The Screengrab : toronto international film festival

Trailer Review: Slumdog Millionaire

Paul Clark — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Danny Boyle’s latest film was a smash hit at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, where it took home the coveted Audience Award. So why did it take Fox Searchlight almost two months to put out a trailer for the movie, which opens next week? What’s more, why does the trailer they eventually came up with look so boilerplate? This isn’t to say that the trailer isn’t at least pretty good- it gets the premise across, establishes the setting, and allows the hero (played by Dev Patel) to elaborate on what really drives him. In other words, everything is accounted for except for a feeling about what makes the movie really special. Part of me wants to think that a movie that takes home the top audience prize at a festival with more than 300 movies should be something more than a standard-issue crowdpleaser. But then, that part of me has forgotten last year’s festival, in which any number of magnificent films got bested by the disappointing (especially considering its director) Eastern Promises. Of course, who knows? This trailer might actually not do justice to the movie. But if Fox Searchlight wants Slumdog Millionaire to make the same impression with mainstream audiences that it did with festival-goers, it should have come up with something better than this.

Classless Man in Voiceless Brawl

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

All Roger Ebert, in town for the Toronto International Film Festival, wanted to do was watch a movie. (Whether or not the movie, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, was worth watching or not is still a matter of some debate, but advance word is pretty good. Sure, that's what they told me about Trainspotting.) Unfortunately, because of the way the man sitting in front of him was sitting, he wasn't able to see the subtitles, and, because recent bouts with cancer, he was also unable to speak. So he simply tapped the guy on the shoulder and gestured for him to move over a bit. In a perfect world, that would be the end of the story, and you certainly wouldn't be reading about it here.

Of course, in a perfect world, there would be no such thing as a the New York Post. It so happened that the slouching dimwit in front of Ebert was their witless film critic, Lou Lumenick. Lumenick responded to Ebert's requests first by yelling "Don't touch me!" at him, as if he were a bristly hobo taking up two seats on the LIRR, and then by spinning around and whacking the beloved Chicago critic with something (a rolled-up program, say some; a festival binder, say others). Happily, the room was filled with hundreds of international journalists, and Lumenick was duly shamed as the story spread all over the internet, marking the first time since 1872 that a New York Post employee experienced the feeling of shame.

To Ebert's credit, displaying far more class than Lumenick, he's dismissed the entire incident as no big deal, and rightly pointed out that if it hadn't been him Lumenick was lurching in front of, no one would ever have even heard the story. But we say, what's bad for the Post is good for America. You stay class, Lou Lumenick!.

Roger Ebert is All Thumbs, No Voice

Michael Caine, Batspoiler

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

So you're in a high-stress profession. You work all day and all night to try to make the world a better place, but to protect some very important people, you have to keep certain things about your job secret. But the strain of such a massive secret, a thing that some people would kill to know, can't be borne forever by just one man. So you turn to the one person you think you can trust, the one man you believe will keep your secret: your faithful butler. And then he goes and blabs it to the whole world.

Ever since Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, made its first trillion dollars, speculation has been rampant about who's going to play the villain role in the next installment. Heath Ledger's untimely death makes it an unlikely, albeit intriguing, possibility that he'll return as the Joker; the two hottest rumors are that Angelina Jolie will be the draw, slipping into a Catwoman costume, and that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman will tag team as the Riddler and the Penguin. Both have generally dismissed as fan-driven wishful thinking until yesterday, when Michael Caine -- currenty paying his club fees as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred -- took a moment at the Toronto International Film Festival to cite an unnamed Warner Brothers exec and insist that the latter rumor is true.

Of course, just to keep us baying, Hoffman had to come out and insist he's never heard any such thing. But who are you gonna trust, the Penguin, or Batman's loyal batman? The rat!

Related Posts:

Jolie to Porn Star: 'Do It'

In Other Blogs: Batman Forever

Paris Hilton Pulls the Bullshit Train to Toronto

Phil Nugent — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In the long-awaited follow-up to her last film triumph The Hottie and the Nottie, Paris Hilton stars as herself in Paris, Not France, described as a sociological-themed documentary about what "the Paris phenomenon" says about "this moment in culture." The director, Adria Petty, seems to enjoy likening her movie to Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film Darling, which was a non-documentary, and also non-good, character study of a shallow, beautiful actress (Julie Christie) whose shrill emptiness and jet-set lifestyle were once thought to have said just reams about their moment in culture. (The movie won Christie an Academy Award for her willingness to behave unpleasantly, so maybe the idea is that Paris, Not France will win some kind of meaningful artistic credibility for Hilton' creepy, dead-eyed smirk. One of several points at which the comparison breaks down: Christie's character, being a movie star, was actually famous for something.) Petty (who, being the daughter of Tom Petty, can be assumed to know something about the joys and hazards of being born into dynastic celebrity), who also shot the film, is about to enjoy a break that many first-time directors would sell out their grandmothers for: on Tuesday, she'll get to see her baby screened at the Toronto Film Festival, arguably the best-loved of all big-name international festivals, and the one with the best reputation for its focus on serving the interests of filmmakers and film lovers instead of providing one more circus of hype and celebrity sleaze. So it's leaving a bad taste in some mouths that Paris, Not France has turned out to be the center in what may be a cynical publicity stunt and bid for another fifteen minutes of the the attention of a jaded world.

The problems began last week, when word hit the papers Hilton had waved her lawyers at the Festival organizers and forced them to scale back their plans to award the movie three public screenings as well as a showing for the press. The implication was that the movie is so hot and critical of the talentless heiress that Hilton wants it suppressed, and if your first thought is to wonder what the hell could be in the movie that would embarrass the star of The Simple Life, not to mention her own homemade bedroom calisthenics tape, that's clearly the point. Thom Powers, who programmed the documentary arm of the festival, seemed to be taking credit for a coup when he told blogger Katrina Longworth, "From my standpoint, of course, I wish we could do additional screenings. But this is certainly a better option than not showing the film at all.” Presumably he's seen the film, and if he thinks that showing it at all is a good option, we'll trust his judgement for now. Longworth herself, though, speaks for the crowd when she writes that she's "got to wonder if there’s more to this than meets the eye. On the surface, you’ve got a rich, fame-hungry girl who allows a filmmaker to document her for publicity purposes as she tries to legitimize her outsized fame by recording an album. A couple of years later, that album is universally considered a joke, and those publicity materials have been expanded into a stand-alone film about Hilton’s relationship to her own celebrity. Paris has obviously lost control, and she’s obviously siccing Daddy’s lawyers on Petty et al in an effort to take that control back...but Paris has made a career out of managing the release of imagery that she supposedly didn’t want us to see. From the sex tape which she first sued over and then transformed into both a cash cow and a career platform, to the prison stay that turned into a week-long, weepy melodrama and dominated the news cycle all the way up to Paris’ march out of the county jail and into her mother’s waiting getaway vehicle, all of Hilton’s career high points have involved the transformation of humiliation into triumph. It’s not that her reputation is “based on shamelessness”––it’s that she continually turns events that should be shameful into products for public consumption. I don’t think we’re dealing with anything different here, and I don’t think we should be surprised."

As Longworth points out, the really odd thing about this fiasco is the announcement that Hilton had somehow "pressured" the festival to cancel all screenings of the film but one." "It would be one thing," she writes, "if the Hilton camp has insisted that the film be removed from the festival completely––I don’t know the laws, but this is something I assume they would have the right to do, considering that Petty’s footage came from her contract to produce publicity materials for a DVD and is now going towards personal use––but they didn’t. Instead, they’ve made tickets to Paris‘ single TIFF screening a hot commodity." Now the New York Post's "Page Six" is explicitly reporting that Hilton " "has craftily manipulated the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival in an attempt to gain more publicity for a new documentary about herself." Hilton's flak even issued a statement acknowledging, "We wanted to create more buzz - create some hype . . . We felt the impact would be more extreme if we had one screening." Hilton, described as "a partner with the documentary", will attend the Tuesday screening. (The flak declined comment on whether or not Hilton has a financial interest in what's being advertised as her own takedown documentary.) To the people who care about the people whose activities are covered on Page Six, manipulating the programming of a serious film festival and robbing real movies by struggling artists of a little time in the spotlight in order to get more attention paid to your little home movie is the kind of thing you brag about.

Paul Clark Previews TIFF '08

Paul Clark — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today marks the beginning of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Sadly, I won’t be covering the fest for Screengrab as I did last year, since various factors have made it impossible for me to make the trip again. However, I’m still looking forward to it in much the same way I did in the years before I actually got to go myself. I love hearing the buzz about the new movies- whether you’re in the market for Oscar-baity Hollywood fare, out-of-nowhere sleepers, or critical darlings, Toronto has plenty to chew on. Even this year, when a number of festival favorites (Hong Sang-soo, Lucretia Martel, Hayao Miyazaki, Erick Zonca, Fernando Eimbcke) are mysteriously missing from the TIFF slate, there’s still a lot to look forward to there. Bearing in mind that I prefer to skip movies that are getting released in the forseeable future, here are eleven movies that I would make the greatest effort to see at TIFF, in no particular order:

Che- there are other films here I’m more eagerly anticipating, but of all the movies playing at Toronto, Che feels most like an event, particularly the 4 1/2 –hour screening of both segments of the film. Most big-ticket directors come with films that have studio backing, but Che is still seeking a distributor, and since there’s no telling when it’s going to be released in theatres, this festival season may be the last chance for it to be seen in a long time.

A Christmas Tale- a few weeks ago, I declared Arnaud Desplechin’s new movie to be one of my most-anticipated films of the fall, and even though this is allegedly coming out in limited release in December, given the choice of seeing it earlier, I don’t think I could wait. Besides, it’d be a way to ensure I see it in time for certain year-end awards.

Of Time and the City- after eight years trying to get projects off the ground, the great Terence Davies surprised cinephiles by premiering a new film at Cannes. Buzz on his latest, a documentary about Liverpool, was fairly muted, but no matter- a new Davies is always cause for celebration.

35 Shots of Rum- Claire Denis is one of the most gifted filmmakers working today, with a winning streak that’s even longer than Pixar’s. I haven’t disliked any of her features to date, and Venice buzz from her latest indicates this will be a worth addition to her already-impressive filmography.

Wendy and Lucy- after the critical success of 2006’s Old Joy, the talented Kelly Reichardt returns with a new film starring Michelle Williams and her dog. Here’s hoping that the presence of recognizable name in the cast will bring Reichardt’s films a new level of visibility.

Lorna’s Silence- word from Cannes was that the latest film from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne was something of a departure from celebrated recent work like The Son and The Child. As much as I love those movies, I’m also eager to see what else they can do. Aw, who am I kidding? I’d follow these guys anywhere.

Three Monkeys- a far cry from the Western rip-offs most people associate with Turkish cinema, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a genuine visionary whose films have made him perhaps the most important filmmaker in his home country. After Distant and Climates, Three Monkeys should only confirm this status.

Summer Hours- considering all the world-class directors she’s worked with, it’s sort of surprising that Juliette Binoche hasn’t starred in a film by her countryman Olivier Assayas. This film has been compared with Assayas’ lovely 1998 film Late August, Early September, which is enough to get me excited to see it.

Still Walking- with his first two fiction features, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda made two masterpieces- Maborosi and After Life. And while none of his subsequent projects has been up to that rarefied level, his 2004 film Nobody Knows is proof that he’s still got plenty of creative juice left in him.

The Beaches of Agnès- some filmmakers find their styles becoming more mainstream as they get older, but not French New Wave veteran Agnès Varda. Her latest essay film should be as chock full of dotty humor as her previous efforts Ydessa, the Bears and I… and The Gleaners and I.

JCVD- the typical pitch I’ve seen for this is Being Jean-Claude Van Damme. With that premise, how could it NOT be awesome?

And since I won’t be covering the festival, here are some links to some cool cats who will be:

Noel Murray and Scott Tobias at the always-indispensible Onion AV Club
Screengrab favorite Mike D’Angelo
Quote identifying machine Victor Morton
Cyprus correspondent Theo Panayides
Self-described Academic Hack Michael Sicinski
The tireless Jeremy Heilman
Honest-to-goodness AMPAS member Ken Rudolph
The good Doctor Girish Shambu
Of course you all know to check out Greencine Daily, Cinematical, and IndieWire. And whether you’re heading to Toronto or simply watching from the sidelines, enjoy the festival.

When Good Directors Go Bad?: Elizabethtown (2005, Cameron Crowe)

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Note: For various reasons too boring to get into here, I was unable to secure a playable copy of the DVD for this week’s Reviews by Request in time to write a post. I’ll be running Jason Alley’s requested review of The New Kids next Friday at the regularly scheduled time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Of all the paths to success taken by Hollywood’s major filmmakers, Cameron Crowe’s is one of the most interesting. Crowe’s 2000 film Almost Famous recounts the story of the teenage Crowe’s stint as a reporter for Rolling Stone, and after his time with the magazine he went undercover as a high school student in order to pen the screenplay for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. As a writer-director, he carved out a niche for his warm, humanistic films, which tend to make liberal use of impeccably-chosen rock’n’roll soundtracks. After the success of Almost Famous, Crowe decided to try something new, making the mindbending thriller Vanilla Sky. However, many critics and audience members were unamused, and although the film did well at the box office (largely due to the presence of Tom Cruise), it’s currently remembered as an interesting failure. After this strange trip outside his comfort zone, Elizabethtown was supposed to be a return for Crowe to the kind of movie he made better than anyone.

But then, a funny thing happened- the return to glory never happened. At its premiere in Toronto, Elizabethtown received buzz that was middling at best, hostile at worst. Crowe’s film- which made the festival circuit in a rough cut- was later shorn of twenty minutes, with the film’s original ending jettisoned completely. But the damage had already been done, as Elizabethtown, no matter what form it’s in, still hasn’t recovered from that initial drubbing. If Vanilla Sky was a strange experiment on Crowe’s part to branch out to a new format, Elizabethtown was treated as one too many trips to the same creative well. Suddenly, the style that had audiences had loved in Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous wasn’t working anymore.

Yet I’m here not to bury Elizabethtown but to praise it. The film is far from perfect, but it’s hard to hate a movie that’s as unabashedly sincere as this one. Elizabethtown is a big shaggy dog of a movie, one that stumbles around and makes too much noise but which it’s not impossible not to love at least a little. It’s not remotely one of Crowe’s better films, but it’s much better than its reputation would suggest.

Admittedly, it took me more than one viewing of the film to come around to this realization. After one viewing of Elizabethtown, I wrote that the film displayed “all of Crowe’s worst tendencies as a writer-director- up-with-people soliloquies, an overreliance on classic rock to bear the story’s emotional load- with almost none of his previous works’ better qualities.” Yet while I still see the elements I objected to the first time around, I don’t object to them nearly as much now. Is it a case of lowered expectations? Perhaps. I wanted another film of the caliber of Almost Famous, and Elizabethtown didn’t deliver in that respect. But I think there's more to it than that.

One of my biggest objections the first time around was to what I termed Crowe’s “relentless humanism”- his need to inject joy and life-affirming sentiment into practically every corner of the story. On top of that, little details kept eating at me- the fact that a major American company wouldn’t have a contingency plan that would prevent them from taking a bath on a billion-dollar campaign, or that a woman with a job and a life would somehow find time to map out a days-long journey (complete with annotated maps and corresponding mix CDs) for a man she’d met only days before. Actually, the entire character of Claire (played by Kirsten Dunst) seemed pretty far-fetched to me, a Crowe fantasy girl much like Almost Famous’ Penny Lane, only bearing next to no relation to the real world.

Yet after further review it’s pretty clear that Crowe wasn’t striving for realism with Elizabethtown. True, there are no mythical beasties or far-flung settings to clue the audience in to the fact that liberal suspension of disbelief will be required, but I believe Crowe intends the film not as a naturalistic representation of the world, but as an emotional odyssey through his own sensibility. Crowe leads his protagonist Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) on a journey from the brink of death back into life, spurred on by the memory of his father and the dogged persistence of Claire. And if Claire isn’t particularly convincing as a fleshed-out character, she’s such an effective catalyst that she works in the context of this story.

And along the journey, Crowe supplies a number of lovely scenes that make the occasional rough patch that much easier to take. Listen to the human cacophony that buzzes around the home of Drew’s Aunt Dora (played by the Food Network’s Paula Deen)- a flurry of activity that stands in sharp rebuke to Drew’s solitary lifestyle. Observe the perfect little scene that takes place between Drew and his slacker cousin Jessie (Paul Schneider, giving the film’s best supporting performance), culminating in the line, “yeah, I don’t know my dad very well either.” And even Crowe’s omnipresent soundtrack works surprisingly well, especially during Drew’s climactic road trip. If some of the music choices feel too on-the-nose, that’s pretty much the point, and if you don’t like Elton John’s “My Father’s Gun,” then there’s really no hope left for you.

As I said before, Elizabethtown has a number of problems. For example, Bloom’s performance is inconsistent- though he does have some nice moments- and Crowe really should have toned down some of the voiceover narration and dialogue (“the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that’s happened”- I mean, really?). Yet the more cynical films I see, the more I’m inclined to forgive a filmmaker like Crowe who clearly pours his heart into a film. In Elizabethtown’s final voiceover, Drew quotes a slogan of the British Air Force: “those who risk, win.” Crowe takes some big chances in Elizabethtown, and even if they don’t all pay off, the film has won me over. In two tries, yes, but better late than never.

Trailer Review: My Winnipeg

Paul Clark — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Of all the movies I wasn’t able to see at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, one of my biggest regrets was missing the latest film by Manitoba’s mad genius Guy Maddin. Of course, only part of my regret has to do with the film itself- it would have been a blast to see it narrated live by the director, who has always been a fascinating character. But the film itself, which has received almost unanimously positive reviews, should be more than compelling enough on its own. Like many of his earlier works- in particular Tales From the Gimli Hospital, Cowards Bend the Knee, and Brand Upon the Brain!- Maddin appears to be re-imagining his own childhood here through a prism of frenzied Freudian melodrama and wicked, film-saturated satire to create an unmistakably Maddin-flavored cocktail. Nice to see Ann Savage, the infamous “dame with claws” from Detour so many years ago, turn up again here as the Maddin family matriarch. I’m not sure how all of this strangeness- like a “man pageant” just around the corner from Sissy Boy Slap Party- but I’m eager to find out.

DVD Digest for May 6, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: One of the most acclaimed films of 2007 arrives to do battle with some of the most reviled releases so far in 2008. Who will prevail? Read on…

DVD of the Week: No one does musical biography like Todd Haynes. This should have been clear from his previous films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine, and his latest film, I’m Not There, lays any remaining doubts to rest. But then, when one is making a movie about Bob Dylan, how could it possibly fit into a neat little package? The Weinstein Company’s two-disc DVD of the film contains a wide variety of features, including a commentary track with Haynes, two deleted scenes, some audition tapes, a handful of documentaries, and a tribute to Heath Ledger. But most of all, there’s the film itself- I’m Not There is sometimes wondrous, sometimes frustrating, but always worthy of its subject, and this DVD should find a place in the collections of cinephiles and Dylan fans alike.

Alas, the other new arrivals on DVD aren’t nearly that noteworthy, sometimes aggressively counteracting the awesomeness of I’m Not There with their wholesale suckitude. More typical of this week’s crop is the universally detested The Hottie and the Nottie (Genius Products- how’s that for irony?), the latest attempt by its star- who I refuse to name here- to achieve total media domination. Also this week: Ice Cube and Tracy Jordan Morgan in First Sunday (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You (Warner, also Blu-Ray); the long-awaited Eva Longoria Parker vehicle Over Her Dead Body (New Line); and 2006 TIFF Audience Award Winner Bella (Lions Gate). Also, this week brings the release of the heartwarming family-themed vagina dentata comedy Teeth, as well as Sony’s first step into the Bollywood market, Saawariya (also Blu-Ray). But while a few of these are worth seeing, I’d have to say this was probably the easiest week to pick a DVD of the Week in quite a while.

A few new editions of some already-on-DVD titles will be hitting stores this week as well, including: The Bridges of Madison County Deluxe Edition (Warner); Serial Mom Collector’s Edition (Focus); and a two-disc special edition of Twister (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Finally, this week’s sole Blu-Ray only release is the 2004 remake of Shall We Dance?

Sorry folks, that’s all I’ve got. Next week promises to bring more DVD goodness. Not a moment too soon, I say.

Trailer Review: The Life Before Her Eyes

Paul Clark — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Well, it appears that it's Changed Title Week here at Trailer Review, first with Monday's Starship Meet Dave, and now this one, which was originally titled In Bloom. It was under this title that the film premiered to lukewarm reviews at last year's Toronto Film Festival, where Premiere's Glenn Kenny called it "basically Sophie's Choice meets Incident at Owl Creek Bridge meets Columbine." The trailer conveys this pretty effectively, with a sudden flash-forward from the teenage protagonist driving to the adult version behind the wheel. But what I have a hard time stomaching is the film's grief-porn aspect, for lack of a better word. Yes, a school shooting is a tragedy, but the film looks less like a complex examination of the psychological fallout from this central incident than a wallow in the heroine's misery. And in what universe does Evan Rachel Wood grow up into Uma Thurman without, uh, surgical enhancement? Just sayin'.

Trailer Review: Mister Lonely

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I wasn't a big fan of Kids, Harmony Korine's screenwriting debut, or Gummo, his first feature as director. I was more positive on his subsequent film julien donkey-boy, although that film demonstrated that he still had some maturing to do. In spite of this, and the lukewarm notices from last year's Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals, this trailer has me intrigued about his latest film, Mister Lonely. A lot of it is the film's cast — where else are you going to find Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, and Denis Lavant in the same film, much less playing second-rate impersonators of Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin respectively? Part of me fears that this moody trailer is hiding some of the thornier aspects of the film, and I don't have the foggiest idea of how Werner Herzog fits into the whole thing, but I'm certainly curious to find out how it all fits together.

Movies We Missed: Les Revenants [They Came Back] (2004, Robin Campillo)

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I know what you're thinking. You looked at the title of this piece, saw the French title and thought, "there goes Paul again, recommending another French movie. Who wants to bet that this one's existential and deliberately paced, and full of observations and death and social class?" And the thing is, you'd more or less be right. But Les Revenants has something most of those movies don't have:

Zombies. Do I have your attention now?

Why I missed it: Actually, most people missed this movie. After playing at numerous festivals during 2004 and 2005 (including Cannes, Venice and Toronto), it never received a proper theatrical release on our shores. Eventually, it was unceremoniously released on DVD, and I wasn't even aware of its existence until my friend Jason, an unapologetic zombie movie nut, recommended it to me. Well Jason, when you're right, you right. And this time, you were right.

Why I should have known: Les Revenants was Robin Campillo's first effort as a director, but his other work was familiar to me, having co-written and edited numerous films by the talented filmmaker Laurent Cantet. Of particular note is his work on Time Out, which wouldn't seem to be similar to Les Revenants but showed Campillo skilled at mining existential unease, a skill that would serve him well in his directorial debut.

Why I ended up kicking myself: While Les Revenants is a movie about zombies, it's like no zombie movie I've ever seen. Even the zombies themselves are different, neither the lumbering flesh-eaters of classic zombie fare nor the running snarling beasties of more modern genre incarnations. In many ways, it's difficult to tell the "returnees" (as the film calls them from the humans who never died. Even the film's opening shot of thousands of returnees walking out of a cemetery looks like it could just as easily be showing mourners departing a funeral. Aside from a body temperature difference of roughly five degrees and some slowness in their mental processes, the returnees walk and talk like any other human. They fit in fairly well in society, with many of them returning to the workforce.

One of the subtexts of the zombie-movie genre is the idea that the zombies were once our loved ones, and Campillo's film makes this idea explicit. Some of the most fascinating scenes in the film show the different ways in which the living deal with the return of their dearly departed. Some of them are overcome with emotion, such as the parents whose child has returned to them, but others are more conflicted, like Rachel, played by Géraldine Palihas. Rachel's husband Mathieu died several years previously in a car accident, and it's fairly clear she's had a hard time getting over his death. After Mathieu returns, Rachel ignores the fact as long as he can until he finds her and works his way back into her life.

However, it becomes clear that the returnees aren't the same people they once were. Those of working age are given jobs, but while Mathieu returns to his former engineering firm, he can't function at his former level and is put to work in a factory. The returnees' difficulties with communication make a number of people uneasy, and by and large they're treated as second-class citizens. In addition, the returnees are a restless bunch, wandering in the daytime and leaving their houses by night to attend mysterious meetings. What could they be planning?

Campillo sort of answers that question in the final third of the film, although the returnees plans and motivations aren't particularly clear (escape? Sabotage? Recruitment?). Much more fascinating is the way the film's relationships play out near the end. The parents of the returned child disagree on how to treat him- while the father dotes on his son, his wife is growing increasingly freaked out by his behavior. And Rachel, who had been reluctant to welcome Mathieu back into her life, becomes increasingly devoted to him, often to the detriment of her own well-being.

Despite the zombie storyline, Les Revenants is not a gorefest. There are no violent deaths in the film, much less the bloody disembowelments we've grown to expect from the genre. Campillo's film is subtler than that, depending more on the subtle existential dread that comes from finding that someone you love isn't quite the way he used to be. With Les Revenants, Campillo has announced himself as a filmmaker to watch.

Yesterday's Hits: Chariots of Fire (1981, Hugh Hudson)

Paul Clark — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Every year, on the eve of the Oscar ceremony, I like to re-watch with a former Best Picture winner. Normally, I’ll pick a favorite of mine (as I did last year with The French Connection) but this year I decided on a change of pace, selecting a movie that I haven’t seen and have barely thought about in at least fifteen years. And while there’s no denying that Chariots of Fire made an impact on popular culture, its status as an Oscar-anointed “classic” is much less certain.

What made Chariots of Fire a hit?: Chariots of Fire was the festival favorite of its day, winning accolades at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and taking home the audience award at Toronto that fall, and it became the word-of-mouth hit of the year. Much of the credit for the film’s success belongs to its story, about two young runners whose competitive drive is rivaled only by their principles. The film’s producer David Puttman supposedly wanted to make a film akin to A Man For All Seasons in which the principle characters are guided by their consciences, and in the stories of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams he found an ideal vehicle for this theme. Chariots of Fire is a straight-laced British production, but it’s also an inspirational sports movie that focuses on characters who are both heroic and relatable.

But let’s not overlook some of the other factors in the film’s success. Consider some of the major world events of the era. Just one year before, the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics, and it’s possible audiences turned to the cinema to get the Olympic fix they weren’t able to get on their television. In addition, 1981 saw a groundswell in anglophilia following the lavish nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. And let’s not underestimate the impact of Vangelis’ theme music from the film, which was one of the few instrumental pieces of the day to get regular airplay on top 40 radio.

What happened?: Along with the aforementioned factors, much of the appeal of Chariots of Fire lie in its underdog status. At the 1981 Academy Awards, the film was the night’s unlikely success story, beating out such high-profile nominees as Reds and On Golden Pond for Best Picture. But once the film took home the big prize, it was no longer an outsider, but the establishment’s choice. What’s more, an unassuming film like Chariots often has a difficult time standing up to the scrutiny such a high-profile honor can bring, and it’s easy to imagine moviegoers who first experienced the film after its Oscar win wondering what the fuss was about.

In addition, few (if any) of the people involved with Chariots of Fire capitalized on the film’s success. Leading men and Royal Shakespeare Company alums Ben Cross and Ian Charleson failed to parlay their roles into movie stardom, with Cross finding a steady career onstage and in big-screen character work (usually playing villains), and Charleson succumbing to AIDS in 1990. Director Hugh Hudson found brief success in Hollywood with 1984’s Greystoke, but his star plummeted after the box-office and critical drubbing of 1985’s Revolution. Vangelis’ theme music helped to kick off a decade of often-regrettable synthesizer scores, as well as spawning a host of cheap and easy parodies of the film’s signature scene.

Does Chariots of Fire still work?: In some respects, yes. What distinguishes the film from other inspirational sports movies is its bifurcated structure, with the stories of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams running alongside each other but only occasionally intersecting. By choosing to tell the story this way, Hudson and screenwriter Colin Weiland give the audience two characters to root for, while at the same time setting up an eventual showdown between them. Unfortunately for the film, real life didn’t quite work out this way, and instead of a race in which we feel conflicted about the possible outcome, Chariots of Fire gives both of its heroes a moment of gold medal glory.

Also, while Puttnam succeeded in his goal to make a film about characters driven by conscience, Chariots of Fire often neglects to paint these characters in much depth. Liddell in particular talks about little else besides his Christian convictions, and while Ian Charleson is fine in the part, the character doesn’t quite come alive as he should. Ben Cross’ Abrahams is the more complex of the two roles, an ambitious young man who sees winning as a victory against the anti-Semitism he experiences every day. Abrahams is such an interesting character that he might have carried a film unto himself, something that can’t be said of the film’s conception of Liddell.

But even in light of the parodies that we’ve seen over the past quarter century, the running scenes still work beautifully. In my experience with sports movies, the most cinematic sports tend to be the ones that have (a) momentum, and (b) simple rules, which would explain why basketball is better-suited to movies than football. In this respect, running may be the most cinematic sport of all, and few of any films capture this better than Chariots of Fire. Hudson does an interesting thing in the running scenes by focusing less on the outcome of the race than on the faces and bodies of the runners, showing in detail their physical and psychological exertions. Chariots of Fire may not be the classic the Academy once decreed it to be, but its racing scenes are every bit as effective now as they were on the film’s release.

Happy Trails to Dusty Cohl

Phil Nugent — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Dusty Cohl died last week, at the age of 78. The name will mean nothing to most casual filmgoers and little to many a devoted movie addict, but Cohl was a beloved figure in festival circles and, in the words of director Ted Kotcheff (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, "the very heart and soul of the Canadian film industry." It was to serve that industry, at a time when, in the words of producer William Marshall (Outrageous!), “There were only about six of us making movies” in the country, that Cohl worked to found the Toronto Festival of Festivals in 1976. Now known as the Toronto International Film Festival, it quickly developed a reputation among insiders as the festival for real movie lovers, a place to discover new talent and see unappreciated geniuses given their due, or just wallow in the richness and diversity of the jam-packed schedules. By attracting filmmakers to the area, the Festival was also, almost incidentally, successful in its goal of redefining Toronto as a city friendly to film production. For this and other good deeds. Dusty Cohl was "invested into the Order of Canada in May 2003 for 'his pride in Canadian talent' and his 'desire to celebrate our achievements.' ” In the same spirit of fun and enthusiasm that led to the founding of the Festival, in 1990 Cohl created the Floating Film Festival, "an almost annual" series of luxury sea cruises featuring movie screenings--world premieres and critics' picks--that Cohl meant to combine “the smallness of Telluride, the warmth of Toronto and the glamour of Cannes.” The tenth Floating Film Festival, which is dedicated to its creator's memory, sets sail on February 25.