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September 07, 2006
Toronto 9/7 - The First Three Movies
TIFF 2006 started with a thud today...
It wasn’t a loud thud... more of a gentle bump in the afternoon, as the three narrative films I saw were derivative and fell short of the work they were drawing from and the fourth film, This Filthy World, a simple filming of John Waters’ “Evening With” touring stage show was as enjoyable as Waters always is, but unable to reach past being a Sundance Channel special event – even with the epically talented Jeff Garlin directing – because none of Waters' actual film work was used (presumably unavailable from copyright holders without major expense) and therefore, you had to know his entire oeuvre to even know what the hell he was talking about most of the time. Never has a drag queen eating dog shit been more called for. With clips, this is a film school must-view. Without, it is a footnote.
Next was the controversial 2:37 a.k.a. Elephant Crash High, an impressive first film from 22-year-old Aussie Murali K. Thalluri, but only as impressive as his absolute lift from Gus van Sant combined with vain, failed efforts to improve on Van Sant’s Elephant ideas with the banal coincident scam of Paul Haggis’ Crash can be.
The film tells the stories of a half dozen high school kids (and a few others in their lives) on one lovely day. The film opens by establishing that someone is bleeding and not responding in a janitor’s closet. From there, it becomes a messy mystery of who is in the closet and why. There is the perfect jock with a secret, the perfect girl with a secret, the perfectly broken geek (he limps and pees against his will) with a secret, the dork/hunky brother with a secret, and the aggressively out gay guy with a secret. So, who’s in the closet? The answer is, inevitably and aggregiously as unobvious as possible.
One of Thaluri’s big missteps was adding doc-style commentary from the characters, which is neither terribly interesting nor helpful to his cast of acting neophytes, who seem very relaxed through most of their scenes and absolutely tongue-tied with bad dialogue in these little fourth-wall busting efforts.
Besides the fact that the work here feels quite warmed over, the major problem I had with the film arrived late and with a fury. One of the secrets is so significant that it not only could be a complete film itself, it is pretty much irresponsible to leave it hanging out there like some so-what plot point in this story. The event, which involves a form of rape, is so life changing in and of itself and the way Thalluri shot it is so specfic and so oddly incomplete, that it only brings up more questions that scream for a more thoughtful filmmaker to offer answers.
The film only starts hurting when it finally gets to its point, but it turned my “not bad” reaction into a real “fuck you” to the filmmaker.
A redeeming feature is the featured role debut of Teresa Palmer, who will soon be seen in Grudge 2, Doug Liman’s Jumpers, and apparently, as the object of Harry Potter’s nudity in December Boys. The girl gives strong hints that she can act and she may be People’s Most Beautiful Person Alive before too long. Stunning girl.
Also, the boy in the film, Sam Harris, shows less acting skill, but he is very, very pretty and has no small amount of charisma. He could be the next Aussie heartthrob to land in Hollywood. With a director a bit more seasoned and careful, plus a few acting lessons, this kid could be something. And so could another young actor from the film, Joel Mackenzie, who has that thing, which is helped by the fact that he plays the one absolute truth teller in this movie.
But the movie... culty... maybe a gay fest circuit film... and something I was thinking would be great for teens to see as a way of understanding the politics of being a teen... until it turned the corner into being something close to seriously offensive.
Following Gus Van Haggis was Guy Loach (or was if Ken Ritchie?) with London To Brighton. Okay, the first time feature filmmaker’s real name is Paul Andrew Williams and like Mr. Thalluri, there is no doubt that talent is on display when you watch his film. But damned if it doesn’t feel like something we have seen – and seen better – many, many times.
This one is a story about a street walker, her pimp, an evil john, his son, and a 12-year-old girl runaway who doesn’t belong in the middle of all of this (which, of course, is what drives the story).
Walker plays with time, goes back and forth in storytelling, and offers style aplenty ala Guy Ritchie and still tries, with the help of the excellent Lorraine Stanley (the street walker) and young Georgia Groome (terrific, but not quite Quinn Cummings) to give us our fill of Ken Loach’s poltical/socialogical insights . Some shots of Groome really look so Loachian as to be stereotypical.
The storyline is hooker and runaway kid on the run with the reasons why being laid out as the movie progresses (or is that regresses?). The problem with a movie like this, however, is that if you don’t really surprise the audience, you are in a losing game. And I not only had a real sense of what 90% of the backstory would be within 10 minutes, I had guessed the surprised at the end 20 minutes or so before it happened.
One hates to take a piss on a movie that involves this much talent, but in the end, it just isn’t a very good movie. It would be great on BBC America on some weekend afternoon. But it just wasn’t enough of a standout to be worth the time here.
More later....
Posted by poland at September 7, 2006 03:54 PM
Comments
So what was the 'impressive' part of 2:37 since everything in the above review makes it sound lazy and stupid?
Posted by: jeffmcm ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 7, 2006 04:15 PM
Regurgitations, yay. I hope something good comes out of the fest, but I feel your pain on the start.
Posted by: PetalumaFilms at September 7, 2006 04:25 PM
With things not quite in full swing yet, DP and JW must be "seeing" a lot of each other.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at September 7, 2006 06:58 PM
But wasn't Crash met in Toronto '04 with mild "this does nothing but ape P.T. Anderson" reviews? And it turned into the movie of 2005, which makes me want to cry.
Posted by: Danny Boy at September 7, 2006 08:33 PM
2:37 isn't gonna be anywhere near a Crash situation.
THat movie has been extremely controversial down here for multiple reasons. I'm seeing it tomorrow at a special screening for Australian Film Institute members (which I am). I absolutely loved Elephant so I'm wary of a film completely aping it's style. But we'll see.
The film received an R18+ rating here (our harshest rating but not as harsh as your NC17) and Thalluri came out and said he was really upset that the film's target audience weren't going to be allowed to see it because you have to be 18.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at September 7, 2006 10:57 PM
Just felt like I had to post this somewhere...
TIFF Day 1 was a total clusterf**k. First, the film Ten Canoes was presented without subtitles. The problem is, huge portions of the film are in native aboriginal. :( The director was stunned that the wrong print was screened.
Next, Borat was halted after 15 minutes due to a broken projector. Larry Charles and Michael Moore tried to valiently keep the crowd from rioting for almost an hour before they announced they could not continue.
What fun....
Posted by: bobbob911 at September 7, 2006 11:51 PM
"But wasn't Crash met in Toronto '04 with mild "this does nothing but ape P.T. Anderson" reviews? And it turned into the movie of 2005, which makes me want to cry."
Well, I personally loved Crash so I'm not too surprised...then again, it's also very much an ACTORS movie and they make up the largest part of the Academy. I mean, look at the road to Oscars... Golden Globes, barely a mention... critics awards, ditto... and then it won the SAG Ensemble award (which I foresaw happening because I knew with that many actors and performances it couldn't get overlooked)... obviously, when it came to picking the picture, the biggest percentage of the Academy went with the actor-driven movie. (If we look back in previous years, that's often been the case except for with Mystic River)
Posted by: EDouglas at September 8, 2006 04:19 AM
Everyone knew it would win at SAG. But we're not getting into THAT argument again.
bobbob, they really screened Ten Canoes without subtitles? Jesus Christ, what idiots do they have working there? Rolf (de Heer, the director) has a right to be stunned. It's a great movie too, it's a shame you missed out.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at September 8, 2006 08:09 PM
Okay, so I saw 2:37 and I agree with you completely. In Elephant the point was that all these kids lives such mundane lives and even then at the end pretty much all of them died, so even if they did have big dramatic lives we couldn't see where they lead because they were killed.
However, here, all these characters are dealing with major issues (as you say, those two characters are dealing with heavy shit) and then the movie just ends and doesn't resolve any of them.
http://kamikazecamel.blogspot.com/2006/09/afi-screenings-reviews-4.html
for an rambled-thoughts review.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at September 10, 2006 01:21 AM
ohhh. no.
sorry to hear that about TEN CANOES...I think Rolf de Heer is a talented director. Can't wait to see TC.
Posted by: Lota at September 10, 2006 01:35 PM
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