Mélusine Mayance plays the title character in Holocaust melodrama Sarah’s Key
Movie Review
Sarah’s Key
Lost key
Kristin Scott Thomas is largely wasted as Julia, the journalist whose story on the Vélodrome roundup of 1942 leaves her obsessed with a Jewish girl (Mélusine Mayance) who may have escaped – and whose family may have owned the apartment that now belongs to Julia’s husband’s family.
As in Tatiana De Rosnay’s novel, the action cuts back and forth between 1942 and 2009, wasting half the running time on a framing story that means absolutely nothing. (The presence of Scott Thomas reminded me of how well Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient pared Michael Ondaatje’s novel down to its essentials.)
The last-act arrival of Aidan Quinn perks things up a little, but the movie sees him as just another means of jerking a few easy tears.
Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage (front) suffer through Trespass.
Movie Review
Trespass
Pass on it
Those movies weren’t very good, and neither Cage nor Kidman was particularly good in them, but that clearly didn’t matter to Schumacher’s producers. These are movie stars, so of course people will fork over money to see them terrified and brutalized!
And if Trespass were smarter or dumber, that might have been enough. Schumacher directs like he’s on amyl nitrite, flinging the camera around the rooms of his gargantuan set to establish a tone of frantic tension. People start screaming at each other about 10 minutes in and never really stop, because Karl Gajdusek’s screenplay upends the balance of power every six minutes, giving Cage and Kidman moments to look gritty and determined instead of sweaty and panicked before the advantage switches to someone else.
It’s just meaningless table-turning, though; who cares if one of the bad guys isn’t as bad as the other three? And what does Schumacher’s costume designer have against poor Jordana Spiro, such a winning comic presence on the sitcom My Boys and so awfully abused here?
Trespass isn’t the worst movie ever to land a gala slot at the Toronto Film Festival – not after Cleaner – but that’s hardly an endorsement.
Ameena Matthews and others try to stop urban violence in south Chicago.
THE INTERRUPTERS (Steve James). 125 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (October 7) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; director will attend the 7 pm opening-night screening.
Movie Review
The Interrupters
Ganging up
Most of CeaseFire is made up of reformed gang members who know what it’s like to go off in someone’s face. It’s noble work that comes with considerable risk, and there are moments when The Interrupters feels like a real-life version of The Wire, with weary heroes trudging forever uphill to make their ugly world a slightly better place.
The problem is that it’s a very repetitive film. For a full year, the CeaseFire members are shown doing exactly the same thing over and over: stemming violence when they can, working with teens who are willing to listen and attending the funerals of victims they weren’t able to save.
But James never really digs into the social and cultural factors that have created the environment CeaseFire is trying to change – the hopelessness, the lack of decent employment, the posturing machismo that demands bloody reprisal for the slightest hint of disrespect.
A longer version that played the festival circuit reportedly addressed some of that, but this cut doesn’t, and that’s a problem that becomes increasingly hard to ignore as the movie goes on.
Hoop Dreams (1994), Stevie (2002) and Reel Paradise (2005) also screen this week at the Lightbox in the Steve James: Documenting Dreams series.
Hugh Jackman (left), Dakota Goyo and a bot named Atom don’t pull their punches.
REAL STEEL directed by Shawn Levy, written by John Gatins based on a story by Richard Matheson, with Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly and Kevin Durand. A DreamWorks release. 127 minutes. Opens Friday (October 7).
Movie Review
Real Steel
Some of it comes from the script, which applies the usual boxing-movie arcs of underdogs and aging heroes to a near-future America where robots have replaced human fighters as champions of carnage, but the bulk of the movie’s soul is supplied by Hugh Jackman as a boxer-turned-robot-promoter who grudgingly takes charge of the son he barely knows (Dakota Goyo) after the boy’s mother dies.
Stuck together for a summer, the two find a junked robot and rebuild it into a contender, bonding along the way. It’s utterly predictable, but director Shawn Levy hits his marks with warmth and energy, letting Jackman sell us on the emotions and the effects. And the kid’s pretty good, too.
George Clooney campaigns hard for a second Oscar.
THE IDES OF MARCH (George Clooney). 98 minutes. Opens Friday (October 7).Movie Review
The Ides Of March
Winning ticket
Seriously. Think of David Strathairn’s spellbinding righteousness in Good Night, And Good Luck contrasted with Ray Wise’s glad-handing desperation. Or Sam Rockwell’s weaselly confidence in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. And then there’s just about everyone in The Ides Of March – including Clooney himself.
The Ides Of March is a nimble adaptation of Beau Willimon’s stage play Farragut North, about the ideological deflowering of a campaign strategist (Ryan Gosling) ushering a hopey-changey Democratic governor (Clooney) through the Ohio presidential primary.
Don’t go expecting revelatory commentary on the way we vote; Willimon’s plot is a Mamety mixture of betrayal, disillusionment and high-stakes brinksmanship that never quite shakes off its stage origins.
But it’s performed by a cast at peak power. Clooney, Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Philip Seymour Hoffman are so good, and so good together, that I didn’t even mind being a step ahead of their characters for the entire running time.
It’s a pleasure to watch them go through their paces.
Nikohl Boosheri (left) and Sarah Kazemy search for sexual freedom in fundamentalist Iran in the Sundance Audience Choice winner Circumstance.
CIRCUMSTANCE written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz, with Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy. 105 minutes. Subtitled. A Mongrel release. Opens Friday (October 7). Movie Review
Circumstance Soon, Atafeh’s fundamentalist brother (Reza Sixo Safai, who avoids stereotype) becomes a threat.
Director Maryam Keshavarz effectively evokes Tehran’s dance club underground, where the young women and their friends find fleeting freedom. And a funny sequence in which an Iranian American helps them dub the film Milk into Farsi savvily conveys Keshavarz’s pro-sex themes, though sex scenes are more sensual than explicit.
On Iran's undergound worlds:
Expertly shot by Brian Rigney Hubbard, the movie begins with scenes shot in open, airy spaces but grows increasingly claustrophobic toward the end.Look for Toronto theatre director Soheil Parsa as Atafeh’s father in a very effective turn as a man desperately trying to keep his family from crumbling.
Great Iranian dance club music, too.
In Circumstance, winner of the Audience Choice award at Sundance, teenage girls Atafeh and Shireen (Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy) struggle with Iran’s social strictures while embarking on a sexual relationship.
CIRCUMSTANCE written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz, with Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy. 105 minutes. Subtitled. A Mongrel release. Opens Friday (October 7).
When Maryam Keshavarz tells me she just gave birth to a baby girl two weeks ago, I tell her she’s set off on an incredible journey.
How’s it going so far? I want to know.
“The response to the film has been amazing,” she says on the phone from a mall in Los Angeles, not realizing I’m asking about her new-mother status. The Iranian-American director is so focused on her other labour of love – her movie Circumstance – that she imagines I’m asking about it instead.
Her first feature, Circumstance focuses on two teen girls whose relationship has taken a sexual turn inside an increasingly repressive Iran.
But Keshavarz doesn’t think of it as a story about queers.
“But people are not able to express who they really are because of the repression. They have to live a double life,” says the director, who previously made two shorts and a documentary.
“What I love is the way the film resonates with people anywhere who feel like they can’t be who they really are. My Jewish publicist in Philadelphia could totally relate.”
Music is a very important part of personal expression in Circumstance, and Keshavarz plans to release the film soundtrack – which uses underground Iranian hip-hop and classical music, depending on the setting – in November.
“Some people have said Circumstance is a musical. It’s filled with music until the brother, Mehran, creates a repressive environment, and then the film starts to go silent. People keep wishing they could know what the lyrics mean, but I don’t think you have to know. You can feel it.”
Keshavarz realized early on that she wouldn’t be able to shoot her film in Iran, and chose Lebanon as a location instead.
“I always wanted to shoot in the Middle East. I needed to have the feel of that world. I could have raised a lot more money had I shot in the States, but for me Lebanon added a layer of tension that the project requires.”
Not that Lebanon didn’t present its own problems, even if it is considered the gay mecca of the Middle East.
“Lebanon is the battleground between the U.S. and Iran. You have conservative areas that support Iran – you can see Iranian flags in South Beirut – and then you go to the Christian area, which is ultra-modern, [where] you feel like you’re in Los Angeles. I’d identify myself as Iranian or American depending on where I was.”
The movie has a strong Canadian connection. Toronto is the home of one of the largest Iranian immigrant communities in North America, which is why Keshavarz auditioned actors here. And, artistically speaking, Atom Egoyan was a mentor for her at Sundance and hooked her up with T.O. stage stalwart Soheil Parsa, who appears in his first film role in Circumstance.
“Small world, isn’t it?” Keshavarz laughs.
CIRCUMSTANCE written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz, with Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy. 105 minutes. Subtitled. A Mongrel release. Opens Friday (October 7).Sexual tension in Iran
Director Maryam Keshavarz insists her Sundance winner probes repression in Iran, not its queer underground
How’s it going so far? I want to know.
“The response to the film has been amazing,” she says on the phone from a mall in Los Angeles, not realizing I’m asking about her new-mother status. The Iranian-American director is so focused on her other labour of love – her movie Circumstance – that she imagines I’m asking about it instead.
Her first feature, Circumstance focuses on two teen girls whose relationship has taken a sexual turn inside an increasingly repressive Iran.
But Keshavarz doesn’t think of it as a story about queers.
On how she personally relates to the story:
“The centrepiece is actually the family,” she says. “The film doesn’t explore the underground queer movement as much as it explores young women and freedom of expression and sexuality. These women truly love each other and are free with each other.“But people are not able to express who they really are because of the repression. They have to live a double life,” says the director, who previously made two shorts and a documentary.
“What I love is the way the film resonates with people anywhere who feel like they can’t be who they really are. My Jewish publicist in Philadelphia could totally relate.”
Music is a very important part of personal expression in Circumstance, and Keshavarz plans to release the film soundtrack – which uses underground Iranian hip-hop and classical music, depending on the setting – in November.
“Some people have said Circumstance is a musical. It’s filled with music until the brother, Mehran, creates a repressive environment, and then the film starts to go silent. People keep wishing they could know what the lyrics mean, but I don’t think you have to know. You can feel it.”
Keshavarz realized early on that she wouldn’t be able to shoot her film in Iran, and chose Lebanon as a location instead.
“I always wanted to shoot in the Middle East. I needed to have the feel of that world. I could have raised a lot more money had I shot in the States, but for me Lebanon added a layer of tension that the project requires.”
Not that Lebanon didn’t present its own problems, even if it is considered the gay mecca of the Middle East.
“Lebanon is the battleground between the U.S. and Iran. You have conservative areas that support Iran – you can see Iranian flags in South Beirut – and then you go to the Christian area, which is ultra-modern, [where] you feel like you’re in Los Angeles. I’d identify myself as Iranian or American depending on where I was.”
The movie has a strong Canadian connection. Toronto is the home of one of the largest Iranian immigrant communities in North America, which is why Keshavarz auditioned actors here. And, artistically speaking, Atom Egoyan was a mentor for her at Sundance and hooked her up with T.O. stage stalwart Soheil Parsa, who appears in his first film role in Circumstance.
“Small world, isn’t it?” Keshavarz laughs.
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