August 2, 2024

Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA members.

In Release this Week

Borderless Fog (dir. Edwin)

“Borderless Fog is a neat, efficient and entertaining crime drama, the first I have seen from Indonesia that blends the cop caper with the rich local culture and politics,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto. “Indonesian films come with varied quality but glad to say, this one comes with high production values.”

The Death Tour (dir. Stephan Peterson, Sonya Ballantyne 🇨🇦)

“The doc, lensed by veteran cinematographer Van Royko, beautifully captures the grit and artistry of the tour with equal measure. It’s a crowd pleaser in its bones, sure to delight audiences just as much as the tour lights up the faces on kids across the circuit,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine, who also speaks with director Stephan Peterson and co-director Sonya Ballantyne. “One of my favourite things about the movie is how you are in the boots of a wrestler who is going on this tour for the first time,” says Ballantyne. “You get to experience firsthand as a person who has maybe never gone to a reserve or encountered Indigenous people. You see firsthand what’s happening up there in your own backyards often enough.”

Dìdi (dir. Sean Wang)

“The filmmaker has meticulously recreated the era in every element of dress, music, setting and activity, right down to Chris’ online world, which still involves MySpace and a somewhat amateurish YouTube,” writes Liz Braun at Original Cin. “What holds it all together is a superbly understated performance from Wang, who is fully three-dimensional as Chris — a decent kid trying to figure it all out. Absent here are all the usual cinema clichés and exaggerations about teen life, thank the goddess.”

“Wang’s ability to conjure memories and moods extends to the film’s era-appropriate aesthetic. This is a movie that feels sticky, lived-in, rough around the edges, just like Didi’s well-kept but dated middle-class home. The set design is also so perfect that it hurts, crammed as it with so many early-aughts fashion and tech that it’s mortifying to realize that these were the standards of the time. More than once – whether it was when Didi was trading random insults with his friends online or watching, and rewatching, the same early YouTube clips – I muttered to myself that I, too, had wasted so much of my teenage life,” notes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Except in Wang’s case, nothing was wasted. Moviegoers now have Didi, after all.”

“There are lovely performances by Joan Chen as Chris’s mom, an aspiring painter who struggles with an absentee husband and an all-too-present mother-in-law, and Shirley Chen as Chris’s big sister, who threatens to beat him up but also cares about him,” says Peter Howell at the Toronto Star.  “Titled for the Mandarin word for ‘little brother,’ the film makes an excellent companion piece to Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, a previous Sundance hit.”

“Chen is heartbreakingly good,” says Pat Mullen at That Shelf. “Chungsing finds herself caught in the tension of following her heart’s desires and doing the expected while projecting the same anxieties on her kids. There are exchanges throughout Dìdi when Chungsing addresses her son in Chinese and Chris rebelliously responds in English. The hurt on her face and the defiance on his says more than words could as Chen wrestles with the expectations weighing down on Chungsing. The heartache speaks a universal language, but also tells a story that is so refreshingly, recognizably specific.”

Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt)

“Every once in a while, a movie comes out of nowhere and punches you in the face with its raucous energy. In 2024, that movie is Kneecap. Brash, bold, and wildly entertaining, this genre-busting hybrid will have you nodding your head to the beat when you aren’t laughing at some of its very cutting humour,” writes Rachel West at That Shelf. “Unapologetically Irish, the new film written and directed by Rich Peppiatt is a fictionalized origin story of Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap — Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh — who all play themselves in the movie. Enjoyment of Kneecap does not hinge on knowing any of the hip-hop trio’s songs or story or even enjoyment of the musical genre. In fact, it’s best loved by not knowing anything about the Irish rap group in advance.”

“Director Peppiatt appears desperate for his film to have a solid ending.  But the appearance of the peelers (what they call the cops) at the end of the film chasing them backstage while Arlo appears comes across as too incredible to be true,” admits Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

“In the longstanding tradition of films where famous bands or musicians play themselves in fictionalized versions of their lives, there has never been anything quite like Kneecap,” notes Andrew Parker at The Gate. “A movie that mashes up vibes from The Commitments, 8 Mile, the Harold & Kumar films, Trainspotting, and Michael Collins into a single package and still somehow works, Kneecap’s profile of a hip-hop group from Northern Ireland that’s as politically minded as its members are strung out on booze, pills, weed, and anything snortable is one of the few truly original movies of the year. The fact that it stands for something worth fighting for is an extra bonus.”

“Kneecap is a lively run of disobedience with lots of music. Its excellent music, even if the vocals require subtitles.  At about two-thirds into Kneecap, I was struck by the uncomfortable realization that all good things must end, and so too will Kneecap. Like the feeling I get at an excellent live music concert, I did not want the show to end. Yet it does. Kneecap wraps up on a satisfying note, leaving behind the feeling of experiencing something incredible,” says Thom Ernst at Original Cin. “Kneecap is one of the most likeable films this year. Turn up the volume and enjoy.”

“With darts tossed at portraits of Margaret Thatcher, scenes in which Liam and his Protestant girlfriend (Jessica Reynolds) throw sectarian insults at each other as a form of foreplay, and one especially traumatizing moment of police brutality, Peppiatt’s film is a blistering, provocative film that doesn’t care to be polite,” says Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “Which is what makes it such a propulsive breath of fresh air, as dirty, complicated, and electric as the musicians it chronicles.”

“In the grand tradition of musical rebels everywhere, from Elvis to the Sex Pistols to N.W.A., the Kneecap trio also rap about life inequities in the post-Troubles North while also raging against authority (cops and the English),” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Filmmaker Rich Peppiatt wisely persuaded the three to take acting lessons for this musical biopic, which also includes a choice role for Michael Fassbender as an Irish revolutionary and dad to one of the Kneecap dudes. It’s potent stuff — much sex, drugs, profanity and violence — but also quite funny.”

“[B]oisterously breaks new ground by firmly rooting itself in a distinct portrait of language, culture, and community,” says Pat Mullen at POV Magazine, who also speaks with director Rich Peppiatt and the Kneecap crew about telling their own story in their own Irish tongue. ““As we always say, Irish language has always been cool. We are just highlighting how cool it is,” says Ó Cairealláin. “It’s one of the oldest written languages in Europe that’s still spoken today. I don’t think we can make it any cooler than it is. We can just use it as a tool to let people know and to get people invested in it and inspired to learn the language.”

The Instigators (dir. Doug Liman)

“How can such people who have worked together before to great results come up with something so willfully stupid and narratively bankrupt?” asks Andrew Parker at The Gate. “It boggles the mind what could’ve gone wrong here, and the fact that they drag a thoroughly misused all star cast down with them makes things worse.”

Only the River Flows (dir. Shujun Wei)

“Only the River Flows — based on the novel Mistakes by the River by Yu Hua — runs a tight 102 minutes but crams a lot of atmosphere into that time, moments of high drama interspersed with bizarre humour,” says Chris Knight at Original Cin. “For instance, I was tickled by a scene in which a poetry reading is interrupted, first by a well-meaning moderator who asks the crowd to stop laughing at the reader and applaud him instead and then, in the midst of that ovation, by the police.”

Pictures of Ghosts (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

“From lush 35mm images to lo-fi VHS and crisper HD, Pictures of Ghosts is a visual odyssey through cinema, evoking the permanence of film images, the romantic lustre of grain, and the comparative ephemerality and ugliness of digital, but also the aesthetic losses and practical gains entailed within the shooting formats,” writes Pat Mullen at POV Magazine. “Mendonça Filho wanders through the streets of Brazil, shifting between archival and contemporary images, as these beautiful cinema palaces stop showing movies. Like many theatres in Toronto, they’ve become churches. Instead of advertising the latest Hollywood hits, marquees display sermons that one could easily confuse old Sophia Loren movies.”

Saving Bikini Bottom (dir. Liza Johnson)

“Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is exactly what is to be expected from a SpongeBob SquarePants movie – madcap and irrelevant silly fun,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

The Shakedown (dir. Ari Kruger; Aug. 8)

“The Shakedown, a crime comedy offers the rare chance to be entertained with South African Humour, and the film is funny, delivering mouth a high hit-and-miss ratio and many countless laugh-out laugh moments,” says Gilbert Seah at Afro Toronto.

Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar)

“Even the most tremendously assembled drama, though, needs a beating heart at its core. Which is where Domingo comes in, keeping the entire production pumping so fast that audiences might get emotional palpitations,” writes Barry Hertz at The Globe and Mail. “The way that the actor is able to nail Whitfield down in moments so small and so large is nothing short of a magic act. Domingo’s eyes at once scream bottled-up rage and undying hope.”

“[I]t does carry the whiff of documentary about it. The fluid camerawork helps, but also the fact that most of the supporting players are graduates of RTA, which is to say they’re ex-cons. That sounds like stunt casting, but it works, and they’re excellent,” says Chris Knight at Original Cin. “Domingo may be the star, but he’s not carrying the movie. Although his character, John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield, might think differently of himself. Divine G is the self-styled leader of the prison’s performing arts cadre, eager to advise, criticize and mentor his fellow inmates, sometimes against their will. Though as we’ll learn late in the film, he’s not always the best at taking what he dishes out.”

“In the film Sing Sing, for pure grit and presence, no one comes close to what Maclin channels on the screen. There are not many actors who could hold their own with the Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo. As Whitfield, Domingo exudes a guarded sense of optimism, someone who has been battered by the justice system and husbands his sense of hope. But that faith is tested when Maclin joins the actor’s circle,” says Eli Glasner at CBC. “But then how else could you explain what Clarence Maclin does? Going from a prisoner who couldn’t see a future to someone who by all rights should be an Oscar contender.”

“Based in part on true experiences, rich with meaning, and avoiding many of the clichés found in the inspirational prison movie handbook, Sing Sing– destined to be one of the finest films of this or any other year – tells the unique story of a dramatic arts program for prisoners that helps to find hope in a place where many only see despair, fear, and regret,” says Andrew Parker at The Gate.

“The action takes place within the claustrophobic confines of the prison (the movie was shot at Sing Sing). It’s difficult to imagine artists gaining a foothold there. But enthusiasm and enterprise make up for the all-too-evident lack of Broadway polish,” writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. “Cinematographer Pat Scola (A Quiet Place: Day One) frequently emphasizes the imposing size of the prison and the physical smallness of the people within it.Here’s where the Shakespeare and Hamlet connections make the greatest impact. As Divine Eye works at mastering Hamlet’s self doubts through his famous ‘To be or not to be’ speech, he lingers over the line ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’”

Starve Acre (dir. Daniel Kokotajlo)

“The cinematography adds to the mood with odd angles and shots of creepy old drawings – woodcuttings depicting woodcutting! – while the soundtrack obligingly adds noises that might be the wind or a far-off scream,” says Chris Knight at Original Cin. “But atmosphere will only take you so far, and it soon becomes apparent that Starve Acre is 10 liters of helium in a 20-liter balloon. The result is limp and never fully takes flight.”

Trap (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

“Trap is simply M. Night Shyamalan’s silliest movie since The Happening,” admits Jim Slotek at Original Cin. “The concert itself, which, as I say, consumes most of a movie with about a half-hour of plot, is not much of a draw. The studio didn’t pre-screen Trap for review purposes, so I saw its first screening at a theatre near me. There were no tween Swiftians or Ariana Grande fans there to catch the next rising star that is Saleka.”

A Festival of Festival Coverage: The TIFF Uptick

At The Globe and Mail, Barry Hertz reports that Rogers has come aboard as the presenting sponsor of the Toronto International Film Festival and gets some words with Cameron Bailey about what that means: “The festival is still the biggest thing that we do, with the largest number of people who we’re engaging with,” Bailey tells Hertz. “And this includes the People’s Choice Awards, which are a big deal for us and in the industry’s awards season, and will be prominent and visible in terms of how the Rogers partnership works.”

TV Talk/Series Stuff

At The Gate, Andrew Parker hitches a ride with Cowboy Cartel: “Johnstone and Fernandez have lucked into a heck of a story here: one that’s complex, lends itself well to documentary conventions, and something that hasn’t been told on this sort of scale before. There’s nothing revelatory about how Cowboy Cartel presents itself, but the substance and how it’s handled fascinates throughout.”

At What She Said, Anne Brodie explores the thriller The Fortress: “The Fortress takes our current and recent experiences with isolationism, pandemic, xenophobia, and environmental decline and distills them into one horrific view of the future, set in fictionalised 2037 Bergen, Norway. Natural and man-made disasters have challenged survival globally but Norway’s government has found a way out, it believes, by cutting all connections to the outside world…It’s heart-wrenching as families are separated by harsh guidelines, and Norwegians feel imprisoned.” Meanwhile, The Change is a refreshing palate cleanser: “Exquisitely funny, beautifully written, and top actors fill out the roles of nutty villagers…The Change is like nothing you’ve seen before and you will be hooked but good.” On the other hand, Influenced has good intentions, but little else: “I’m simply concerned that it will guide content makers to create more of this mindless social media copying as mainstream TV. Wait a minute, much of TV IS already mindless!” Better fair for teens comes in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: “A smart series that doesn’t speak down to teens and shows them in an honest, unsentimental way.” Saving the best for last, Brodie recommends No Offence: “A superb police procedural new to BritBox has landed and it’s worth your attention. Now the UK produces the best police series ever, even surpassing the Scandinavians, and leaving American series in the dust.”