TIFF, take two

>> Highlights from the second half of the
Toronto International Film Festival

by MARK SLUTSKY

It may not have been the best film I saw at this year’s TIFF, but Wilson Yip’s Flash Point was definitely the awesomest. The Hong Kong action flick, starring the great Donnie Yen, begins with an hour or so of confusing intrigue (punctuated with a few good fights), but it’s the film’s last half hour that really makes it special. It’s basically one big fight, between Yen and Collin Chou, starting with guns and progressing quickly to pure empty-handed one-on-one martial arts insanity. No wires or fancy CGI here—just incredible choreographed martial arts. The audiences at the festival’s Midnight Madness screenings are always enthusiastic, but the night Flash Point played, they were screaming with joy at every spectacular move.

Remind me to never second-guess Sidney Lumet again. The great director’s work over the last decade or two (Gloria, A Stranger Among Us, etc.) had nothing on classics like Dog Day Afternoon or Serpico, but his latest, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, was one of the festival’s great surprises. A tight, grim heist-gone-wrong flick starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney—all excellent—the movie starts dark and spirals downwards. In a good way.

Not everything that shows at TIFF eventually opens here in Montreal, so I have my fingers crossed for a few films in particular. Flash Point, of course, and Roy Andersson’s You, the Living (mentioned in last week’s round-up) are among them, but the movie I’m really pulling for is Ping Pong Playa. Directed by Jessica Yu (best known for her Henry Darger doc, In the Realms of the Unreal), PPP could best be described as a Chinese-American Rocky with paddles instead of fists. It’s a charming low-budget comedy about the blessed sport with a very funny performance from lead Jimmy Tsai.

Another comedy with a handmade, though far slicker feel was Son of Rambow, from Brit creative team Hammer & Tongs (director Garth Jennings was behind the 2005 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) about a pair of Rambo-obsessed kids in ’80s England who decide to make their own action movie. A hilarious goof, the film is full of inventive visual trickery and a childlike sense of fun; it should appeal to anyone who either grew up in the ’80s and/or ever pretended to be an action hero.

Todd Haynes’s Dylan movie, I’m Not There, was one of the movies I was most interested in seeing at TIFF, and it didn’t disappoint. A bit long at 135 minutes, it’s nonetheless a fractured examination of the artist, a what-if collage of parallel universe Dylan types as portrayed by a handful of excellent actors. Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and, most notably, Cate Blanchett (who is amazing as the Pennebaker-era Dylan) portray variations on the man, and Haynes gets the visual tone of each era, each of “the many lives of Bob Dylan” (as the movie puts it) perfect. Look out for appearances by Montreal’s Royal Mountain Band and big supporting roles from local actors Paul Spence and Joe Cobden (the movie was largely filmed here).

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