TIFF 2012
Well, it’s all over folks. You can tell that by the completely dismantled Industry Lounge, or by the tumbleweed and upcoming programming billets littering the streets of the city. But wait! There is one final thing to do before the curtain officially closes on TIFF 2012: give out awards for the best of the fest. Below is a list of wonderful films, many of which you hopefully saw at the festival. Of note, there are a number of very strong Canadian features on this list, specifically Laurence Anyways directed by Xavier Dolan, Antiviral directed by Brandon Cronenberg, Blackbird directed by...
What you get when you sit down with Rob Stewart is pretty much what you get when you watch his movie, Revolution. It’s the same. He’s just a guy trying to get the word out that we’re doomed. What you don’t get when you sit down with Rob Stewart is the same thing you don’t get when you watch his movie: guilt, brow-beaten and shamed into doing good things for the planet. A self-admitted hater of environmental documentaries, I sat down to chat with Rob about why that is. He was lovely, genuine and passionate about his cause, just like...
Today we reach the final moments of TIFF 2012. What better way to celebrate the festival’s closing then by seeing a bunch of movies? Today TIFF is screening a ton of them! So join Toronto Film Scene on our excursion into movie screening madness today on the Scene. Denis Côté continues his art of filming whatever he damn well pleases and using it to help us find areas of the subconscious of awesomeness with his latest, Bestiaire. Simply described, Bestiaire is an observational documentary about animals (I did say “simply”). Trista DeVries not just recommends, but demands that you...
Janeane from Des Moines is documentary about an improvised character (the titular Janeane) interacting with political candidates in Iowa, a battleground state. We meet Janeane at a point in her life where she is having a great deal of personal and life issues, all of which are challenging her way of life and personal belief system. I sat down with director Grace Lee and lead actress, comedienne and improv artist to chat about the making of the film. ...
Disconnect focuses around three stories: a teenage boy being cyber bullied; a couple who have their credit card and banking information stolen; and a reporter trying to do a story about youths being exploited in a sexual chat room. Although there are three different stories, they each share a common theme – how difficult it is to maintain real human connection in a world that is so technology driven. With a theme so relevant, Disconnect is an emotionally resonating film. The stories are fictional, but they are so similar to things you hear on the news everyday. It is gut...
Have you ever found yourself watching The Shining and wondering what’s up with all of the Native American imagery? Have you ever wanted to watch it frame-by-frame to deconstruct its hidden meaning or plot out a perfect map of the ominous Overlook Hotel to determine whether or not that window in that one scene is in the correct place? Unless you’re the subject of Rodney Ascher’s documentary about the various theories concerning the subtext found in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, the answer is: probably not. Using clips from other Kubrick films as well as footage from The Shining itself, Ascher...
What Maisie Knew is a contemporary version of the Henry James novella by the same name. Taking place in modern day New York City, the story revolves around precocious 7-year-old Maisie (Onata Aprile) who’s caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her mother Susanna (Julianne Moore), an aging and slightly nutty rock star, and her father Beale (Steve Coogan), an art dealer who isn’t all that interested in being a parent. As her Mom and Dad take on new partners (Alexander Skarsgard and Joanna Venderham respectively) and carry on with their self-involved lives, Maisie is shuttled around...
In 1931, just before the Spanish Civil War, a group of children are locked away in an institution. The children cannot feel pain and, with the help of a German doctor, they’re placed in experiments to help them understand suffering. In the present day, David (Àlex Brendemühl), a brilliant neurosurgeon, is involved in a car accident which reveals that he is suffering from lymphoma. His only treatment is a bone marrow transplant from his parents, but when he asks them for help, he finds a mysterious connection between himself and the institutionalized children from 1931. Directed by Juan Carlos Medina,...
In 1965, the Indonesian government of President Sukarno was overthrown by a military coup, which paved the way for a mass bloodletting against the country’s “communists” (anyone who disagreed with the regime, particularly ethnic Chinese). A hierarchy of deadly middle management, petty thugs self-styled in the perceived fashion of American movie cowboys and gangsters emerged in Indonesian, charged with mass executions. 40 years later, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer finds one in particular, Anwar Congo and a group of his former colleagues, and charges them with recreating their heinous acts in the style of the Hollywood movies they love so much. What...
On a family day trip, pre-teen siblings Adolfo and Sara beg to be allowed to climb an ominous hillside on their own. Eager to engage in a little “adult time” in the car, their parents Sol and Felix let them to go, watching them wander hand-in-hand up the rocky path after a promise to return in 90 minutes time. When the children do finally return, after a night of being lost in the wilderness, Sol and Felix slowly begin to realize that the children who came back are not the same as they were the day before. As their homelife...
Set in the Orthodox Jewish community in Tel Aviv, Shira (Hadas Yaron), the 18-year-old daughter of rabbi Aharon (Chaim Sharir) is in the early stages of getting matched for marriage to a man she’s only glanced at in a supermarket aisle. When her older sister Esther (Ranana Raz) dies in childbirth, leaving her distraught husband Yochay (Yiftach Klein) to care for the baby alone, Shira’s forced to decide whether to hold out for a husband her own age or to help her family out by marrying Yochay and raising her sister’s baby as her own. Fill the Void is my...
Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a 27-year-old aspiring dancer who lives in a Brooklyn apartment with her best friend, Sophie. She’s messy, clumsy, awkward, and adorable. She can’t get her life together, hold down relationships, or, y’know, be a grownup. But at least she’s got Sophie to keep her anchored. The two girls are, in their own words, “like a lesbian couple who don’t have sex anymore.” That is, until Sophie decides to move in with another friend who got an apartment in her dream neighbourhood. This leaves Frances unmoored, drifting further from her goals and permanently searching for her ambiguous...
