TIFF blog: day 7

Seven days, 30 movies… it’s been a pretty good run, but it’s time to call it quits. TIFF itself continues for two more days, but between getting ready for a wedding and prepping next week’s Fast Forward (on Calgary’s film festival), I’ve taken in about as much film as I can handle at this point. Here’s how the last four stacked up.

ME AND ORSON WELLES (dir. Richard Linklater)

Although he was a real person, Orson Welles makes for a fantastic fictional character. The breadth of his talents, the depth of his intellect and the size of his ego all combine into one of the 20^th century’s few truly larger-than-life characters. Linklater’s (School of Rock, Waking Life, Before Sunset) latest is the story of a high school kid who lucks his way into Welles’s production of Julius Caesar; kind of an Almost Famous for the theatre crowd. The film is at its best when Welles is around, but is also pleasant enough when dealing with the high schooler’s quasi-relationship with Claire Danes, an ambitious girl willing to sacrifice her personal life, and maybe some of her morals, for her career. A framing romantic subplot feels tacked on, but the chance to bask in the presence of Welles is worth the few missteps.

CHOCOLATE (dir. Pracha Pinkaew)

Where do you go after Ong Bak and The Protector? As far as sheer marshal arts spectacle is concerned, those films are masterful – never mind the fact that the plots and acting are, well, not great, because the fights more than make up for it. For director Pracha Pinkaew, the next move was apparently to ditch the star who made him famous – Tony Jaa – in favour of Jeeja Yanin, a 24-year-old girl who has no trouble fighting of hoards of ninjas. Yanin plays an autistic girl with exceptional muscle memory, who learns martial arts by watching the school across the street (and some Tony Jaa movies). As with Pinkaew’s prior two movies, the plot doesn’t matter. An elabourately staged battle in a meat packing plant and a precariously staged fight on the fire escapes of a bustling Thai city are reason enough to recommend this. After all, watching a little girl beat up on a bunch of gangsters has to be fun, right?

SKY CRAWLERS (dir. Mamoru Oshii)

Crawlers is right. This anime flick takes its time developing a story about fighter pilots who never age, stuck in a corporate war that never ends. There are a few neat ideas, and the few battle sequences are well animated, but most of the film consists of angst-filled conversations and… well, not much else.

ZIFT (dir. Javor Gardev)

Shot in exquisite black and white, Zift tells the story of Moth, an ex-con who finds himself in unfriendly hands the moment he leaves his Bulgarian jail cell. The communist setting provides a twist on the otherwise standard heist-gone-wrong storyline, and a chase through a female bathhouse is good fun, but Zahary Baharov as Moth is the real reason to watch this one. He’s just hard-boiled enough for the movie’s noir elements, and just eloquent enough to rise above them. I’m hoping this one gets distribution – it could easily find an audience on the art house circuit.

 Tomorrow: Nothing; my work here is done.