12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen) Rating: NNNNN
Easily one of the best films of 2013, Steve McQueen rebounds from the uneven Shame with this stunning adaptation of the memoir by Solomon Northup, a free American sold into slavery in 1841 and forced to spend more than a decade concealing his identity in a series of Southern plantations before he could contact his friends in the North.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is a revelation as a man forced to conceal his intelligence and compassion – his very essence – in order to survive, and Benedict Cumberbatch and McQueen regular Michael Fassbender offer diametrically opposed performances as Northup’s masters over the years. Alfre Woodard, Sarah Paulson and Michael Kenneth Williams make effective appearances, and producer Brad Pitt turns up as a good-natured Canadian.
McQueen directs with a total lack of sentiment, crafting each sequence with a merciless forward momentum that compensates for the episodic nature of the narrative. Norm Wilner
One of the best films of the year.
Read our Q&A with Steve McQueen (2011) here.
Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh). Rating: NNN
Having made a huge splash with his 2008 hit-men-in-hiding drama In Bruges, Martin McDonagh returns four years later with this shaggy-dog comedy about blocked Irish screenwriter Martin (Colin Farrell), whose life becomes a raging sea when his best friend (Sam Rockwell) kidnaps the dog of an unhinged mobster (Woody Harrelson) in a half-baked ransom scheme.
The meta-trickery around which McDonagh builds the movie doesn’t pay off, so structurally Seven Psychopaths is kind of a mess. And casting Christopher Walken, so memorable in both True Romance and Pulp Fiction, doesn’t do much to distance McDonagh from the “Tarantino knockoff” cloud that shadowed In Bruges.
That said, if you enjoy it for what it is – an insubstantial but endearing goof on genre clichés, with knockout supporting turns by Walken, Harrelson and the always delightful Rockwell – it certainly has its moments.
Also, Tom Waits is in it, holding a rabbit. That’s more adorable than you’d think. Norm Wilner
Check out our gallery of the cast from the TIFF (2012) red carpet here.
Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan) Rating: NNNN
Laurence Anyways comes from the imagination of one of Canada’s most inventive filmmakers. In the 80s, a love relationship goes through wild ups and downs when Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) transitions from male to female and his girlfriend (Suzanne Clément) tries to support her. Saturating his colour palette and adding magical touches so that nature mirrors the story’s powerful emotions, Dolan (J’ai Tué Ma Mère) creates a gorgeous, epic romance that never loses its energy despite the film’s length. The performances are spectacular, especially Clément’s – she took the best acting prize in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes – as a woman who desperately wants to believe she can be part of the gender revolution and Nathalie Baye as Laurence’s deeply conflicted mother. Winner of TIFF 2012’s best Canadian feature award and wholly deserving. Subtitled. 161 min. Susan G Cole
Listen to our interview with the brilliant and intense young director Xavier Dolan here.
Don’t miss our Q&A with Dolan’s muse Suzanne Clément on her role in Laurence Anyways here. (published 2012)
L’Amour Fou (Pierre Thoretton). Rating: NN
Those uninitiated to the world of haute couture and prêt-à-porter will be left scratching their heads at Pierre Thoretton’s overly deterministic requiem for late designer Yves Saint Laurent. L’Amour Fou assumes familiarity with the couturier’s bio and the fashion world, maybe rightly so, since it follows not only two previous Saint Laurent docs but also 2009’s Valentino: The Last Emperor.
Still, more info as to why the man’s fashions were so innovative (Wiki does it better) or why his life was meaningful might have made this portrait more worthwhile.
Instead, the film offers little more than the selective recollections of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s life and business partner. Bergé elliptically talks about the designer’s work, substance abuse and depression as asides while cataloguing their luxurious homes and ridiculously vast art collection. The latter takes on increasing significance because the film pivots around an auction of these very same objects.
It all feels like a detached tour of Saint Laurent’s mausoleum, where we browse artifacts that reveal very little about their owner besides his blatant void-filling self-indulgence. They may have auctioned for millions, but Bergé says it best when he describes these objects as soulless. He could be speaking about the film, too. Radheyan Simonpillai
Artifact
Artifact gives intimate access to singer/actor Jared Leto and his band Thirty Seconds to Mars. Leto directed and co-produced this documentary which follows the making of his band 30 Seconds to Mars’s This Is War album, while dealing with the $30 million breech of contract lawsuit filed against them by their label Virgin/EMI. The doc wrestles with questions of “art, money and integrity” and enlists fellow musicians and key indusrty players for insights, including Brandon Boyd (lead singer for Incubus) and Chester Bennington from Linkin Park.
Check out our gallery of Leto and bandmates from the TIFF 2012 red carpet here.
Lost Song (Rodrigue Jean) Opens Friday (February 27). 102 minutes. Subtitled. Rating: NNNN
Lost Song is a taut and atmospheric little film that doesn’t miss a beat.
Suzie LeBlanc stars as Elisabeth, a new mother who can’t quite cope with the move to an isolated cottage. The immense Quebec wilderness, her overbearing husband, Pierre (Patrick Goyette), and the piercing shrieks of a newborn take their toll, and she slowly unravels.
Directing with patience and precision, Rodrigue Jean builds tension by keeping mum about his characters’ motives. There’s no exposition, very little dialogue and a thin plot. Instead, he relies on evocative cinematography that makes the trees shift from idyllic to foreboding, editing that delivers a jolt every time someone so much as trips over a log and a strong performance by LeBlanc, whose every flicker of emotion is placed under a microscope for analysis.
It’s an uneventful art-house thriller in which every “turn of the screw” grips you with anticipation of what’s coming next. Radheyan Simonpillai
Rodrigue Jean bares brutal home truths in our interview here. (Published 2009)
Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet). 120 minutes. Rating: NNNNN
Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s most personal film to date, is in the running for best-film-of-the-year honours. It’s a masterpiece of whimsy and romance, which is notable because the director has seemed till now to be a hardened type. Jeunet and his filmmaking partner Marc Caro made their mark in 1991 with their hilarious, wildly imaginative debut, Delicatessen, and then came back with The City Of Lost Children. Since then he’s flown solo, making Alien Resurrection and now Amélie.
The title character (newcomer Audrey Tautou) is a shy, beautiful waitress living in Paris’s charming Montmartre district. She occupies her time doing good deeds such as returning a box of childhood toys to a middle-aged man and playing matchmaker for a couple who frequent the cafe where she works. But Amélie hides behind her own goodwill, afraid to take risks, until she bumps into a young man (Mathieu Kassovitz) who collects torn-up Polaroids from subway photo booths. This capricious, joyful film wraps several life-affirming moments into a light, bouncy bundle. After it ends, you leave the theatre vibrating with happiness.
“I think people love this movie because Amélie’s generosity is totally free,” says Jeunet. “Usually in life, when you give something to someone you want something in return. But not Amélie — she wants nothing in exchange for her love, and that’s beautiful.”
Jeunet was in town during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where Amélie picked up the People’s Choice Award.
When he first walks in for our interview he looks at the hotel room, the photographer and me sternly. I think, “Oh, he doesn’t like this room, and he hates me.” But then he sits down and winks. Occasionally during the interview he stops to make faces at the photographer and then continues to talk.
It’s this sense of play that guides Amélie. In one scene, the heroine leaves a trail of elaborate clues up the steps of a church to guide her potential lover to his book of lost photos. Ingrid Randoja
Read our full review here
