Having purchased this e-space for a total of three years, I may or may not come back to it before that time has expired. Nonetheless, I am keeping this website active as a resource for the reviews already posted, some of which for films that have yet to find any kind of mainstream attention. I still welcome any and all feedback related to this website. In the meantime, you can catch my weekly or bi-weekly posts over at Midnight Poutine, a local arts blog for the island of Montreal.

Thanks to those few who have commented, supported and read this blog from time to time. In the meantime, some random neuron fired off in my brain this morning and I remembered the URL for a short-lived film review blog I worked on three years ago. Lo and behold, it still exists.

While I mostly go on a tirade against Je te mangerais’ depiction of its central lesbian character, I also briefly go over other films from around the world showing at the festival: What You Don’t See, A Room and a Half, The Childhood of Icarus, and Be Sure to Share. You can read my full impressions at Midnight Poutine.

It’s Hispanic week! Sin Nombre is about the modern-day struggles of Honduran teenagers. One, Sayra, wants the opportunity to take the train into America and start a new life for herself and her father. The other is a young gang member who takes the same journey. “It contains risk, violence, a little romance, even fleeting moments of humor, but most of all, it sees what danger and heartbreak are involved. It is riveting from start to finish.” (source)

In Northern Ireland, 1981, IRA member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike to protest the decrepit conditions of Maze Prison where he and other paramilitary prisoners were being held. Steve McQueen’s Hunger chronicles this point of history with a very narrow focus: the prison itself. That Bobby (expertly played by Michael Fassbender) does not appear until the second third of the film allows director McQueen to focus on the conditions of the prison through the eyes of others. This gives a pretext for Bobby’s eventual decision to starve himself. And it is in the details of the conditions where Hunger manages to capture its audience. (read more of my review)

If the above movies have you feeling down and out, try out Earth, Disney’s re-compiling of images and scenes from the classic BBC series “Planet Earth”. While there is still cruelty in nature, at least it looks more beautiful set against impressive backdrops and sweeping aerial shots.

Other Releases
De l’autre côté du lit
Good Dick
State of Play

Refrain tells the story of Riya (Vidya Lutchman), a young woman who is stuck in the repetitive grind of an abusive relationship with her boyfriend Ash. Ironically, it is the random outbreaks of violence, leaving her bruised and bloody in the bathroom every night, that inspire her to re-ignite a passion for writing. Her inspiration begins as a snippets of lyrics written in a notebook, and the humming of tunes. As she gains confidence, as well as a friendship with a fellow musician she meets online, Zeph, her music develops beyond just outlines and becomes fully formed songs. It is through a relationship with a ninjitsu instructor, Lin, that she gains the courage to begin stepping outside of her docile nature and potentially break it off with Ash.

Riya’s story could just have been the platform for actress Vidya Lutchman’s beautiful singing voice and accompanying soundtrack, but Tyler Gibb shows off his skill at writing by fleshing out the four main characters (Riya, Ash, Zeph and Lin) and making them more than just caricatures, by allowing both the film’s silences and its music as exposition for emotion, and by sidestepping some of the clichés one could come to expect from a film about domestic abuse. For Riya, there is a lesson to be learned beyond simply escaping the cycle of violence. She learns from her experiences with both Zeph and Lin, and realizes that escaping the abuse is not enough - she must change as a person and gain freedom from dependence. Ash too is given a chance for redemption, despite the ferociousness of his actions. Human beings can change; but in order to do so must be reminded daily of what they once were and accept their previous selves.

Refrain is clearly an independent production: but from the washed out colours of its video quality rises a beautiful and sad story. Its title speaks to both the musical aspirations of its main character, but also the repetition in her own life - and how breaking this repetition may also break her aspirations: it’s an unusual but unique choice that comes off as a more realistic portrayal of the longstanding effects of oppression. Do yourself a favour and give this one a chance. Few and far between, this one joins the ranks of Who is KK Downey? and Adam’s Wall as one the finest English-language Montréal independent productions in recent years.

The story that exists is very simple. A young woman’s father falls after a long mountain hike and plummets to his death. He leaves behind four daughters and a wife for whom a period of grief begins. Dressed all in black, their days consist of knitting, sewing and preparing food. The repetitive and all-consuming nature of these activities comes across in a series of successive long shots. For minutes on end, audiences are treated to the rhythmic nature of four girls knitting at a table, their arms raising up to tighten the pattern and then threading with their needle. These scenes feel almost like synchronized swimming, and reveal a simple beauty to each act. The only other visible inhabitants of this town are young boys dressed up in robes who share secret passions with each of the sisters - this and when the sisters are alone giggling are the only shows of emotion in the film. The mother, always dressed in black, seems intent on making sure her daughters do not forget the grief they should be feeling for their lost father.

There are other images of worth in this film: a winter owl regurgitating hairballs like a cat, or fluttering into an open window to oversee a sleeping girl. There are also nightmarish dark robed creatures with antlers that occupy the mother’s thoughts, and whom bare a strange resemblance to the young robed men who enjoy heated affairs with her daughters. An intriguing image near the end of the film ties the fear and its realization together. There is also a recurring image of a character that looks like a Japanese Butoh dancer. This one was lost on me as it may be a regional reference.

It is for the above images and its short running time that you may be interested in Winter Silence. Unfortunately, it suffers from a glacial pace and and seeming pointlessness to the assortment of imagery. This would be recommended viewing as visual background to a gallery or house party, but is far from an engrossing film.

I must talk about the brilliance of the opening scenes. The film opens with a view of a concentration camp through barbed wire. A wistful tune plays and suddenly the wires vibrate, as if being strummed by an invisible hand along with the musical accompaniment. In a single shot, we are introduced in the foreground to the musical nature of the gypsies: the characteristic that urban audiences can best attribute to them. In the background is the threat of confinement - a fact of life during World War II that affected these nomads, and one that will be revealed all too clearly by this film. In the next scene we are introduced to the gypsy family who are the central characters. Like the barbed musical bar lines, the clamour of footsteps, rattling pots and pans and shaking caravan creates a kind of music as they move. While a major part of their ability to subsist is playing music from town to town, director Gatlif portrays the strong familial bond that keeps them together, and highlights the uniqueness of each family member - providing a completely human portrait of a peoples who have been so misjudged by modern urbanites who see them solely as musical crooks.

While much occurs to each of the characters in the family, as well as the people they meet: friendly veterinarian mayor Theodore and his girlfriend schoolteacher Madame Lundi; the heart and tragedy of the film lies in Taloche. Seemingly a paranoid schizophrenic as well as delayed cognitively, Taloche is like a grown child, eternally curious, oftentimes mischievious, but a good person. He has the soul of a true nomad, as evidenced by scenes in which he runs off into nature and hollers at the top of his lungs. He is unable to understand the grand scheme of events that affect both he and his family - World War II and French regime laws that forbid nomadism. All he knows is the exhiliration and freedom of his style of life. In one potent scene he is running across the train tracks and comes across a stop watch with Yiddish numerals. No explanation is given to why this cracked item is on the side of the tracks and Taloche seems perplexed by its presence there. A knowing modern-day audience can make the obvious conclusion, but the discerning viewer will understand the deeper message: “Gypsies, the clock is ticking, and your turn is coming.”

Much happens in Tony Gatlif’s Korkoro - too much to relay in a simple review of the film. Needless to say, it gives light to the Holocaust of the Roma. It reveals the role of the French government in their oppression - not willing to lay the easy blame on the already-hated Nazis. It also is a scathing indictment of the governing world’s conceptions of the term “freedom” or the French’s “liberté”. The gypsies, who feel themselves to be truly free via their wandering way of life, are hunted for this freedom and jailed for it. Ironically, the only way they can be released is if they own the deeds to a piece of land and settle down. Perhaps part of the message is that we live a contained sense of liberté: as long as we have pieces of identification that can be stamped by our governments, and they know where we are at all times, we are “free”.

Korkoro is one of the first films of this era in years with something new to say. It refuses to focus on Holocaust or concentration camps (as but a short amount of film time is dedicated to this) and instead relies on the connections between people: both good-hearted and villainous, of notions both pre-conceived and broken, to exemplify the hardships endured by a people. Highly recommended viewing.

As writing out reviews is an involved process, by the time I manage to publish them readers have no way of actually going out to watch these movies (especially at festivals such as MWFF where they may never see release). At Midnight Poutine you can read my quick impressions of recently viewed movies as well as when they play again, in anticipation of longer reviews to come.

Review: Inglorious Basterds (2009)

The first thing one will come to realize is that the titular band of Jewish-American Nazi-killers are not the main focus of the film: they share the screen with renowned ‘Jew Hunter’ German detective Col. Hans Landa and a young woman who escaped the massacre of her family, Shosanna Dreyfus. In a sense, this film is Shosanna’s story, and retribution belongs to her, not Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine and his killers. The Basterds themselves feel like Robin Hood and his merry men; slightly one-dimensional, empty shells devoid of humanity. Like Errol Flynn and his men, they are pompous and eerily jolly in their disregard for the mayhem they cause others. And while Flynn’s on-the-fly gibes were bearable due to the righteousness of his actions, Aldo Raine’s come off as skewed righteousness. One need only to bear witness to Raine’s Little John, the ‘Bear Jew’, bashing in a German officer’s head with a baseball bat as the others cheer him on from the woods to make both the connection and the disconnection.

Don’t get me wrong: the death of the Nazi elite is hardly a crying shame; though there is something off kilter and uncomfortable about the wanton violence on screen - maybe because of its mix of comedy. This is not alien territory for Tarantino: the same mix of dark humour and violence is his notable trademark (one need only remember John Travolta’s gun accidentally going off due to a speed bump in Pulp Fiction). Speaking of trademarks, Inglorious Basterds has some very similar moments to Pulp Fiction. It is a film heavy on intense scenes of dialogue that lead to a bloody showdown by their unravelling. The very first scene in the movie is sure to go down as a classic. This is helped by Christoph Waltz’ Hans Landa, probably the best reason to see the film. His playful drinking of a glass of milk brings to mind Samuel L. Jackson’s washing down of a Big Kahuna burger with a soda. We know Landa is playing with his subjects, because we know he is smarter than them. This knowledge brings an extreme level of intensity to every scene he occupies.

While both Landa and Jewish escapee Shosanna Dreyfus are well fleshed out characters, Tarantino dropped the ball on the rest. We are given hints to some of the background stories of the Basterds, but these are never realized. Once, the action stops mid-scene to introduce a character a la Kill Bill - but only once. I got the feeling more than once that Tarantino had trouble shaking some of the influences of his last mega project. The use of Ennio Morricone and one-time Basterd bio seemed out of place in this new world he was trying to create. Considering this project has been on his mind for years, it’s possible he had fleshed out these scenes early and was too attached to them to let them drop: even though one of the main rules of writing is the ability to let go.

An underlying theme that was well developed and could have been utilized more was the importance of language and cultural traits. More than once ignorance of other languages or customs leads to death. Landa himself speaks English, German, French and Italian during the movie: and this reflects on his survival rate. If anything, the characters who survive and speak only one language can attribute this to dumb luck. One scene has the Basterds undercover as Italian filmmakers, only to be outdone by Landa who speaks it fluently - Brad Pitt on the other hand, humorously says one or two words with a heavy Louisiana accent.

Inglorious Basterds cannot be mistaken for anything but a Tarantino film. It has some of the best pot boiler sequences he has ever scripted, but lacks the coherent whole of his other films. Some of this may due to it being a sort of ode to cinema (evidenced by the finale at a movie theatre): it borrows from spaghetti westerns, references German filmmaker Pabst, Clouzot’s Le Corbeau, recreates a WW2 nationalistic film as the final act’s centerpiece, and even seems to channel Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator for Hitler, lending his scenes less gravitas. In the end, if you come out of the theatre feeling like you should have loved the movie but didn’t, it may be due to its unneveness.