TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS, PAGE 3

Trumbo
"Many of the documentaries you tend to see at film festivals represent one of two polar extremes. One is the trenchant, heartfelt exploration of some issue of politics -- which, while fascinating, can be a bit of a slog. The other is the breezy, buzzy exploration of some aspect of show business -- which, while fun, can be a bit light ..."

Cassandra's Dream
"When the lights dim and the first moments shine upon the screen, you know that you're watching a Woody Allen film. That classic font smiles, and we quickly get the cast of characters. There's no long, music-laden intro -- just a quick rundown of the top names and then into the story. That's where the similarities to classic Allen die, though, but maybe it's time to stop comparing Allen to the works of his past. Over his last few films, the filmmaker has broken out of the mold ..."

White Lies, Black Sheep
"The big-name movies may get most of the press at film fests, but it's often unearthing the jewels of the smaller indie films with less publicity that makes a film fest great for me. White Lies, Black Sheep, the newest film from Afropunk director James Spooner, examines issues of race and racism refracted through the lens of the New York City rock scene ..."

Redacted
"It was at last year's TIFF that Brian De Palma was approached by the guys from HDNet, who made him their 'five million' offer -- we'll give you five million dollars to make any film you want. The film he decided to make was, surprisingly, one he's already made -- 1989's Casualties of War. Redacted tells the same story, of a company of Army grunts who take part -- some willingly, some reluctantly -- in the rape and murder of a young girl ..."

The Devil's Chair
"At last year's Fantastic Fest I caught a flick called Broken, which I thought was an interesting if somewhat flawed piece of ultra-grungy survival horror -- but still a solid enough movie to make me wonder what newcomer Adam Mason would come up with next. So I'm pleased to note that Mr. Mason's latest effort, a tale of demonic insanity entitled The Devil's Chair, is a marked improvement over Broken -- which is still worth seeing, by the way, once it hits DVD next month ... but only if you're a serious horror freak ..."

À l'intérieur (Inside)
"You know how certain amusement park rides (usually the really scary or herky-jerky ones) have warning signs that say "Look, if you're pregnant enough that you can rest a mug of coffee on top of your belly, then you're definitely not allowed to get on this ride"? I'm paraphrasing there, but already you get my point: Certain rides are too physically strenuous for pregnant women to deal with. Well, I'd like to propose that the ferocious French horror flick À l'intérieur (aka Inside) get one of those signs ..."

Then She Found Me
"The directing debut of Helen Hunt gets a passing grade, barely -- the story she's telling is as old as the hills, but Then She Found Me is still executed with style. Sometimes charming, occasionally funny, it never draws attention to itself as the work of a director with training wheels on. The film follows the journey of April Epner (Helen Hunt) a 39 year-old woman who is inexplicably marrying a man named Ben (Matthew Broderick) who is so inconsiderate and self-absorbed that no woman could find him to be primo marriage material ..."

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford starts with images, moments, visions -- all grounded in the dry, calm tone of the narrator explaining where we are, and who we're watching. We meet Jesse James -- played by Brad Pitt -- and Robert Ford -- played by Casey Affleck; their ultimate relationship can hardly be in doubt, given the title of the Ron Hansen novel Andrew Dominik's adapted for the screen ..."

Lars and the Real Girl
"The initial footage for Lars and the Real Girl, which came out last month, presented a quirky, jaw-dropping world where Ryan Gosling gets a Real Doll to cure his loneliness. It looked to be a strange, black, indie comedy -- lots of laughs and possible lasciviousness. But that just skims the surface of this film, and to call it a comedy is to ignore the profound depth of Craig Gillespie's feature ..."

Lust, Caution
" Lust, Caution is a great festival film; it's lush and long and loaded. It's also a bad festival film; I want to go back to it and think about it more, as if it were too delicate or intricate to be understood with the snap judgments and quick appraisals a festival can make you turn to at first resort ..."

In Bloom
"Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maureen (Eva Amurri) are two average high-school students, chatting and killing time in the girl's bathroom one day when their conversation is interrupted by a noise from way off in the distance. It sounds like a bundle of firecrackers being set off, and causes them to quickly shut up and perk up their ears. The sounds are repeated, closer and louder, and before they have time to react to what is happening the bathroom door bursts open and a troubled, wild-eyed student is suddenly walking toward them, pointing a machine gun ..."

Paranoid Park
"In the late '90s, Blake Nelson's debut novel, Girl, was turned into a feature film starring Dominique Swain. While the adaptation can be strangely addictive for its utter badness, it was a far cry from its source material -- the grunge, the feeling, the spark were all sapped from it and what remained was a goofy tale about a girl trying to be cool to get the guy ..."

My Enemy's Enemy
"Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, who won the Oscar for his 1999 documentary One Day in September and also directed The Last King of Scotland and is helming the upcoming Brad Pitt, Edward Norton film State of Play, has unveiled a new documentary here in Toronto, My Enemy's Enemy ..."

The Princess of Nebraska
"In The Princess of Nebraska, Wayne Wang's companion film to his other Toronto entry, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Wang tackles adapting another short story by Yiyun Li. Wang brought to life A Thousand Years of Good Prayers with methodical pacing and the careful unfolding of a story about the conflicted relationship between Mr. Shi, a Chinese father and his adult daughter, Yilan; in Princess, Wang uses an edgier style to show us 24 hours in the life of a college student some 15 years younger than Yilan, who lives in Omaha but has traveled to San Francisco ..."

Flash Point
"The best possible signpost to what kind of movie you're in for comes early in Flash Point, when Donnie Yen's hard-bitten cop Jun Ma is standing before the equivalent of Internal Affairs or some other review board. Apparently, one of Jun's more recent busts resulted in a perp with " ... three fractured ribs, a broken hip ... and anosmia. ..." It only took a second to translate the subtitle medical jargon and have it sink in: Donnie Yen hits melonfarmers so hard he slaps the very sense of smell out of their heads ..."

Deficit
"Deficit drops you directly into a day in the life of an upper-class, college-aged brat in a posh suburban neighborhood outside of Mexico City. Gael Garcia Bernal directs, as well as stars as the main character, Cristobal, and as the film opens we see him driving over rundown streets with a friend, a quizzical expression on his face, giving off the vibe that we're about to enter some kind of crime drama ..."

Rendition
"Did we polygraph the Egyptian?"
"He came up clean."
"Polygraph doesn't mean diddly."
'We always say that when they pass."
"Put him on the plane. ..."

That exchange comes early in Gavin Hood's new film Rendition, between senior intelligence officer Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) and her underling (J.K. Simmons) ..."

Eastern Promises
"Another gory mafia story from David Cronenberg, this time set not in America's heartland but in the Russian immigrant community of London. Eastern Promises stars Viggo Mortensen as a limo driver and hired muscle for the mob whose life gets very complicated when a young woman is raped and murdered, but not before she leaves behind some crucial evidence that could tie the crime to the mob -- her newborn baby ..."

Weirdsville
"I didn't know it at the time, but I was first introduced to Allan Moyle in Squeeze Play, when he was the "Wet T-Shirt Waterboy." The flick is an old, risque adult comedy that my friend and I would sneakily watch late at night during sleepovers (when we were way too young for the buttocks-ball-catching material) ..."

Emotional Arithmetic
"Closing the Toronto International Film Festival, Paolo Barzman's Emotional Arithmetic opens in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where a family's awaiting the arrival of a guest. But it's not a normal family, and it's not a normal guest. Melanie (Susan Sarandon) is looking forward to the guest's arrival; her husband David (Christopher Plummer), less excited. The guest is Jacob (Max von Sydow), who Melanie hasn't seen since the darkest days of World War II ..."  

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