All Toronto articles – Page 155
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Reviews
Cleaner
Dir: Renny Harlin US . 2007. 92 minsTen years have passed since the combination of Samuel L Jackson and director Renny Harlin was a guarantee of lively box-office action. Think The Long Kiss Good Night (1996) and Deep Blue Sea (1999). Harlin has steadily surrendered his A-list status and Jackson ...
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Reviews
The Last Lear
Dir. Rituparno Ghosh. India 2007. 130 min.An overly complicated film-within-a-film story, told through multiple narrators, causes confusion in Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear. The film was conceived as a vehicle for the greatest living idol of Indian cinema, Amitabh Bachchan, in his first full length English-language film. The role of ...
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Reviews
Dr. Plonk
Dir. Rolf de Heer. Australia 2007. 84 min.Deprived of the frantic mania and destructively anarchic passion that drove the best silent comedies, Rolf de Heer's attempt to revive the genre turns out into another capricious whimsy for a director whose erratic career has never followed a conventional path. Shot on ...
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Reviews
Just Like Home (Hjemve)
Dir Lone Scherfig Denmark . 2007. 97 minsFive years after her admired English-language debut Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself, writer-director Lone Scherfig makes an eagerly awaited return to her native Denmark for Just Like Home, an idiosyncratic ensemble comedy depicting a community in crisis. A slight, slow-burning tale, it lacks ...
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Reviews
Reservation Road
Dir: Terry George USA. 2007. 102 minsA respectable, well-intentioned exploration of grief, guilt and the instinct for revenge, Reservation Road boasts some fine performances but tries too hard to pass itself off as a weighty, tear-stained Oscar contender. A plot heavily reliant on coincidence may have worked on the page ...
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Reviews
Death Defying Acts
Dir: Gillian Armstrong UK/Australia. 2007. 97 mins.The period romance is back in style if the UK success of Atonement is anything to go by, but Death Defying Acts is so corny and old-fashioned that only diehard romantics are likely to consider it magical. The relationship between famed escapologist Harry Houdini ...
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Reviews
Married Life
Dir: Ira Sachs, US, 2007. 90minsIra Sachs's new film Married Life commences with wonderfully droll cartoon-like credits that simultaneously amuse with their archness and efficiently evoke the 1940s era in which the film is set. Like the film as a whole, however, they promise a great deal that is, alas, ...
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Reviews
Nothing is Private
Dir: Alan Ball. US. 2007. 124 mins.Perhaps the most polarizing film of the Toronto International Film Festival this week, Nothing Is Private marks the feature directorial debut of American Beauty writer and Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. As you might expect from Ball's oeuvre to date, it is a ...
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Reviews
The Stone Angel
Dir. Kari Skogland Canada , 2007. 115 minutes.The Stone Angel is a perfectly respectable, solidly-made film which, beyond the expert performance by the always reliable Ellen Burstyn, has unfortunately little to recommend it for consideration for theatrical release beyond its home territory. Adapted by director Skogland from a beloved Canadian ...
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Reviews
The Past (O Passado)
Dir: Hector Babenco Argentina-Brazil 2007. 114 mins.Brazilian director Hector Babenco's latest film is an utterly misbegotten effort, a long way from his earlier successes such as Pixote and Kiss of the Spider Woman, or 2003's Carandiru. Despite the presence of international heart-throb Gael Garcia Bernal, the tortured, sometimes unwittingly laughable ...
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Reviews
Mother of Tears
Dir/Scr: Dario Argento. Italy. 2007 98mins .The new work of Italian horror specialist Dario Argento, Mother of Tears forms a trilogy of the two macabre, hyper stylized works that made his international reputation: Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). The time away from the material has certainly not dulled the director's ...
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Reviews
Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame (Buda As Sharm Foru Rikht)
Dir: Hana Makhmalbaf. Iran / France , 2007. 81 min. Hana Makhmalbaf is the younger scion of the Makhmalbaf Film House factory. All of eighteen years old and already a veteran with a short film, a documentary and a book of poems to her credit, she handles this first feature ...
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Reviews
Jane Austen Book Club
Dir. Robin Swicord, US, 105 minutes, colour, 35 mm. In The Jane Austen Book Club, five women and one man lead lives that seem torn from the pages of Jane Austen's novels as they discuss those writings in a book club in a California suburb. 'What would Jane do' becomes ...
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Reviews
Chaotic Ana
Dir: Julio Medem. Spain, 2007, 120 minutes. Many viewers felt that director Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle was one of the best films of the 1990s. Its mixture of poetic visual and verbal imagery, coupled with a strong dose of mysticism and steamy insights into love and sex, ...
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Reviews
Lars And The Real Girl
Dir: Craig Gillespie USA 2007. 106 mins.Ryan Gosling, one of the finest actors currently working in American independent cinema, is once again outstanding in this offbeat but exceptionally accomplished film. Starting off as funny and quirky, Lars and the Real Girl gradually becomes a riveting yet never heavy-handed psychological portrait ...
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Reviews
Before The Rains
Dir: Santosh Sivan US/India. 2007. 98minsA bittersweet journey from blinkered loyalty to rueful independence, Before The Rains captures the crumbling of British rule in 1930s India through a doomed love affair and its tragic consequences. In its more obvious moments it strays perilously close to the conventions of romantic fiction ...
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Reviews
A Jihad For Love
Dir: Parvez Sharma USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia. 2007. 81minsFilmed over six years in twelve countries, A Jihad For Love compiles personal stories that illuminate the bitter struggles of lesbians andgay men to reconcile their homosexuality with their Muslim faith. The film presents itself as a modest first step in attempting to foster a ...
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Reviews
Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)
Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...