Here, in my order of preference, are the films I saw at the 2004 festival:

 

·          My Favourite: Hotel Rwanda

For the third year out of four (I missed Zatoichi last year) I got to see the People’s Choice Award winner and agree whole-heartedly with the selection. Don Cheadle is excellent as Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan Hutu hotel manager who found himself in the impossible position of trying to protect his Tutsi wife and eventually hundreds of other Tutsis fleeing the civil unrest of 1994. You may well already know how this true story ends, but I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t like to know how a movie ends before I see it. In any case, even if you do know how it turns out, the movie is a gripping testament to one man’s courage in the face of atrocity.

 

·          Honourable Mention: Innocence

I was extremely impressed by the balance that this film achieves between the oblivious innocence of children and the menace of a real world beyond their comprehension. Not to be confused with the Australian film of a couple of years ago, this is a French film that follows a group of young girls at an insular boarding school. The atmosphere is a lot like The Village, where the characters abide by a set of rules that may seem odd to the viewer, but are matter of fact to the characters and are very much for their own good. It doesn’t quite have the epiphany moment that The Village does, but it does have its own balanced and subtle logic.

 

I also recommend:

·          The Machinist – I always love this kind of movie, where we as the audience essentially work out a mystery alongside the central character, and this is a perfect example. (A couple of other great examples are Memento and Fight Club.) Christian Bale is impressively convincing as an insomniac machinist whose life seems to be spinning out of control. It’s not paranoia when there really is someone out to get you...

·          Dear Frankie – A Scottish film of great sentimentality, it might be accused of being a chick flick, but I don’t think that would be a fair assessment. In fact, I was very impressed by the way that this movie didn’t take easy, pat solutions to conflicts, and gave a third dimension to most of its characters. The story of the single mother of a deaf boy, the main plot line hinges on the fact that she has lied to her son about his father, telling him he’s a sailor who’s just always away at sea. When a ship comes to town that just happens to have the name of his father’s fictitious ship, she’s forced to deal with the reality of her situation.

·          Childstar – Don McKellar’s most mainstream outing yet, this is a comedy about a spoiled child actor trying to come to grips with his life. Very entertaining, and topped off with a number of in-jokes for a Canadian audience.

·          Palindromes – The only other Todd Solondz movie I’ve seen is Welcome To The Dollhouse, but he does seem to have a very distinct serious satirical style. He works it to great effect here, in an innovative, darkly humourous film that deals with themes of identity, innocence, religion, and happiness.

·          My Summer of Love – I quite enjoyed this English film about two girls in a rural town who develop a very close friendship. They have very little in common except for boredom, but they amuse each other and become fast friends. Their relationship heats up so quickly, though, that things threaten to go out of control.

·          Saw – A sort of lower-budget updated version of Seven, this film pushes the envelope of the serial killer genre with even more twisted sadistic schemes and a handful of frenetic scenes that feel like rock videos. It’s got more plot twists than any other movie I can think of, which certainly makes it entertaining, as long as you don’t mind a little gore with your suspense and mystery. The plot starts to fray and get a little campy toward the end, but the ending itself is satisfying and made me forgive whatever juvenile and gratuitous violence it took to get there.

·          Trauma – This movie has a lot in common with The Machinist, but with a much more surreal flavour, and a less coherent (and for me, less satisfying) conclusion. Here it’s Colin Firth as the flawed central character, who has just lost his wife and is trying to pull his life back together.

 

Also worth seeing:

·          Millions – It could be the fact that I had hardly eaten all day and had gotten a bit of a headache, or it could be the fact that it was my third film of the day toward the end of the festival and I had been up much of the night before with Griffin, or it could be the fact that I saw it at the (rather crummy) Ryerson Theatre, or it could be that I had just gotten my hopes up too high, but I was rather disappointed with what director Danny Boyle himself had described as Amelie crossed with Trainspotting (which is why I had my hopes up so high). The story just struck me as mostly silly, often just as reminiscent for me of Home Alone and The Parent Trap as Amelie or Trainspotting. Still, Boyle’s style and verve make it fairly entertaining and eye-pleasing; just don’t go in expecting a masterpiece like I did.

·          5 Children & It – A fun and light kid’s fantasy movie from the good people at the Jim Henson creature shop, somewhere on the spectrum between Lemony Snicket and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

·          Primer – This is a dense and intellectual science fiction film that centres on two entrepreneurial engineers who manage to invent a time travel machine and then have to deal with the scientific and ethical consequences. It’s a little dry, and requires a great deal of concentration (and although I’ve only seen it once, I think it very likely requires more than one viewing) but there’s definitely some meat to this movie, and I think science fictions fans will enjoy it even more than I did. On the other hand, if a little technical jargon makes your eyes glaze over, or if you’ve had a hard day and just want to relax, you’d be best to avoid this one.

·          Notre Musique – Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film was pretty much what I expected: an artsy, meditative, wordy film that defies easy description. The subject matter here is largely about war and justice, from the Balkans to North America to the Middle East, and while it’s certainly thought-provoking, it isn’t a lot of fun, more like the cinematic equivalent of being forced to eat your vegetables.

·          A Hole In My Heart – Director Lukas Moodysson seems to have followed a trajectory away from the mainstream, as each of his films has been less accessible and more difficult than the last. This one certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, as some of the imagery is really and truly shocking..no kidding here! It’s hard to put your finger on what this movie really is, and it’s very open to interpretation, moreso even than most artsy movies, but I see it as a blistering evisceration of the porn industry.

·          After The Day Before – Another movie very much along the lines of The Machinist and Trauma, this Hungarian film follows a man who sets out in search of a farm that he has inherited in the countryside. There seems to be something odd going on in the area, however, and in a non-linear narrative, the central character gradually solves a mystery related to the strangeness.

·          I, Claudia – I enjoyed the range of characters in this adaptation of a Canadian one-woman play, and the acting was quite strong, to the point where it had me doubting at times that it really was the same actress playing every character, but I found the technique of having a different mask for each character quite distracting and even annoying, not to mention some of the mannerisms of some of the characters, so I will stop short of recommending this one.

·          Dead Birds – I was intrigued by the idea of a horror film set in the south during the U.S. civil war, but in the final analysis, this is really a pretty typical haunted house movie, worth seeing for the cool visuals and unusual setting, but not worth going out of your way for.

·          The Forest For The Trees – I found this story of an earnest young German teacher who moves from a small town to a big city interesting to watch primarily because of the realistic and engaging portrayal of the central character, as well the ambivalent direction of the movie, which at times makes you really feel for her, and at other times really dislike her.

·          P.S. – Laura Linney struggles with her attraction to the much younger Topher Grace in this exploration of unusual relationships. I really didn’t care for most of the characters and was frustrated by what they did for the most part, but there were a few decent scenes, so I won’t warn anybody off.

 

I don’t recommend:

·          Silver City – John Sayles is a director I’ve long favoured, and he’s directed several movies I’ve liked very much (The Secret of Roan Inish, Eight Men Out, Limbo, and The Brother From Another Planet, just to name a few) but it seems to me that his latest few outings have been just plain boring. Chris Cooper is the one bright spot in this movie, as a clueless politician riding his father’s coattails (clearly a caricature of George W. Bush), and it certainly isn’t as bad as Sunshine State, but I can’t bring myself to recommend it.

·          Human Touch – This Australian movie about relationships plodded along without ever really giving me much reason to care about any of the characters, and even to the extent that I cared about them, I didn’t like them. In my opinion, there are any number of made-for-TV relationship movies that are just as good as this, if not better, so there’s no need to see this one. I will mention, however, that the best thing about this movie was the visual art installations it depicted, which, although they were completely ancillary to the story, are apparently real works of art by an Australian artist. I feel like I could recommend the gallery space featured in the movie, but I wouldn’t recommend the movie just for the few seconds featuring it.

 

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