Black Sheep TIFF Review: THE BOYS ARE BACK

When it comes to raising children, the predominant way of thinking is that young boys and girls need their mothers. The offshoot of that logic is that the fathers of these young boys and girls don’t really know what they’re doing. While I do not subscribe to this particular supposed truism, many do and the movies certainly agree. THE BOYS ARE BACK opens with a father (Clive Owen) driving along the beach, ever so close to the water, with his young son (Nicolas McAnulty) riding along on the roof of the car. Director Scott Hicks brings his latest film as close to the edge of cliché as Owen does his son to the ocean but fortunately both know when to get back to reality before its too late.


This particular reality had me teary within fifteen minutes of the opening credits. Owen, who may find his name tossed around come awards season for this one, plays an international sports writer based in Australia. He is barely home but that all changes when his beautiful wife (Laura Fraser) dies suddenly of cancer. Now, Owen must cope with the loss of the woman he loved and figure out the mind of a toddler. To make matters more complicated but not necessarily worse, Owen’s teenage son from a previous marriage, Harry (George Mackay), is sent to live with him shortly afterward. The boys behave very badly but always with the hope of a healthy growth ahead of them.


Hicks rose to fame in 1997 with two Oscar nominations for his biopic of David Helfgott, SHINE. His record has been spotty at best since. THE BOYS ARE BACK may not get him back that same kind of acclaim given the difficulty of the subject matter but those who see it will remember why he was recognized to begin with.

DUPLICITY

Written and Directed by Tony Gilroy
Starring Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti


Claire Stenwick: If I told you I loved you, would it even matter?
Ray Koval: If you told me or if I believed you?

Can you think of anything more satisfying than pulling a fast one on someone? It’s even more delicious when that particular someone is someone you care about or who has gotten you more times than you would like to remember. The look on their faces when they realize they’ve been had is worth every painstaking effort you had to make to pull it off. You would think then that DUPLICITY, a film in which two very likeable and sneaky folks, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, who have proven chemistry together from working previously in Mike Nichols’ CLOSER, would be sticking it to each other so bad that you would delight in every jab they made at each other. Well, the ultimate joke would be on you then because, while writer/director, Tony Gilroy, positions DUPLICITY as a feisty heist movie by stepping up the cool factor any way he can, it is actually nothing more than a failed prank fallen flat on its pretty Hollywood face.


When we first meet Claire Stenwick and Ray Koval (Roberts and Owen), they are drinking it up in Dubai at the US consulate. She isn’t the least bit interested in him and he is working her as hard as he can. I didn’t hear it but he must have said the right thing at some point because they end up in bed together. Of course, she was only sleeping with him so that she could drug him and steal some super secret international spy stuff. And naturally, he put aside all of his super secret spy training and allowed himself to be taken in by her beauty. It is fleeting though - the moment, not her beuauty - and with very little chemistry or connection. Yet this is supposed to be the instance that binds the two in a lust that spans years and leads to what we’re told is true love. They reconnect years later in some other exotic shooting location and concoct a plan to dupe two high profile rival corporations (run by over acting Paul Giamatti and understated Tom Wilkinson) and make off with millions of dollars that will allow them to bask in exorbitantly rich bliss for the rest of their lives. It’s a fine plan but I wasn’t buying anything.


Gilroy’s last directorial effort was his first. MICHAEL CLAYTON earned him respect from critics and contemporaries alike as the film went on to earn a number of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Gilroy himself. Gilroy enlisted some of the same players he worked with last time out, including composer, James Newton Howard, cinematographer, Robert Elswit and even Wilkinson rejoins the gang. How is it then that when all these folks got together last time, they achieved such subtle perfection while this time, Howard sounds as though he were ripping off the OCEAN’S 11 through 13 scores and Elswit is practically washed out? (Wilkinson is still great as he can do very little wrong in my book.) Perhaps the blame can be placed on Gilroy’s most tired screenplay in years. By keeping corporate espionage grounded in reality last time out, he made it fascinating and relatable. By infusing it with Hollywood convention, the whole game was played out before it even began.


DUPLICITY boils down to very little more than two pretty people running games on each other and anyone else they can. The trouble is that the games they’re running are amusing only to them and entirely transparent to the rest of us. The truly duplicitous nature of DUPLICITY it would seem is just that everyone on that side of the screen thinks they are so much funnier, so much sneakier and so much more dubious than what we on this side of the screen actually see. Once again, the cool kids are too ignorant to notice that they are nowhere near as cool as they think they are.

THE INTERNATIONAL

Written by Eric Singer
Directed by Tom Tykwer
Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts and Armin Mueller-Stahl


Louis Salinger: I want some fucking justice.

In times of economic woe, it is easy to paint the institution with money as the face of evil. I’m not saying there isn’t reason to do so, just that it’s simply easy to do. Enter Eric Singer and his “banks as murderers” idea for THE INTERNATIONAL, a thriller that lives up to its name but not the genre it belongs to. This is to say that while THE INTERNATIONAL certainly spans the globe, it doesn’t provide much in the way of thrills along the way. In fact, it is often quite measured, relying on lengthy stretches of dialogue just so that the viewer can make sense of its unnecessarily complicated plot. Still, there is talent and beauty everywhere you look on screen, so there are distractions aplenty to keep you reasonably entertained; unfortunately, there is just one scene that you will remember after the fact.


Apparently – now brace yourself; this may be hard to comprehend – banks should not be trusted. I suppose, telling this story at a time where most of the population fortunate enough to have money to put into a bank already smells something rank on the rise, will help most people buy this crazy notion. You may have already suspected something afoul with the banks but did you ever imagine that the world’s largest banks would be conspiring with every arm of government and every major corporation on the planet to control the world’s cash flow? It is truly mind blowing and by mind blowing, I mean ridiculously trite. So much so that it seems somewhat beneath director, Tom Tykwer, to pick this as his first serious foray into big budget Hollywood heaven. Tykwer, most famous for his groundbreaking picture, RUN LOLA RUN, infuses THE INTERNATIONAL with an incredible sense of visual style that would certainly make any conventional script into a winner. Well, it would if it weren’t a script about killer banks.


Tykwer does give us an explosive shoot out at the Guggenheim museum in New York City that will certainly go down as one of the most intense, and not to mention artful, action sequences to grace screens this year. The clear, straight lines drawn by the panes of glass hanging from the ceiling or the bullets cutting across the room are interrupted by the lucid flow of the winding stairs and the general chaos of the situation at hand. It is all so full and surprisingly lush, considering how monochromatic the whole setting is, but yet it is oddly simple in its intricacies. Alas, one great scene does not a great movie make. Perhaps had the principles of this one scene been applied to everything that came before and after it, the whole thing would be riveting. Instead, everything seems to be figured out before it is even explained, leaving nothing new to discover. Apparently, banks are not the bad guys we should worry about; writers are. (I should probably mention that I work in a bank by day and write at night.)

BLACK SHEEP @ THE 31ST MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL


What a difference a year makes. Last year, I casually fit five films from the Montreal World Film Festival into my schedule. I met up with friends, had lunches before and drinks afterward. For ten days, there was something special happening in my routine. This year, the special dropped off and pressure took its place. I was asked by Ioncinema, a website I’ve been writing DVD reviews for these last couple of years, to cover the festival for the site. This meant I would be fully accredited and that in turn means I get a fancy badge with my picture on it that allows me into all the screenings and gives me access to the pressroom. A schedule was made. I would attend twelve screenings. Meanwhile, I still had to go to work every day, work on the Black Sheep site upgrades and find time for an editing project I have pending. Somehow managing to make everything work was the least of my worries (cutting the gym out of my schedule freed up time for meals). My biggest concern was booking interviews with directors who were in town with their films. I finished with three interviews, two less than I had hoped for but I am very happy with the results of all three. As many of the screenings I scheduled were done so in hopes an interview would follow, I cancelled many of them to alleviate some of the aforementioned pressure. Twelve screenings turned into five … well, five and a half really because I walked out of Nicolas Roeg’s PUFFBALL (blech). Subsequently, the pressure that was initially created entirely by myself gave way to other states, like appreciation and enjoyment.


The first film I saw is actually in competition in the First Films category. Germany’s DER ANDERE JUNGE (THE OTHER BOY), directed by Volker Einrauch, tells the tale of two teenage boys in Hamburg who are forced to interact with each other because their parents are good friends when they otherwise never would. Paul (Tim Oliver Schultz) is a boy with no boundaries. He does what he wants and his parents do nothing to discipline him. Why should they really? He is a man after all and a man needs to find his own path if he is ever going to be successful. Robert (Willi Gerk) on the other hand is quiet and pensive. He is a sensitive boy who is mostly left alone by his parents, as they don’t really know what to do with him. Robert allows Paul to step all over him whenever the two cross paths, losing a little more esteem each time. By the time Paul naively sticks a gun in Robert’s face, he cannot take it anymore. Having finally been pushed too far, Robert pushes back. One of the boys ends up dead and the true beauty of the film follows. Perhaps if the parents weren’t so preoccupied playing cards with each other, they could have seen what was going on between their boys in the next room this whole time. The death and subsequent cover-up forces all involved to wake up and see the limitations of their own lives. Einrauch’s film asks many questions about nature and nurture, like whether the boys are accountable for their own actions or just acting out the influences of their parents, but never presumes to answer any of the questions directly. Instead, he allows the film’s starkly guarded performances and delicate script to leave the debate in the laps of the viewer to bring home to bed with them. Sleep is that much further out of reach after seeing this one.


For me, sleep was even further away on that particular night. New this year at the festival is the Midnight Slam series. Gore and ghouls from around the globe found themselves a home in the daily midnight screenings dedicated to violence and horror. Making its North American premiere at the festival was SHOOT ‘EM UP, one of the larger festival entries this year as the film is being released ultra-wide this week. Midnight screenings are like one long stretch of full moon fever. People seem to feel that the time of day gives them free reign to holler and give props every time someone jabs a half-eaten carrot through the back of someone’s skull. I don’t mean to take away from the fun, especially from a film like SHOOT ‘EM UP, which can be loads of fun. I guess I just felt bad for my roommate who had to sit next to “Oh, no. Oh, no. He’s not going to … OH YEAH! HE DID GO THERE!! I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS MOVIE!!!” all the way through the movie. As irritating as this was to my roommate, it is probably exactly what writer/director, Michael Davis wants. This is Davis’s first Hollywood production and he surprisingly scored some top talent (Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci) for what amounts to nothing more than B-movie with better production value and smarter dialogue. Drawing inspiration from John Woo’s HARDBOILED, Davis gives us a man (Owen) who delivers and then saves a baby amidst constant gunfire zipping past his head. With the baby tucked under his arm like a football, he outruns the bad guy (Giamatti), finds solace in the arms of a lactating prostitute (Bellucci) and eventually finds himself jumping out of an airplane and into a shoot-out in mid-air. Davis’s action sequences are outrageous but are also sharply choreographed and shot with style. His witty screenplay even manages to weave family values into the fold. SHOOT ‘EM UP is the kind of movie you shut your brain off to enjoy, only to realize you didn’t have to.


An opposite experience can also be had. SPINNING INTO BUTTER is the kind of movie you keep your brain alert for only to realize you could have left it in the car. I am honestly baffled at how this film finds itself in competition for the festival’s top prize. I have been known to write films off prematurely but I knew within the first minutes of this film that it would be hollow and cheap. SPINNING INTO BUTTER was originally a play and having the playwright (Rebecca Gilman) also write the screenplay (with Doug Atchison) was the first mistake to be made. The story of an over glorified guidance councilor (Sarah Jessica Parker) who moves from an inner city Chicago school to a quieter Burlington university (read as leaves black for white) is preachy without a strong position. It knows what it wants to say but it doesn’t know how to say it. It wants to expose the deep seeded hatred and racism within everyone that we don’t talk about. This is both admirable and brave. It’s a shame it tells us this through one-liners angrily spat out of numerous throwaway characters of various ethnic backgrounds. You’ve got an angry black woman, a noble Nuyorican guy and a nerdy Asian student for starters. The colorful background makes way for the nice white lady dean of students (Parker) to meet and engage in challenging debate with the well-intentioned black reporter (Mykelti Williamson). While the film finds its most solid moments in scenes shared between these two actors, its ultimate lack of character encouraged by first-time film director, Mark Brokaw, only turns this movie against itself. Instead of exposing our buried racial prejudices, it serves to show the tokenism and ignorance of the filmmaker himself as it relies on stereotypes to make its points.


My journey then went from no character to full character. After making the rounds through the United States festival circuit, Montreal filmmaker, Francois Dompierre, comes home with his first feature, ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW. This was it for me. It is a strikingly beautiful, rich character study that is haunting and inspiring. You know after the first few minutes that you are about to see something meaningful and significant. Then, by the time the film comes to a close, you know that Dompierre has the potential for great things in his future. Wes (Joey Kern) gets a phone call late one night from Alison (Alexandra Holden). He wishes he were still dreaming but he can’t avoid the voice on the other line. A part of him doesn’t want to either. From the few things said over the phone, so much is learnt about these two people and the effects they have had on each other’s lives. Meanwhile, the depth of Dompierre’s screenplay has only just begun. Each scene that follows gives that much more insight into the nature of their relationship and themselves without revealing too much. The intrigue nears Lynchian proportions as the film is told out of chronological order but in a manner that feels like the only way it could have been told. I found myself anxious as the film was drawing to a close as I felt I didn’t know enough yet about these two people, about their fascinating story. Dompierre did not disappoint though. He reveals just enough and at just the right times to keep you wanting to learn more about Wes and Alison and subsequently doing so until the end of the film. The film is not without its faults but they smooth themselves out through the earnestness of the director’s presence felt throughout the film. My only regret about ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW is that I didn’t see it at a public screening so I could have shared in the warmth this film gives so freely.


Like last year, my closing film for the festival is also the closing film of the festival itself. Unlike last year, the film is well deserving of its place. French director, Claude Miller, returns to the Montreal World Film Festival this year with UN SECRET (A SECRET), starring Patrick Bruel, Cecile de France and Julie Depardieu. The sheer scope of the story is staggering. The summer of 1955 is vibrant and colorful. Everyone around the swimming pool is alive and soaking in the gorgeous day. Everyone, that is, except for young Francois. He is in awe of his mother’s beautiful stature, weary of his father’s disappointment and afraid to get in the water. Thirty years later, Francois (Mathieu Almarich) is a therapist who helps others face their fears. It isn’t clear whether his fears have been entirely vanquished but it is certain his healing process began in 1962, when he finally learned about his family’s secret. The secret itself had been buried since the early 1940’s. The script begins by alluding to things unsaid within Francois’s family and how avoiding saying these things only creates more damaging problems than speaking the truth would. However, the title itself suggests that there is one secret that will eclipse all. As that secret unfolds, the viewer is treated to so much suffering that serves as concrete insight into how this family became what they did. Miller’s film is a morality tale about the consequences of keeping things to yourself. Not saying what you should only leads to internalized torture that stops you from being who you are. Furthermore, it is foolish to think that secrets don’t get out. Silence echoes louder than any truth ever could. That said, as much as I would like to, I can’t tell you anymore about this film … it’s a secret and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.

On this, the last day of the 31st Montreal World Film Festival, I am relieved that it is closing and to have survived. Beyond that though, I am thrilled for having had the experience behind the scenes. Hanging out at the Hyatt lobby, meeting directors, getting into sold out screenings – all these things are new to me and it was a pleasure to have had these opportunities. I’d like to thank Trevor, Phil and Candice for joining me for screenings. I’d like to thank Celine France and Maryanne Shelley at the Festival pressroom for being so accommodating and helpful. I’d like to thank directors Michael Davis, Volker Einrauch and Francois Dompierre for meeting with me and sharing their experiences. And lastly, I’d like to thank Eric Lavallee at Ioncinema for sponsoring me to begin with and making this whole thing possible.

Next week, I will make my way to Toronto for my first time at the Toronto International Film Festival. See you there.

CHILDREN OF MEN

CHILDREN OF MEN
Written by Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron


The trouble with foretelling the future in film is that you need to make it credible. The viewer must be almost instantly immersed in a world that is unlike their own, be it entirely or just slightly. If successful, the viewer has the potential to form insights regarding the world they currently live in based on where it looks to be headed. If it fails, every intention the director weaves into the film will be lost on untrusting eyes. Alfonso Cuaron’s near apocalyptic CHILDREN OF MEN opens in a coffee shop in London where the patrons stare in a state of numbed shock at the newscast that announces the death of the world’s youngest human being. Baby Diego was all of 18 years old. There is no one younger because the human race has inexplicably stopped reproducing. The film is set only 20 years from now. Unfortunately, by carefully avoiding over-explaining how humanity got to this point, CHILDREN OF MEN misses achieving that level of authenticity necessary to fully engross the viewer, albeit just narrowly. Yet as more time is spent with the characters of this future, it somehow transforms into a compelling testament to the hope that keeps humanity going no matter how dire the state of the world. Given our current sliding slope towards an increased spread of apathy and despair, Cuaron has crafted an important film that serves as both a reminder and a tool to unify the global population … or at least the film-going one.

Part of the reason CHILDREN OF MEN fails to convince from the start is because of another device designed to foretell the future, the movie preview. To draw us into the intensity of the film, the preview shows an explosion that lead character, Theo (Clive Owen), just misses being killed in. This scene takes place early in the film and, given that this particular preview has been running even longer than most as the release was delayed by three months, the knowledge that the bomb is coming detaches the viewer as they brace for the blast. Had it been a genuine surprise, the shock itself would have served to announce the severity of the times, leaving the viewer as frightened and uneasy as the Londoners of 2027. The missing desperation allows for more time to make sense of what defines this future. While Cuaron’s clues to explain humanity’s collapse are clever and creative, the viewer is still left alone to play catch-up, trying to piece everything together on their own. Of course, it becomes clear that understanding how it happened is entirely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that’s where the road leads but the ground is not solid enough to get a good bearing, making it difficult to see past the details.


Surprisingly, the film is still surprising. And thankfully, once it does catch you off guard, it continues to do so until you understand what it means to need to survive at all costs. Theo must deliver Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to The Human Project, a group of the world’s greatest minds dedicated to the rebirth of the human race. At the risk of pointing out the film’s obvious symbolism, Kee is the “key” to this project as she is the first woman to conceive a child since Diego. Her miracle, although unexplained, inspires everyone she encounters to do right by her and protect her unborn child. As those who are accustomed to varying degrees of selfishness shed their ego-serving ways, their true colors shine through. Even those are meant to stop Kee so that they can use her baby to further their own purposes in the world ahead, from underground terrorists to an army that doesn’t care who they blow up as long as something is being destroyed, are powerless in the presence of the potential savior she is carrying. It’s as though everyone has given up and decided that their actions are meaningless and Kee’s baby gives them a hope so pure it is unlike anything they ever knew before all the trouble began, as if they too are reborn along with the child.

What was impossible to imagine at the start becomes so vividly real that the viewer cannot help but be wrapped up in the urgency of Kee’s need for a successful mission. Cuaron gives no reason at any time to think CHILDREN OF MEN will have to end happily out of a necessity to appease its audience. He makes every step of Kee’s journey arduous and exhausting. After all, she is over eight months pregnant; her odyssey would be hard for anyone. Only she is not simply carrying a child. She is carrying the fate of humanity at a moment in history that could mean the difference between a chance to begin again or an otherwise likely extinction. Being only 20 years away, there could already be a “Kee” amongst us. Though hope sometimes feels difficult to muster, CHILDREN OF MEN shows us we will find it again when we least expect to and it will keep us alive when we need it most.