go see NATIONAL ANTHEM.

King Tide (2023) Toronto 2023

After a storm a small town isolated on a distant island finds a baby under a capsized boat. The child has miraculous powers and can heal anyone she is near. Ten years on, an unexpected event forces the island to consider if they should keep themselves and the girl isolated or if she should be brought into the world. The discussion threatens to tear the once closely knit community apart.

For the most part I really liked KING TIDE. It’s a film with a dynamite sense of place and  solid cast. We are on an island in the middle of the sea. You can almost smell the sea breeze. It is a film that has a lot going on and asks us to ponder some heady subjects. It is for the most part a solid drama.

The place where the film gets in trouble and which keeps me from truly loving the film is in the tone of the film. From the opening frame to the last the film is dripping with the sense of tragedy. The framing the shots and especially the score push the film into a dark place from the beginning. The trip down the path is set at the outset with , the tone and the mood so the result is the story doesn’t build to anything. We know where this story stands. I knew things were not going to be happy.

Does it make it a bad film? No, but a film should be a journey that surprises us where it ends. KING TIDE signals where we are going to be at the end and it takes some of the edge off.

Still what is here is really good and I recommend it.

Teachers Lounge (2023) Toronto 2023

When things begin disappearing in her school and a student is accused of doing it a teacher begins to look into the matter and ends up causing all sorts of problems as she tries to negotiate between various groups.

This very mannered film walks the fine line between drama and uncomfortable comedy as a do good and principled teacher finds the way she sees the world is not compatible with the way things are. The drama comes from the situation and the dark humor comes from the way things just don’t quite play out the way out heroine wants them to. It’s not really funny as such but it’s in that uncomfortable place where bad things happen to good people and you laugh lest you squirm.

While everything in the film is really well done I found that I never connected to what was happening. I blame it on the tone which really didn’t connect to me. I’m not really a fan of cinema of discomfort and I usually need something to hold on to in order to make the connection. Here I didn’t have it and while I could intellectually appreciate everything on screen there wasn’t any emotional connection.

Because there is enough good here and because several other reviewers loved this I think this is worth a look.

SPIRIT OF ECSTASY (2023) Toronto 2023

Pop star Claire Pommet has been given a potential award winning role by director Helena Klotz's SPIRIT OF ECSTASY, but while the role is killer one wishes she had been given something to actually do.

Great looking, beautifully acted and very by the numbers this is the story of a non-binary  person looking to make the big bucks by becoming a financial analyst. She wants to get away from her life living with her family on a military base. What will she do to get what she wants?

If you think you can spin the plot out, you are probably right.  I know based on seeing any number of similar films about outsiders trying to get ahead in the world I had a pretty good idea where this was going.

That I could guess where this was going is a real shame since Pommet has a gravitas that many first time actors don’t have. On screen in pretty much every shot you find that you are watching her despite the over familiarity of the plotting. Frankly the fact that Klotz hasn’t given her lead a better set of challenges to over come some how makes the role seem less than it is. Don’t be fooled by the story and just watch the person at the center. Pommet is scary good. She holds the whole film together and our attention even as we are considering paying less attention. In all seriousness her presence is such that you will walk out of the film wanting to see the next role she takes on.

If you want to see an actress who is going to go on to big things then see SPIRIT OF ECSTASY

MAMBAR PIERRETTE (2023) Toronto 2023 NYFF 2023

When I started to watch MAMBAR PIERRETTE I wasn’t certain if the film was a documentary or a narrative. I had just moved from one film on my slate for Toronto to the next. I wasn’t really aware of what I was seeing I was simply going along my list of films for the day, watch X then move on to Y and so on. As a result I some times have to think about what I am seeing. That was the case here. The film looked like a narrative, but it moved and felt like a documentary. While I wrestled with what the film was for a couple of minutes, I eventually got lost in the film itself and by the end I didn’t care.

The film is the story of Pierrette, a seamstress working in a small village. She is working as much as she can to support not only herself but also her son and sick mother. Times are hard. She is managing to survive but it a daily struggle. As she says at one point so long as she remains healthy she will be able to manage. Over the course we watch as she struggles to get by, deals with various crisis and talks to her friends and customers who stop by her shop and keep her connected to life.

This film is magic.

While the film is a narrative it is a film rooted very much in life as it is lived. Director Rosine Mbakam needs to be praised. Using her skills as a documentary filmmaker to their fullest extent she has a crafted a drama that feels more like a life than most documentaries. Ten or so minutes in I was convinced that I was watching a documentary that simply had a few added shots added in. This is one of the great portraits of the human drive to just go on and survive. As the film ended and life was returning to normal I began to get misty.  This wasn’t any contrived  triumph moment of anything or a dramatically constructed exclamation point, it was instead a very quiet sigh as if just to say, “such is life”. It was a moment that would mean nothing out of context but coming after 90 or so minutes after the opening it’s a grand summation.

I loved this film. I loved how it made me feel and think.

Highly recommended.

One of the best films I’ve seen for Toronto  and an early favorite for the New York Film Festival as well.

Human Surge 3 (2023) Toronto 2023 NYFF 2023

People wander through various locations and talk about things.

You are going to either love this film or hate it. Odds are you are going to love the experience of seeing this film if you see this on a big screen where you can get lost in its images.  If you see it, as I did , via a screening link, you are going through the whole film wishing that you had seen the film on a huge cinema screen.

Shot with a 360 degree camera, with the images unfolded the images have  a scope that you don't normally see in a film. There is an overwhelming sense of place and space.  Because of the way the camera records images, there are sequences, such as the walk in the tall grass towards the end, that end up creating hypnotic images.

The images that create a head space that is magical.

The problem with the film is that outside the images I'm not certain the film works. The reason for this is that film has no plot. It is simply the camera following various people walking and talking. The dialog is improvised so as a result is  you end up with exchanges that go nowhere or are odd ("I see a crow vomiting on a beach") or are intentionally meaningful. The exchanges might have worked if most of them weren't from a distance with the speakers walking with their backs to us.  We can't really see them enough to connect with them. And while I'm sure there is a better connection on a bigger screen, I still suspect that it isn't as strong as the filmmaker thinks it is.

For me this is film made with a really cool conceit that has nothing beyond the conceit.  If that's enough for you, great, but  if not this is a tough slog.

Worth seeing if you can see it on a truly big screen for the images, otherwise I'd take a pass.

Bloom (2023) Toronto

Woman buys her significant other a plant. However efforts to contact her after that go nowhere.

This is a hard  film to really explain. It’s a film with some ambiguity so it’s hard to say if the film works or not simply because how you view what happens will alter how you react to the film.

What is not open to discussion is the performance by Jodi Balfour who is the whole show. She is the reason we watch the film because her emotional rollercoaster ride is simply one of the best performances you’ll see all year.  Its another indication that most awards, and especially the Oscars aren’t really highlighting the best performances of the year since Shorts are not included.

Track this down to see a killer performance.

DEATH OF A WHISTLEBLOWER (2023) Toronto 2023

The girlfriend of a whistleblower survives his assassination and then sets about making sure the people responsible will pay.

Rooted in what is happening in South African society where the government and corporations will occasionally kill people who expose their nasty little secrets (the film ends with dedications to a half dozen people recently killed) the film tackles the problem of illegal chemical weapon manufacture and sales. While the film clearly has a lot to say about the state of the country, the film always remains a solid political thriller. It’s a dark tale that we aren’t always sure that our heroine will survive. What I like is that the tension doesn’t ease until the end credits roll.  It’s a rare thinking man’s thriller.

I had a great time .

Get some popcorn and track this down.

The Umbrella Men: Escape from Robben Island, (2023) Toronto 2023

The sequel to one of the joys of 2022  is one of the joys of 2023.

Following up the events of THE UMBRELLA MEN this film follows the events of the first film. However things go side ways and Jerome and Morty end up in prison. The rest of the gang have to take matters into hands and rescue their friends and clear their name.

Beginning with what maybe my favorite opening of the year, it’s a musical number that is just a delight, the film drops us back into the lives of the characters we fell in love with last year. Not needing to set everyone one up, the film just pretty much goes, pulling us along and making us smile along the way. Sure this is a caper film, and we are interested in seeing how it comes out, but for the most part I didn’t really care. I was just having too good a time watching the interaction of all the characters I now call friends. It’s just a lot of fun as everyone cracks wise and plots a prison break.

In some ways I may like this film more than the first film. Part of it is that the film just goes and partly because the film is better. It’s as if the filmmakers took everything they learned from the first film and improved on it. Everything is just better.

If you saw and loved the first film, watch this one. If you haven’t seen the first one see this one anyway. It’s just so much fun. Besides, you’ll pick up everything you need to know along the way.

SUMMER QAMP (2023) Toronto 2023

I’m not going to do a formal review of SUMMER QAMP. Don’t get me wrong it’s a magnificent film, it will move you in the best possible ways. You will absolutely love the film. But honestly the last thing you need is guy like me telling you about this film. What you need is to do is simply show this film to a bunch of LGBT+ kids and let them see that they aren’t alone, that they aren’t the only one and that there are more people than they can imagine who are exactly like them- let their reaction be the review.

The film follows several LGBT kids as they go off to a summer camp, CAMP fYrefly in Alberta Canada, where everyone is queer. It’s a safe place where the kids can be whomever they really are. It’s a camp designed to give the campers a sense of community and connections outside of their normal lives. It’s a place where they can learn that there are people who feel as they do.

To say that this film is important is one of the great understatements of the year. This is film that needs to go out and get into the hands of kids who will find hope in it.  Early in the film one of the kids said that they only found out there were queer people when they read a book and there was a queer couple in it. The statement broke my heart. That they found the camp and could find a community made my heart sing.

This is a glorious film.

I am so glad it exists since I know that it will give hope and save lives, especially in an age where there is so much misplaced hatred directed at the queer community.

Say what you will SUMMER QAMP is going to be a beacon of hope for generations, and we are better for having it exist.

SEAGRASS (2023) Toronto

This is the story of a family that goes away to a retreat. The marriage of Judith and Steve is fracturing, something made worse by the emotion kicked up by the death of Judith’s mother. It is hoped that the kids will be able to relax as the parents work on their issues but the emotion bubbling out from the adults affects the kids.

I really like a great deal of this film. There is rawness to a lot of the emotion that bleeds off the screen in ways that feels lived in. One gets the sense that life is up there on the screen.

What I am not as love with is some of the dramatic plotting. Where the individual scenes and sequences are killer how they are stitched together isn’t always the best. Too much is telegraphed.  We know how Judith will be for much of the film just from her look and a few lines; we know what some complications are going to be simply from how some sequences set up; we know how things will play out between the kids because the tropes are wll used ones and we know the sea cave will be important because of the way things are framed. While nowhere near fatal, it does knock what should have been a great film into being just a good one.

My reservations aside SEAGRASS Is worth looking for some great acting and some lyrically beautiful sequences.

Hey Viktor (2023) Toronto 2023

This is a repost of the short review I ran when the film played Tribeca earlier this year.

Actor Cody Lightning makes a meta comedy about himself trying to deal with being an out of work actor who's biggest achievement was a film made when he was a kid (SMOKE SIGNALS). He gets backing but it comes at a cost. Funny, if obvious comedy has laughs, but it's wildly overlong and somewhere around the half way point I was done even if I was till laughing.

HOMECOMING (Machccan)(2023) Toronto 2023

This is the story about the return of artifacts from the Sami people from a museum to the people themselves. It follows the directors as they assist in the return of the artifacts and ponder what the items mean to the community they came from.

This is going to be a short review. After seeing the film three times and making numerous attempts at writing an on point review over the last two weeks I’ve decided that I’m going to  keep this short. The reason being is that HOMECOMING kicked up a lot of things for me outside of the film itself that go back to my once upon a time training as a historian. The question of museum collecting cultural artifacts is one that leads off into all sorts of discussions. My previous attempts at reviews became very long discussion of whether its right or wrong to collect artifacts and what should museums do with the pieces that they have. While all of these questions are raised and discussed at length in the film, I can’t in good conscience subject you to my novel length musings on the subject.

HOMECOMING as a film is good. It’s a well done look at Suvi West and Anssi Kömi helping restore artifacts taken from their people  back to the community they came from. It is a film that documents the hows and whys of the return.  It does so in a seemingly run of the mill way with nothing extraordinary on the face of it.

However, where the film scores is not in what the film shows, but rather in the discussions it starts. Watching the film with a friend we ended up talking well past the end of the film and this bled into my writing long pieces about the collection of materials, including human remains, their return and questions of what happens after that. It is a film that makes you ponder the nation of museums and academic study.  This is a film that gets the discussion started and then hangs around in your brain for a long time afterward as you ponder what it is showing you.

As a film that is going to get thinking and discussing, this film is gangbusters.

If you want your intellect scratched I recommend HOMECOMING when I plays near you.

2 TIFF 2023 Shorts: APHASIA and MODERN GOOSE

APHASIA
Marielle Dalpé’s brilliant animated look at Aphasia is a must see.Aphasia is a disease which messes with a person’s ability do deal with language. It’s not a loss of intelligence but rather the brain won’t let you communicate as you did. Words lose their meaning.

The film is an explanation of what the disease is as well as jarring simulation of what it is like to have it.

I was rocked.  This glorious piece of filmmaking is exactly what films should do, which is give us a chance to experience something outside our lives.

Running just under four minutes the film is as good as films can get.

MODERN GOOSE
A look at the film the lives of geese in today's world.

While nominally a documentary/essay hybrid the film is instead a soul crushing dystopian look at a species displaced by humanity.  We go from seeing them in their wild splendor  and watch as they fly into civilization where the look like avian homeless people setting up nests where they can, fighting a losing game with traffic and being forced to feed on things we throw away. It’s heart breaking.

This is a film that will make you hate humanity and make you want to destroy everywhere people live. It isn’t possible but you’ll want to do it because you will feel so much for the geese.

A must see film.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) Venice 2023 Toronto 2023

Sasha is a young vampire who gets squeamish at the thought of killing anyone. When her family cuts her off and tells her to fend for herself she struggles to find a way to cope. Then she meets Paul who agrees to let her feast on him, but she has to help him do a couple of things first. Complications are of course heading their way.

I absolutely love this film. It is a glorious film full of great characters. You absolutely love everyone on screen.

In some ways we’ve seen variations of this story, but in other ways this is entirely new. There are some twists and turns here that are wonderful.  Actually what is even more wonderful is the characters and performances which create an entirely believable world where vampires for exist.

I can’t say enough good things about this film easily one of my most favorite films of 2023, HUMANISTIC VAMPIRE made me smile from ear to ear. I just sat there falling in love with the film in ways that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Finding a film like this is why I love the movies. The point I fell hopelessly in love with the film with the film was the scene with a Brenda Lee song. Watching the Paul and Sacha (I won’t suggest they are actors but simply the characters) was so magnificent I was getting misty. There was no real reason for it other than this marvelous moment between the two people on screen. I was lost for ever.

How good is this film? When I was done I was sending emails to all the writers covering Venice and Toronto to tell them to cover the film. I was sending emails to film directors to tell them to cover the film.

Yes it really is that good.

You need to see this film. This is the sort film that takes a story we might have seen before, adds some seasoning and makes it something new. It’s a film that is so full of humanity and truth it makes us reconnect with life.

Highly recommended

God is a Woman (2023) Venice 2023 Toronto 2023

In 1975,Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, an Oscar-winning French filmmaker for SKY ABOVE MUD BELOW went to the Guna Yala islands off Panama’s Caribbean coast to make a film about the Kuna community. He lived with them for over a year and shot a film about the fiercely independent people. The trouble was because of financial reasons  the film disappeared into a creditors vault seeming to disappear forever.  Filmmaker Andrés Peyrot and member of the Kuna people Orgun Wagua follow Arysteides Turpana as he attempts to get a copy of the film to show his fellow Kuna the film from 50 years ago.

This is a great film.  

Starting out as a film about the making of a film and about the people who were profiled in it, the film suddenly explodes in the last half hour has a copy of the original film is located a the film is screened for the Kuna people, most of whom had only heard the stories of the original film. It is here in these moments that the film produces a very real cinematic magic that speaks to anyone who has ever seen any sort of film. What I mean by this is that in the moments when we watch the Kuna watching a film about them the walls of cinema collapse. Time compresses. People see themselves and their loved ones alive once more. The Kuna get to see all of the the things and the people that they only heard about in stories. Legend becomes reality.

Watching the end of the film I was made misty repeatedly. I  connected to what I was seeing on a personal level as I remembered when I saw old home movies of relatives I had only heard about. I remember listening to my parents and other relatives reacting to the people on the screen as if they were live. Stories fell from their lips. It was a magic I had lived.

On an intellectual level GOD IS A WOMAN is a magnificent statement about why movies matter. Why do we go to the movies and what the ghosts up on the screen? It s because they bring the dead to life and the past to the present. Yes we have had this discussion before but rarely has there ever been such a magnificent illustration of that point.

I absolutely loved this film it is a film that moved my soul and opened up my eyes once more to things I thought I knew.

Highly recommended.