{"id":24229,"date":"2024-09-16T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=24229"},"modified":"2024-09-15T10:40:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T17:40:17","slug":"tiff-dispatch-sex-violence-and-monkeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/tiff-dispatch-sex-violence-and-monkeys\/","title":{"rendered":"TIFF Dispatch: Sex, Violence, and Monkeys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After doubling up my inventory of new films after my last dispatch<\/a> from the Toronto International Film Festival, I can report that the best film I saw there was The Fire Inside<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>which director Rachel Morrison and screenwriter Barry Jenkins take from the true story of Claressa Shields, \u201cthe teenage phenom from Flint, Michigan\u201d who won the gold medal in women\u2019s middleweight boxing at the 2012 Olympics. We all have an internal moviegoing clock, and you may feel yours going cuckoo here; she wins that medal at the 2\/3 mark, when we\u2019re all expecting that to be the triumphant conclusion. And then, miraculously, the picture keeps going, subverting the sports-movie Cinderella story formula and reminding us of the reality of sports entertainment (and the tenuous place of women athletes within it). Morrison started out as a cinematographer\u2014her credits include Mudbound<\/em> and Black Panther<\/em>\u2014and her fight photography is expectedly kinetic. But she also finds the beauty in the everyday, creating a credible reality in which her actors (particularly Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry in the leads) can shine without seeming to show off. It\u2019s a deeply moving film, and a reminder of the dimensions that are possible even within the most seemingly staid formulas. Grade: A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s become a bit of a clich\u00e9 to applaud an actor\u2019s \u201cbravery\u201d when they\u2019re doing a sexual role, but there\u2019s really no more appropriate descriptor for what Nicole Kidman is doing in Halina Reijn\u2019s Babygirl<\/em><\/strong>. During the focal couple\u2019s first real, physical encounter, when he touches her for the first time and goes to work on her, Reijn holds on Kidman\u2019s face, in a fairly tight close-up, for what seems like an eternity\u2014and Kidman lets us in. It\u2019s stunning, how vulnerable she is in that scene; this is the most private moment an actor can show us, and even when it\u2019s within the confines of the character (and that\u2019s certainly the case here), it still feels like we\u2019re privy to something we\u2019re not supposed to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Babygirl <\/em>knows what it\u2019s like to be inside a relationship like this, how it feels when the thing you need, on a basic and feral level, exceeds your control of it. Romy knows (and the film does too) that she\u2019s potentially undercutting her job and jeopardizing her family, but as she puts it\u2014in a scene of next-level acting by Kidman\u2014\u201cThere has to be danger, there have to be things at stake.\u201d It\u2019s rare to find a filmmaker who even understands<\/em> that, much less is savvy enough to convey it within a dramatic narrative without seeming like they\u2019re making a movie about kamikaze pilots. It falls apart a bit in the home stretch, when the conflicts and conclusions veer into the kind of conventional and predictable territory that, until then, Reijn has studiously avoided. But if she fumbles there, it\u2019s forgivable; what she achieves here far outweighs the mild shortcomings. Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are, to be fair, flashes of good writing and some successful performances in Saturday Night<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>Jason Reitman\u2019s real-time dramatization of the run-up to the 1975 debut episode of Saturday Night Live<\/em>. But there\u2019s never even the briefest moment of immersion, nary a fleeting sense that we\u2019re watching a story unfold, rather than a carefully cultivated affirmation of our pop culture priors. By the time Willem Dafoe\u2019s blowhard network suit fumes, \u201cPerhaps you kids aren\u2019t quite ready for prime time<\/em>,\u201d we\u2019re getting into full-on bullshit biopic \u201cYes, Dewey Cox, with meditation there’s no limit to what we can imagine<\/em>\u201d territory. And that\u2019s before we get to the payoff with the brick floor, which may be the single clumsiest metaphor I\u2019ve seen in a motion picture in longer than I\u2019d care to remember. Grade: D+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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David Gordon Green made his name with small, character-driven indie movies, and he tends to return to that form when his attempts at big, mainstream moviemaking go awry. He did it with Prince Avalanche,<\/em> Joe<\/em>, and Manglehorn <\/em>after his run of studio comedies went sideways; he was back at TIFF with Nutcrackers<\/em><\/strong>, a \u201chome base\u201d movie that feels especially necessary after the likes of Halloween Ends<\/em> and The Exorcist: Believer<\/em>, but it also feels even more calculated than usual. Ben Stiller stars as a hotshot real estate agent called to rural Ohio to care for his utterly feral nephews after the tragic death of their parents; they live on a working farm, and if <\/em>you don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to see our uptight yuppie chasing some chickens, you haven\u2019t seen enough movies. Stiller\u2019s done this role a thousand times (my god, he has to get back to Chicago for an Important Presentation\u2014were they having a sale at the tired trope outlet?), though he does manage to dig out some new textures, and his offhand line readings and little comic tics are as reliable as ever. But it all shakes out pretty much as expected, and the ending is pure treacle, no matter how many artsy indie flourishes Green slaps on it. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julie Delpy opens her ambitious ensemble comedy\/drama Meet the Barbarians<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>with the on-screen text \u201cOnce upon a time in Paimpont,\u201d and that\u2019s a smart note to start on: this is a satire settled snugly in the hows and whys of the current sociopolitical moment, but it\u2019s also a fairy tale in which a happily-ever-after is never really in doubt. Paimpont is a cozy little French village that has opened its doors to Ukranian refugees, only to find that \u201cUkranians are in high demand on the refugee market\u201d and they\u2019re being sent a Syrian family instead. Conflicts arise, tiny infractions that (credibly) become big deals, so the picture is something of a comedy of manners, with equal parts charm and cringe. The characters are distinct and mostly likable (and the focal family are not just used as comic props, but made real characters of depth and dimension), though the tone is tricky, with Delpy sometimes letting it tip too far into tragedy or farce. The resolution is totally pat, of course, but she\u2019s summoned up enough warmth and goodwill by then for a pass. Grade: B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The central conceit of The Greatest Showman<\/em> director Michael Gracey\u2019s bio-musical Better Man<\/em><\/strong> is that he presents his subject, Britpop bad boy Robbie Williams, as he says he sees himself: as a dancing monkey. It\u2019s a clever little gimmick that kinda-sorta works initially, but as the story progresses, it becomes a quick and easy (lazy, even) way to add a sheen or freshness or subversiveness while still gripping the musical biopic playbook tightly. Gracey\u2019s approach is playful and ribald, the musical numbers are spiritedly staged, and the montages are appropriately manic. But the overlong picture keeps hitting the same beats over and over again, like a spectacularly limited drummer, and the dialogue in the inevitable scenes of bottoming-out conflict is a catalog of all the usual, dusty cliches. Grade: C-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African photojournalist Ernest Cole published his book House of Bondage<\/em> in 1967, an essential document of that nation during the shameful Apartheid era. Fifty years later, 60,000 of his previously unknown and unpublished negatives were discovered in a Swiss bank vault. \u201cThis is the story of what happened between those two dates,\u201d notes the on-screen text of Ernest Cole: Lost and Found<\/em><\/strong>, and director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro<\/em>) does that job admirably; he attempts to create, simultaneously, a bio-doc of Cole, an appreciation and analysis of his work, and the story of South Africa\u2019s considerable shifts in that period. The photos, private, powerful, heartrending portraits of poverty in both that country and ours, are riveting, evocative, and brilliant, and Cole\u2019s words are given life by LaKeith Stanfield\u2019s often searing, sometimes halting, always thoughtful voice-over narration. That narration also creates a snag, though; the viewing experience is dogged by some documentary ethics questions, as you may found yourself distracted by guessing which are and are not his actual, written words (especially in the later sections). That complaint aside, this is a beautiful, poignant piece of work. Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kill the Jockey<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>is the kind of movie where our hero asks an underworld acquaintance for a gun, and when he\u2019s handed the bag with the weapon, the tough guy adds, \u201cI also put some hot dogs in there. You are too skinny!\u201d It\u2019s a crime thriller with a kooky, cockeyed approach, stylish and bewildering, right from the jump; the director is Luis Ortega, a filmmaker from Buenos Aires with a giddy absurdist streak and a gift for striking compositions (the cinematographer is Timo Salminen, Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s go-to). What begins as a riff on American boxing noir turns into something much stranger, Lost Highway<\/em> as remade by Almodovar, with an unexpected (and refreshingly cheerful) turn into a trans narrative. It doesn\u2019t always land, and doesn\u2019t make much sense. But it certainly doesn\u2019t bore. Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our TIFF \u201924 coverage closes out with mini-reviews of \u201cThe Fire Inside,\u201d \u201cNutcrackers,\u201d \u201cBetter Man,\u201d \u201cSaturday Night,\u201d \u201cBabygirl,\u201d and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":24232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436],"class_list":["post-24229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24233,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24229\/revisions\/24233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}