Toronto 2011 Diary, Day 3

Today started at 7:00am with profoundly good luck at the box office. Sometimes, additional tickets for a screening go on sale that morning, and I was hoping this would be the case for a screening of George Clooney’s The Ides of March and the gala premiere of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Amazingly, I scored tickets to both. Combined with the tickets I already had, this meant for one full day of film going.

Film: The Ides of March

Director: George Clooney, who I suspect needs no introduction. But this is his fourth film as a director, following Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Leatherheads.

Notable Cast and Crew: Ryan Gosling stars, with Clooney, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood all turning in excellent supporting work. Clooney and his writing partner, Grant Heslov, adapted the screenplay from a stage play.

The Gist: In the days leading up to the Ohio democratic presidential primary, a political strategist (Gosling) experiences a crisis of self when he realizes the governor (Clooney) he works for may not be the perfect candidate he believed.

The Goods: This is a flawlessly crafted film, with absolutely top-notch performances and great dialogue to feed them. But the two real stars here are Clooney’s direction and Gosling’s emotional range. Everything about this movie’s visual style—framing, lighting, angles—indicates that Clooney has completely arrived as a director.

But the movie still wouldn’t have worked without Gosling’s ability to portray his character’s internal conflict. The real arc of the film is about Gosling’s strategist coming to grips with the realities of politics and what it takes to get to the top of that world. For Ides of March to succeed, Gosling’s changing reality has to be conveyed in his eyes, and it is. The film ends with one of the best closing shots I’ve seen in this year or most others.

The one flaw with the film though, is it’s just not as thematically profound as I get the feeling it hopes to be. The ultimate message of the movie (Politics are dirty! You have to cut deals and screw people over to win!) will probably fall a bit flat for anyone that isn’t hopelessly idealistic. But even still, that doesn’t take much away from what is otherwise one hell of a good political drama.

The Grade: A-

Film: Pearl Jam Twenty

Director: Cameron Crowe, a former rock journalist who became immersed in the Seattle music scene of the late 80s and early 90s. Crowe is also the writer director of Say Anything, Singles (which helped break Pearl Jam), Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, and Vanilla Sky.

Notable Cast and Crew: The only real cast is Pearl Jam, but Chris Cornell (former lead singer of Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, and Audioslave) is also featured in interviews.

The Gist: A documentary celebrating Pearl Jam’s 20^th anniversary, and covering the entire history of the band.

The Goods: Pearl Jam Twenty manages to succeed on every level of ambition it shoots for. It’s a lively and informative career history and one hell of a great listen. But more importantly, this film manages to convey why Pearl Jam was a band that mattered. Pearl Jam became the lead spokesmen for an entire generation of disaffected youth, and they did it by refusing to ever sacrifice their principles or their integrity. Even as their career momentum dwindled to a halt in the mid-to-late 90s because of the way they tightly controlled their exposure, they refused to ever give in for success. They are the ultimate “band of the people” because they persistently valued loyalty to their fans more than loyalty to success.

If Ides of March was all about the way people end up sacrificing their integrity, then Pearl Jam Twenty is about the way you hang onto it. In a present day interview, guitarist Stone Gossard even talks about the “birth of no” for the band, and how they collectively decided they would no longer allow themselves to be victims of overexposure. (And just wait until you see Gossard talk about the Grammys!) One of the real treats of the film is seeing the band perform “Alive” at their second ever show, revealing how great they were from the moment of inception. Unlike most bands that form as teenagers and go through years of growing pains, Pearl Jam came together when the members were all in their mid-twenties, and greatness was right there for the taking. Lucky for us, they took it. This is everything you could want from a career spanning rock and roll documentary.

The Grade: A

Film: A Dangerous Method

Director: David Cronenberg, a thirty-year veteran of edgy filmmaking. Most of his early career was spent making psychological horror films, such as Videodrome, Scanners, Dead Ringers, and The Fly. But he’s entered a late career renaissance with his last two films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, both outstanding dramas about the effect of violence on the human psyche.

Notable Cast and Crew: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, and Keira Knightley. Christopher Hampton (Atonement) wrote the screenplay, adapting his own stage play.

The Gist: A historical drama about history’s two greatest psychologists, Sigmond Freud (Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Fassbender), who see their relationship change when a new patient (Knightley) comes between them.

The Goods: This is a very well done and compelling period drama, with impeccable acting (and Knightley absolutely steals the show—she’ll be contending for an Oscar), but there are some flaws. First of all, the movie is too short. A Dangerous Method isn’t simply one biopic, but it’s actually about the relationship between two of the most important minds of the 20^th century. Clocking in at barely over 90 minutes, it just feels like more could have been mined out of such a weighty subject.

But more importantly, this never really feels like a Cronenberg film. Most of the director’s work has always been about the common ground where horror, violence, sexuality, and the human mind all intersect. Method has the latter two, but not the former. And while that gripe alone might not make this seem like an underwhelming film, here’s what does: It’s undeniably ironic that a movie about the birth of modern psychology turns out to be the least psychological movie Cronenberg has made in a long time.

The Grade: B+

Film: Drive

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn, the Danish director behind Bronson and Valhalla Rising.

Notable Cast and Crew: Ryan Gosling stars, with Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, and Ron Perlman in supporting roles.

The Gist: Gosling stars as a mechanic and movie stunt driver by day, getaway driver by night. Working on a deal to start professional racing with Cranston and Brooks behind him, he gets caught on the wrong path when trying to help a beautiful neighbor’s husband square his debts.

The Goods: Drive is a fun and captivating action noir film, mixing the car chase exploitation flicks of Roger Corman with the existential French new wave crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville. Gosling’s character (who is never named) preserves his mystique by not speaking much, but the toughness and action star quality is conveyed quite well. What’s frustrating about Drive (and no, I’m not holding the unoriginal plot against it—that’s to be expected from a car chase movie) is that the violence just gets so over the top in a few sequences that it’s remarkably distracting from the movie. So much so that when the end credits roll, the daiquiri mix-like blood spurting might be the image of the film most firmly stamped in your mind. And that’s a shame for such a compellingly cinematic action movie.

And for those of you keeping track at home: In the past two months, Ryan Gosling has successfully played the lead role in a great romantic comedy (Crazy Stupid Love), a great political drama (The Ides of March—see above), and a pretty good action movie. Even while resisting the temptation to overly hyperbolize Gosling, it needs to be asked: How many actors could do that? When was the last time a leading man displayed that kind of range? Kevin Costner made Bull Durham, JFK, and Revenge in a 3-year span, which might be as close as it gets without going back to Hollywood’s Golden Age. It may be easy to forget now, but from about ’87-’93, Kevin Costner had one of the greatest leading man hot streaks Hollywood has ever seen. And Gosling looks primed to challenge that. Stay tuned.

The Grade: B

Up next: Q and A time with Francis Ford Coppola, celebrating 20 years of Sony Pictures Classics, the new Almodovar film, and a fantastic new Indie comedy.

Toronto 2011 Diary, Day 2

The first full day of the 36^th annual Toronto International Film Festival saw me harness my U2 media pass and attend my first ever press conference. Answering Twitter questions about the From the Sky Down premiere the night before, director Davis Guggenheim, Bono, and The Edge sat down with TIFF Documentary Programmer Thom Powers for a lively hour-long chat.

Many worthy quotes and tidbits were revealed, and you can watch the whole thing on U2’s website, but here are some highlights…

When asked how realistic a break-up might have been during the making of Achtung Baby, The Edge replied that a total crash and burn wasn’t that likely, but “what was really at stake was an ending of the trust the four of us had in each other. In a weird way, that probably would have been more sad.”

When asked about the reasons for doing the film, Bono replied that the band is dangerously close to irrelevance, and it was useful to look back at how they’d dodged that outcome before.

And when David Guggenheim was asked if he still had any questions left for the band after spending so much time with them, he looked over to Bono and The Edge and said “Do you like me?”

I attended two screenings in the evening, one of which received the first standing ovation I’ve ever seen at TIFF. It was called…

Film: The Artist

The Gist: The Artist is a black and white silent film set during the era when Hollywood made the transition to talkies. Chronicling the declining fortunes of silent film star George Valentin and the rise of the beautiful Peppy Miller as Hollywood’s new “it” girl, The Artist lovingly honors and recreates cinema’s first golden era.

Director: Michel Hazanavicius, a veteran of French TV (and he also wrote the screenplay)

Notable Cast and Crew: The two leads are both French actors, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo. Great supporting work is provided by John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Malcolm McDowell.

The Goods: A lot of people will have a hard time convincing themselves that they want to see a modern day silent film, and I was certainly in that group. But the film was beloved at Cannes and Dujardin took home that festival’s Best Actor prize, so I felt like I had to give it a shot. And I can now tell you, firsthand, The Artist was a profound cinematic experience that I’ll likely never forget. This film exudes such a contagious joy that it’s almost indescribable. The full crowd at TIFF hung on the film’s every moment, and there was a palpable feeling in the room that none of us will ever see another movie quite like it. I confess I have no idea whether this film will find an audience when it gets a theatrical release. Reviews and word of mouth will be behind it (and several critics think it will receive some Oscar nominations—Picture, Director, and Actor all seem feasible), but how many ticket buyers will give it a chance? I hope you do, because The Artist is not to be missed.

The Grade: A

Film: The Hunter

The Gist: The story of a scientist hired by a biological research corporation to go to Tasmania and find the alleged last remaining Tasmanian Tiger.

Director: Daniel Nettheim, making his first feature film after a prolific decade in Australian TV.

Notable Cast and Crew: Willem Dafoe stars as the title character, with Sam Neil in a supporting role. The film was adapted from a novel by Julia Leigh.

The Goods: The Hunter is a deeply ruminative film about man’s role in trying to control nature, and the consequences we pay for it. Much of the conflict in the film is internal to Willem Dafoe’s character, and a huge visual draw for audiences will be the gorgeous Tasmanian wilderness. The movie was very reminiscent of the Robert Redford classic Jeremiah Johnson, and while it’s definitely beautiful and compelling, the resolution feels a bit unsatisfying on levels both practical and philosophical. But there’s a great scene with a Bruce Springsteen song.

The Grade: B

On tap for tomorrow: The premieres of the Cameron Crowe documentary Pearl Jam Twenty and the Ryan Gosling action noir Drive, as well as my attempt to score a ticket to the premiere of the Freud/Jung biopic A Dangerous Method.

For more frequent info on TIFF and more, follow me on Twitter @thirdmanmovies

To see this post on Detroit's Metro Times blog, click here

Toronto 2011 Diary, Day 1

I arrived in Toronto today a little after 2pm and immediately had to start scurrying. It was a big night, after all. The U2 documentary From the Sky Down, about the making of 1991’s Achtung Baby, was opening the festival at 6:30, and I was responsible with doing coverage for the band’s fan site, atu2.com. In the meantime, all I had to do was shower, change, pick up my tickets and press pass, and get across town to the Elgin Theatre. Easy, right? Well, for those of you that have never seen the ticket line for the opening day of a major film festival, it looks a little like the apocalypse. Just picking up will call tickets took an hour and a half. And would you have guessed that I had to pick up my press pass and my press accreditation (two separate things, I might add) in two entirely different buildings? Yes, the world’s largest film festival does have some minor organization and efficiency problems.

I ended up getting to my seat at the Elgin just as Piers Handling (Director of TIFF) was coming out to introduce the film. But luckily, the initial panic of my first 4 hours in Toronto quickly dissipated, and by the end of the night, I had seen two fantastic films.

Film: From the Sky Down

The Gist: A documentary about the making of U2’s landmark 1991 album Achtung Baby, interspersed with footage of the band revisiting the songs at this summer’s Glastonbury Festival, where they celebrated the album’s 20^th anniversary.

Director: Davis Guggenheim, who has arguably been the best documentary filmmaker of the last decade. He won an Oscar for 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, took on America’s school system with last year’s Waiting for Superman, and held the world’s greatest guitar summit in 2009’s It Might Get Loud.

Notable Cast and Crew: Well, the band, for one. But insightful interviews are also conducted with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, engineer Flood, and manager Paul McGuinness.

The Goods: From the Sky Down is a film about trying to turn massive mainstream success into a meaningful artistic career. Many regard Achtung Baby as U2’s greatest and most important album, and this film adequately and profoundly explains why. By the end of the 1980s, U2 had become the most successful band in the world, and The Joshua Tree was, to many, the decade’s best album. But the band had become the very type of “big rock” they hated, and they knew that they couldn’t repeat the same formulas if they wanted to have sustained creative success. So they went to Berlin, and changed their look, their sound, and their attitude. This intimate look inside that creative process is worth the time to anyone that thinks rock and roll is an important form of artistic expression. If the film has a flaw, it’s that it tries to do too much. The first half is mostly devoted to why the band needed a reinvention, and then by the time you throw in the present day footage of the band getting ready for Glastonbury, there just isn’t enough time to show the actual reinvention.

The Grade: B+

For a more in-depth look at the film, see my coverage for atu2 HERE.

Film: Le Havre

The Gist: Taking place in the eponymous Normandy port city of the title, Le Havre is a French dramedy about a poor shoe-shiner who takes in an illegal African immigrant boy on the run. When a police inspector begins to suspect the shoe-shiner of harboring him, a humorous cat and mouse game ensues.

Director: Aki Kaurismaki, a Finnish director who has been making movies in France for decades, most notably 2002’s The Man Without a Past.

Notable Cast and Crew: Kaurismaki typically uses the same cast and crew for all of his films. Andre Wilms is the star here, but Jean-Pierre Leaud (veteran actor of numerous Francois Truffaut films) also has a small role.

The Goods: A truly wonderful film that goes in directions—both in story and in style—that you don’t expect, it manages to be both relevant and a whole lot of fun. Kaurismaki uses a mishmash of styles that at times recalled Douglas Sirk, David Lynch, and Wes Anderson, but never felt like it was copying anyone. The humor in the film is a bit dry but always feels genuine, while the easy moralizing is mostly avoided. Plus, there’s a great rock and roll segue featuring a local legend named Little Bob. This was my first Kaurismaki film, but it definitely won’t be my last.

The Grade: A

On tap for tomorrow: A press conference with Bono & The Edge, silent film homage The Artist, which was a sensation in Cannes, and The Hunter, starring Willem Dafoe on the hunt for the last living Tasmanian Tiger.

For more frequent info on TIFF and more, follow me on Twitter @thirdmanmovies

To see this post on Detroit's Metro Times blog, click here.

In Theaters: The Names of Love

The Names of Love

Directed by Michel Lecrlerc

The Grade: B+

The Names of Love is a delightful new French comedy about the generations worth of baggage so many of us carry within the origins of our names. Jacques Gamblin and Sara Forestier star as an unlikely romantic couple trying to come to terms with how their ethnic backgrounds inform and/or impede on their roles in modern French society.

Gamblin plays the boring and uptight Arthur Martin, whose painfully common name (we learn there are over 15,000 Arthur Martins living in France) hides the fact that his mother is an Auschwitz survivor descended from Greek Jews. Arthur falls in love with the beautiful but chaotic Baya (Forestier), who makes sure everyone knows she has an Algerian father. Baya is on a life mission to convert her political opponents by sleeping with them—as Arthur put it, “she uses her body as a weapon of mass destruction against the fascists.”

Forestier, who won this year’s Cesar Award (the French Oscar) for Best Actress in the film, is absolutely fantastic as Baya, who wears not just her heart, but her entire cultural being on her sleeve. We see her choose “whoring” for the greater good that she thinks it can do for the nation’s political climate, and then we watch the upheaval of her world when she falls in love with Arthur. In a particularly memorable moment, we learn why she holds herself responsible for the election of (current French President) Nicolas Sarkozy.

Even if some sequences feel a bit too rushed, the film maintains its grounding via a humorous running commentary by adolescent versions of Arthur and Baya. In his first major film behind the camera, writer/director Michel Leclerc does a wonderful job of finding the whimsical comedy behind a weighty subject matter, and he approaches it with a grace and maturity that point towards a bright future.

Big Man, I'll Miss You

Hiding on the backstreets

Where we swore forever friends

On the backstreets until the end

-Bruce Springsteen, “Backstreets” (1975)

As I write this, I’m on my seventh hour of watching old Springsteen concert DVDs—an evening spent on the couch, with a 6-pack of beer, and precious time spent with remembered friends. The E Street band has been keeping me company virtually every minute since the news hit… The Big Man had passed away due to complications from the stroke he suffered last week.

People always debate things like who the greatest rock guitarist is (Hendrix? Clapton? Chuck berry?), or who the greatest rock singer is (Lennon? Daltry? Jagger?). Even greatest rock drummer debates have been known to cause serious throw-downs between Keith Moon backers and John Bonham backers (For the record, it’s Moon). But Greatest Rock And Roll Saxophonist? No one argues that one. At first it may seem like a minor achievement, but think about it. How many people can die saying they were the greatest EVER at what they did? Clarence may be gone, but his legacy looms just as large as he always did on stage.

The great critic Greil Marcus once wrote that rock and roll had become “too big for any center. It is so big in fact that no single event can be much more than peripheral.” But continuing, Marcus wrote that Bruce Springsteen “performs as if none of the above were true. The implicit promise of a Bruce Springsteen concert is that This Is What It’s All About.” (Note: the above is actually taken from Dave Marsh’s quoting of Marcus; I have never encountered the original source.)

But where Marcus uses the term “center,” I prefer to say community. Rock music started as “The Counter-Culture,” but counter or not, it was still a culture. It was a community of people who felt they had a common set of values and shared experience. As rock (and popular music in general) expanded, this sensation evaporated.

But a concert by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band was different. It was about re-establishing the community feel that rock music had so long ago abandoned. It was about uniting under the cause of rock and roll ecstacy that seemed to have disappeared. As Bruce himself said in the recent documentary The Promise, rock was about capturing that “never-ending now.” On stage, the E Street Band was there to give it to us.

No one personified this more than Clarence Clemons. In most bands, the frontman exists apart from the rest of the band; the frontman captivates the audience, the band plays the music. But from the cover of Born to Run 36 years ago all the way through the last time they shared a stage, Clarence proved that you don’t need to sing in order to work the crowd.

The first time I saw the E Street Band as an adult was October 2007, towards the beginning of the Magic tour. I went with my girlfriend at the time, Megan, and we showed up early so we could try to get in the pit. The lottery shined in our favor and we ended up about 15 feet in front of stage left, right where Clarence stands. When the band came out, they broke into “Radio Nowhere,” and Clarence started out unassumingly, banging the tambourine. All eyes were on Bruce, and Clarence knew it. After a minute or two, Clarence grabbed his sax and walked up towards the front of the stage. There was a low murmur of excitement from the crowd in anticipation of our first sax solo, but it wasn’t enough for the Big Man—he wanted more. He came right up to the edge of the stage, getting the attention of everyone on his side of the pit, and then started motioning his right hand in a come hither motion with all five fingers. As he amped up the enthusiasm, so did we. “Give it to me,” he was saying. We gave it to him. Everyone in our area stopped paying any attention to Bruce and just went ape-shit crazy cheering for the Big Man. Finally, once we had reached the decibel he demanded, he nodded to us in approval and then went into his solo.

It was one of my favorite random moments from any concert I’ve ever been to. Clarence Clemons had that true sense of the moment that only the best performers ever really understand. When all eyes were focused on Bruce, he brought some attention to himself with just a few flicks of his fingers and a knowing smile. Anytime I hear Clarence referred to as a sideman, I think of that moment, and know that no other sideman in the world could have pulled it off. Clarence Clemons loomed so much larger than life that life just couldn’t contain him any longer.

Rest easy Big Man, and do so knowing that you really were “King of the World, Master of the Universe,” just like Bruce always called you on stage.

In Theaters: Even The Rain

Directed by Iciar Bollain

The Grade: A-

When the Academy Award nominations were announced this year, many were puzzled at the absence of Even the Rain from the Foreign Film nominations, and now I understand why. Selected as the official entry from Spain, the film actually takes place in Bolivia during the water supply protests of 2000. Gael Garcia Bernal and Luis Tosar play Sebastian and Costa, the director and producer (respectively) of a Spanish film crew who journeys to Bolivia to make an epic movie about Columbus’s voyages to the Americas and his exploitation of the native population. Choosing Bolivia for its appropriate scenery and cheap labor, a local named Daniel is cast in the pivotal role of an Indian who leads an insurrection against Columbus. But as the water company stiffens the price on the local supply, fact and fiction begin to blur as Daniel leads a protest against the local authorities, saying that if the people refuse to act, then “even the rain” will be taken from them.

The opening scene shows a helicopter transporting a giant wooden cross high over the Bolivian countryside, and we’re immediately reminded of the opening of the Fellini classic La Dolce Vita, in which a large wooden Jesus is flown over a Roman beach. This is clever foreshadowing, as La Dolce Vita was partially about the self-absorption inherent within the activities of the upper class—a theme that would repeat itself in Even the Rain. A fascinating tale about the summoning of morality, it’s also somewhat reminiscent of the underappreciated Gulf War film Three Kings, as we see well-to-do foreigners initially try to exploit local resources for selfish ends before getting swept up in the problems of the populace and forced into choosing a side. But even Three Kings didn’t have the successful dual narrative employed here, as the central conflict of the characters in the fictional Columbus film echo what’s happening in the real life of the extras cast in it. During one scene of the film within a film, an advisor says to Columbus “Look into an Indian’s eyes. Are these not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves?”

Written by Paul Laverty, the Scotsman who wrote 2006’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and directed by Iciar Bollain, a popular actor and director in her native Spain, Even the Rain creates realistic drama that moves us without ever manipulating us, and the characters each find themselves at a crossroads where their actions will forever define who they are. Bollain uses an interesting tactic during the Columbus film scenes of not allowing the film crew to be seen, thereby lending a greater level of gravitas to the fictional portion of the meta-narrative. The proceedings feel especially poignant because of the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias, the great Spanish composer who works mostly with Pedro Almodovar, but who also received Oscar nominations for The Constant Gardner and The Kite Runner. The only complaint I can really levy is that the brisk 98-minute running time might have been too short.

The Greatest Opening Scenes in Film History

So many of the great albums immediately hit you with their best shot. Classic songs like “Brown Sugar,” “Thunder Road,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Respect,” “Purple Haze,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Seven Nation Army” were chosen to open their albums with a bang instead of slowly draw the audience in and build to a climax. Movies traditionally haven’t operated the same way; the classic Hollywood films typically began with by-the-numbers exposition and set-up—and even that was after three or four minutes of boring title cards.

Luckily, times have changed. The Film School Generation of the 1970s began to successfully switch things up a bit, showing willing audiences that there’s no reason exposition and set-up has to be unengaging. Today, thanks to the ever-present ADD experienced by modern audiences, there’s basically a written-in-stone rule that movies have to be exciting from the first moment (and over the last few years, this practice has even led to the near-extinction of opening credit sequences; many films are starting to delay all credits and titles until the end).

So these are the facts, and they are indisputable: a movie’s beginning is now almost as important as its ending. But what are the opening scenes to which all others should forever be judged against? Well, that’s what I’m here for.

First, a few words on some notable omissions:

Up and Saving Private Ryan often appear on lists like this, but I don’t think they qualify, because the early sequences for which they are justly famous (the marriage montage and D-Day invasion, respectively) are actually the film’s second scenes. Jaws and 2001 also get a lot of credit for the way they open, and while it’s mostly deserved, I don’t think either opening stands up well today. I gave good consideration to The Departed for this list, but it’s a bit difficult to distinguish exactly where the opening scene even ends (the title screen doesn’t appear until more than twenty minutes into the film, in what is probably the third or fourth scene). A Clockwork Orange has one of the greatest-ever opening images, but the entire opening scene isn’t as impressive. And lastly, I remember the opening of Mission: Impossible III being particularly great, but I don’t own the DVD and couldn’t find the clip online to save my life, so without a fresh viewing, I opted not to include it.

Let’s get to the list! (Click on the title of each film to see the clip.)

25. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

24. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

A lot of films open with what can fairly be called a teaser. The audience is shown an event that isn’t really meant to make sense, but is intriguing enough to make us stick around for the explanation. In a sense, a teaser intro is a way of saying “we’re going to spend the next two hours explaining how we got here,” so for an audience to accept that inevitability, the teaser better be pretty damn enticing. Goodfellas probably has the all-time best teaser intro (“For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”), but Citizen Kane, with its single word (“Rosebud”), is inarguably the most famous—and influential. Two other great examples are The Hangover (“Things got out of hand, and we lost Doug.”) and Fight Club (Brad Pitt holding a gun in Edward Norton’s mouth).

23. Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)

22. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

For some movies, the perfect way to open things is by setting the ground rules. We’re given a scene in which the specific events don’t have a lot of bearing on the plot, but the mentality and attitude established is crucially important. In both Scream and The Dark Knight, we see the villains performing crimes that prove to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but the way in which they’re carried out serves as a perfectly ominous message for what’s to come. With Scream’s Ghostface, we learn two simple rules: 1) don’t answer the phone, and 2) at least know your horror movies if you do answer it. And with the Joker, we learn that there simply are no rules. (No Country For Old Men also did this well, with Javier Bardem's villainous Anton Chigurgh memorably killing someone with a cattle stun gun shot to the forehead just a few minutes into the film.)

21. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

At the end of The Social Network’s first scene, the main character is called an “asshole” in a pretty definitive way. But this serves as the film’s way of issuing a challenge to the viewer: This movie is about an asshole, but we DARE you not to find him fascinating. Written by the great Aaron Sorkin, the opening sequence is a hyper-speed conversation that results in a break-up which feels both spontaneous and yet totally justified. But the verbal rhythms of this scene also introduce us to a key element of the characters—their inner rhetoric operates with the speed and efficiency of a microprocessor, and they say what they think. There’s no clip because The Social Network is still in theaters, but anyone that hasn’t seen it yet really should do so. I dare you not to find it fascinating.

20. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

The clip actually omits the first five minutes of the movie, but it still gets the point across: nobody has ever been able to squeeze more drama out of delayed action than Sergio Leone. An incredible amount of time is spent in Leone’s classic Spaghetti Westerns on characters waiting for one another to make the first move. In doing so, Leone draws us into the drama the characters face. As character A waits for character B to draw, and vice versa, the audience starts to experience the same sweat on their brow as the characters, because we’re forced into playing the same waiting game. It’s a daring psychological ploy, because people generally prefer instant gratification, but Leone’s darting camera and extreme close-ups pull it off. It’s not quite fair to say Quentin Tarantino learned everything he knows from Leone, but there’s at least an entire semester’s worth of curriculum in this scene.

19. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

18. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

Not just two of the most famous opening sequences ever, but, in many ways, the two opening sequences that started to draw attention to the art of a great first scene. What both films do so well is subtly draw you into their worlds so thoroughly that you feel like you’ve always been there. This is important to do in films like these, where the backlog of mythology and relationships is incredibly complex. But the great directors are able to reveal detailed sets of information in effortless ways, and that’s never been on display better than in these two films. And if you were to make a list of the greatest opening lines in film history, Star Wars (“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…”) and The Godfather (“I believe in America”) might very well rank #s 2 and 3 behind Citizen Kane’s “Rosebud."

17. Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)

Tim Burton’s original Batman films are inferior to Christopher Nolan’s contemporary versions in almost every single way, but Burton wins out in one key area—his Gotham City is far better realized. In fact, an argument could be made that the original Batman is one of the greatest works of art/set direction in film history, on par with classics of the field like Metropolis, Frankenstein, and Blade Runner. Using a bizarre combination of 1930s era Manhattan, 1970s CBGB’s punk, and Blade Runner-like future gothic, Burton and his collaborators created one of the most unique visions of urban horror that’s ever been unleashed, and it is introduced marvelously in Batman’s opening scene. The clip unfortunately picks up after an initial 20 seconds or so of Gotham images, but you can check them out at the end of this video.

16. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)

The intro of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy had an unenviable task, because it required success on two levels. On the more obvious front, the Fellowship of the Ring intro had to cover an enormous back-story and mythology in a way that was brief, compelling, interesting, and exciting. But that’s actually the easy part of the equation; the difficult part was pleasing the devoted fans of the novels and meeting the expectations that come along with creating one of the most anticipated and ambitious movies ever attempted. Jackson had taken a gargantuan cast to New Zealand for over a year and spent more than 100 million dollars to film what amounted to a twelve-hour film based on a book trilogy that had an impossible-to-please fan base. The financial well being of an entire studio was riding on these films, and Jackson literally could not afford for the intro to be anything but perfect. Luckily, it was perfect. Using a new style of epic filmmaking that was to be endlessly copied in the years to come, a haunting score from Howard Shore, and regal narration by the great Cate Blanchett, The opening of The Lord of the Rings will give you goose bumps. Mission Accomplished.

15. Lord of War (Andrew Niccol, 2005)

Lord of War has an intro that I like to refer to as “Important Unimportance.” As we watch the journey of a single bullet from being manufactured all the way to blowing a nameless kid’s brains out, we don’t learn anything about the film’s characters, plot, style, or really even the theme (the opener is weighty and topical drama, while the film is more like unsuccessful black comedy). And yet… the movie is inconceivable, as well as a hell of a lot worse, without the intro. While it seems easy to conclude that the opener doesn’t add anything to the film besides a memorable credits sequence, the real reality is that the film doesn’t add anything to the opener. The opener was simply too good, and the movie it introduced had no hope of living up. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) also had an a great intro in the Important Unimportance vein, as the theme of coincidence was memorably introduced through three entirely unrelated, yet unforgettable anecdotes.

14. City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)

What City of God’s opening sequence does so well is something nearly unique in film up to that point: it establishes not so much a style of storytelling, but a rhythm. The speed of the cuts intertwined with the music makes the film feel like a carefully choreographed salsa dance—keep up or keep to the sidelines. The entire film operates on this propulsive beat that chugs along so relentlessly the characters end up in a constant reactionary status with their own lives, much like the chicken in this scene. Ending the scene with the 360-degree spin as the main character reverts to his childhood self was an effortless way of establishing where the film is going. In that sense, this intro operates like a teaser that does so much more than tease. In terms of establishing a visual rhythm, the opening sequence of West Side Story (1961) also does a good job, but it’s not in the same league as City of God.

13. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)

12. The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)

Occasionally, a movie’s opening sequence will simply dazzle us with its craft, and that’s the case with these two. Both films open with an unbroken tracking shot that looks simply impossible to pull off, and yet there we are watching it. For decades, Touch of Evil had the reputation of having the tracking shot to end all tracking shots, and it was the first shot of the movie! Lately though, as technology and the ambition of great directors continues to exponentially increase, Touch of Evil’s supremacy is constantly being challenged. Just in the last few years, movies like Atonement, Children of Men, and The Secret in Their Eyes have given us shots we never would have thought were possible. But while those films all used their crowning technical achievement as the centerpiece of the movie, The player had the audacity to open with an 8 minute long unbroken shot. The entire film uses meta-fiction quite well, but the theme is introduced in this opening scene. As one character says to another that the opening shot of Touch of Evil could never be topped, that’s exactly what we’re seeing happen. Robert Altman had the balls to not just beat Touch of Evil at its own game, but to tell us while he was doing it. Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995) also opens with a tracking shot of similar audacity, but it doesn’t manage to be compelling in the same way.

11. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

Really, this should have been a mortal lock for the top ten, but I’m not totally sure it qualifies because it’s so long. (The opening sequence of Inglourious Basterds is over 20 minutes, while all but four other entries in this top 25 were under 8 minutes.) I finally opted to include it under the following corollary: my blog, my rules. It could be argued that Basterds has the most ambitious opening of any film on this list, precisely because it doesn’t follow any of the most basic assumptions regarding how to open a movie. It jumps right into an important scene, but proceeds along very slowly; none of the title characters or name actors in the film are featured in a scene that lasts for an extremely long time by today’s standards; and the opening scene may well leave you crying—not exactly something a summer movie is supposed to do twenty minutes into its runtime. And as if that all weren’t enough, Tarantino had the audacity to combine Leone style drama with Hitchcock style suspense… and make us fully aware he was doing it. The result was a scene so memorable and powerful, that it effectively won Christoph Waltz an Oscar. (Sadly there's no clip of the complete scene online, but if you've never seen it before, just rent the movie. It's one of the best films of the last several years.)

10. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)

Herzog’s films have always been about the grey area where extreme dedication collides with pure insanity, and how the lines between the two can easily become blurred. As a result of this undercurrent, Herzog often ends up making movies about the dangerous quests men embark on, and how they turn out. Aguirre, Herzog’s masterpiece, desires to show us that the quest of the Spanish conquistadors to locate the fabled El Dorado in the 16^th century was borne out of less than pure rationality, and the film does this rather quickly. Using an ethereal score that seems to be floating out of the mist, and an incredibly orchestrated shot of hundreds of people descending a mountain jungle to the depths of madness in a single file line, Herzog accomplishes a singular cinematic rarity: he achieves the entire goal of a film in its first two minutes. Now that’s an opening scene!

9. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)

8. Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009)

Since 2005’s Batman Begins, the franchise reboot has become one of Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers. While the advantage of hindsight enables filmmakers to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, a great reboot is still difficult to pull off. A careful balance has to be found between honoring what has gone before and forging a new identity. While neither of these things is easy, you might have been fooled into thinking so after seeing Casino Royale or Star Trek. Both films open with the never-before-seen origin of their classic characters; we watch James Bond get his first two kills and earn double O status, while we see Captain Kirk’s birth during a catastrophic space battle. James Bond films have long been famous for their pre-credit sequences, but while always entertaining, they are almost never of any consequence. Casino Royale dared to be different. Not only do we watch Bond effectively become Bond, but also the stylish black & white and brutal fistfight clearly signal that the tongue-in-cheek era of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan is gone for good. The sequence serves as a bold statement of purpose for what the new franchise will be, but still has the good sense to end with a nod and a wink to those of us that have been around the block with Bond before, as the classic gunshot framed by the eye is given a dramatic re-creation. Unlike Casino Royale, the opening sequence for Star Trek doesn’t serve as a departure from the norm or homage to it, but it is one of the greatest film-opening action sequences ever created. That may seem less ambitious, but if the ultimate goal of a great opening sequence is to make people salivate for the rest of the film, then Star Trek earns top marks. (Sadly, the only clip of it I could find changes a few crucial parts of the score. Just know that the music is far more dramatic in the real version.)

7. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)

The most economical way to use a movie’s intro is to quickly dispense as much background information as possible, so the film can get to the key plot points without wasting a big chunk of running time. Often times, this strategy manifests itself in long text openers (i.e. Star Wars, Gladiator), but isn’t that just the easy way out? The greatest example of the alternative is The Royal Tenenbaums, which we’ll refer to as the “Text Intro After a Cocktail of Speed and LSD” (or TIACSAL, for short). Basically, TIACSAL is a text intro read by a narrator, while the screen imagery dramatizes the text as fast as possible in a medley of bizarrely juxtaposed scenes and events. This had been done before, notably with Jules & Jim (1963) and Raising Arizona (1987), but never this well. The Tenenbaums intro combines the great narrative voice of Alec Baldwin, the strangest family history you’ll ever see outside of a Jerry Springer taping, and the most intricately detailed and idiosyncratic domestic art direction ever captured on film. But the more you watch it, the instrumental version of “Hey Jude” playing in the background becomes the emotional core of the scene; a song about a child in the spotlight needing comforting after his parents’ separation, it provides realistic grounding to the film’s themes… and that timeless “na na na” coda to frame the sequence.

6. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)

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5. The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)

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4. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)

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3. Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)

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2. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

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1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Film Trilogy Wraps Up

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Directed by Neils Arden Oplev

The Grade: B+ (on DVD)

The Girl Who Played With Fire – Directed by Daniel Alfredson

The Grade: A- (on DVD)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Directed by Daniel Alfredson

The Grade: C+ (in theaters)

Trilogy as a whole: B+

The Swedish film versions of the suddenly (and posthumously) popular trilogy of novels by Steig Larsson wrap up today with the theatrical release of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, so it’s an ideal time to assess the three films together, the first two of which opened in theaters earlier this year and are now available on DVD. The much Ballyhooed Hollywood versions of the films have just gotten underway with director David Fincher, star Daniel Craig, and newcomer Rooney Mara as the titular Girl, but we won’t be seeing the first of them until Christmas 2011, so the Swedish versions have to tide us over until then—a task they accomplish pretty well… mostly.

The first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, opened back in April, and introduced us to lead characters Lizbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist as they come together to solve the disappearance of a young girl. While the title might lead one to think otherwise, the first film is really Mikael’s story; as an investigative journalist and publisher of “Millennium” magazine, Blomkvist has come under fire for a libel case in which he may have been set up. Prevented from returning to normal work, Blomkvist is hired by the patriarch of the powerful Vanger family to help solve the mystery of his niece’s disappearance forty years prior. Professional hacker Lizbeth Salander, initially working for Blomkvist’s legal opponents to help frame him, ends up aiding him on his new case.

At 152 minutes, the trilogy’s first film is its longest, but it never seems like it. Even though we realize at the film’s conclusion that it was a fairly standard mystery/thriller, it perpetually feels like something greater and deeper while we’re in its throes. Like The Silence of the Lambs, it’s a film in which the supporting character who aids the protagonist ends up being the most compelling person in the movie. We first meet Lizbeth as a waifish, helpless victim of her controllers, but she seizes control of her own life with a flare for the dramatic, and it’s compelling enough for us to follow her story into two sequels.

The second film, The Girl Who Played with Fire, opened this summer, and features a switch in both focus and director. While the first film was spurred along by an extraneous plot that the characters become involved in, the second film permanently changes the spotlight to Lizbeth Salander, her past, and her attempt to extricate herself from that past. (It’s useful to remember that the first book’s original title was Men Who Hate Women, which implies that two sequels focusing on Lizbeth might not have originally been planned for.) Fire is the best film of the trilogy both because Lizbeth is most directly involved in the action, and the action is most directly centered on Lizbeth; the plot arrives out of her character, instead of just existing to give her character something to do, as in the first film. The climactic scene of the film sees Lizbeth rise out of her own grave (literally) to confront her past with an axe to the head (not a metaphor), and in doing so, she becomes the perfect heroine for the new millennium: her weapon of choice is a laptop, but she’s more than capable of getting her hands dirty the old fashioned way. There’s talk in Hollywood of mounting a campaign to get actress Noomi Rapace an Oscar nomination for playing Lizbeth, and if so, this is the movie it should be for.

Unfortunately, the final film—this week’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest—cruelly halts this momentum as efficiently as an opposing coach calling for a timeout. While the first two films effectively created an appetite for seeing what Lizbeth is capable of, the third film (running for a feels-like-it 148 minutes) shackles Lizbeth to a hospital bed and a courtroom chair for well over two hours, giving her nothing more than a cell phone to play with until she finally gets crafty with a nail gun in the last ten minutes of the movie. Say what? While Lizbeth spends the first half of the movie in the hospital, there’s at least the promise that the excitement will ratchet up along with her condition, but once it becomes clear the second half of the movie won’t break free of its legal doldrums, there’s an inescapable feeling that this isn’t what we signed up for.

But here’s what’s worse: on top of Hornet’s Nest killing Lizbeth’s mojo, the plot feels utterly superfluous. The Girl Who Played with Fire was essentially about Lizbeth discovering the truth about her past, confronting the people who wished to control her, and defeating them. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is essentially about… get ready… the exact same thing. All of the revelations and answers were packed into that second film, and it ended with what looked like a resounding victory for Lizbeth. The third film basically tries to tell us “Wait, the fight’s not over! The struggle continues… in the courtroom!” In many ways, Hornet’s Nest provides a valuable lesson for the new practice of filmmaking in which entire series’ are filmed at once: Don’t play your trump card if there’s still another whole film to go.

In spite of all this, the movie could have redeemed itself in the closing bits, but that’s yet another lost opportunity. After winning her freedom and defeating the last of her transgressors, Lizbeth triumphantly goes home and… has a cup of coffee. Roll credits. That would be fine as the ending to an episode of Law & Order, but as the ending of a hotly anticipated film trilogy? It has the audacity to be an anticlimactic conclusion to a movie that was already anticlimactic in its duration, but it gets an “A” for consistency. There was a great shot in the second film of Lizbeth defiantly riding the motorcycle she took from someone who crossed her, looking like quite the badass, and ready to deal with anyone that gets in her way. Would it be too much to ask for the trilogy to have ended with something like that? In many ways, it’s not enough for Lizbeth to simply win; we deserved to see her seize her freedom, but we didn’t get it.

It is, however, useful to remember that these films are adapted from the immensely popular novels, meaning a) any inherent flaws in the plot structure are most likely the fault of the book author and not the filmmaker, and b) if the filmmakers had significantly changed a recently deceased author’s most famous work, there would have been public outrage. So, assuming these adaptations are at least vaguely faithful (I haven’t read the books), I’m mostly complaining about the way Larsson chose to end his trilogy rather than the way Daniel Alfredson chose to film it. Honestly, I sort of feel like the second and third book/movie should have been switched—let the middle part of the trilogy knock around a courtroom while Lizbeth goes crazy with an axe in the finale.

Even still, while not totally placing blame on Alfredson for the lack of ass-kicking in Hornet’s Nest, one can’t help but wonder if a great filmmaker could have found a way to make it more compelling. And this is why I’m suddenly even more intrigued for what David Fincher will do with the Hollywood version of the stories. Fincher, director of the year’s best film inThe Social Network, the modern classics Seven and Fight Club, and the woefully underappreciated Zodiac is a master at slowly building momentum and intensity. Given this, it seems inconceivable that his version of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest will fall prey to the same flaws, but that’s still over a year away. In the meantime, the Swedish version of the trilogy is now complete, and it is overall a very worthwhile movie experience. The first film is little more than a really well done genre film, and the third film, while not boring, does feel a bit useless, but the second film is the true keeper. It is the trilogy’s raison d’etre, and the showcase of a great character who is sure to become a key figure of pop culture.

Note: To see the Detroit Metro Times version of this post, click here.

TIFF Finale: Days 10 & 11 (Saturday-Sunday, 9/18-19)

Note: Click here to see the Metro Times version of this post, which contains video and photos.

Sometime, you just get lucky. Saturday, September 18—the penultimate day of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival—became that day for me. Let me explain…

Over the first week of the festival, word of mouth began to spread on which movies were the favorites, and one name kept popping up over and over again: The King’s Speech. Starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech is about that friendship between King George VI and his speech therapist. In the weeks leading up to the festival, as I was looking over all of the descriptions and trying to decide which films to see, I read that brief plot synopsis, thought it sounded boring as hell, and didn’t put it on my shortlist of films to try and catch. The film only screened twice, both times occurring in the festival’s first few days, so by the time word began to spread about how amazing it was, I had already missed my chance to see it. Or had I?

For my Saturday volunteer shift, I ended up working a private industry screening of The King’s Speech, and I was one of two volunteers stationed inside the theater to help guard against unlawful piracy in the audience. This essentially meant that I could just stand there and watch the whole movie, which I happily did. I also saw two films later that evening, which both sucked, but my day had already been made.

Movie: The King’s Speech

What Is It? In the mid-1930s, King Edward abdicates England’s throne, leaving his stuttering brother, George VI, to become king and lead his nation into war against Germany. With the advent of radio and the looming conflict, it has never been more important for the King to make inspiring speeches to his people, so he hires a speech therapist to help conquer his stammer.

Director: Tom Hooper—Acclaimed for his TV miniseries work, especially USA’s Elizabeth I and HBO’s John Adams, Hooper’s only previous film was last year’s The Damned United.

Notable Cast: Colin Firth stars as George VI, with supporting work by Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist, Helena Bonham Carter as his wife, and Guy Pierce as his brother.

The Grade: A

Thoughts: If I were forced to bet right now on what will win Best Picture for 2010, I’d lay all my money on The King’s Speech. It is truly a flawless film. Despite a plot that sounds painfully boring, the film races by briskly and is never less than vividly entertaining. There’s a dry British humor that permeates the proceedings, as well as plenty of four letter words courtesy of a radical treatment method. And the acting… oh, the acting. Colin Firth is all but assured an Academy Award, and Geoffrey Rush could quite possibly win a second (he won Best Actor for 1996’s Shine). The King’s Speech is also a beautifully inspiring story about a man’s determination to overcome his disability in order to better serve his country. The film opens in wide release on Thanksgiving weekend, and I urge everyone to make time for it between trips to the mall. My only complaint was that I had to watch the whole thing standing up.

Movie: Stone

What Is It? Filmed at a jail in southeast Michigan, a convict up for parole gets his beautiful wife to try and influence his parole officer’s decisions.

Director: John Curran—Most notable for directing 2006’s underwhelming period drama The Painted Veil, which starred Edward Norton and Naomi Watts.

Notable Cast: Edward Norton plays the titular convict, Milla Jovovich (star if the Resident Evil franchise) plays his wife, and Robert DeNiro stars as the retiring parole officer.

Notable Crew: The film was written by Angus MacLachlan, whose previous screenplay was 2005’s wonderful Junebug.

The Grade: D

Thoughts: The only positive thing I can say about Stone is that it’s an ambitious film that tried to be great. But sadly, that’s where the compliments end. Honestly, this movie is just stupid. All three characters fight for who can be most unlikable, and DeNiro’s parole officer is given a prologue set thirty years ago that not only makes us hate him from the get-go, but feels completely superfluous to the film’s narrative. The acting is fairly serviceable, but anyone who’s seen HBO’s The Wire will immediately recognize that Norton is just doing a really good Bubbles impression, and therefore won’t be able to take him seriously. And you know what’s even worse than a movie with a bad plot and bad characters? A movie with a bad plot, bad characters, and no resolution. When the movie ended (or, more accurately, when the credits started running, since I don’t think it’s fair to say the movie had an ending), much of the audience responded with a disappointing “huh?” And unless you’re a former inmate, you won’t see any recognizable Michigan locations to make the movie worth sitting through. Instead of wasting your money on this, just see The King’s Speech twice.

Movie: Passion Play

What Is It? A trumpet player who’s seen better days and now works for the mob encounters a beautiful winged woman at the circus who might just be an angel. But when his mobster boss wants to claim her for his own, the trumpet player is forced into a tough decision.

Director: Mitch Glazer—a three-decade screenwriting veteran (Scrooged, The Recruit), this is Glazer’s directing debut, and he wrote the film as well.

Notable Cast: Mickey Rourke and Megan Fox play the leads, and Bill Murray uses his dry wit to tackle the mob boss.

The Grade: C-

Thoughts: I saw this movie because I’m a fan of both Rourke and Murray, but I found it to be a pretty forgettable experience. It deserves a little leniency because it is Glazer’s first film as a director, and it’s not totally awful, but I certainly don’t recommend it. The plot feels like Glazer took Wim Wenders’ two masterpieces from the 1980s—Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire—stuck them in a blender, and added a jumbo packet of Cheez Whiz. Murray feels out of place and yet still underused, while Megan Fox is at her best when not speaking. The movie does a relatively decent job maintaining interest with brisk pacing, but the ending is so comically bad that I actually wondered if it was supposed to be funny. I laughed quietly and nervously, just to make sure I covered all my bases as a polite audience member.

The 2010 Toronto International Film Festival came to a close on Sunday, September 19, and I managed to catch two more screenings that morning before I had to skip town.

Movie: The Debt

What Is It? Three retired Mossad agents in 1995 have unresolved issues from a thirty year-old case (the one that made their careers) come back to haunt them.

Director: John Madden—Most remembered for directing 1998’s Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love, Madden has mostly kept quite over the ensuing dozen years, only surfacing with a few disappointing movies (Proof, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin).

Notable Cast: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciaran Hinds (Munich, Miami Vice) play the 1995 incarnations of the three agents, while Sam Worthington (Avatar), Marton Csokas (The Bourne Supremacy), and beautiful newcomer Jessica Chastain play their younger counterparts.

Notable Crew: Matthew Vaughn, writer/director of Kick-Ass and Stardust, wrote the screenplay with Jane Goldman (his writing partner) and one other.

The Grade: B+

Thoughts: For most of The Debt’s running time, it doesn’t distinguish itself as much more than a well-done espionage thriller, but about 2/3 of the way through, there’s a twist that dramatically changes the meaning, as well as the film’s resonance. Without giving away too much, The Debt reminded me of the way films like Atonement and The Usual Suspects have devoted huge amounts of screen time to the dramatization of events that turned out to be of questionable veracity. It’s also a film about the way our greatest failures never quite manage to completely vacate our lives, and in this sense, The Debt is a film people should relate to even if they’ve never been secret agents. As you might guess from the cast, this is an extremely well acted film, but Chastain is the real revelation. She has the unenviable task of portraying a woman who will grow up to be Helen Mirren, and Chastain brings the necessary amount of vulnerability, toughness, and regality that are befitting of her older counterpart.

Movie: John Carpenter’s The Ward

What Is It? A beautiful young woman with no memory prior to being found by police at a burned-down house is institutionalized during the 1960s. Once in the asylum, she seemingly becomes the target of a ghost who may be a former patient.

Director: John Carpenter—Arguably the most influential post-Hitchcock horror director, Carpenter created a string of classics in the 70s and 80s that surely ranks as one of the better hot streaks in modern Hollywood history (Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing, Starman, and Big Trouble in Little China all came out in an 8-year span). Carpenter also typically handles writing, producing, and soundtrack duties on his films (he wrote the classic Halloween score). Sadly, his idea well mostly dried up in the 90s, and he’s been more or less retired for the last decade or so.

Notable Cast: Amber Heard (Pineapple Express) stars, while Lyndsy Fonseca (the daughter in TV’s How I Met Your Mother) plays one of the other patients.

The Grade: C-

Thoughts: For my final film of TIFF, I had the opportunity to see something of a bit more prestigious flavor, but I hadn’t yet seen any of the Midnight Madness movies, and I wanted to end the whole experience on something fun. So what better than John Carpenter’s long awaited return to the genre that he helped shape? Just about anything, it would turn out. The Ward literally feels like Carpenter went to a screening of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island earlier this year, felt that movie could have just as easily featured a cast of hot chicks, went home and knocked out a screenplay that night, then started shooting a week later. Even at its worst, The Ward is still relatively watchable and entertaining, but it’s undeniably depressing to see a once-great director resort to using genre clichés when he used to be the guy creating them.

And with that anticlimactic note, my great TIFF 2010 experience came to a close. In 11 days, I saw 22 films (though I slept through almost all of one of them), attended one interview and one sneak preview, took part in 7 filmmaker Q & A’s, knocked out nearly 50 hours worth of volunteer work, lost an incalculable amount of sleep, and, at various times, got behind on such luxuries as eating and bathing. By the end of the festival, I was mostly subsisting on Tim Horton’s doughnuts and coffee shop pastries, because my life savings was being so heavily drained on the public transit system. And yet, my first film festival was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most profound experiences of my life, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Really, the only depressing aspect of the week was how many potentially great movies I didn’t get to see. For the record, here are the top ten films that never quite made it off my wish list:

1. Hereafter—New drama about mortality from Clint Eastwood, which should tell you everything you need to know about why I wanted to see it. Starring Matt Damon, this film inexplicably only screened once (most films at TIFF screen three times), which made it one of the most difficult tickets to come by.

2. Biutiful—Starring Javier Bardem and directed by the great Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Babel), this film won raves at Cannes.

3. Waiting For Superman—Documentary about the failure of the U.S. education system made by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) and funded by Bill Gates.

4. Blue Valentine—The most acclaimed film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this relationship drama stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, who are both expected to receive Oscar attention.

5. Another Year—The new film by Mike Leigh (Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy), several critics have called this his best yet.

6. Of Gods and Men—French drama starring Michael Lonsdale (best known to American audiences as the evil Drax in Moonraker), I talked to a few people who thought this was the single best film at TIFF.

7. Little White Lies—Starring Marion Cotillard, this was the film I had a ticket for, but was forced to trade in for something else when they couldn’t get the subtitles working.

8. The Conspirator—Robert Redford directed film about Lincoln’s assassination, starring Robin Wright and James McAvoy.

9. Barney’s Version—Life reflection dramedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Paul Giamatti.

10. Machete Maidens Unleashed—A documentary about the huge amount of American B-Movies filmed in the Philippines during the 1970s and the jobs they provided for the indigenous female population. Seriously, just look at that title!

And, lastly, my top ten for the films I did see:

1. The King’s Speech

2. Black Swan

3. 127 Hours

4. Three

5. The Town

6. Inside Job

7. The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town

8. Janie Jones

9. It’s Kind of a Funny Story

10. Tamara Drewe

Thanks to everyone that read along for taking part in my journey. I’m already excited for TIFF 2011.