WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 7

By Chris Luckett

Today’s sole film was also arguably its most widely anticipated. Among other accolades, The Intouchables won Best Actor at the Cesar Awards, was nominated for another eight Cesars, and is the only film of the 2012 AGH BMO World Film Festival to be on IMDb’s elite Top 250 list. Is it worth the hype? For the most part, actually, yes.

Image property of Alliance Films

The Intouchables tells the story of Philippe (Francois Cluzet), an incredibly wealthy quadriplegic who needs to hire a new live-in caretaker. Despite all the “qualified” applicants, Philippe chooses to hire Driss (Omar Sy), a young man who only showed up to get a signature for welfare. The two form the kind of unlikely friendship that’s pretty likely in movies like this.

If I can lobby a criticism against the movie, it’s that it tries too hard to be a people-pleaser. It unfortunately sometimes slips into the treacly territory of saccharine bonding flicks like The Bucket List or Finding Forrester. And between the two leads, the movie is able to be marketed towards white people, black people, rich people, poor people, old people, young people, and people with disabilities. It’s very convenient when movies are able to reach every conceivable demographic.

That said, it’s really more of a quibble than anything. The movie is a wondrously fun experience, even when things get sad. While there are definite weaknesses to being a feel-good movie, there are also perks; when it works well, it takes you through a range of emotions and leaves you fulfilled. The Intouchables will make you laugh, and it will make you cry, and by the end, it will make you feel good.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 6

By Chris Luckett

Image property of E1 Films

The first film of today’s bunch was the weakest. We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) is a dramedy from Italy that succeeds, but doesn’t stand out in any real way. It’s a tried-and-true movie formula, gussied up to look fresher than it really is. One need only look to any movie in which a groom gets cold feet and spends the running time contemplating going forward or running away, to see the worn inspiration for this film.

In We Have a Pope, the time has come to elect a new leader of the Catholic Church. None of the voting cardinals can agree on a candidate and none seem to want the position. Through a plot catalyst, one cardinal (Michel Piccoli) is elected to be the Pope. He then spends an half and a half wandering the streets of Rome, wondering whether to accept the position or resign.

The film is entertaining, in its own way, and even contains scenes of amusement. (While the Piccoli’s cardinal wanders Rome, the rest of the cardinals spend the conclave in such activities as an ad hoc volleyball game.) The problem isn’t that nothing much happens beyond wandering and pontificating – others, like Gerry or Before Sunrise, have made that conceit work; the problem is that the wandering and pontificating that is done isn’t interesting. Even the ending lands with a thud, when it clearly was intended to surprise.

Image property of 20th Century Fox

What did surprise was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It looked like an “old person” movie, to put it in the blunt words kids these days are using. Instead, it ended up being a vibrant, riotous comedy that just happened to star legendary British thespians instead of Apatow alumni.

It should have been more obvious from the start. After all, the director, John Madden, also directed the Best Picture Oscar-winner Shakespeare in Love. On top of that, the seven leads are played by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Billy Nighy, among others. The chemistry they all create is downright magical.

Watching experts do what they do best can be riveting, and the acting in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is rife with scenes of jaw-dropping brilliance in both performance and execution. Best of all, it’s one of the funniest movies of the year – for any age group.

Capping off the evening was a more modern comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed. Almost feeling like a comedic, hipper version of K-PAX, it follows a reporter (Jake Johnson) and his two interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) as they try and track down the author of a bizarre classified ad seeking a partner for time travel.

Image property of Alliance Films

When they finally track down Kenneth (Mark Duplass, in a welcome return following Monday’s screening of the brilliant Your Sister’s Sister), he seems like the next Unabomber. Plaza’s Darius begins spending more time with Kenneth, though, and starts to see more to him.

The plot kicks into cruise control for a while, as far as their storyline goes. It all builds to a climax, though, that really leaves the audience unsure of what will happen. By the time the end is approaching, it almost seems just as plausible that Kenneth is telling the truth as that he’s crazy. The ultimate truth is satisfying, while still leaving questions. Safety Not Guaranteed hasn’t been one of the outright best of this festival, but it’s an fun comedy with an enjoyable cast and its own amusing charm.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 5

By Chris Luckett

For the first day since the opening night, only one film was screened tonight: the Canadian thriller Inescapable.

Image property of Alliance Films

This was a special screening of the movie, before it opens nationwide across Canada and possibly the U.S. It would be nice to be able to say nice things about the movie, since Canada doesn’t produce the quantity of films other countries do – but Inescapable is just too mediocre to recommend.

Much like another recent movie, Inescapable involves an ex-government agent/father whose daughter is kidnapped in a foreign country, so he must go there and track her down in a one-man brigade. (Just replace France with Syria.) Whether it’s the larger quantity of conversation and pontificating or the lack of a budget for many action scenes, Inescapable does occasionally feel like a Canadian Taken. Unfortunately, more often than not, it more feels like a Canadian Not Without My Daughter.

Admirable work from the three leads (Alexander Siddig, Joshua Jackson, and Marisa Tomei) keeps the movie afloat for the film’s duration, but the writing is downright sloppy. Characters suddenly have knowledge they didn’t have in the scene prior, characters disappear and are nonchalantly mentioned as dead in the next; it felt like the editor had excised entire scenes that were fundamental to the plot, leaving gaping plot holes and mind-blowing continuity errors.

If there’s a reason to see Inescapable, it’s the acting, especially from Siddig as the father forced to face his Syrian past in order to retrieve his daughter. Beyond that, it’s simply adequate.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 4

By Chris Luckett

Sadly, today had more disappointing movies than prior days have. Where Do We Go Now? and Farewell, My Queen disappointed to different degrees. Even so, the fourth day of the AGH BMO World Film Festival still found room for another of the best movies of 2012.

Image property of IFC Films

Your Sister’s Sister is so simple, it could be a three-person play. The premise is simple, the plot is simple, the setting is simple. Yet within that simplicity lies a cunning intelligent and wondrous depth.

The story revolves around a Jack, man in his ‘30s (Mark Duplass) whose brother died a year earlier; his best friend Iris (Emily Blunt), who suggests he go up to her family cottage for a sabbatical; and Iris’s sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), who Jack discovers is already at the cottage when he arrives.

The movie’s characters are incredibly three-dimensional and fleshed out wonderfully, yet are revealed in a very delicate and deliberate pace. The situations, while a tad implausible once of twice, remain quite believable, due in no small measure to the excellent performances of the three leads.

An intimate drama that never feels staged or scripted (in part because it was mostly improvised, with just a rough scene-by-scene treatment from writer/director Lynn Shelton their guide), Your Sister’s Sister is beautifully honest and funny look at relationships of all kinds, viewed through the lens of three likeable and articulate thirty-somethings.

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Where Do We Go Now? was a drastic change in both tone and quality. Torn between being a subversive comedy and a modern-day tragedy, it’s divided against itself and ultimately provides an unrewarding and ineffective film experience.

Telling the tale of a Lebanese village where half the population is Muslim, half the population is Christian, and both sides overreact with violence at the drop of a hat.

In what would make for an interesting comedy, the plot is sparked by a boy accidentally breaking a wooden cross in the church. The Christians suspect the Muslims. Then a herd of goats finds their way into the mosque. The Muslims suspect the Christians. Before you can say “misunderstanding,” the two sides are in a bitter and deadly war with each other.

For a movie that is so ripe for comic overtones, Where Do We Go Now? bizarrely goes incredibly dark, starkly depressing, and brutally violent – while, at other times, the women hire Ukrainian strippers who create comic mayhem in their wake; the mayor’s wife fakes a miracle; and characters all break into gleeful song while preparing to drug their husbands. The movie is so disjointed, it’s a marvel it can stand. Where Do We Go Now? has been the most disappointing movie at the World Film Festival so far.

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Just six years ago, Sofia Coppola made the high-profile Marie Antoinette, with the memorable casting of Kirsten Dunst in as the titular queen. Her story is revisited and partially retold in Farewell, My Queen. This time, Diane Kruger (National Treasure) dons the pouf.

The movie depicts a few of the last days of the queen’s reign (just after the storming of the Bastille), as told through the eyes of Sidonie (Lea Seydoux), a servant who reads to the queen.

The production is highly skilled from a technical standpoint – costumes, hair, makeup, set design, and art direction are all done masterfully – but the performances don’t stand out and, most unfortunately, the writing is dull. For a movie set during such a tumultuous time, Farewell, My Queen is too often sombre and slow-going.

At the same time Farewell, My Queen was shown, Moonrise Kingdom was also screened. Wes Anderson is the only modern movie director whose work is instantly identifiable through visual style alone, and this is no exception.

Image property of Focus Features

The posed, almost-storybook look he gave earlier movies like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox works wonderfully here, giving this tale of two runaway children in the 1960s a wonderfully timeless feel.

Wonderfully droll performances are also supplied by the likes of Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, and Frances McDormand, all working wonders with the clever dialogue and quirky characters. Fans of dry humour will find much to love.

If the whimsy occasionally becomes a bit overt, it doesn’t hinder the picture much. It may not be quite the masterpiece Rushmore or The Fantastic Mr. Fox are, but even a slightly less-than-superb Wes Anderson movie is better than almost anything else at a multiplex.

WORLD FILM FESTIVAL: Day 3

By Chris Luckett

The World Film Festival continued with the same momentum on its third day it built up by Day 2’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. The day began with the Japanese drama Norwegian Wood, continued with the dysfunctional-family comedy 2 Days in New York, and wrapped up with the British lark Hysteria. Much like yesterday, the first sunk, while the second and third soared.

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Norwegian Wood is adapted from an acclaimed Japanese novel about love, loss, and heartbreak. Unfortunately, a plot that may have worked in literary form does not seem to translate in this dull, bloated adaptation.

Characters come off as too serious and/or ponderous, even in scenes where the tone wants to be lighter. It carries on long, long after multiple logical places to end the tale of Toru (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) and his constant vacillation between the meek and psychologically crippled Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and the effervescent and hopeful Midori (Kiko Mizuhara).

Most unfortunate of all is simply that the movie is so plodding, for what had the potential to be a truly emotionally affecting movie. There is a fine line between tranquil and slow, between serene and dull; Norwegian Wood steps over it early on and never finds it way back.

2 Days in New York is a sequel to writer-director-star Julie Delpy’s earlier 2 Days in Paris. Marvellously, the new film requires zero knowledge of the original film – in fact, it may even help – and stands incredibly tall on its own merits alone.

Delpy plays Marion, a French-American artist living in New York with her new boyfriend, Mingus (a never-been-better and rarely-been-funnier Chris Rock). With an art exhibit coming up, Marion’s French family flies over to meet Mingus, see Marion’s exhibit, and just generally mess up Marion’s life in a way that only embarrassing family members in movies can.

What could have been a routine fish-out-of-water/culture-clash comedy, though, crackles with levity and freshness, as well as perfectly executed mini-farces. While much of the comedy is mined from the same boorish characters and clichéd situations in countless other films before it, 2 Days in New York managed to make it seem brand new.

Image property of Magnolia Pictures

Special mention is truly warranted for Chris Rock, who is revelatory as the seemingly only sane one is his entire flat of French people of various degrees of craziness. The script is also incredibly sharp, mining familiar territory for fresh laughs and distracting from the story’s unoriginality with ingeniously scripted jokes and wonderfully delivered comedy. If Woody Allen made a fish-out-of-water comedy of manners in the mid-‘80s, it would’ve been pretty close to 2 Days in New York.

Hysteria, looking very dry and reserved from trailers and synopses, ended up being a hilarious delight in same wry tone as Shakespeare in Love or The Full Monty.

Detailing the chain of events that led to the creation of the vibrator, Hysteria casts Hugh Dancy as the charming Dr. Mortimer Granville, a progressive doctor in the late 19th century bouncing from one dismissal to another after his “radical” views on things like germs keep him cyclically looking for work.

Image property of Sony Pictures Classics

He’s hired by Dr. Dalrymple (the reliable Jonathan Pryce) to assist in Dalrymple’s work treating women suffering from hysteria, in a time when men didn’t admit or understand that the symptoms of hysteria would simply indicative of unsatisfied women. Dalrymple’s treatment for hysteria consists of a rather... “hands-on” approach to quenching their ravenous impulses.

Granville’s friend, Edmund (the absolutely side-splitting Rupert Everett), is an early adopter of technologies like the telephone and the electric generator. When he and Granville put their heads together one day to solve the problem of Granville’s constant hand cramps, the results are electric.

British period comedies are all-too-often stiff and dry. Hysteria masterfully avoids such traps of tone, playing lightly with the characters and situations and never taking itself too seriously. The result is a riot wrapped in corsets and one of the most surprising comedies of the year.