EIFF: The Miracle / Jonna's Body, Please Hold

These were two short movies that were shown together.

The Miracle is about a little-person recounting a "miracle" that happened when she and her mother fulfilled a life-long dream of visiting Lourdes. (I don't think what happened was well set-up to be a "miracle" ... it was a bit more of an "obvious" ... but potayto potahto) I believe it is based on the actress's own life. I really liked the fanciful storytelling in this movie, especially how the actress played herself from age 5 to 48 (she's a youthful-looking woman, and frankly makes herself positively adorable in high pigtails as a 5 year old). At times, it was a bit surreal and goofy for my tastes, but there is no getting around how watchable and endearing this actress is.

Jonna's Body, Please Hold is a story told primarily from the point of view of the inner workings of a woman's body -- I believe all bodypart characters are played by the same actress. I think I was expecting something like a live action Osmosis Jones. What I got was a lengthy (even though it was short film) inside look on what happens when a body is fighting cancer. It was like those Archie comics I bought on one vacation when I was a kid that turned out to be Christian-message Archie comics. Nothing bad, just not what I thought I was buying into -- and a bit more preachy than I was looking for.

EIFF: Dakota Skye

Okay so my favourite moment was when a guy asked at the Q&A after the screening "Could you discuss the meaning of the movie's title?" After a brief pause to no doubt confirm he had heard the question correctly, the director replied quite congenially "It is the main character's name. Dakota Skye. So we named the movie 'Dakota Skye'." If the director had added an eye-roll or a "Duh.", it would have made my year (I hate most of the self-absorbed, pretentious fops who ask questions during festival's Q&A sessions. Most of them care less about learning something about the movie, its process or the cast/crew's experience, and are just attempting to come across as more informed or insightful than they really are)

Oh, the movie, though. Yeah, cool premise. A teen has the superhero power of seeing the truth in anything anyone says ... and then she meets a guy who either never lies or can thwart her innate gifts. But which is it? Well, who cares. I liked the idea, and there wasn't anything all that wrong with the movie -- its just the girl was just so gosh darn unlikable. She acted unlikable, and spoke unlikably, and even her narration was unlikable. And for someone who says she's yearning to find an honest person, she's actually more dishonest than anyone in her life (including the fact that she's the one cheating in her relationship). We see the subtitles of truth whenever someone lies -- but if we saw her truth subtitles the movie would be 23 minutes longer. So it isn't that I can't go along with an unlikable liar for the duration of a movie, it's that I don't think this character was supposed to come across as an unlikable liar. And if she was ... well then her superpower was actually ironic hypocrisy.

EIFF: One Week

This is billed as a "love letter to Canada" ... which could be truer if Quebec, Yukon, NWT and the Maritime provinces weren't a part of Canada. I guess we should just rejoice in the baby steps of filmmakers recalling that it includes more than just Toronto.

Any hoots: guy gets diagnosed with cancer, guy buys motorcycle and guy motors from Toronto to Vancouver. It was quirky and it was amusing and it wasn't really anything more than you would expect of a cancer guy motorbiking it cross-country. We do have a pretty pretty country though man. Well, the half of it that was included in "the letter", at any rate.

(Can I just say, though, if you don't want to pull us out of the "the moment", don't put a guy who starred in a Disney movie about a kids hockey team on the ice with a player from the NHL team that was named after same Disney movie. The Disney Mighty Duck and an NHL Mighty Duck should not be seen together except above the caption "Stupidest Inspiration for NHL team name" ... and changing the team name to just Ducks doesn't negate that stupidity)

EIFF: Let the Right One In

This is a Swedish movie. That is relevant only because my perception may be coloured by the fact that I don’t see a lot of Swedish movies. Or German, French, Icelandic or Bulgarian movies. I don’t see a lot of foreign movies. So maybe it’s just a matter of my not having similar movies against which to compare this one in tone and delivery. It was interesting. It was original. It was characters watching walls or windows or their own fingers a lot. The main characters, two 12 year olds, were very watchable and compelling. One was a vampire. But in a kind of accepted, understated, life is a Swedish movie kind of way. I spoke to two other people who just adored this movie, its pace and its off-kilter premise. So what do I know?

EIFF: Midnight Meat Train

(This wins my award for hands down best name of a movie at the festival) One of the most horrifically gory movie I’ve ever averted my eyes from, and yet one of my favourites of this year’s festival. The gore never snuck up on me, so I was able to take off my glasses and look to the corner of the theatre so I could still see the fuzzy gist of the action in my periphery without directly exposing my mind to the image. (I’m pretty sure at one point someone got hit so hard in the back of the head that his right eye popped out of his head. Ick!) The rest of the movie was amazingly worth it, though. Interesting, suspenseful and off-centre enough to make it stand heads, shoulders and popped out eyes above the usual unimaginative horror fare.

EIFF: Rachel Getting Married

I think this was an American movie trying to be a Swedish movie. Again, a solid festival favourite: damaged girl returns home for a sibling’s wedding and becomes the catalyst for all the damage of the family at large to come dripping out. This one, however, chose poignant, emotionally charged scenes interspersed with overly long and pointless scenes that made me wonder if the actors themselves even forgot (if they ever knew) how the scene related to anything. The most blatant of which included a five minute dishwasher loading scene – within which the dishwasher is loaded, unloaded, and loaded again immediately – that was capped off by the completely uninspired, tactless choice of dropping the elephant into the room in the most common and unskilled way possible. (Really ruined the movie for me that such a heavy handed rookie first-draft device would survive subsequent drafts and find itself in the final cut edit of the movie) There was such a limitless possibility to this story, and the emotional journey of the main character in particular, to explore how a person or family can survive this tragedy intact, but all this movie did was introduce us to the drama, then walk away from it barely examined.

EIFF: Wherever You Are (Retitled Lifelines)

Ah, the old festival standby: a character study of what is eroding a middle-class family. I could tell you what is creating the erosion in this particular case, but part of the draw of the movie is that its questions and answers unfold as you watch. Although there aren’t many answers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I realized that the movie very discreetly changed the audience’s perceptions of the characters. Near the end you realize you have begun disliking the characters you had original sympathy for, and began to feel for the characters you earlier dismissed as callous and self-involved. Well done and understated. And, in theory, I appreciated the realism of the movie in that it doesn’t tie up the loose ends just because issues have been identified. On the other hand, the movie does just end. In the middle of a close up, it fades to black and credits roll. Leaving the resolution to the audience’s interpretation is one thing ... but I do prefer my movies to actually finish telling the story before asking me to decide for myself where the characters go from here.

EIFF: [REC]

Hold me, I’m scared. I can’t remember the last movie I watched crouched down in between the theatre seats ahead of me, my hands clasped on either side of my face with my mouth in permanent silent scream position. (Gore quotient = low. Scare factor = high. Disquieting level = holy crap) Part of me wants to see the remake “Quarantine” that is coming out in a few weeks because this was just that good that I’m curious to see it from another angle, but the rest of me wouldn’t want to ruin my experience with this movie by seeing a low-rent polished-up interpretation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – and this movie ain’t broke. The creep factor is raised by this movie being Spanish with English subtitles – people screaming in a language I don’t understand adds to the atmosphere that the characters are in a situation they have no explanation for. If you can find it in a theatre near you, I’d say Go Now. I just don’t see how playing it on your tv set can be an adequate substitution. (unless you’re like my brother, who has a dvd system that projects movies onto a screen the size of a billboard – only my brother and people of his ilk may watch this movie in his own home.)

EIFF: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

What I adore most about Kevin Smith movies is the dialogue. His characters fling such witty and insightful banter back and forth it’s like Wimbledon for intellectuals with funny bones. So I was saddened by the inclusion of so many “f*cks” and permutations thereof in this movie because I have always subscribed to the belief that expletives are the simplest fall-back position for people too lazy to access adequate vocabularies. (doesn’t stop me from using expletives – which is exactly how I know their use is symptomatic of not bothering to try to express oneself more articulately) But once I mourned that, I found this to be a really original, funny movie. If you can’t figure it out, Zack and Miri make a porno. To make money to pay rent, if you care. It’s a blue romantic comedy. Zack gets Miri, Zack loses Miri, Zack gets Miri back. I didn’t really ruin the movie for you, because once it gets into the romantic arena, it is paint by numbers (another disappointment). But it’s relatively easy to push from your mind that a handful of scenes regarding Zack and Miri’s burgeoning relationship are uninspired and barely qualify as dramatic effort, and just enjoy the majority of the show.