TIFF '09 Day Quattro

Fun Fact: Corn Pops in Canada is a completely different product than Corn Pops in the states. I found this out late one night after a Midnight Madness screening. I bought one of those single-serve cereal bowls and much to my surprise found a cereal with a completely different texture and taste. The domestic version of Corn Pops is more of a air-puffed sweet nugget with a popcorn-like lightness and consistency. The Canadian version has the look and feel of a glossy sugar-coated Kix pellet. It's not bad, but I much prefer the American version. Perhaps I should submit this information to a travelogue.

But I digress. So what munificent bounty did the final day of movie-watching yield? Let's see...


The Men Who Stare At Goats – I feel as if I should have enjoyed this movie more than I did. It’s smartly written and really well-acted. Yet, I found it only intermittently funny and somewhat scattershot. Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey. You couldn’t really ask for a better cast. There were a few meta-jokes involving discussions of Jedi Knights that were pretty funny.

McGregor plays a small college-town journalist (Ann Arbor!) who heads out to Iraq to experience war, find purpose and perhaps win back his ex-wife (she leaves him for his editor in a slightly amusing subplot). Instead he meets Clooney who is an ex-special operations soldier trained in "psychic warfare." At first McGregor's Bob Wilton dismisses him as a nut, but slowly he begins to buy into some of what Clooney's eccentric Lyn Cassady is selling. It's sort of a road movie as we follow the pair across the Iraqi desert on what Cassady swears is a super-secret mission. We also get flashbacks to his training under Jeff Bridges' New Age-y Bill Django who somehow gets the military to fund his bizarre operation. The film reminded me of Three Kings with its subversive take on the military. The final act ties the film to one of the most controversial political issues of the day, torture, but it doesn't really spend to much time dwelling on its revelations. It's understandable since that would have made it an entirely different film. Still it would have been nice if they would have gone deeper into that territory. Still recommended.


Valhalla Rising – The dude from Adam’s Apples (nifty film that I can’t recommend highly enough) and Casino Royale plays One-eye (most likely an incarnation of Odin; thanks to Neil Gaiman I know more than I probably should about Norse gods), a mute warrior who is really handy with a hand-axe. I was unfamiliar with the director’s work, but he’s fairly established. The film has a lot of slow-motion camerawork accompanied by ominous and portentous music, but not much really happens. It actually reminded me of Aguirre the Wrath of God, the Werner Herzog film set in the Amazon with an inimitable Klaus Kinsky performance. Man that guy was intense. Anyways, this film is all about atmosphere and it does have a haunted feel to it. I just wish there'd have been more of a narrative going on. As it stands you get an interesting depiction of Christian Vikings (does that make sense?) coming to the New World and getting their arses handed to them.


The Warrior and the Wolf – This movie should have been called The Warrior and the Rapist. The film has an odd three act structure in that none of the acts feel interrelated. We start with the story of a reluctant soldier, a gentle soul who’d rather tend to his flock than fight in a war. A general has taken a liking to him and keeps trying to convince him to join his army. The guy finally agrees and becomes an officer, I think. There are so many flashbacks and flash-forwards, it's hard to keep up.

We then shift to the reluctant military officer leading the (apparently fatally wounded) general's troops home from the front lines after a defeat at the hands of some unnamed enemy (they look like Mongols). On the way, the troops hold up for the winter in a Harran village (the Harran's are depicted as a kind of primitive tribe living in the mountains). The guy finds a Harran woman played by Maggie Q living in a secret passage in the hut. After he catches her the first time, they struggle for a bit until he sees some of her exposed leg and then pounces. And when I say pounce, I mean it. She resists, but he forces himself on her and towards the end of his transgression, she starts to relent. (You know how it is, sometimes these b!tc#es don’t know what they want ‘til you give it to ‘em. Am I right? Hunh, hunh?) The scene didn’t sit very well with me to say the least. If it had just been him taking her against her will, then okay, within the context of the time period and the circumstances it’s deplorable but realistic. My issue was that she falls in love with him after the fourth or fifth time this happens. And this scene replays itself numerous times in the same lurid fashion. I noticed several walkouts and I can only assume they had the same objections as I did.

The third act is short and somewhat surreal. The general who seemed to die at the end of the first act returns only to have some of his men killed by wolves (wolves who happen to be his old lieutenant and his raped-into-submission-lover). Then the general tries to kill the wolves and the former soldier-turned-wolf can’t fight back because it’s his old friend, but the general ends up dying anyway as the she-wolf eviscerates him when he attacks her lover. I would have been interested to talk to Maggie Q about her decision to take this role. I also would have liked to talk to the director about his choice to depict such a thoroughly repulsive love story. I wouldn’t have been surprised if these questions were raised during the Q&A, but I just didn’t have the patience to stick around once the lights went up. Not recommended.

So all in all, it was a pretty good year at TIFF. I would have liked to stay longer as there were some great films showing later in the week, but most will be out eventually so no real loss. As always, the city was beautiful and welcoming. My only complaint is that the dollar just keeps getting weaker. They were actually doing me a favor accepting U.S. currency on a 1-1 basis. Wow.