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I’d like to preface the following comments with the justification of why I saw this movie. I like to watch movies that are really popular, even when I know they’re going to suck. This is because even though I am a fan of good movies, I try to be aware of and on top of what the majority of people are watching and what’s going on in the general market.

I saw the first Twilight film with a good friend who loved the books. We watched with a third friend and, you know, that movie wasn’t so bad. Then we decided that the three of us should watch all of the Twilight films together, so we saw New Moon and it was pretty bad. This one, though I had slightly higher hopes for, because I figured that they wouldn’t allow the movies in this undeservedly huge franchise to get worse. I also think I enjoyed 30 Days Of Night and thought that maybe this film would have a darker feel to it and perhaps even a workable script or even some decent performances.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (based on the book by Stephenie Meyer; screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg; directed by David Slade) is a terrible movie. The dialogue is painful and slow and boring. The scary bad guys are not scary at all, especially the Volturi, who, headed by an extremely not-scary Dakota Fanning, look like a bunch of pathetic goth kids who got lost in a forest. The music isn’t bad (Howard Shore has proven himself many times) but the themes felt very inappropriate for this type of film. The story wasn’t very interesting. Taylor Lautner as Jacob seems to have just realized that he’s in movies, acting, and has decided that he needs to act now, and does so very intentionally (read: badly). The love scenes were long and tedious and not even remotely bearable.

I can go on, but I won’t. My biggest issues with these Twilight films are that, sure, the source material is pretty terribly written, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of incredible writers out there who will work for cheap and could write an amazing adaptation. There are directors out there who actually care about good storytelling who will create films that aren’t embarrassing. But most of all, I’m actually offended that studios put so much money into, and then make so much money on, films that are clearly not good. I have no problem with blockbusters or cultural phenomenons; sometimes they’re not that good, but at least you can see that they tried. Eclipse feels like they were like, “We’re going to make hundreds of millions of dollars from this regardless of how good it is, so let’s make it suck.” THAT is what I disliked the most about this film.

I’ll still finish watching the series, though.

Fish Tank (2009, written and directed by Andrea Arnold) is Arnold’s second feature film (her first being Red Road, which I saw at TIFF07 and absolutely loved). This is an exceptional film. It takes place in ghetto UK (not sure where but it reminded me of some of Little Britain’s skits) and concerns a teenaged girl named Mia, amazingly portrayed by newcomer Katie Jarvis.

Mia is introduced to us brilliantly and you know right away not to mess with her – she’ll beat the crap out of you – but we’re also quickly exposed to her softer, vulnerable side: This is the side that loves to hip-hop dance, a major cultural phenomenon that proves to be not only a creative outlet but a powerful element necessary to communicate with in her family setting.

The plot is set up quite well and even though it contains some generic elements, it still kept me feeling like I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Arnold definitely learned the language of her subjects and both recognizes and acknowledges their cultural symbols, which include shouting profanities and dancing to hip-hop. Although it’s easy to feel that these elements are a bit weird, they are handled so straight-faced that you soon realize that what you’re watching is very real, and is probably as strange to us as our way more conventional and “nice” way of life is to them. These people pull no punches – they call it as it is; they’ll punch you in the gut and then let you know why – or not.

Michael Fassbender is brilliant as usual and it was great to see him deliver another fine performance, sandwiched between his grueling portrayal of Bobby Sands and his equally intense LT. Archie Hicox.

Andrea Arnold is 2 for 2 now and I can’t wait to see what’s next from her!

(UPDATE: This is what’s next from Andrea Arnold. Amazing!)

Nestyda (Shameless) (2009, written by Jan Hrebejk & Jirí Machácek, directed by Jan Hrebejk) is a Czech comedy that was rather unremarkable. It was legitimately funny at times and the lead character was indeed shameless in his self-centred actions. The situations he found himself in were often pretty funny but I really just thought he was an idiot and didn’t really care what happened to him.

There’s a scene at the end involving a fish and his son which was an excellent metaphor for how he was changing and more “alive” than he even realized. Sometimes, I suppose, we make the best decisions in the worst of ways.

Eyes Wide Open (2009, written by Merav Doster and directed by Haim Tabakman) is a gay love story / tragedy that takes place in a traditional Hasidic Jerusalem community. It is a relatable story of a man who considers his fleshly lust for other men to be something that, by constantly overcoming it, makes him stronger in his faith. He is so screwed up by his feelings that he fools himself into believing that this is something that sets him above others; this of course leads him to a place where he finds himself out of control, but ultimately, happy.

The film is not necessarily sympathetic but probably will be interpreted as so. The performances were was great. The pacing was slow but intentionally so and riveting nonetheless. There some amazing shots, too – one of them, a shot of a reflection in the window of a van, is still strong in my memory. Nothing in this story was especially surprising yet it was still satisfying and powerful. It was also pretty erotic in a pretty unconventional way.

We saw Antichrist (2009, written and directed by Lars von Trier) on the opening night of 2009′s Toronto International Film Festival. What a way to start my 30 films! I had been totally into the hype surrounding this film, from its early announcements, trailers and then crazy feedback from its Cannes screening, including the awesome “I am the best film director in the world” statement from Lars von Trier (youtube).

I became increasingly more nervous as the screening approached. I don’t know why… I have never anticipated a film with such conflict before! I am not a fan of spoilers but I couldn’t stop myself from reading article after review after interview about it.

The film is about many things: Chaos, Grief, Pain, Despair, misogyny, Nature vs. Nature vs. Nature vs. Nature… all pretty uplifting stuff. The prologue was absolutely brilliant. Shot in B&W and in slow-mo, with some opera music playing (clearly I do not know what piece it was)… it was both beautiful and terrible as we see two very conflicting things happening. I am not going to get much into the story as you can easily find spoilers elsewhere.

It was beautifully shot. It features some incredible shots of nature and a very dream-like and hypnotizing use of slo-mo. There are disturbing images of animals in perverted states. Do they help him, or do they help her? The extreme images of torture and mutilation were well led-up to. I felt it was a pretty powerful study of some dark themes. And then there was “The Scene” – even though I kind of knew what to expect, I still felt like it was pretty shocking. There were moans and groans throughout the audience and apparently somebody near the front threw up on people. Awesome!

Dafoe was good; actually he was pretty unspectacular and bordering on annoying until around the time the torture began… but maybe that was intentional. Gainsbourg was amazing but I did find her to be pretty bad in the scene where she’s running around screaming “You bastard!” over and over again. She was, however, playing a crazy person…

Willem Dafoe was present for a Q&A in which most questions were about von Trier. That’s fair enough, though, and Dafoe was very gracious with his answers and candor. He talked a lot about how he became involved with the project and also the clearly dark and depressed state that von Trier when he wrote the screenplay.

All in all, I think this is an important film but I don’t necessarily recommend it. I’m very glad that I saw it and I think it’s safe to say that von Trier remains one of my favourite directors – not really because I think he makes the best films, but because he consistently challenges not only his audience, but also himself.

Hunger (2008, written by Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh; directed by Steve McQueen) is possibly one of the most intense films I have seen. It depicts the last six weeks of Bobby Sands’ (Michael Fassbender) life, the IRA member who died as a result of the 1981 hunger strike in HM Prison Maze. This is McQueen’s first film.

You can almost feel, smell and taste what you’re seeing onscreen. The main character, Bobby Sands, isn’t introduced until a fair bit into the film – McQueen takes his time in setting things up to the point where he’s ready to show you Bobby.

There is one scene in particular – commonly referred to as “The Scene” – that everybody is talking about: it is a 17-minute single take of a riveting conversation between Sands and a priest. Not only does it stand out because it is so brilliant, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the film, which is relatively dialogue-free. “The Scene” acts as solid transition point into the final act of the film. (You can find the entire scene on YouTube, split into sections.)

I don’t have much else to say except that this film was entirely gripping and emotionally draining. It was exceptionally made and I highly recommend it. For those who may have trouble with graphic imagery (of the non-sexual kind, I should specify), be prepared.

Zift is a neo-noir film from Bulgaria. It tells the story of a man who was jailed for a murder he did not commit. The story is in black and white and uses familiar noir techniques such as the voiceover, non-linear storytelling and the always-awesome femme fatale.

The film is super slick and stylish. Director Javor Gardev comes from almost twenty years of working as a theater stage manager or something and this is very obvious in the film’s choreographed, long take opening sequences.

I’m not going to comment on the Zift’s political statements so as not to make my ignorance so obvious, but in the q&a afterwards, the director had a fair amount to say about it. I will say, however, that this is the type of film that I attend the film festival for. In other words, I loved it!

Here’s a trailer. It has English subtitles:

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.

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?