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Sauna is another project by director Antti-Jussi Annila in which he combines different genres in a bizarre mash-up. His previous film Jade Warrior (which played at TIFF in 2006) incorporated Chinese martial arts with Finnish mythology. This film takes the horror genre and tries to marry it with a historical epic.

It fails. The fourteenth century setting is instantly appealing but then becomes bland as we discover that the two main brothers and a team of three others are joining forces to map out a new Swedish-Russian border after a 25 year war. Yawn! Then the traditional, pre-Christian Finnish concept of the sauna washing sins away comes into play, and these characters certainly have a lot of no-no’s in their not-too-recent paths. The brother with the significantly lesser bloody past is haunted first, and the most, while his near-blind brother’s 73 kills take their turn later.

About the older one: a lot of attention is given to his poor eyesight and the use of his spectacles (still a rather new invention back then, I suppose), but aside from one comment near the end, it pretty much led to nothing. Maybe we were supposed to see the tough guy as being weak? I dunno.

The horror parts weren’t much more than jumpy, and the historical epic parts were uninteresting to me - at least as the subject matter of a film. They should have picked one and concentrated on that.

It did have a great look to it, though. The ominous sauna was very creepy and there is no way that I would have ever stepped into it. Also, the “scary thing”, although I have no idea why or how we see it at the end, was truly frightening; I wish that it had been used throughout the film instead of just at the end.

This was screening 5/26.

Serbis (Brillante Mendoza) is a snapshot of a day of poverty in the Philippines. Handheld cameras follow family members (by blood and adopted) around their disgustingly dirty adult theater/fast food shop. We observe them walk, talk, yell, walk, fight, walk, have sex, cook, serve customers (both food and at the theater box office), talk and walk. There is no real story - we simply join them in the midst of their many varied situations.

The film is certainly not bad, but it’s even more certainly not for everyone. The title translates to “service”, which is what the many young and mainly young prostitutes say to patrons of the cinema and those in the vicinity, to offer themselves.

This is an extremely noisy film, which I’m sure was intentional. The characters’ voices were barely audible at times due to the incredibly loud street noise. It’s a bit explicit at times but not as much it was made it out to be. It’s also pretty gross, and i’m sure that was intentional. Like, really gross, though. I wanted to have a shower immediately but instead had to settle for another film’s lineup.

I found this film to be incredibly well done and I would be surprised if the majority of the cast actually had acting experience. I am a big fan of handheld photography and also of bleak, realistic films. This may not be the favourite of the films I am seeing at this year’s festival, but it will certainly stand out.

Serbis was up for the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year, the first time in 24 years for a film from the Philippines.

This was screening 4/26.

A Film With Me In It (2008, Ian Fitzgibbon) is an Irish film that is very, very dark and very, very funny. I loved it. It stars Mark Doherty and Dylan Moran as two kinda losers. Mark (Doherty) is an unsuccessful actor who lives with an unhappy girlfriend as well as a paralyzed brother. Pierce, his friend, is a “screenwriter” who attends AA meetings and is quite brilliant at not admitting that he is an alcoholic.

Doherty wrote this thing and Moran must have been in his mind as he did so. I’m a huge fan of Black Books and was pretty stoked for the opportunity to see him more in his element than as the sidekick in Run Fat Boy, Run.

The film was funny, dark, ridiculous but totally believable. At least that’s how they played it out, and it totally works. I love it when I feel terrible for laughing at something! I hope this film gets picked up for North American distribution. In the Q&A, the director says that he was inspired by Withnail & I, Shallow Grave and A Fish Called Wanda. It was shot in 20 days in Dublin, Ireland.

Below is a clip from the Q&A of Doherty, Moran and Fitzgibbon discussing some of the improvisation that occured while filming. Apologies for missing the first few seconds.

This was screening 3/26.

Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) is about a small family who I think we’re supposed to think lives in poverty. It doesn’t look like it though; although their apartment is small, it’s pretty sweet, with an awesome view of the water and a kick-ass rooftop patio. Anyway I think we’re supposed to think they are poor because the dad is a driver for a politician and they always seem to be short on money.

The story begins as the aforementioned politician is involved in a hit-and-run. He gets his driver to take the 9 month prison sentence for him in exchange for compensation. Premise: good! Execution: not so good. There’s a ton of plot in this film but not nearly enough character. We watch the family do (or not do) things but never are we given enough to come close to understanding why. And there’s a bit of spooky stuff that, sure, I can come up with explanations for… but I shouldn’t have to be *that* creative - that’s the filmmaker’s job!

Performances were great and certainly taken seriously, and probably a lot of thought was put into it; the only spectacular thing about this film, however, was the visuals. It consisted mainly of stationary shots (just like last night’s film) and this style was used to great effects as there were a lot of close-ups where the subject moves in and out of the frame. Most striking was the use of colour - or should I say, the lack of colour. It was very under-saturated and I love that look. I think it was filmed in Turkey and the horizons and skylines were absolutely beautiful. I could have looked at it all day… actually, it was so slow, it kind of felt like I was…

I didn’t feel what was probably intended to inspire empathy for a struggling family or a moral dilemma. I felt sympathy for the characters but too much was left to our imagination. There were too many facial expressions and not enough dialogue. The long, silent shots were boring and tedious, but again, they looked brilliant. I’ve including quite a few stills and posters because they look so amazing!

This was screening 2/26.

Acné follows Rafa (Alejandro Tocar), a 13-year old Jewish boy living in Montevideo, Uruguay. We witness his first sexual encounter and then follow him as he roams around town with his friends, deals with issues at home and at school and, ultimately, seeks his first real kiss.

First time feature film writer-director Federico Veiroj was present to introduce the film and then did a Q&A afterwards. He was here in 2004 with his short “As Follows“, and said that both it and Acné drew from a script that he had written back in 2000. He didn’t seem to mind informing us that Rafa’s colourful story was greatly influenced by his own, but did add later that the screenplay had been worked on so much during the past eight years that he can hardly see anything of himself in the character anymore.

This statement is a credit to young Alejandro Tocar, who, at 15 years old at the time of filming, had no acting experience. His performance is very natural and this boy certainly has talent; whether it is talent enough to play a range of characters, however, still needs to be seen (Michael Cera, anyone? I still love him, though…).

The film was shot on HD and in order to hide the format’s limitations, Veiroj made certain to include “as few shots of the sky as possible, as HD makes it look bad”. He shot a bulk of the film in an actual apartment but it was decorated especially for the film. The decor and lack of mobile phones and computers place this film intentionally in the mid-90’s. He said that he wanted to tell a story where the characters were not mingling with technology as often as, or more than, their friends and family.

Camera movements are few and far between; when it moves, it is very slow and deliberate. I love the handheld style but this made me feel more like an invisible observer than as being part of the action; this also went well with the relatively slow pacing and dialogue.

I liked the film. At only 87 minutes it still felt slightly long, so Veiroj may still have a way to go before being able to flesh out a feature length film. But it was a nice way to start this year’s festival experience, especially with its ample moments of humour and awkwardness. I love coming-of-age films, and Rafa was definitely a unique enough character to watch.

This was screening 1/26.

I’m seeing (at least) 25 movies this year at TIFF - the most so far for me! 10 of them I am seeing with friends, and the other 15 are with the new Daytime Lite Package. I’m pretty excited and very grateful that I was able to take six days off this year.

I will post my selections when I receive the results from the advanced ticketing. Also, this year I may actually review some of them… It sure would be great if that was what I did for work!

I noticed this a couple of months ago and I’m still pissed off about it. I thought of it again while listening to a /film podcast rant on overly revealing trailers. The trailer for Boy A (2008, John Crowley) is absolutely terrible! It gives the entire film away and that’s a real shame because one of the best things about this movie is the way that the backstory unfolds.

John Crowley did a great job of telling this story. You meet the character, and just as it often is in real life, you slowly begin to learn about who they are and how they came to be that way. I saw this film at TIFF last year (and of course have not mentioned it until now, almost a year later) and it was one of my favourites. The storytelling is very sensitive and Andrew Garfield’s performance is really something to remember.

Check the film out (it was in limited release as of 23 July, 2008) but if you are just interested in the story, you might as well check out the ridiculously revealing trailer below.

p.s. When looking for a movie poster to include in this post, I found one that gives a lot away, too! Why didn’t The Weinstein Company let this film tell the story itself?

I don’t have much to say about The Happening except that it was really, really bad. Mark Whalberg’s constant look of disbelief was maddening. Zoey Deschanel was as horrid as always. The premise was cool but it totally tanked from there. I wasn’t expecting much but this is ridiuclous!

It felt like I was watching a soap opera; both the dialogue and its delivery were so forced. Deschanel is really, really bad - how does she keep getting parts? And there’s this one guy, a botanist or something, who looked weird and said really odd things, at the worst possible times, but nobody seemed to notice. Anyway, I can go on forever about how bad this movie is, so I’d better stop now.

You can clearly see in the picture above that Zoey and Mark are bad and annoying.

Interestingly, after receiving unanimously negative advance screening reviews, Shyamalan decided to call this film “the best B movie ever” or something like that. Come on, man! You made a crappy movie - it’s okay. Just promise to do better next time, okay?

The Happening: written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

I grew up reading C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles Of Naria and was, like everybody else, greatly looking forward to the “good” big-screen adaptations. I really enjoyed The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and had high hopes for Prince Caspian. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed with it.

It was a huge production and it looked amazing. The battle scenes were awesome - but they also took up the majority of the screen time, which is one of the films biggest problems. The novel is full of story and character, but the filmmakers seemed to have traded in plot and character development for really cool looking creatures. Even though I know the story very well, I wasn’t at all convinced while watching it on the big screen. I also felt that Peter and Susan (William Moseley and Anna Popplewell) had become worse actors - perhaps it’s a good thing that their characters are basically finished with.

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It felt to me like they thought that since the story is simpler, it could be breezed over. For example, I generally don’t care to see a big huge battle if I haven’t been presented with any real reasons to care about which side wins. Of course I’m not saying that they made me feel ambiguous - the Narnians are obviously the ones that I am supposed to want to win - I just feel like the filmmakers took that fact for granted. But if I was only looking for a big, loud, violent (but relatively bloodless) and huge-scaled battle/adventure film, it did the trick.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - based on the novel by C.S. Lewis; Screenplay by Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely; directed by Andrew Adamson.

The Signal is a pretty cool movie that I’ve been reading about for a few months. It’s a horror/zombie movie and what’s interesting is that it’s split up into three parts, each written/directed by a different person. The zombies concept was kinda cool, but it’s probably not entirely accurate to call them that, since they aren’t simply undead. After receiving some kind of “signal” either through the television, cell phone or radio, people are infected with a murderous rage that actually seems rational to them at the time.

Each third is clearly marked but I kinda wish it hadn’t been as I was looking forward to trying to figure out where each section began. Even with the sectioning, though, the different writing and directing styles are pretty obvious. The first third is a bit spooky, the second part is in a small setting and dialogue-heavy (and funny!), and the final section is a bit bigger as it climaxes and concludes the film.

This one is definitely worth watching and was great for me because I love zombie movies as well as non-conventional filmmaking styles. The story concept isn’t super brilliant, but the three writer/director thing really makes this an interesting and enjoyable watch. Lots of blood and guts doesn’t hurt, either!