2004 Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival (heretofore to be referred to as VIFVF, k?)

Day 1

The Other Boleyn Girl (2003 UK Philippa Lowthorpe)

Adapted by Lowthorpe from the Philippa Gregory novel, starring the otherworldly beauty of Natasha McElhorne (Solaris) in the titular role of Mary Boleyn, with Jodhi May (The House of Mirth) as her more famous younger sister Anne. Loosely based on historical conjecture that Mary was Henry VIII’s lover and bore him at least one child before he became infatuated with and ultimately married Anne, the film’s lasting value may be in its wee indie approach. Shot in DV, with jittery hand-held camerawork throughout, Lowthorpe’s low tech approach to the oft yawn-inducing conventional costume drama/period/chamber piece is intriguing. Outside of a few luscious emerald-tinted Lily Chou Chou shots in the Tudor garden, this is one ass-ugly looking film, but while the grainy imagery makes it look like the thing was filmed through muslin, the unpolished approach to the potentially stuffy material is actually something of a plus. In the end, and despite some solid performances, the film doesn’t quite cohere, as it fritters away the palpable tension between the rivalrous siblings whose world views could not be more unalike, and dissolves into a more predictable familial struggle to save Anne from the axe once Henry tires of her. The Other Boleyn Girl is also a slightly misleading title, given that the film really is much more compelling when Anne takes the reins. After all, characters who are driven, manipulative and emotive are always going to be more interesting studies than those whose goals are to marry and live happily ever after as a nobody, as is the case with Mary. The film’s study of how women were commodities, and sex their only weapon in a world of dangerous men, aims in an interesting direction, but doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Grade: 69/100

Fatigue (2003, Wales, Mike Barnes)

Meant to exist solely in the world that other movies have created, this is a hard boiled noirish tale whose context is nothing more than other movies. Feature film debut by Mike Barnes is certainly stylish—he cops from the Coens, Tarantino, Lynch, Hitchcock, and fellow Brit Guy Ritchie, to name but a few—but for what purpose? Comparing the film to Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1, might be instructive. Both are heavily stylized efforts, making extensive reference to other films and borrowing generously from a variety of genres. Both are fantastical films of people involved in conflicts that could realistically only exist in the movies. Yet, while Tarantino’s film is energetic and exhilarating, Barnes’ film is enervating and depressing, and a large part of the blame for this must fall on Barnes, who fails to flesh out characters for us to care about one whit. Perhaps there is a dull honesty to his film, in that all the characters are punished, in one form or another, leaving us to ponder about how all of us must go the way of all flesh, and all that. But given the general moral vacuity of every character in the film, I’m figuring that if that’s all Barnes has brought to the table, I’ll be taking my business elsewhere in the future.

I needed a double dose of Outkast at full volume to get my spirits up in order to carry on to…

Grade: 49/100



Expiration (2003, Canada, Gavin Heffernan) Canadian Premiere

Sort of a student film version of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, this time set in the seedier side of contemporary Montreal (though it, and in particular the surrounding daytime landscape, still comes off looking lovely). After a brief set-up involving a young man named Sam (writer/director Heffernan also stars here) who’s about to propose to his pregnant girlfriend Niki, an unexpected twist leads to the couple being separated and each entering into the Montreal underground scene to experience what might be best described as a compressed lifetime in one night. We move from (among many things) a wedding, to parent-child conflicts, through to a rooftop finale that features a man considering taking his own life. Shot on DV, the movie looks great on DVD, but a little less so when transferred to film, Expiration has some interesting moments, but as is often the case with such episodic fare, some individual pieces prove more satisfying than the picture as a whole. Though no Orson Welles (despite the triple threat billing) Heffernan does have some chops as a filmmaker, and it might be interesting to see what he can do when handed other people’s material.

Grade: 66/100

A VERY SPECIAL AND PARTICULARLY THROATY SHOUT OUT FOR THIS HERE TV SHOW THAT NONE OF Y'ALL HAVE PROBABLY EVER EVEN HAD THE CHANCE TO HAVE SEEN, BUT MIGHT SOON IF YOU GET OFF YER ASSES AND PUT SOME PRESSURE ON THOSE PINDICKS* WHO RUN THE COMEDY CHANNEL.

Corner Gas


1.2m Canadien tuned in for this show’s series premier. Apparently, that is pretty much unprecedented for the first episode of a Canadian-based show. Set in a small, fictional Saskatchewan (pronounced sorta like "Sasquatch-ewan." Except you Americans call him "Bigfoot," which sounds nothing at all like Saskatchewan. So, like, nevermind, I guess) town in the middle of nowhere (is there any other kind of town in Saskatchewan?), Corner Gas features the gentle satire of series creator Brent Butt (his big screen career has been limited to cameos in little-seen flops like Gwyneth’s Duets and Norm MacDonald’s Screwed, which pretty much describes anyone who dropped a sawbuck on that one), whose observational wit is felt in the sweet-yet-acerbic characterizations of the folks like his parents, grease monkeys, police and diner owners who pony up to the gas bar in this one horse Sas-kat-chew-an town that lies on two major trucking routes (Holy Mother of God! Lemme apologize NOW for that last sentence. A team of Rhodes Scholars, professional etymologists and amateur aestheticians declined to try parsing that one). Keenly observant and incessantly funny, Butt obviously has deep affection for the people he’s funning with. Corner Gas is sorta like Northern Exposure--except for being, like, really funny and witty and all--in that Butt has tapped into the inherent humour and the basic universality of the situation. The show's about small town folk who are trying to hold onto what distinguishes them from the urban rabble, particularly in the face of the Insistent and Evil Forces of Globalization.

Or, Butt just knows how to write and tell a joke. Either way, and honestly, all hyperbole aside, this really is one of the best series ever to come outta this, my true north strong and free. And no, I'm not on the payroll, I'm not a friend or relative of anyone on the show, and I'm sure as shit not crazy or stupid either, so please, take my recommendation here to heart.

*But really, I'm sure they're all nice (not to mentioned fully developed) as hell there at TCC. Still, harass the hell out of 'em until they commit to picking up Corner Gas. You'll thank me for it.


Grade: 90/100

The Best Movies of the Year that Wuz: Part Deux ½

Continuing in that fine week-old Cinemania tradition of highlighting what wuz the best thing about going to the theatres in 2003.

Gerry

Hiking for Godot. An existential Blair Witch Project. The daemon, it turns out, ain’t in the woods, it’s lurking here (points to chest) deep within the darkest corners or yer everlastin’ soul. Two lads (Matt Damon, CASEY Affleck) out for a hike in the wilderness are looking for "the thing at the place," but instead the fellas end up at the end of the world, which turns out to look a lot like a giant salt bed. Damon and
Affleck are well-cast as cocky kids who play at life—conversations tend to degenerate into "game talk"—but who are ill-prepared when the play gets real. Van Sant’s use of spartan acoustical impressions—the crunch, crunch, crunch of feet on stone eerily marks the gents’ march to their doom--is stellar. Cinematography Savides’ terrible and wonderful shots of the beautiful, bleak, wide and indifferent sky succinctly highlights van Sant’s central concern with how we’ve grown apart from the world we attempt to inhabit.

Grade: 84/100

Sweet Sixteen

Director Ken Loach’s riff on Francois Truffault’s 400 Blows has a contemporary Scottish setting and a performance by a young amateur actor that will knock you to your knees. Martin Compston plays the lad with the impending rites-of-passage birthday who will sell his soul to hold his family together. Now Loach will never be mistaken for Truffault as a cinematic stylist—his brand of filmmaking is much closer to the Dogme 95 aesthetic than French New Wave—but he continues to make films that refuse to sentimentalize the plight of the poor and disenfranchised in the so-called "first world." Watching Compston’s resourceful character hatch one plot after another in a desperate attempt to hold onto hearth and home is a powerful indictment of the forces at play in our society that are working overtime to tear this fabric of our society seam-from-seam.

Grade: 82/100

All the Real Girls

Easily the most romantic and heartbreaking picture of the year, All the Real Girls captures those moments of new and first love with a freshness that is downright thrilling to this jaded viewer. Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschanel are marvellously tender, conveying those ineffable moments of bliss and confusion ("shhhhhhhh." "hello hello hello hello") that mark many a great relationship. Some complain that the mid-film twist that throws their relationship onto love’s rocky shores is contrived and out of character, but considering how Paul so idealizes Noel that he cannot bring himself to "defile" her by sleeping with her, something he has done to so many women before her, and as he has awoken in Noel the very real desire to experience love in all its aspects, I’d say that the moment in question is completely plausible and fits well within the story’s complex study of love. For more on this fine film, check out my full-length Apollo Guide review here.

Grade: 88/100

More Catch Up

The Magdalene Sisters

A dark and unrelentingly grim tale--while often dripping in bitter irony, the movie’s sole moment of poetic justice and biting humour is quickly and dramatically subterfuged. The Magdalene Sisters is reminiscent of Tim Roth’s confessional horror The War Zone, as both are based on actual events, both involve unconscionable acts of cruelty and betrayal, and both have an unremittingly bleak tone that threatens to swamp the audience in its misery. Objectively speaking, when tallying the social costs of the abuse, the institutional terrorism represented in The Magdalene Sisters is clearly the unfortunate winner, yet of the two, The War Zone packs the more serious wallop. Part of this might have to do with the fact that Roth’s film focuses very specifically on one family’s experience of sexual abuse and incest, while The Magdalene Sisters (oddly) seems to dilute its impact somewhat by representing the often-tragic stories of several young women simultaneously. Also, while The War Zone’s style plays like an open sore, raw and festering, there is a polish and professionalism to the production of The Magdalene Sisters that is counterintuitive to the tone it is trying to create, and the themes it is attempting to explore. Still, this is a potent and punishing film. Brace yourself.

Grade: 74/100

Playing Catch Up

Spider

You can catch this new release in its pretty spanky new DVD (it really is a good-looking transfer, with solid featurettes and an informative commentary by Cronenberg), Spider has all the proverbial earmarks of superb craftsmanship, as Cronenberg’s trademark keen eye and use of sound do a fine job of capturing the singularly strange subjective p-o-v in this private study of one man’s living hell. Unfortunately, with the mumbling and stumbling Ralph Fiennes in the title character, playing Spider as if he were a Quaalude-popping schizophrenic variant of Hoffman’s Rain Man, I was soon wearying of this creepy tale. Further, while Cronenberg’s film weaves a web of psycho-sexual neuroses that would make a Freudian cream his genes, the movie is sunk by its failure to rise above the obvious, as well as by the filmmaker’s inexplicable decision to seek the refuge of scoundrels. That is, Cronenberg falls back on that most popular of contemporary filmmaking conventions, the "GOTCHA!" plot twist. A favourite whipping boy of film critic Scott Renshaw, it seems that we must now enter the movie theatre EXPECTING to be tricked, so we are always on the outside of the material looking in, trying to spot the gimmick rather than immersing ourselves in the film. Even worse, if films don’t deliver a cheap trick surprise ending, we feel ripped off. As David Foster Wallace might say, it’s a fucking mess. Anyways, I got the sneaking suspicion that Cronenberg was up to something like this, and was able to predict the so-called surprise very early on, which pretty much negated the effectiveness of the conclusion, and if a film’s power is reliant on tricking its audience, then the moment in question is less a twisting of the knife than letting the last gasp of air out of a leaky balloon. And, really, Freud is, like, so-o-o-o-o yesterday.

Grade: 57/100