Now that The Movie Guy has successfully found his way back home from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, he has decided to share some of his personal ‘highs’, The Impossible", and ‘lows’, Here Comes the Devil, from this year's fest.

PHOTO CREDIT - WarnerBros.com

Edmonton - September 21, 2012 - Now that I’m back (and ‘SEMI’-RESTED) from this year's Toronto International Film Festival...

...I thought I’d give you a few of my personal ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ from the fest.

THE GOOD:

The Impossible: the best, most gut-wrenching, nail-biting, and moving film at this year’s festival was definitely this stunner from Juan Antonio Bayona, director of 2007’s brilliantly scary frightfest, The Orphanage. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor are outstanding in this true story of one family’s desperate struggle for survival in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand. Outstanding performances all around (look for Naomi Watts to get an Oscar nomination for this one), and incredibly filmed (this is a true ‘must-see’ on the big screen) - this is easily one of the best films of the year. The trailer is a bit ‘spoilerish’, so watch it at your own peril!




How to Make Money Selling Drugs: fantastic doc about the true folly (and price we’ve paid) of the ‘War on Drugs’, this slick, fast paced film is relentlessly entertaining. Featuring interviews with such heavy hitters as 50 Cent, David Simon (creator of The Wire), Eminem, Susan Sarandon, and countless others, this film had everyone buzzing (no pun intended), and is worth seeking out whenever it finally receives a wide release.




Room 237: this terrifically entertaining doc delves into the conspiracy theories and secret messages that obsessive cinephiles have ‘found’ in Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1980 horror film, The Shining. The conspiracies on display here are wildly divergent…and compulsively watchable. Look for this one to hopefully hit Edmonton in the new year.

Sightseers: Ben Wheatley, director of last year’s strange and terrifying thriller, Kill List, returns with a wonderfully warped and utterly hilarious ‘romantic comedy’ that could best be described as ‘When Harry Met Sally Met Natural Born Killers’. Gory, funny, absurd, and never boring, this was one of the most surprising highlights of the festival. Definitely not for all tastes, but that’s a good thing.

THE BAD:

The ABC’s of Death: As I suspected would happen, an incredibly ambitious idea - asking 26 of the world’s up and coming genre film directors to create a short film about death, using the letter their assigned letter - is undone by an incredibly uneven tone. Anthology films rarely work, and this one is even spottier than most. Adam Wingard’s tongue-in-cheek entry is by far the highlight of the entire film.

A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman: perhaps the single biggest disappointment of TIFF 2012 is this bizarre, nearly unwatchable ‘fake biography’ of the late Graham Chapman (narrated by him, using recordings from an audiobook he did before his death). Boring, unfunny, mundane, and unnecessarily in 3D, to boot, this film is a massive letdown. Hannah Arendt: dull and poorly-acted ‘prestige’ project, this biopic of Arendt (author of the controversial ‘The Banality of Evil’) is just a tough slog from beginning to end. There’s nothing worse than a period piece that looks and sounds phony every step of the way, and this film is guilty on all counts. What should have been a compelling and captivating portrait of the famed writer instead comes across as an overly earnest stage play put (unconvincingly) to film.

THE UGLY:

Here Comes the Devil: this loud, obnoxious, and ugly ‘thriller’ from Mexico is shot like a Mexican soap opera, but not nearly as fun. A family, out for a day trip near some spooky caves, loses their 2 kids. The kids show up again the next morning - but it’s plain to see that ‘something’ about them has changed. Easily the worst film I saw at TIFF this year, if you see this one pop up on Netflix at some point, avoid it like the plague.

90 Minutes: 3 (non-intersecting) stories of male impotence (both literally and figuratively) make for an endlessly dark and depressing film. While I can appreciate what the filmmaker was trying to achieve here, the end result is just too ugly to recommend, and one is left wondering ‘who’ exactly is the audience for such a film.

AND THE JUST PLAIN NUTTY:

Passion: Brian DePalma was once one of the greatest thriller filmmakers on the planet (Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface), and for a long time was one of my own favorite filmmakers. But the sad fact is that he hasn’t really made a decent film since The Untouchables - and that was in 1987! (I don’t count Mission: Impossible, because that was more a vehicle for Tom Cruise). But even if you count the first M:I film, that was still 16 years ago. In the interim, he’s treated us to such cinematic atrocities as Bonfire of the Vanities, Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale, The Black Dahlia, and Mission to Mars. When I saw the atrocious Femme Fatale at the 2002 TIFF, the audience was literally in hysterics for the entire second half of the film. Well, Mr. DePalma has topped himself with Passion - only instead of copying Hitchcock, he’s now just copying himself (the opening is a Dressed to Kill knockoff, and final scene is a virtual carbon copy of the ending of Raising Cain). Even the music sounds like it was stolen from one of his earlier films. And yet…you simply can’t look away.



That’s just a small sampling of the 30+ films I saw at TIFF this year. If you were there, let me know what YOUR ‘highlights’ and ‘lowlights’ were! And be sure to ollow me on Twitter: @TheRealMovieGuy.