Also, thought thiswas kinda cool.

I'd be OK with formally released live versions, but I don't see a re-mix (unless it's truly different) or a remaster as creating a new song and therefore for these I'd say no. Agreed on comp's, it's the original release that matters.

Three Monkeys, The Ghost

I'm tired of writing reviews as well, Bri, and am pretty swamped at work so will close out the 2008 festival by saying:



Three Monkeys' was good, if a little slow, and probably something best appreciated during a film festival (in a theatre, where you can't fast forward but the sound and picture quality highlight the effort the director made to create a very sensory film).

Recommend for festival watching/a lazy weekend afternoon when the thought of a languidly-paced (festival speak for 'fucking slow') film may actually be inviting.


The Ghost was a bit of a conventional but no less enjoyable thriller that shows what happens when a writer decides to collaborate on a book with a known assassin. Despite the obvious plot holes (i.e. the educated main character's inability to foresee that regular meetings with a cold blooded killer could possibly take a turn for the worse?!?), the characters are interesting, the film is often shot in the dark and rain, giving the film a grey look that suits the tone of the story.

Recommend.

Okay, I'm done. Bye Bye till next year.

Disgrace

A brilliant adaptation of Coetzee's powerful book, this was another high point of my festival. Malkovich does a remarkable job with the part of the loathsome but oh-so human professor David Lurie, and his determined daughter Lucy is convincingly portrayed by Jessica Haines.

I'm getting a little tired of writing reviews, so I won't bother with a synopsis.  For those who have read the book, this is a very faithful adaptation, but through the performances, the bringing-to-life of the setting (both Cape Town and the Eastern Cape farm) , the crystalline screenplay, and the power of the story, this film has a life of its own, proving (although its clearly the exception) that great literature can be reinvented as great cinema.

Highly recommended.

Pontypool

This was one of my favourite films of the festival.   It's a fun, arty, cerebral zombie film from Canadian Bruce McDonald.  Adapted from a book, but I would have guessed it was from a play, as the entire film takes place in a dingy radio station in a church basement in a small town in the Kawarthas.   Great performances by the two main cast members - Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle - and particularly McHattie as Grant Mazzy, a jaded old DJ who used to work in the big city but got in the face of too many producers.  

This screenplay is clever and provocative, and the film has tons of low budget style and creativity.  It's all abut the plot in this film, so I'll leave my synopsis at that.   See it if you get the chance.....highly recommended.      

Un Chien Nuit

This could have been a good film. Maybe it's a great film. I don't know.
The reason I don't know? I showed up at the theatre at 8:30pm, thinking it started at 9:00pm. It started at 7:00pm.

I must have looked at the tickets three or four times that day, to make sure I had them with me, and not once did I look at the time, assuming, for some reason, that it was at 9pm.

Unfortunately, this was also the film I was taking my parents to see, so they missed out as well. Sigh.

Katia's Sister

This is a bleak, difficult film about a Russian family - a mother and her two daughters - struggling to survive in Amsterdam.    We join the story late, in the sense that mom has already fallen into a life of prostitution.  Beautiful seventeen year old Katia is in a rebellious stage, and despite her mom's pleadings, begins to work at a strip club.  Homely, sweet-natured 13-year old Lucia stays at home, searching for identity and someone to love her.   She reaches out to her mom and sister desperately as their relationship falls apart and mom leaves the girls in the apartment to move in with a boyfriend.

This film was well conceived and made, immersing you in the family's love and pain right from the first shot.   All of it was told from Lucia's perspective, to the point that the viewpoint never moved above her head....so for example, we saw a lot of mid-sections of boyfriends, and not faces. A significant problem as a viewer who speaks neither Russian nor Dutch (and was reading subtitles, perhaps overly lazily) is that there was no overt indication anywhere in the film that Katia and family were not from Amsterdam (ie were emigres - I got this only from reading the TIFF review after the fact), so much of the pathos of their plight  was missed or misunderstood by me at the time.  Mild recommendation.

A Year Ago in Winter

I'll be brief as Sarah has already covered this film off admirably.     Couple of additional thoughts I had:

(1) how strange it is that two films I've seen this year have as their central story the forbidden (and unrequited) love between a 19-year old brother and his 21-year old sister (the other being "Dioses").  Even the ages are exactly the same - weird.  The treatments are very different; Winter only suggests it as one possibility (though it is the last and most likely theory) for Alexander's unexplained suicide.   And Dioses is more about serial moping.

(2) This film was filled with many strong performances and rich characters, but had clunky moments / elements that very nearly ruined it (or may have for me, I'm still sitting on the fence...).    Sarah has mentioned the dance scene, another was the portrayal of the artist with whom Lilli falls in love shortly after Alexander's death - a misguided relationship with an egocentric fella, classic artist type.    The actor in this role was awful, completely unconvincing as an artist, he looked and felt more like generic beefcake, and the love she felt for him never made any sense.    This fifteen - twenty minutes of the film played like an episode of Red Shoes Diaries.  

Mild recommendation.

Parc

Sigh. I could go on about how some of the scenes made great use of music and camera movement; one that stands out in particular features a couple passionately kissing, while the one of the characters narrates the relatively quick demise of their relationship, a neat juxtaposition that breathes some life into a pretty slow-moving film. And there is a nice visual energy to the film as a whole. But really, the whole film was mostly ridiculous, the storyline so bizarre at times that it's almost, but not quite, funny. A far less charitable review for a four-letter french word titled film would be a four-letter english word review starting with the letter s.

Overhead on the way out of the theatre: "Are you kidding me? I wanted to leave an hour ago".

Pretty much sums it up.

Gomorrah

An unflinching look at the way the mafia corrupts and poisons, both literally and figuratively, a rundown area of Naples, Gomorrah is thought-provoking if a little emotionally bereft.

I think this is part of the point, though, and full credit goes to director Matteo Garrone for presenting the interweaving stories with an unglamourized naturalism; no slickly edited montages set to Gimme Shelter here. The characters are not heroes who are thrust by the fates into circumstances beyond their control but willing participants who have made choices that with which they are willing to live, and in some cases, die. The greatest success of the film is in demonstrating how the vicious cycle of violence is perpetuated.

Its one possible slight failing is its inability, at times, to really engage the audience emotionally. Few if any of the characters are very sympathetic. As the story progresses, the sheer volume of executions and shootings begin to numb most viewers; I don't think it was my imagination that most of the folks shuffling out of the theatre after the screening seemed vaguely indifferent.

Still, there's something to be said for a film that kept me thinking for the next few days.

Recommend.