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TIFF FILM REVIEWS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH

Burn After Reading (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, USA):82

Partisans and detractors alike are dismissing this misanthropic marvel as a slight, meaningless comedy, when in fact it's far more probing and trenchant, in its defiantly goofy way, than No Country for Old Men. Basically it's Blood Simple played for laughs, but with a nasty post-9/11 sting -- I intuitively sense that there's a brilliant reading to be made along those lines, but at the same time I don't really want to think too hard about it, for fear of winding up with a dead frog pinned to the table. Gasping for breath for 90+ minutes more than sufficed.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Kim Jee-woon, South Korea):57

The good: Terrific action set pieces (albeit without much of a discernable Leone influence) at fairly regular intervals. The bad: Runs 128 minutes, feels like 150. The weird: Song Kang-ho in a shootout wearing a diving helmet.

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, USA):84

Demme goes Dogme! Easily the most emotionally wrenching family melodrama since The Celebration, which it heavily resembles (except in that the Big Secret is unknown at first only to the audience); Anne Hathaway's heartbreakingly credible concerto of neediness and self-absorption is merely the most unexpected performance in a never-miss ensemble. I was not remotely prepared for this picture in my opinion, and spent fully half of it on the verge of tears.

Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France):46

I'm a defender of Sorrentino's hyperactive atyle, and it's certainly bracing to see it applied to that most staid of subgenres, the political biopic. But this film is nearly impossible to follow if you aren't well versed in the last several decades of Italian-government scandal -- the names and allegations just keep flying, and you can only shrug. Toni Servillo's performance, as always, is good for some odd pathos.

The Rest of the Night (Francesco Munzi, Italy):66

Solid, well-wrought, pleasingly subtle take on The Immigrant Underclass (this week's special guests: Romanians in Italy!) plays sort of like a less chilly Chabrol film that doesn't actually want to see the bourgeoisie burn. Fine performances all around, except that it's distracting to see Aurélien Recoing dubbed into Italian.

Posted on 09/07/08 by: dangelo 05:53 PM