To this point it's been an up and down festival. There has really only been one dog: The Last Winter. I'm not even sure what in the description made me think this was good, but once again the great and mysterious Festival Book strikes again. The worst part was the Festival director for the series The Last Winter was in was all raving about it. It made me want to grab him and shake some sense in to him when I saw him the next day. I think it's a really bad sign when the number of film crew in the movie equal the number of attendees.
Aside from that, the other movies were all great. More about those after the jump.
4.5/5 A very heartwarming film.
Le Voyage en Armenie was a really good homecoming movie and I think the best thing I could say about it was it felt very Armenian. It's the story of a father who leaves a trail for his daughter through a culture and a land that is "in her blood" yet foreign to her. As she searches for her father she gains a growing understanding of him and her culture.
4/5 I $@#! the Man
Monkey Warfare is one of the best Canadian films I've seen in a while. This was a real pleasure after last years' disappointing Seven Times Lucky. Don McKellar is in fine form as an anarchist with a haunting past, initiating a new generation and learning just how much times have changed, and also how they haven't changed. Funny, engaging and in the end worth every minute.
5/5 Nirvana
Kurt Cobain: About a Son was for me more of an explanation than a documentary, but not having read the book when it came out it was a story I'd never heard before. Sure everyone knows the surface details about Kurt Cobain, but really listening to him speak about his life is a different experience. The juxtaposition of the voice over with images of what he's talking about was really well done and it gives a very real (well it felt real) impression of what his early life was like and what made him the man and musician he was.
1.5/5 Just.. not so good
The Last Winter was so bad, if I wasn't sitting right behind the actors I would have walked out. This movie is trying really hard to be "The Thing" but with an environmental conscious, and I think that's exactly where it fails. Throughout the movie we are just getting beaten over the head with the environmental message, and it gets boring. That and the mysterious force (Wendigo) hunts a team of Alaskan oil company workers, about to reopen a rig in the Alaskan refuge. Of course you know these environmental nogoodnicks are going to get their comeuppance. The movie just takes that way too far. Painful.
| 04 Sep 07 | No TIFF this year | |
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| 11 Sep 06 | Toronto International Film Festival '06: 1st Quarter | |
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| 05 Sep 06 | Toronto International Film Festival '06 Film List | |
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