Toronto 2005: Day Two/Three

DAY TWO/THREE

The good news is that I was already somewhat dismissive of Guy Ritchie, though there were moments in all of his films that intrigued and amused me.

The bad news is that he is not alone in the "established directors who hit the wall hard" category this fest.

Watching Elizabethtown was a deeply emotional experience for me. You see, I quite like Cameron Crowe's work. He is a wonderful filmmaker. And Elizabethtown has all the qualities not of a simple misfire, but of an outright jumping of the directorial shark.

I believe that some directors are, essentially directors. A guy like Frances Coppola seems to internalize his films before spewing them out, but he has also shown himself completely capable of just directing a movie that is less personal. Soderbergh is in that realm, his misfire here with Bubble an indication of an urge to experiment more than of a career crisis.

But Cameron Crowe is in that camp with Oliver Stone and Woody Allen who are connected in some deep way to their material, their films evolving with their lives... and also running out of steam when they had said all they had to say. Word is that Allen's Match Point is quite an excellent out-of-genre film. But you get my meaning.

Elizabethtown is the first time we've glimpsed Cameron Crowe doing Cameron Crowe.

The comparison of this film to Garden State is specious and insulting. Garden State combined Crowe-isms and Swedish comedy to evolve into its own unique mediocrity. Like Garden State or not, Zach Braff cannot carry Crowe's jock. Which is why it is all the more horrifying to say that I understand what those comparisons are about. Because if Garden State is a Cameron Crowe imitation, Elizabethtown is one as well... and without the added sparks that Braff brought to his film.

The film misfires in virtually every way. It opens with a faux Jerry Maguire section that feels like we've seen it before - complete with company girlfriend who leaves when things go bad - that sets up a whole story about a terrible public humiliation to come... which is neither explained nor examined nor much referred to after the first 20 minutes. I don't think I'm giving too much away to tell you that the disaster is a running shoe... and why is it a fiasco? Don't know. Didn't tell.

When Orlando Bloom's character finds out that his father is dead, he heads back to Elizabethtown, but his mother and sister's choice to stay in Seattle is murky at best.

And then you have the empty economy section on a commercial airline... the free upgrade to first class, though that section is somewhat abandoned too... and the wacky stewardess who is classically Crowe-spunky, but unlike Crowe, she is never terribly believable as a character.

As things move along, the film is not unlike Red Eye... everything that happens sets up a gag of no substance. But in Red Eye's 75 minutes, you expect it all to be thin and senseless. Not so with an emotional drama from Cameron Crowe featuring a dead father, a riff between the folks back home and the mother, and a nightmarish public humiliation due at any moment. (How the shoe can be such a disaster and not be publicized for a week - an absolute movie contrivance of 50s era simplemindedness - is beyond me.)

One sits there, just waiting and waiting for a Cameron Crowe movie to emerge from the wreckage. But it never does. The music cues are not surprising, they are cliché, albeit the cliché was essentially created by Crowe himself many movies ago.

And those magical moments that survive in memory from the weakest of Crowe's works are simply nowhere to be found. He tries to bring them to life, but they just sit there. There is a "falling in love on cell phones" sequence that never finds its wings. And it is painful after a while because you so want to love and embrace it. But the child is cold.

The performances are a mixed bag. Some people will like different performances, some won't like any. But Orlando Bloom, who I think is a movie star, is not this movie star. The role demands curveballs and sliders and Bloom is all fastballs down the middle. As for Ms. Dunst... this role is nearly impossible, and her endlessly perky take on it is often hard to take. There is little wrong with Ms. Sarandon's work... except the script she is trying to make sense of... a script that has traveled just past the lip of good, turning quirky into weird and unappealing.

I just sat there, trying to figure out what went wrong. And I only wish I came up with a better answer, as this one hurts to my core. When greatness fades, it is an ugly light indeed.

As for Guy Ritchie's Revolver... oy.

This too feels like an example of an interesting director who suddenly is just doing a pale imitation of what made him famous.

Unlike Elizabethtown, there is little hope available as you watch Revolver. It is slow. It is tricky in the way a first time festival director is tricky, obsessing on cool photography and tricks and not any story, character or development.

The story is pretty standard Ritchie... a bunch of bad guys in and out of a tricky series of con jobs. But this film feels like someone told Ritchie that he is a director of depth and insight and not the ringmaster of a hyperactive circus. He repeats himself. He slows things down. He has his lead in bad hair and a beard. He makes the story so complex and uninteresting that the audience loses interest in following it.

Compared to Revolver, Elizabethtown is an Oscar winner.

Revolver is so tedious that it is nearly unreviewable. As always, Ritchie fills his film with interesting and amusing actors of many shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. But the plot just goes in circles and it's just not clever enough to sustain the drain.

This year's festival is developing into a series of highs and lows. It's not just my opinion. There is a remarkable consistency of dislike for Elizabethtown, Revolver and one I didn't see, Terry Gilliam's Tideland.

On the flipside, I quite liked some surprise films, like Michael Caton-Jones' Shooting Dogs, which more accurately tells a tale of the Rwandan genocide, These Girls, a Canadian coming-of-age comedy, a media/government manipulation satire, Thank You For Smoking, and Mrs. Henderson Presents, the Judi Dench vehicle from The Weinstein Company, which is still half-owned by Disney. (The film, that is.)

Shooting Dogs is a much grimmer look at the genocide, focused on a Kilgali school run by a priest (the always exceptional John Hurt). The school is partially occupied by U.N. forces, but when things heat up, the tale of heroism at the center of Hotel Rwanda is replaced by real death, a far more terrifying reality of what it outside the gates, and ultimately a much more responsibility-laden view of the behavior of the world in the situation.

It shouldn't be surprising that the most overwhelming part of Shooting Dogs - a title which refers to the fact that U.N. soldiers would be willing to shoot dogs if an attack was anticipated, but could not shoot the Hutus who were waiting just outside the gates, clearly intending to slaughter every man, woman and child Tutsi they could - is the closing credits, where we meet some of the crew members from the film who are survivors of the genocide.

The big question for this somber, top-quality film is whether the success of Hotel Rwanda has removed all appetite for a film adding to the discussion of this dark moment in history. For me, this is a far superior film. But it is also less conventional.

These Girls is a silly little piffle about three friends who sleep with the same hunky guy one summer. Set in New Brunswick, the film centers on the girls, each of whom recalls better known actresses. Caroline Dhavernas really struck me as a young Laura Linney, in style and vocal tone. Amanda Walsh is kind of a sexy combination of Jaime Pressley and Michelle Williams. And Holly Lewis is a kind of hyperactive version of Aussie actress Jacqueline McKenzie.

The trio bed's Angel/Buffy he man David Boreanaz, which is the central commercial value in the picture. Teen girls who are very relatable get together with teen idol, here playing a white trash husband and father whose wandering schlong gets him in more trouble than he ever imagined. That said, the film never much worries about the age difference or even the cheating on the wife. It is a bit blithe on the subject.

But the film is cute - very light on any actual nudity or sexual simulation - and will surely have a nice little life on cable and DVD. It is no Ginger Snaps. But it will be a solid single for whoever picks it up.

Thank You For Smoking will find a home sometime this week, though I personally think this very enjoyable film has extremely limited theatrical appeal. It's not quite arch enough to gain strength based on its subject alone at I quite and star Aaron Eckhart is not a big enough name to draw and none of his co-stars have significant screen time. Still, this film is comparable, if a few steps behind, the Larry Gelbart comedies for HBO. First time feature director Jason Reitman made a short film that I quite liked in 2001, gulp. And here, he shows some potential as a writer/director. But he needs to aim for a little more if he wants to do a real theatrical. That does not mean, however, that the film will not be picked up (Par Classics?) by the end of the fest.

Finally, there is Mrs. Henderson Presents, which I wrote about yesterday on The Awards Blog...

by David Poland