Ruth's Reviews Home

*1/2 Heaven**	[2002] Tom Tykwer’s latest film (a German, French, USA collaboration) takes the audience through riveting scenes of interrogation and remorse followed by pastoral scenes of love-on-the-run. The story ends in a kind of modern day ascension. Tykwer’s previous filmography includes Run Lola Run (a big winner at Sundance) and The Princess and the Warrior. Cate Blanchett is wonderful as Philippa, a young woman who has caused the deaths of a number of innocent people in an effort to rid the world of one malevolent individual. Giovanni Ribisi is also great as Filippo, an intense young police officer who meets Philippa when he is called in to translate at the interrogation. The intensity he brings to hearing and translating the accused woman’s responses soon leads him to take other steps to work on her behalf. The film has a bizarrely redemptive quality that I also found in The Princess and the Warrior. (back to list)
*** The Man Without a Past**	[2002] Aki Kaurismaki (Finland) directs this 2002 Cannes Grand Prix winner. The film is big-hearted, funny and, at times, derisive. It is peopled by the inhabitants of makeshift dwellings along Helsinki’s docks and those who provide them with meals, used clothing and odd jobs. Among the container dwellers is M who is middle-aged and amnesic after being brutally mugged. Among those who serve them is Irma, a no-nonsense Salvation Army worker (played by Kati Outinen a Cannes winner for her acting in this film). Through circumstance, M and Irma are drawn into a thoughtful and satisfying relationship. Kaurismaki’s loving and playful treatment of his characters draws you into an affectionate relationship with them. You watch the normally plain-faced Irma tentatively applying make-up in the privacy of her room as she begins to warm to this disentitled man. You watch M carefully plant potato roots from the sparse few that he has available to eat now so that he can eat into the future. In Kaurismaki’s world, people take delight in the little triumphs like the part-time job that earns a man enough money to rent a container for his family from the watch-dog cop. This is definitely a film to see and, for my liking, to own. (back to list)
**1/2 Winged Migration**	[2002] This documentary got buzz at the festival for its immense accomplishment. It gives its audience the sensation of flying by taking the camera up with the birds and providing a bird’s-eye view of the varied landscape they travel in their marathon migrations. The filmmaker, Jacques Perrin, is noted for a previous documentary Microcosmos. You experience the majesty, symmetry and endurance of the various species that are filmed in their migrations as you fly beside, behind and above them. The images are by turn breathtaking, disturbing and hilarious. It is breathtaking to watch a neighbouring bird at close range where you can see the ripple of wing muscle and the fluidity of wing motion. It is disturbing to hear the shot of a rifle and see one of your flock arrested in flight, spinning and falling. It is hilarious to watch mating or feeding rituals that are done in unison and look very like synchronized swimmers dressed in their showy costumes. (back to list)
* Tuck Everlasting	[2002] Based on the children’s book of the same name, the film is about a 15 year-old girl who leaves her home, discovers love and adventure with a forest-dwelling family and has to make a tough decision about how the rest of her life will unfold. The sweet innocence of the Tucks (parents played by William Hurt and Sissy Spacek) is hard to take seriously – even more so when you discover their secret and begin to really wonder how they get on together so well. The most interesting part of this very dull children’s film is the Man in the Yellow Suit, played by Ben Kingsley. For the parent with extreme sensitivity to any form of violence, silliness or sassiness in children’s movies, this is a great movie to take your kids to. Most of my interest was concentrated on the real William Hurt sitting five seats down in the row behind me. One wonders why he is in such bad movies lately? (back to list)
1/2 Far From Heaven**	[2002] Todd Hayne’s film interested me but really didn’t work for me. I give it a star for wonderful set design – truly authentic ‘50s (I was alive then and old enough to see and feel the time). I give 1 and 1/2 more stars for acting – the entire cast was solid. Dennis Quaid was exceptional as the troubled, shut down and heavy-drinking husband, Frank Whitaker (I keep seeing his rigid, depressed face). Julianne Moore does a great job as his trying-to-make-her-way wife, Cathy. She knows what she is supposed to do and say but her real feelings of isolation, boredom and attraction keep popping out and causing confusion for her and embarrassment for others. She develops a furtive friendship with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), who emotionally and morally grounds the movie. Cathy’s woman friend Eleanor Fine (Patricia Clarkson), is a superior and savvy socialite who sympathizes with Cathy about her husband’s vile behavior until she becomes convinced of her friend’s loathsome association. You watch her wordlessly take the steps back from social contamination. One viewer said, and I think she is very right about it, the film couldn’t decide what it wanted to be – a campy look at fifties’ family values or a serious expose of the socially endorsed homophobia and racism (not that the two are unrelated!). I thought that Pleasantville offered a far superior treatment of the theme. (back to list)
*1/2 Laurel Canyon**	[2002] Laurel Canyon is not a great film but it is a wonderfully entertaining film, with a hilarious performance by Frances McDormand as the rock and roll record producer cum mother of the potential groom. She is bright. She is irreverent. Her libido dances energetically in both directions. She loves dope, music, nakedness in swimming pools -and her son - and her future daughter-in-law (maybe a little too much). And, in the end, she gets the job done…you realize that her very serious, right-minded son learns the important things that his embarrassing mother has always known…i.e., “you’ve got to live a little, love a little” and risk letting “your poor heart break a little”. The last scene of this movie is, as one reviewer said, perfect. Lisa Cholodenko (High Art) has done a great job. (back to list)
*1/2 Auto Focus**	[2002] Directed by Paul Schrader (former screenwriter e.g., Taxi Driver, director of American Gigolo), the film stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. If you pick the movie to see because these two guys are in it, then you won’t be disappointed. Greg Kinnear, especially, surely can’t miss an Oscar nomination for his role as Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heros fame. Crane was sex-obsessed and you spend a good deal of the movie’s airtime following the dicks of Bob Crane and his loser pal, Carpenter (Dafoe). Some breaks are offered through the character’s interwoven fascination with new video technologies and juxtaposed clips of scenes from Hogan’s Heros. Kinnear is every wholesome-faced sex addict who meets his critics with an “I don’t understand what the problem is. I’m a really nice guy”. And you do end up feeling bad and thinking that this was a really nice guy who really, really lost his way. (back to list)
****** Sweet Sixteen**	[2002] British director, Ken Loach (My Name is Joe) and screenwriter, Paul Laverty (winner at Cannes for this film) are able to starkly and eloquently portray the naïve hope and rageful disillusionment of the film’s main character, Liam (Martin Compston). Subtitled because of the Glasgow working class dialect, the film develops the relationships of a step-father-abused boy with his hopeless, incarcerated mother (Michelle Coulter) and his realistic, coping sister (Annmarie Fulton). Liam repudiates his sister’s message that getting by means getting away from the family dynamic that is sucking Liam back in as the would-be saviour of his mom. The fruitlessness of his mission is graphically depicted in the burnt out shell of the trailer home he has purchased for his mother through great personal risk. You know how it all will end as you observe the passive, unsettled face of his mother at the ‘coming out’ party staged by her devoted son – a party to which the abusive step-father is not invited. As someone once connected with similar environments, I recognized the territory with a very great sadness. This is a powerful, if dark, film. (back to list)
***** Emperor’s Club**	[2002] The film is another take on Dead Poets Society but comes short of achieving that film’s success. Directed by Michael Hoffman (One Fine Day) it stars Kevin Kline as Mr. Hundert, a professor in a boy’s private school. Hundert teaches the classics but his focus is the moral lessons that are imbedded in the study of Greek and Roman history and thought. He takes on the task of teaching one of his students a lesson in integrity but ultimately fails. In this story, less honourable courses of behaviour clearly have their rewards. Hundert ultimately swims to the surface in his own struggle to live an honourable life. (back to list)
*** Whale Rider**	[2002] This film was my pick of the Festival and, to my great joy, was the pick of my fellow audience members (standing ovation at both showings and winner of the People’s Choice Award). The film was New Zealand director, Niki Caro’s, second feature film and actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes’ first acting role. Caro’s screenplay is based on the novel “The Whale Rider” by Witi Ihimaera. All three were present for the screening and the Q&A at the end. The film begins with the birth of Pai (Castle-Hughes) in the tragic circumstance of a twin-brother’s death. Her birth and life are uncelebrated because she represents the dashed hopes of a father and grand-father who believed that her dead twin brother would have been the saviour chief of a failing Mauri tribe. Her loving grandfather misses all the clues that this quiet, gentle grand-daughter has the attention of the whales. She is forced to lurk in the shadows of the grandfather’s class of would-be leaders in order to pick up the stories and the skills important to their culture. When he is not around to see, she passes the test that proves her destiny as tribal leader. It is only in the final, stirring scenes of the film that the community gets the proof it needs to fall in behind her. This is a truly majestic film with haunting scenes that continue to live in your mind’s eye. Sam Neil (The Piano) was in the audience and stood up during the Q&A to say how the film made him very proud to be a New Zealander. (back to list)
***** Max**	[2002] This is director Menno Meyjes’ feature debut (nominated for his screenplay adaptation for The Color Purple). It exposes the defeatism and raw nerves of post WW I Germany under the harsh terms of the Versailles peace treaty. The film counterpoints a self-assured, wealthy Jewish artist turned art dealer, Max Rothman (John Cusack) with a poor, unsure artist/political activist, Adolph Hitler (Noah Taylor). Rothman lost an arm in the war and so shares some of the sensibility of the times. His career as an artist destroyed, he takes an interest in the excitable ex-soldier, Adolph, who wants to garner profile as an artist. Hitler’s art, however, is trite and spiritless. Rothman urges him to release himself into his art and to experiment. The profile and the self-release Hitler seeks through art is found instead through his emerging popularity with the military as the voice for working-class rage and anti-Semitism. Rothman admires the new art Hitler is creating as a result of his political activities and vision – an infrastructure of super highways and political icons. Ironically, Rothman, who never takes the young man’s anti-Semitic rhetoric very seriously, becomes the target of the growing anti-semitic rage. The film is well-acted by both Cusack and Taylor and gives an interesting slant on an often used theme. (back to list)
*1/2 Standing in the Shadows of Motown**	[2002] Paul Justman’s documentary heralds the talents of the Funk brothers who “played on more number one songs than Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined”. The film traces the legendary musical accomplishments of the individuals who made up the Funk brothers and who, until now, were largely unnamed and unknown. It combines old film footage with current renditions played by surviving Funk brothers, backing the likes of Joan Osborne, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ben Harper and Chaka Kahn. It’s artists talk about the riffs that helped to make the Motown sound. You realize that the music was not just the upfront talents of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, etc., but was the talents of the ‘house band’ that contributed so heavily to its appeal. It was such a thrill to see. (back to list)
****** Dirty Pretty Things**	[2002] Stephen Frears (U.K.) takes a close look at the vulnerability of illegal immigrants working undercover in contemporary London (previously directed My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters and High Fidelity, to name a few). It is an exhausting, exploitive world. Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian who has escaped to London meets Senay (Audrey Tautou), a young Turkish girl through his work. Okwe and Senay are both compromised by exploitive employers. Okwe, taxi driver by day and hotel porter by night, discovers that his hotel boss has his own undercover employment in the hotel. He translates his connection with poor and vulnerable illegals into a profitable industry - organ trade. For many illegals it offers ‘a way out’ of situations that are only minimally sustaining and that have become emotionally/morally untenable. In the end, Frears’ protagonists combine their wits to get what they both need in order to move on. The film is finely executed and compelling. (back to list)
****** In America (Working Title)**	[2002] Irish director, Jim Sheridan’s latest film (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) depicts the life of a recently-immigrated Irish family of four living in a broken-down, drug-infested New York tenement. They are trying to get on their feet, not only economically, but emotionally following the death of the couple’s son. Their optimism about their new life in the U.S.A. is continually tested. It takes some help from an unlikely source for the father, Johnny (Paddy Considine) to believe they can really move on. Samantha Morton (the lead psychic/procog in Minority Report) does a great job as the ever-hopeful wife and mother and Djimon Hounsou is amazing as Mateo, the family’s strange, reclusive neighbour. The film is loaded with powerful scenes – Johnny struggling to get an old rusty air-conditioner into the steamy apartment’s window; Johnny testing his talents and his family’s meager resources to win a coveted stuffed animal for his youngest daughter at the fair and that same daughter’s fearless interactions with the powerful and explosive Mateo. (back to list)
Punch-Drunk Love**	[2002] Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) directs this romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer) as Barry Egan, a cut-off, deadpan sort of guy who erupts without much warning and destroys things, and Emily Watson (Hilary and Jackie, Gosford Park), who enters Barry Egan’s life without much ado and brings with her some equilibrium. By day, Egan is a small business owner with a warehouse full of merchandise and by night, is somewhat ruled by his seven sisters. The film has all the quirkiness and surprises that you expect from Anderson but, for me, it lacked the integrity and heart that Anderson’s earlier work has. (back to list)
1/2 Asoka**	[2001] This Indian film directed by Santosh Sivan is an epic that chronicles the life of Asoka who, from 274 B.C. to 232 B.C. was emperor of the Mauryan dynasty. He was responsible for unifying much of India and for bringing Buddhism into prominence as a religion. His character is one of sharp contrasts. Shah Rukh Khan (Asoka) is a star in the Indian film industry and was loudly welcomed by the festival audience. Asoka is depicted early in the film as a gentle, romantic individual who has left the court at his mother’s direction. As he moves later into a position of power, having lost both a young woman and a mother whom he loved, he becomes increasingly ruthless. Later, he is brought to his knees as he experiences first-hand and personally the suffering of people who have been conquered by one of his wars. The casting and music seemed incongruous with the subject matter – in western terms, much like having Tom Cruise play Gandhi with Minnie Driver as Gandhi’s wife and a sound track of dance music, complete with choreographed dancing by the pair. The audience learned from the director that music and dancing is intrinsic to Indian films. (back to list)
*1/2 Cool and Crazy**	[2001] This is a beautifully filmed documentary about a small Norwegian fishing community and more specifically the men who gather and sing in the local male choir. The audience is offered the sounds of the powerful north Atlantic surf as it pounds into the breakwater and the collective richness of the male choir singing in relief against the snowy landscape and the brightly coloured clapboard houses that are their homes. The breakwater (and you suspect, the weekly meetings of the choir members) “make it possible to live there”. Each of the men has his own unique story that is shared at points throughout the film. What they share in common is the pride they have in their community, their choir and their remembered successes as paramours. One critic compared the film to The Buena Vista Social Club and it has some similar moments - their beaming faces following their performance to an enthusiastic crowd in the ‘big city’ of Murmansk, Poland (20,000 inhabitants). One of their members says to a Murmansk fan, “Someday we’re going to be famous”. Now, as a large Toronto audience watches and listens to them, you might say, they are. (back to list)
****** Baran**	[2001] Majid Majidi (The Colour of Paradise) directs Baran, the story, and name, of a young Afghanistan refugee who works illegally in poor conditions and for poor wages in Iran. Majidi said, in introducing his film, that there are one and a half million legal refugees in Iran and probably that many again who are in his country illegally. Majidi uses images, silences and a slow, deliberate pace to draw his audience into the pathos and the emotional and spiritual richness of his world. Baran is silent throughout the film – from the director’s perspective, to reflect the voicelessness of those who we are not heeding. On a humanitarian level, the film documents the poverty, homesickness and heroic struggles of this refugee community. The story also involves a young, hot-headed Iranian co-worker of Baran’s, Kaleef who in the end, out of love and compassion, sacrifices his hard-earned and hoarded cash and the identity card that supports his passage through the world to support Baran’s family. On this more personal level, it is about the spiritual redemption (Baran also means “rain” in Farsi) that is available when we find more meaning in love than in our personal security. (back to list)
***** Hearts in Atlantis**	[2001] In this film, director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars) does the genre that Hollywood does so well – coming of age in America in the ‘50s. It goes like this - exuberant boy and girl have their innocence eroded as they come face to face with the tawdry and sometimes sinister elements of the adult world. The story is Stephen King’s. All of the nostalgia is there for a fifties plus audience – the soundtrack, the worn baseball mitt and the two-toned cars with big fins and white-walled tires. The acting is just what you might expect from Anthony Hopkins...and, good job, because this isn’t a movie with a fascinating and intricate plot. Hopkins plays a strange older man, Ted Brautigan, who shares what he has found out about life with a young boy, Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin). “The first kiss is the standard against which you will judge all other kisses”, he tells him. The boy can’t control what the important adults in his life have done or will do - including his self-absorbed mother (Hope Davis). He does, however, end up getting the personal strength he needs to help his young friend, Carol (Mika Boorem) and to look after himself. (back to list)
Mullholland Drive**	[2001] David Lynch’s new thriller has been described as amongst his best – if not his best – work. You won’t be able to figure out what is going on in this film. That’s o.k. The critics are reassuring about that. Apparently, that isn’t the point of this film. Since I don’t have to tell you what happens, I’ll go straight to style. Lynch is a master of suspense. From the first scene where a car takes a sharp turn and stops and the brunette in its back seat says, “Why are you stopping? We aren’t there”, and the gun comes flashing out from the front seat. Huge car collision and the brunette is making her way out of the car and through the dense foliage on Hollywood hill. She goes to sleep in somebody’s flower garden at the bottom of the hill and then spends the rest of the film trying to piece together who she is. In working that out, she has some good sexual fun with a young blond Canadian girl who has gone to Hollywood in the hope of getting an acting career, with a few strings pulled by her show biz aunt. There are all kinds of strange characters who turn out to be oddly connected to each other – or not. And some ‘Hermann Hessian’-type narrow passages with bends or rooms off where you sometimes discover nothing terribly unusual and where, other times, you run into something pretty weird. And there is a little theatre where a heavily cosmeticized woman sings “Crying” in Spanish and presumably drops dead while the music keeps on because in this theatre “everything is recorded”. Had enough? (back to list)
*** Thirteen Conversations about One Thing**	[2001] Director Jill Sprecher (Clockwatchers) and co-writer, sister, Karen Sprecher, have put together a very brilliant and compelling indie film filled with conversations about “happiness”. The characters are people you know and people you are, but portrayed with a wonderful tenderness. There is the young smart aleck lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) who’s got the world on a string and is sick of the sour pusses around him until a big ‘hello’ event in his life. There is the disgruntled office manager, Gene English (Alan Arkin) who warns “be careful what you wish for” and is determined to test his “always looking on the bright side” employee. There is the physics professor, Walker (John Turturro) who leaves his wife because he is content rather than really happy; and, there is Beatrice (Cleo DuVall), the life-affirming cleaning woman who believes for a while that she was put on this earth for a reason. The film moves through events and conversations with an invigorating pace, great humour and compelling wistfulness. Walker tells his mistress how wonderfully freeing their relationship has been for him, as he fussily re-makes his bed and confirms “same time, same place”. Gene wonders whether some departing sign to his wife as he left for an out-of-town training course could have saved his marriage. Beatrice tells the friend and co-worker who had relied on her optimism that she woke up to the fact that the bad thing that happened to her just happened for no reason. This film was my festival favourite this year. (back to list)
**1/2 Deep Blue World**	[2001] This film was a joint UK/Czech Republic/German project directed by Jan Sverak (director of the Academy Award winning film Kolya for best foreign-language film). The story is about two Czechoslovakian pilots who join the British RAF, following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The bond between the older pilot, Lieutenant Franta, and his young protégé, Karel, is shattered when the young pilot discovers his friend’s at-first-reluctant involvement with the woman with whom he is in love and who he is desperately anxious to convince of his maturity. Despite the bitter ending to their communication, the young pilot remains willing to watch out for his friend in the war encounters that ensue. In the end, the Czech pilots who are lucky enough to return to their country at the war’s end are imprisoned by the Communists (along with their Nazi enemies) because they represent a threat to the new regime. The film’s director said that it wasn’t until 1951 that Czech pilots were released and it has taken much longer for the citizenry to recognize their war effort. This sad tale of love, heroism and repeated loss is beautifully and realistically filmed. The sound track was wonderful as well. (back to list)
****** Last Orders**	[2001] Four men are part of the trip to Margate to fulfil Jack’s last order to dispose of his ashes at the seaside pier full of early memories for Jack and his family. Each man has his own memories of Jack and his own unique relationship. The trip becomes a kind of last outing with Jack …the pubs along the way, the stop at the war memorial, the farm where Jack (Michael Caine) and his wife Amy (Helen Mirren) met as pickers, Canterbury Cathedral and finally the now abandoned seaside resort. The men are Jack’s son, Vince (Ray Winstone), his war buddy, Raesy – also known as Lucky (Bob Hoskins), Vic (Tom Courtenay) and Lenny (David Hemmings). The actors who play their younger selves are well cast too. It is also the story of Amy’s commitment to visit her severely, developmentally disabled daughter June, who, in the fifty years she has gone to see her “has never once called [her] mom”. The film is exceptionally well-directed (Fred Schepisi – Six Degrees of Separation) and well-acted by the entire cast . These are not characters who verbally express much emotion but, through the film rendition, the pathos and humour of the Booker Prize Award novel of the same name became more real for me. (back to list)
***** From Hell**	[2001] This horror film about Jack the Ripper was reminiscent for me of Sleepy Hollow, also starring Johnny Depp. Robbie Coltrane (British TV-produced Cracker) makes a fitting side-kick to Johnny Depp in this film, where both are involved in investigating the series of gory murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel district in Victorian England. Johnny Depp plays Abberline, who works through his psychic abilities and opium dreams to try and solve the five murders that occur throughout the movie. He does so within a context of authorities who are disinterested in the possibility that the predator is a wealthy gentleman. The scenery is Dickens-like and contrasts the poverty and vulnerability of the English underclass of the 19^th century with the wealth and insensitivity of the upper-class. It also has some eerie likeness to Eyes Wide Shut in its scenes of the Freemasons, men of wealth, many of whom are doctors and also anti-Semitic. These men are seen preying on unfortunate souls who are deemed appropriate specimens for their medical horrors (lobotomies, etc.). They also appear fairly insular against any investigation of their behaviour from outside their ranks. This is a well-constructed movie that is reputed to have followed very closely to the facts of this unsolved case. (back to list)
Heist**	[2001] This was a well-executed David Mamet film (The Winslow Boy, State and Main) but with the somewhat overdone theme of ‘con out-conning con’. And somewhat like The Thomas Crown Affair in its elaborate, well-written plot, veteran thief, Jim Moore (Gene Hackman) always has that one more back-up plan against betrayal. He can live without the girl if he has too. (back to list)
****** Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)**	[2001] This Canadian Inuit film (winner for Best First Feature at Cannes this year), is immense and mythological in its unhurried portrayal of life in the far north. It is the first feature film made in the Inuit language Inuktitut. The director, Zacharias Kunuk, is an internationally renowned carver. The film chronicles what happens when evil infiltrates the lives of a small northern community. The audience has the opportunity to share in the daily life of Inuit people who have not been professionally trained as actors, as they build their igloos, travel in search of seal and caribou, prepare skins, eat and take counsel from their elders. It is the tale of two fun-loving brothers whose lives become endangered when the one brother, Atanarjuat, is attracted to Atuat who loves him but is already promised to Oki, the boastful son of the camp leader. When Atanarjuat insists on having her he sets in motion an animosity that isn’t settled by a ritualized fight organized by their elders. The stark, pristine landscape becomes a back-drop to the vulnerability of its inhabitants whose very lives depend on their capacity to settle differences and to work well together. The most memorable footage in the film is when Atanarjuat, naked, flees from the murderous Oki across the ice fields, falling into icy water along the way and finally finding shelter with an old couple who are camping along his flight path. (back to list)
****** The Son’s Room**	[2001] Italian director and principal actor, Nanni Moretti, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this film. The film is about psychiatrist Giovanni’s life before and after a personal tragedy. The film begins with a tender, joyous picture of family life in a small Italian seaside town and deals in the end with the evolution of grief. Its treatment of the subject is extremely real and haunting. Moretti powerfully depicts the heavy obsession that Giovanni has, in the days and weeks that follow, about the events leading up to the tragedy. He addresses the isolation of each family member as they try to come to terms with life following death, in separate rooms. For Giovanni, "everything is broken” in the house, including the once fun-loving relationship between he and his wife. In many ways, it was the story of our lives at this time [the attack on the World Trade Centre]. In the end, it is the act of reaching out to others and embracing the evolution of life that makes them able to share a moment of laughter and some hope for the future. (back to list)
****** Samsara**	[2001] This is Pan Nalin’s first feature film and is set in the Himalayas, using footage of real settings and non-actors. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking and surpasses any I have seen in film. Dwellings inhabited by monks or by village folk are carved right into the sides of mountains. The film is the story of Tashi (Shawn Ku) who has meditated in a hermitage for three years. Woken out of his trance by his fellow monks, he is brought back to the monastary. His talon-like nails are cut, his head and beard shaved and he is fed back to strength. He is celebrated for his achievement of advanced enlightenment. Nightly sexual arousal makes him wonder what his next direction is. Soon he meets Pema (Christy Chung), enjoys the rapture now of sexual intimacy. He marries her and enters fully into the life of his village and his family (a son is born to the couple). His loyalties to his new life are tested as well and he comes to understand his own moral weakness and the suffering it causes to others. The film maintains a sparse dialogue that lets the audience become fully present to the external and internal landscape of the film. (back to list)
****** The Man from Elysian Fields**	[2001] Director, George Hickenlooper’s film is a very amusing account of a young, struggling writer Byron Tiller (Andy Garcia) who is happily in love with his wife (Julianna Margulies) but hasn’t figured out how to keep food on their table. The film begins with him finding his first novel, Hitler’s Child in the remainder bin of a local bookstore. He leads an unsuspecting bookstore customer into a discussion about the book. She enthuses when he identifies himself as the writer and has him autograph it, only to return it to the bin when he leaves rather than pay the $2.99 to buy it. Despite his best efforts, he is out of cash and is finally convinced by stranger, Luther Fox (Mick Jagger) that he should come and work for him at Elysian Fields. Elysian Fields is an escort agency that caters to wealthy, lonely women who want intelligent conversation. They also insist on sex, as Byron finds out much to his chagrin and guilt. Luther carefully picks Byron’s first customer, a woman (Olivia Williams) who is married to a very successful older writer (James Coburn) to whom she is very devoted. Soon Byron is alternatively sharing her bed (with the writer’s full endorsement) and sharing the exercise of re-writing what is likely to be her Pulitzer Prize winning husband’s last novel. The plot takes some nasty turns, both for Byron and for Luther, who has been enjoying a long-term relationship with the only customer (Angelica Huston) he has retained himself. Luther comments, as the film nears its end, “I’ve spent my life pleasuring as many women as I can; he is trying hard to make just one woman happy. What a novel concept.”. Mick Jagger does a remarkably fine job as an actor and, we learned from the producer (Donald Zuckerman), contributed a very significant piece of content, i.e., the relationship with his client. (back to list)
*** Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon**	[2000] I picked this film because I really like Ang Lee’s work (Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil - which was at the 1999 festival). In this one, Lee sets a new standard in film-making. The film is immense and magical. Sub-titled and filmed in and around Beijing, the Gobi Desert and a bamboo forest, it is at one level a series of martial art engagements. Men and women trained in secret arts engage in ritualized and imaginative combats that get your full attention. At a far more profound level it is about honour and about love. Lee has succeeded in creating both a great action and a great character film. Chow Yun-Fat (Anna and the King) plays a powerful and skilled martial artist, who is torn between his duty to avenge his master’s death and his love of his also very adept fighter-companion. In the end, it argues that both tradition and free expression have their place. In the director’s own words, his films are about finding the balance between yin and yang, between tradition and its rules and charting new territory. This was my pick for best movie and won the popular vote at the Festival (back to list)
****** House of Mirth**	[2000] Based on turn-of-the-century writer Edith Wharton’s novel about New York high society, the film takes you from fashionable and pleasant town and country pastimes to the cruel politics that are the underbelly of this world. Single and supported by an aunt’s pension, Lily (played brilliantly by X-Files Gillian Anderson) is on the lookout for the man of wealth who will secure her future. The story moves like an end of summer fly on a sun-drenched windowsill, in pace with the lethargic high-society life-style. Lily cannot seem to muster enough dull grace to ease her way into a secure, if boring, marriage of convenience. She finds more amusement in relating to the one employed member of her social milieu, a fashionable and successful lawyer played by Eric Stoltz. The movie takes a sharp turn when gambling debts force her to ask for help. She becomes pulled into the moral morass of her friends’ lives and soon discovers how self-serving and vicious they can get. Lily becomes the tragic heroine when she concedes to a future of poverty rather than seize an opportunity to ‘level the playing field’. The costumes are wonderful. (back to list)
*1/2 Liam**	[2000] Stephen Frears’ (My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, Dangerous Liaisons and High Fidelity) made-for-British television movie about pre-war Irish Catholic Liverpool shows you life through the eyes of a young boy, Liam. A strongly cast Liam is his own little man despite the pronounced views of his bitterly racist father, his hell and brimstone Catholic pedagogue and his railing and desperate mother who is trying to keep food on the family table. The movie has wonderfully funny scenes of Liam stuttering through both attempts to defend himself and long confessions when he is convinced he has indeed sinned. Despite his tender heart he is unable to keep the world around him from turning on those he loves. The one thing he can do for his mother and his sister, who take the brunt of the family’s misfortunes, is to comfort them by brushing their hair. (back to list)
****** Luzhin Defence**	[2000] The film is based on Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. Luzhin (brilliantly played by John Turturro) is an idiot savant who becomes a chess Grand Master but can’t manage the simplest aspects of day-to-day life. His brilliant chess-playing earns him admirers but his dependence, first on his chess master and later his fiancé (Emily Watson) leave him socially and emotionally vulnerable. The war of interests between the self-serving wily former chess master and Luzhin’s loving but protective wife converge and Luzhin makes the only play he feels he has left to him. John Turturro told the audience that he wanted to play Luzhin in a way that would suggest the potential emotional resources the character never quite found. He was extremely successful and his success leaves the audience feeling the full weight of the tragedy that his life becomes. Ask me what director, Marlene Gorris, said about the ending when you’ve seen it. She had a very interesting comment. (back to list)
* 1/2 Greenfingers**	[2000] This delightful and soulful U.K./U.S.A. film is about the gardening feats of an English convict and his pals who learn how to nurture each other by nurturing seedlings. They gain respect from the outside world by exhibiting their gardening talents to an at-first begrudging horticulturalist Georgina Woodhouse (Helen Mirren). For those of you who took delight in Waking Ned Devine, its Irish hero, David Kelly plays a very wise and lovable older con in this movie. The film is loosely based on the real life horticultural pursuits of some of England’s modern day convicts. (back to list)
*1/2 Men of Honour**	[2000] This inspiring true story about the first black Master Diver in the U.S. Navy is brilliantly acted by its two principals. Cuba Gooding, Jr. convincingly portrays the incredible fortitude and determination that Carl Brashear maintained in the face of unremitting racial harassment from his commander (Robert De Niro) and social isolation from his fellow recruits. What is most unbelievable is that George Tillman, Jr., director, told the audience that he chose to ‘play down’ the true extent of racial harassment so that it would not become a diversion from the focus on Brashear’s military achievements and heroism. How badly did those in power want Brashear to fail out of the Diver program? His commander is demoted when he disobeys orders not to bring him to the water’s surface until he stops moving. (back to list)
***** When Brendan Met Trudy**	[2000] This U.K./Irish delightful comedy traces the relationship between a stick-in-the-mud introvert who lives vicariously in old classic movies and an extroverted rule-breaking woman who goes out every night to commit balaclava madness. At first she gets him to do things he’d never have done before just to win her. In the end, he does things he’d never have done before just because it amuses him. Brendon has a classically-trained voice and Trudy pushes him into singing hymns at parties and the like. Reluctant at first, he eventually bursts into song in a most unlikely circumstance to the amusement of all. Fittingly the movie ends with him walking away with a perfect John Wayne swagger. (back to list)
***** Angels of the Universe**	[2000] Icelandic director, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, described this as his most personal work to date. The film documents the life of a friend’s brother who was schizophrenic. The audience sees and hears the rapid deterioration of the mental health and relationships of this young man through his own eyes. What begins as the vivid imagery of a youthful painter and poet becomes nightmare obsession and paranoia following the breakup of an intense romance. The film has a wonderful lightness during the delusional interplay between Paul and his in-patient companions. There is a great segment where, diverted from attending a co-patient’s funeral, these friends dine together in the most fashionable restaurant in Iceland. On balance, the relentless struggle to gain and maintain sanity leaves the audience with a taste of small victories in an otherwise cruelly disjointed world. (back to list)
***** Chasing Sleep**	[2000] This psychological thriller was a feature debut for U.S. director, Michael Walker. Its main character, a university professor and writer, finely played by Jeff Daniels, can’t sleep and can’t figure out what’s happened to his wife that she hasn’t come home yet. His mental health deteriorates as he fusses over the deteriorated plumbing of his house in between amiable encounters with the local police. It’s a movie that closes in on the audience to the point that it gets hard to breath and you really want it to be over. The troubling thing is that you are never sure as the viewer what ‘being over’ would mean in this film. It’s pretty powerful. (back to list)
**1/2 *When the Sky Falls*	[2000] The film is based on a true story about Irish reporter, Veronica Guerin, who exposes the power and violence of Dublin’s criminal underworld and a justice system that is unable to bring Dublin’s key drug lords to justice. Guerin’s relentless pursuit of them results finally in her death in June 1996 and posthumous changes to the criminal justice system. According to local Film Festival press, the crime boss who arranged her assassination was just then coming to trial for her murder in Dublin. The film does a great job of showing the unemotional raw power and violence of the drug underworld. (back to list)
**1/2 *Deeply*	[2000] Feature film debut by Canadian director, Sheri Elwood, this is a touching story about a down-east community and an embittered girl whose relationship with an elderly villager (Lynn Redgrave) enables her to come to terms with a recent tragedy. The no-nonsense old lady shares a story with her that helps her connect with her pain and move forward. The simple, quietly moving film has some of the elemental quality of The Piano. This is a new director with a future. (back to list)
Legends of Rita**	[2000] This German thriller is about a gang of terrorists who perpetrate their crimes in West Germany and enjoy sanctuary in East Germany through the efforts of local communist authorities. When West German authorities begin to close in on them, their political patrons provide them with new identities. Rita is not so comfortable hiding in an assumed identity that provides her with a legitimate life style and yet she enjoys a passionate love affair with a fellow factory worker. Her girlfriend is imprisoned after she becomes aware of who Rita really is. When the Berlin wall comes down so does Rita’s protection. It was a good action packed little flick with some hot sex. (back to list)
Before Night Falls**	[2000] The film is based on the memoirs of exiled Cuban novelist and poet, Reinaldo Arenas. It is a story of homophobia and censorship. The director/acclaimed painter, Julian Schnabel, portrays life in post-revolutionary Cuba with a detail and vividness that bring the viewer up close to its events and characters. Sean Penn and Johnnie Depp provide wonderful cameo appearances. Arenas looks to friends and admirers to smuggle his manuscripts out of Cuba for publication and as a result is imprisoned. The film is about personal and artistic freedom more than it is about political oppression. Finally able to come to the U.S.A. as part of Castro’s deportation of ‘criminals’ and ‘homosexuals’, Arenas’ life is plagued by different problems such as economic survival. Arenas died of AIDS in 1990, ten years after his immigration to New York . (back to list)
* Monkey’s Mask	[2000] The film is based on a Dorothy Porter novel and has a story line that sounds like it should work. Apparently the book has quite a lesbian cult following. The movie didn’t make it for me. The sex was bad and the Kelly McGillis role miscast. The thriller part of the movie didn’t thrill as the lesbian private dick muddled along in her investigation. It may be the cat’s meow for some but I don’t get it. (back to list)
* *Rumour of Angels*	[2000] It was unfortunate that Vanessa Redgrave was attracted to this fairly hokey new-age story. It’s about a young boy who lost his mother and his interest in life until an old woman (Vanessa Redgrave) tells him how, if he stays attuned, he’ll get reconnected with his mother from the beyond. In the end, he gets reconnected with his never-present dad and the stepmother he could not accept and they all get to watch the flashing lighthouse beacon that passes on his mother’s message to him in Morris Code. Probably not even worth a rental when your mother is over, despite the exceptional (as always) acting by Vanessa. (back to list)
*** Snow Falling on Cedars**	[1999] Directory Scott Hick's film (Shine) was well-cast, beautifully filmed and well-paced to capture the sensibility that was present in the novel. Ethan Hawke does a superb job of playing the Anglo reporter/ex-lover of the Japanese girl whose husband is on trial. The themes of racial bigotry and spurned love are creatively juxtaposed throughout the script and the personal resolution for the film's main character is brilliantly handled. I thought the music was too intrusive and overly dramatic at times. (back to list)
*****1/2* *Cider House Rules*	[1999] John Irving was right to be proud of this film version of his novel (of course, it was his screenplay!). Swedish director, Lasse Hallstrom (My Life As a Dog), did a wonderful job, the movie bearing a lot of similarity to that film in its homey, under-stated style. Tobey Maguire is perfectly cast as Homer, the orphan boy-wonder who manifests such a purity in his love of Candy. Speaking of Candy, I liked a fellow moviegoer's comment that the look and vulnerability of Candy (played by Charlize Theron) had appeal reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. (back to list)
*****1/2* *Sweet and Lowdown*	[1999] Woody Allen's direction and Sean Pean's acting combine in Allen's latest film to portray jazz guitarist, Emmet Ray (who you are led to believe is a real, if obscure musician - ?). The music, as always with a Woody Allen flick, was wonderful and Sean makes you love this self-aggrandized and self-gratifying little guitarist just because he takes childlike delight in playing masterfully. His much- maligned and oft-betrayed girl-friend is perfect for him because her disability is muteness and her abilities are truth-telling and down-to-earth wholesomeness, allowing the musician to fill up all of the space with his self-vaunting monologues but not to overwhelm her. (back to list)
****** Music of the Heart**	[1999] If you like true-story movies that deal with the human spirit's ability to make a difference in both one's own and someone else's life, then you'll love this movie. It's about a woman who's not sure she can get past rejection, kids who aren't sure they can get past their environment and both coming together to focus on maybe the one thing that can change their lives - music. Meryl Streep, as always, is a knock-out at character-making, as the ordinary mother who accomplishes extra-ordinary results. (back to list)
****** Anywhere But Here**	[1999] The mainly 'hate' love-hate of a teenage daughter (well-played by Natalie Portman) for her mother is explored here with Susan Sarandon playing a wacky mother who's life is in chaos. The lights keep going out in the apartment. For the daughter, the light keeps going out in her life as her mother's bizarre fantasies keep on driving their lives' directions. The daughter's impromptu acting of her mother's one- night stand - "he did things that men only do when they love a woman" brings the mother back home to herself and the daughter back home to her mother. (back to list)
****** Ride with the Devil**	[1999] This epic film about the Civil War, directed by Ang Lee, takes you through the good guys and the bad guys (they aren't separated by which side they're on in this horrendously awful war where neighbour is against neighbour and everybody has their own reasons for being there. Taking southern perspectives, it is nicely complex - i.e. the war isn't really all about freeing black people. Tobey Maguire is great in it as one of the guys who is there to defend his southern community, along with his black friend. I might have rated this higher but I can hardly stand anymore the close-up shoot-outs and carnage of civil war cinematography. (back to list)
***** Guinevere**	[1999] When Irish eyes are smiling and lying, watch out girls! For the guy who can't get any action, this is a must-watch film because Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) has a knack for seduction that should have him running training camps. Lessons here too for the outraged and disappointed mother group. This is a wonderfully entertaining movie about class-conflict with emphasis on the sterility of old wealth, the gullibility of those who let themselves get bored with it and the mixed motivations of the artist who is zealously poor. (back to list)
****1/2* *Harlem* *Aria*	[1999] This little, indie movie should have been bought and wasn't. This was my lovely discovery at this year's festival. The story made me pick it - black, developmentally-delayed kid growing up in Harlem with ambition to be an opera singer (with a lovely, tenor voice to support the reasonability of the ambition). "Life is like a box of chocolates" for him too - a lot of "not tasty" experiences and a few nice surprises that had the audience giving the film a standing ovation. (back to list)
****1/2* *Wayward Son*	[1999] This is a poignant film about what can happen when one man in a small southern town believes in a Yankee ex-con's innocence. The roles of benefactor and ex- con were well-acted by Ben Postlethwaite and Harry Connick Jr. (back to list)
***** Joe the King**	[1999] This is Frank Whaley's directorial debut. Noah Fleiss, an incredibly fine young actor, play's a young boy who warms his way up to delinquency as all of the other possible options seem more and more out-of-reach. My thought was that every governor should have this movie as required homework, so they get to see just how hard "going straight" can be for some kids. This movie is guaranteed to make lots of inadequate dads feel like maybe they're not so bad. (back to list)
***** Ratcatcher**	[1999] This is director, Lynne Ramsay's, feature film debut. It is a gritty film, done in a dreary Scotland, with English sub-titles. The garbage in these folk's lives is literally piling up and the best sport at hand is whacking the rats that run through it. The kid is quite believable as the aimless observer of the squalor in and around his home - his big dream is for his family to get a subsidized apartment with a field nearby. The dreariness is almost too much (especially since I saw both this movie and Joe the King on the first day of the Film Festival). (back to list)
***1/2* *After the Truth*	[1999] A German movie about a lawyer who Mengele strong-arms into defending him as he voluntarily comes out of hiding to face a war crime's tribunal. Mengele displays the bland, commonplace face of moral detachment as he sits through the chronicling of atrocities by survivors (as neo-Nazi's placard the parameter of the courthouse). The vigorous, if reluctant, defense is that there were unavoidable requirements under the regime and that gas-chamber selection was the lesser evil (i.e., euthanasia) being practiced in this limited-choice environment (the Director indicated this to be a not uncommon defense among those brought to justice). The trial ending was not very believable. (back to list)
* *Third Miracle*	[1999] The film is about a priest's struggle to discover a reason to believe, as the appointed investigator of alleged miracles. The priest, played by Ed Harris, works through his cynicism in a buddies-in-disbelief relationship with the beautiful Anne Heche. It's not memorable. (back to list)
***1/2* *Est-Ouest*	[1999] The film depicts a couple's return to soviet Russia under Stalin and builds around the love of a young boy for an older woman who becomes his lover and confidant. Trapped by a heavy-handed and ruthless regime, the woman and her young lover plot his escape into freedom and her potential escape out of a marriage that has crumbled under the experience of oppression. (back to list)
* *Legend of 1900*	[1999] It was hard to find anything redeeming about this movie despite it having been a hopeful pick (Giuseppe Tornatore also directed Cinema Paradiso) with a wonderful music motif. It gave new meaning to the phrase "it just didn't work". The failure of this movie shows us that a good screenplay (this was Tornatore's) is an important part of the success formula. (back to list)

***1/2

Heaven

The Man Without a Past

**1/2

Far From Heaven

***1/2

Laurel Canyon

***1/2

Auto Focus

Emperor’s Club

Max

***1/2

Standing in the Shadows of Motown

Dirty Pretty Things

In America (Working Title)

Punch-Drunk Love

Asoka

Baran

Hearts in Atlantis

Mullholland Drive

Thirteen Conversations about One Thing

Deep Blue World

Last Orders

From Hell

Heist

The Son’s Room

Samsara

The Man from Elysian Fields

Deeply