TIFF 2018 SEEN

EASILY THE GREATEST DISCOVERY FOR ME FROM JAPAN WITH THE TYPICAL METICULOUS DETAIL IN EVERY ASPECT OF MASTER FILM PRODUCTION. THE NARRATIVE ALONE IS SO CREATIVE AND UNPREDICTABLE. MAY NEVER GET A USA DISTRIB, BUT IF IT DOES, DONT MISS IT. PUT IT ON YOUR NETFLIX LIST.....THEY WILL HELP YOU FIND IT, BUT NOT ALWAYS. When Asako’s first love suddenly disappears, she’s given a chance to relive her romance two years later when she meets his perfect double, in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Palme d’Or–nominated romantic drama. A film on the mundane magic of falling in love, Asako I & II is the brilliant screen adaptation of Tomoka Shibasaki’s bestselling novel, Netemo Sametemo When Asako (Erika Karata), a shy student from Osaka, meets Baku (Masahiro Higashide) at a photo exhibition, it’s love at first sight: a mystical experience erasing the world around them — akin to a curse. Baku is a mysterious and gorgeous-looking young man. He likes to disappear when the mood strikes him; one day he’s gone for good. Two years later, Asako, now working as a server in a Tokyo coffee shop, spots Ryohei (also Higashide). A young employee at a company that produces sake, he looks exactly like Baku, to the point that Asako is convinced she’s finally found her lost lover. Ryohei may look like Baku but he is a very different person: he has no secrets, he is honest and kind-hearted and will love Asako with a faithful, protective love, destined to last forever — the kind of love that’s so reassuring it might even be scary. In the minute description of everyday life, shaken by epochal events like the Fukushima earthquake, or in the perfect rendering of Asako’s hesitations and uncertainty, Ryusuke Hamaguchi shows here his signature filmmaking: beautifully composed, radiance-breathing takes. Asako I & II confirms him as one of the most original filmmakers in contemporary Asian cinema, an auteur who has assimilated the Japanese filmmaking tradition, bringing it to a new level with his inimitable style and personal sensibility.

THIS FILMAKER, PAUOLO SORRENTINO IS THE BEST DIRECTOR WORKING TODAY YET THE AUDIENCE RAN FOR THE EXITS BOOING PROBALY TRUMPERS WHO RECOGNIZED THE SIMILARITIES. HURRAH, MADE ME LOVE IT EVEN MORE. IF YOU ARE DISTURBED BY THE DISHONEST EGOCENTRIC LEADER, THEN SKIP THIS FILM. IF ON THE OTHER HAND YOU HAVE MISGIVINGS ABOUT TRUMP, THEN SEE THIS FILM.....MANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN BERLOSCONI AND TRUP. World Premiere Italian Subtitled Paolo Sorrentino skewers Italian politics in this satirical, profane, and imaginative fictionalization of controversial Italian tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi and his inner circle. For the second time in his career, Paolo Sorrentino satirizes the tumult of Italian politics through the experiences of an infamous politician. While his hypnotic Il Divo dramatized the downfall of long-serving former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, Loro's hyperkinetic inspiration is the controversial tycoon/ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi, a man who in real life is still running for office. t is a corrosive and wildly profane comedy, skewering both its subject and modern Italy itself. Loro ("Them") pulls out all the stops in what is initially a supercharged vision of the country and the flawed forces behind it, namely Berlusconi and his cronies at their point of decline in the late 2000s. Sorrentino places us in the seedy orbit of Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio), a handsome young guy-on-the-make whose ambition is to leave his provincial southern city of Taranto for Rome and get close to Berlusconi (Toni Servillo). His means of doing so is sordid but highly effective. Trafficking beautiful young women as escorts to attend parties and events proves to be his stepping stone into the halls of power. Once Sergio has arrived, so to speak, the increasingly embattled Berlusconi becomes the focus.

Through some of the most imaginative sequences in his filmography, Sorrentino elicits a towering performance from Servillo. Somehow boorish but charming, svelte but awkward, Berlusconi is depicted as a mass of contradictions, and the director is determined to treat him as more than a mere buffoon. Taken to task by his long-suffering, (soon to be ex-) wife, Veronica Lario (Elena Sofia Ricci), a woman of cool self-possession, and abandoned by his political allies, the fallen PM is left to fumble with the private realities behind his public scandals, and this is where the true power of Loro finally lies.

PIERS HANDLING

BIOGRAPHY

Director Paolo Sorrentino Paolo Sorrentino was born in Naples. His features as writer-director include One Man Up (01), The Consequences of Love (04), The Family Friend (06), and This Must Be the Place (11). His Cannes Jury Prizewinner Il Divo (08), Academy Award winner The Great Beauty (13), and Youth (15) all made their North American premieres at the Festival. Loro (18) is his latest film.

A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT TO ME AS A FIRST CLASS DIRECTOR HAS COMPROMISED HIS EXCELLENCE FOR COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. IT WAS A DUD EVEN WITH BIG NAME STARS. SUCH A SHAME.OF COURSE LIVING IN IRAN HIS ARTISTIC FREEDOM IS SEVERELY RESTRICTED. Cannes 2018: Everybody Knows review

09/05/2018

★★★☆☆ Two years after The Salesman played in competition at Cannes, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi opens the 71st iteration of the festival with his mystery-thriller Everybody Knows, boasting an attractive trio of Latin performances from Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín and Penélope Cruz, in a compelling drama concerning lost loves and family ties.

The opening scene lingers in the dilapidated belfry of a provincial Spanish church where a creaking clock grinds through the minutes before sending pigeons into chaos as the hour strikes. As the pigeons settle back to their perches, the camera pans down over the graffiti of one-time lovers who have etched their initials into the wall amidst the crumbling stone work: ‘P’ and ‘L’.

We first meet Laura (Cruz) who, along with her two young children, has returned to her rural family home just outside Madrid for her sister’s wedding after leaving her husband Alejandro (Darin) back in Buenos Aires. The sun-drenched, sleepy town is sent into a throng of activity for the wedding. Here, Laura encounters her one-time lover Paco (Bardem), a warm, light-hearted winemaker, now married to Bea (Bárbara Lennie), a local teacher of disadvantaged teens.

On the night of the wedding a thunderstorm seemingly causes a power cut, putting a pause to the raucous nuptials. Minutes later, Laura checks on her teenage daughter, Irene (Carla Campra), who she discovers has vanished. Where Laura’s daughter was once sleeping lays threatening newspaper clippings of a girl who was abducted several years earlier. Frantically searching the house, Laura hunts for her daughter in the attic by the glow of her mobile phone, which suddenly buzzes with a message demanding a ransom of €300,000 for her daughter’s return.

From here, Farhadi ratchets up the tension. Where once there was love and affection in Laura’s family there is now suspicion and guilt. Old wounds are torn open once and the bonds of family are tested to breaking point. We start to wonder: was this an inside job? Could it be one of the immigrant farm hands? Or could it be Paco who has kidnapped the daughter of the women that rejected him? And what was the real reason Laura’s husband didn’t attend the wedding?

Farhadi keeps us on our toes. Where his cinematographer, José Luis Alcaine, once lingered on the soft, muted yellows of the local stone work and verdant vineyards, we now focus on the tear-stained face of Cruz and the stoicism of Bardem who sit in the shaded confines of bedrooms and hallways.

The success of Farhadi’s film lays in his choice of casting. Scenes shared between Darín’s God-fearing Alejandro and Bardem’s pragmatic Paco are an absorbing exercise in craft. Yet, where Everybody Knows falls down, almost to the point of laughter, is in how it seems to toy with plotting devices you might find in a Spanish TV melodrama. Yet, the hook of the mystery keeps you watching, and in Farhadi’s hands even the far-fetched appears believable.

As time ticks along, Farhadi brings home his message with a bell-hammer, and it feels overly laboured to the detriment of the film. Arguably, this is the Iranian’s most mainstream film to date, and lacks the subtlety of his early work, yet he still shows he has the ability to deliver devastating blows that leave you stunned. While not on top form, Faradhi demonstrates he is still a master craftsman, albeit in a more conventional mould.

THIS IS A TRUE PALM D'OR WINNER THAT IS WHY WE GO TO SO MUCH TROUBLE TO DISCOVER THE VERY BEST IN THE CRAFT. THERE IS NOT AN AREA OF FILM THAT IS DONE EXPERTLY. IT WILL BE WORTH YOUR EFFORT TO FIND IT AND ENJOY EXPERT FILM PRODUCTION. YOUR LOCAL ART CINEMA WILL EVENTUALLY HAVE IT.. MAKE AN EFFORT TO FIND IT. Cannes favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to the Croisette for the seventh time with Shoplifters, a quietly devastating portrayal of family and theft in contemporary Japan, and one of his best works of recent years. The survival of families has been a constant concern for Kore-eda. Whether it’s the abandoned children of Nobody Knows, the generational shifts of Still Walking, or the jarring mixup of Like Father, Like Son, family is an emotive and fragile concept, vulnerable to the vagaries of economic hardship and social change. His latest film sees his focus as sharp as ever and his touch light but at the same time utterly profound. A young boy Shota (Jyo Kairi) accompanies his father Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) on a trip to the supermarket. With a series of diversions and hand signals, dad distracts the store staff or blocks their view while Shota gets the week’s shopping into his school bag. “I forgot the shampoo,” Shota says, but they’ll get it another day. It’s too cold to go back. It’s also too cold for a little girl (Miyu Sasaki) out on her balcony as her mother and father fight inside. Osamu takes pity on her and gives her some food and then takes her home. Here, she is accepted as his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) discovers signs of abuse, and having stayed a few days the girl is renamed Rin. The subject of it potentially being a kidnapping comes up, but Osamu is fairly certain it can’t be a kidnapping if they haven’t asked for a ransom. Rin joins a family that also includes teenager Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), who works at a peep show, and a grandma (Kirin Kiki). Their apartment is almost baroque in its clutter and cramped confusion. Although Osamu and Nobuyo both have half-hearted jobs, the main income derives from a series of scams. Everyone’s in on it. Even grandma is claiming her dead husband’s pension, stealing from the slot machines and sponging off her dead husband’s son from another marriage. Shota and Osamu soon introduce Rin into their stealing ways as news of a child’s abduction does the rounds and forces a quick haircut. The Shibatas fit into a long tradition of familial skullduggery familiar from British television: see Bread, Only Fools and Horses and Shameless. Here, the twist is how much the family is in the usual sense of the word a family. It emerges that none of the relationships are what they appear and the ‘family’ is in fact a self-serving fiction, which can develop affection but whose real purpose is survival. But, then again, isn’t that just what a family is anyway? Kore-eda explores these questions with a slow, deliberate and damned near-perfect film. Without any showiness, cinematographer Ryuto Kondother frames shots of heartbreaking beauty such as Rin’s foot curling around a chair leg as she has her hair cut or the family gathering to look up at fireworks they can only hear. The performances are peerless, with Lily Franky again exceptional as the ne’er-do-well father figure whose Fagan-esque tutelage seems inspired as much by childish exuberance as criminal inclinations. Stealing is fun. Sakura Ando, as his life partner, suggests a deeper more moral person: someone who knows she is wrong and tragically understands that a deserved emotional reckoning is coming. The children – as ever – provide such naturalistic performances, the word doesn’t even apply. Seasons pass as they do in Kore-eda films – and in life. The cold realities of Japanese society are alluded to – the shift work and exploitation at the bottom of the ladder, the abuse of children by the traditional family, ignored by an indifferent society – but Kore-eda as much as his anti-heroes seems intent on providing a fictional space, a place of potential safety and respite. It’s a beautiful fantasy, but one that he is brave enough to concede can only ever be temporary.

ANOTHER ENTRY FROM THIS GROUP OF BRILLIANT PHOTOGRAPHERS. THE VISUALS ALONE ARE WORTH YOUR TIME AND YET IT ADDS TO THE COLLECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTARIES. DEFINITELY ONE OF MY FAVORITES TO TIFF 2018. WOULD NOT ALLOW A PERSONAL RATING WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN A SOLID 10. Filmmakers travel to six continents and 20 countries to document the impact humans have made on the planet. TIFF Review: ‘Anthropocene: The Human Epoch’ The culmination of a major body of work By Pat Mullen • Published September 13th, 20180 Comments Elephant Tusk Burn, Nairobi National Park, Kenya, Courtesy of Anthropocene Films Inc. © 2018 Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Canada, 90 min.) Dir. Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier Programme: Special Presentations (World Premiere) Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier document the devastating consequences of human activity in Anthropocene. In a way, they’ve been documenting it for nearly fifteen years. Anthropocene is the third installment in the team’s epic trilogy of spectacular environmental essay films that began with Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013). The latest film is the culmination of a major body of work and it’s as visually stunning and intellectually invigorating as the previous two films are. Anthropocene, admittedly, is also a film they’ve made before—although they’ve never quite made a film on such an astonishing scale as this one. While Watermark benefited from its clear focus on the lakes, rivers, and other bodies quenching the earth, there isn’t much to immediately distinguish Anthropocene from Manufactured Landscapes aside from the discernable advances in camera technology. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — Landscapes one of the best documentaries ever made — and the similarity between the films highlights the superior craftsmanship that allows the trio to capture the scale of human activity with sweeping grandeur. Manufactured Landscapes has some voiceover as talks with Burtynsky insert his thoughts sporadically throughout the film like artistic statements. Anthropocene, on the other hand, has Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) explain the human epoch in layman’s terms while the images present the awesome scope of humanity’s destructiveness. Landing Vikander is an impressive coup for this production, and further proof of the significance of the trilogy in addressing environmental concerns. The didactic National Geographic style narration, while used sparingly, isn’t really necessary because the imagery is so powerful, although it did help settle a to-may-to/to-mah-to debate that began in the press and industry line about whether the title was An-thro-po-cene or An-throp-o-cene. (Vikander used the latter pronunciation.) Matters of scale are the focus of Anthropocene as the film examines the life that humans drain from the planet as they pillage its resources with unrestrained fury. The gist of the era of the Anthropocene is that contemporary civilization entered a new period with the escalation of human industry, land development, and resource extraction that significantly altered the natural harmony of the Earth’s ecosystem. (For a much stronger definition and distillation of the new era, read an essay by Michael John Long in the new issue of POV.) The Anthropocene is, visually, the natural extension of the polluted and unnatural corners of the globe captured in Manufactured Landscapes. 12 years later, it’s clear that the rate of activity isn’t slowing down. It’s ramping up, and Anthropocene urgently uses the visual power of cinema to remind audiences that the Earth’s beauty isn’t theirs for the taking. The film begins with one effective example in Kenya of the rate at which humans needlessly and violently pillage the Earth’s natural wonders. Tens of thousands of elephant tusks form piles that one could easily mistake for family-sized huts. A guide passionately explains to the camera how these tusks are bounty confiscated from poachers, who continue to hunt elephants for ivory that can be sold at lucrative prices. The smell of death permeates the film as the cameras take in these tusks, which were stolen to make trinkets and statues but instead sit discarded as mementoes of human wastefulness. Other eye-popping moments arise as Anthropocene tours the globe and takes in lithium evaporation ponds in Chile’s Atacama Desert that transform the landscape into a patchwork quilt of unnatural colours. The film takes audience deep below the Earth’s surface for a rapid train ride through the world’s largest tunnel in Switzerland. Russian miners joke about their work habits in one of the film’s few moments of candid, light-hearted human activity. In Germany, the film witnesses the world’s largest excavation rig transform entire villages into coal mines. An angry woman in the town guides the filmmaking team through the village’s last stand as people become powerless to the battering ram of industry and see their lives and histories turned into rubble. The centerpiece of the film whisks audiences to Carrara, Italy where Anthropocene observes resource extraction on an operatic scale. The camera catches a backhoe wrestle the with mountain as workers mine marble. The truck kicks up its heels as the front end grips the white rock and rips a portion from the mountainside. The camera pulls back from the tussle and zooms out to let the full magnitude of the operation occupy the screen. Switchback roads mark the mountainside and the extent to which humans have ripped these elements from the earth. The marble mine begins the shot as an object of beauty ends as something violent and horrifying. One beauty is at the expense of another. Anthropocene brings the signature lyricism of the Baichwal/Burtynsky/de Pencier oeuvre as the stimulating cinematography implores one to look at the world anew. A trip to the London Zoo presents numerous animals who are either endangered or at the point of functional extinction. The implication is that humans will inevitably join the list of bygone creatures that once roamed the Earth. The difference is that these beautiful animals didn’t deserve their fates. We do if we continue at the rate we’re going. There are elements of hope to be found in Anthropocene as the film reminds us of our responsibility to the land and waters that make us thrive. Facing extinction, humans need to see these images to understand the cost of the lifestyle many of us enjoy. One hopes that humanity survives long enough for the filmmakers to capture our return.

THE NAME OF PAWEL PAWLIKOWSKI AS THE DIRECTOR SHOULD BE A PERMANENT PART OF THE MEMORY OF MY READERS. A JEWISH POLISH BORN, BRITISH EDUCATED DIRECTOR WHO STUDIES LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY WHOSE GRANDMOTHER WAS AN AUSCHWITZ VICTIM, BUT HE WAS RAISED AS A CATHOLIC, NOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IDA CAME TO BE. HE BROKE ONTO THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE WITH LAST RESORT, HIS GENIUS SEALED WITH IDA.WHICH WON THE ONLY POLISH FOREIGN LANGUAGE OSCAR. HE IS ALSO A MENSCH TO STOP MAKING FILMS TO LOOK AFTER HIS DYING WIFE TILL HER DEMISE AND THEIR CHILDREN THROUGH GRADUATIONS. HIS FILMOGRAPHY TILL NOW IN HIS 60TH YEAR THAT IN 2O YEARS HE WILL BECOME THE GREATEST FILMAKER EVER. IN 20 YEARS I WILL BE 100 SO I WILL NEED HELP TO LET ME KNOW IF CORRECT I AM DEPENDING ON YOU.

I'm not a professional filmmaker, it's just a little part of my life and it's not how I define myself. It's not really important whether I make the film in Poland, England or wherever. The films are always the result of where I am, what I've discovered and what's in my head. I don't see filmmaking as a career, in that I've never tried to "graduate" to big commercial movies. I always just made films about what interested me at the time - for better and worse, because sometimes that really didn't interest anybody else! [on his process] The changes are part of my writing process. When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking. I wanted to make the kind of film which is like a meditation more than a story, which has these kinds of faces that convey the mood of Poland at that moment, but is also a bigger parable about stuff. I wanted a film that was musical, not that it's got a lot of music in it, but that has a kind of musical shape to it, and that's not prosaically narrative but has its own rhythm. It's exactly the kind of film that I wanted to make but not in details. It's more like I know where I'm going.[2014]. Polish, French Subtitled Pawel Pawlikowski’s formidable romantic drama features two musical performers in postwar Eastern Europe whose discontinuous love story is hindered by obstacles of time, space, and politics. Three years after deservedly scooping the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film with his beautifully composed Ida (which screened at TIFF in 2013), Pawel Pawlikowski returns with an equally haunting, distinctive, and moving work. Cold War shares many characteristics with its predecessor: stunning use of black-and-white photography and 4:3 aspect ratio, careful attention to mood and tone, and an exquisite narrative set in mid-20th-century Poland. Rooted in the personal, the new film is also infused with the broader social and political realities of postwar Eastern Europe. If Ida was Pawlikowski's attempt to "recover the Poland of my childhood," Cold War bravely continues this excavation, albeit down a new path. Based loosely on the story of the director's own parents, it covers the entirety of a couple's relationship, from their enchanted first meeting in 1949 to the aching denouement of their marriage in the 1960s. Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is a jazz-loving pianist and musical director tasked with auditioning folk singers as part of a state-sponsored project to champion culture from rural Poland. Young Zula (Joanna Kulig), who turns out to be more torch singer than folk singer, captivates Wiktor at first sight with her beauty and insouciance. Their fates joined, they are soon struggling both with personal demons and historical forces that threaten to tear them apart. Cold War is a superbly realized visual poem that resonates all the more thanks to its striking use of choral, classical, and jazz music. It is also a bittersweet paean to a relationship and an era.

IF NO OTHER REASON THE DANISH FILMAKER THOMAS VINTERBERG DEMANDS YOUR ATTENTION. REMEMBER HE IS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF DOGME 95 WHICH IS A CINEMA TECHNIQUE THAT IS SO IMPORTANT TO FILM EXCELLENCE. THE FILM IT SELF WAS SO FRRUSTRATING AND IN MY SOMNOLENT STATE MADE IT NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STAY ALERT. THE EARLY WEDDING SCENE BEFORE DEPARTURE WAS EXCELLENT AND ENTERTAINING. Director Thomas Vinterberg and a formidable cast — including Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, and Colin Firth — recreate the tragic final hours of the real-life nuclear submarine explosion that left the ship stranded at the bottom of the Barents Sea, while bureaucratic obstacles impeded rescue and their families’ search for answers. The August 2000 sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk was a tragedy - one that could have been avoided. The disaster haunts us still, and it has been vividly recreated in this new film from director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), starring Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, and Colin Firth. It is the first major Russian Navy exercise since the end of the Soviet Union, but the K-141 Kursk is deemed unsinkable and its crew recognized as the best in the Northern Fleet. Among that crew is Captain-Lieutenant Mikhail Kalekov (Schoenaerts), a devoted naval officer with a loving wife (Seydoux), a child, and another on the way. He and his crew board the Kursk and descend into the Barents Sea with a sense of optimism and fraternity. Then come the explosions. Many lives are lost instantly, but Mikhail and others are safe in one of the sealed rear compartments. They have air and food to last until they are rescued, but when will help arrive? Once the sub's seismic activity is detected, Britain, France, and Norway offer their assistance, but Russia insists it has the situation under control. Time is of the essence, but time keeps passing. From its first scenes, which echo The Deer Hunter in their depiction of a wedding preceding a fateful deployment, Kursk keeps its focus squarely on the camaraderie and heroism of the submarine crew and their families. The film is a heartrending tribute to victims and survivors - and a work of nerve-racking suspense, even if you know how it's going to end

IF YOU ARE A TRUE STUDENT OF CINEMA, THEN THIS INSIGHTFUL BIODOC MUST BE SEEN! THE DIRECCTOR AND HER PREVIOUS HUSBAND, VOLKER SCHLONDORF ARE 2 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ICONS OF GERMAN CINEMA, SCHOLNDORF ESPECTIALLY FOR HIS THE TIN DRUM, PERHAPS MY FAVORITE FILM OF ALL TIME. Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942. In the 1960s she moved to Paris where she worked for film collectives, collaborating on scripts and co-directing short films. She also pursued an acclaimed acting career, starring in films by well known German directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff. In 1971, von Trotta divorced her first husband Juergen Moeller (with whom she had a child) and married Schlöndorff. She co-wrote many of the scripts for his films, and in 1975 the two of them co-directed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). In 1977, von Trotta directed her first solo feature The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978) (The Second Awakening of Christa Klages). With her third film, Marianne & Juliane (1981), von Trotta's position as New German Cinema's most prominent and successful female filmmaker was fully secured. Her films feature strong female protagonists, and are usually set against an important political background. Themes in her work include the effect of the political on the personal, and vice versa, as well as the relationships between female characters, often sisters This documentary is a hard pass. There are a few interview tidbits that are interesting (if nothing really new), but every scene, every move is counteracted by von Trotta's deep need for attention and recognition. I don't have a problem with filmmakers inserting themselves into their own documentary, but this is just ridiculous: She is front and center. And about half of the runtime is about her, not Bergman. How she was inspired to become a filmmaker because of Bergman, how she felt honored, because he liked a movie of hers forty years ago. It becomes unbearable very quickly. If you want to watch a informative documentary about Bergman, avoid this production like the plague. There's some interesting information burried there, somewhere beneath the layers of self-promotion and self-congratulatory chest pounding, but it's simply not worth the effort. A better title would be "The wonderful filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta looks back on her greatest achievements (and there's Bergman)".

EVEN THOUGH THIS WAS ONE OF THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FILMS OF TIFF18, TO ME IT WAS A WASTE OF TIME. THE CHARACTERS LEAVE MUCH TO BE DESIRED. Subtle as a great dane, and less convincing than a show poodle that’s trying to pretend she’s an untamed stray, “Dogman” is an obvious and strained little movie about an Italian groomer who’s going through life with his tail between his legs. Another severe consideration of Italy’s criminal underworld from the director of “Gomorrah”— albeit one that hews much closer to the margins than it does to the mob — Matteo Garrone’s latest film might present itself as a cozy revenge saga, but that’s only because it’s trying to throw you off the scent. Alas, it isn’t long before the neutered cries of a three-legged allegory start to come from all directions, the barely hidden subtext barking its head off like a tiny Chihuahua that hasn’t been fed.

JEAN-LUC GODARD IN HIS 88TH YEAR CONSIDERED NEAR THE TOP OF ALL FRENCH DIRECTORS, YET I HAVE ALWAYS TRYING TO APPRECIATE HIS ARTISTRY, BUT HAVE ALWAYS HAD A TOUGH TIME. THIS EFFORT WAS NO DIFFERENT, BUT THE VISUALS ALLOWED ME SOME ENTRY INTO HIS ART. IT WAS REALLY LITTLE MORE THAN A COLLAGE OF HIS PAST WORK WITH ZERO NARRATIVE. SKIP THIS ONE.

GENRE SAMURAI FILMS BORE ME SO I DNF

North American Premiere Japanese Subtitled A restless ronin is eager to leave his quiet countryside life behind when the winds of war begin to blow, in visionary Japanese genre director Shinya Tsukamoto’s mesmerizing take on the samurai genre. Killing, the powerful latest work by Japanese master Shinya Tsukamoto, offers a modern take on the classic samurai film, evoking both the genre's mood and spirit. Inspired by Akira Kurosawa's films, Killing stems from an idea the director had a few years ago: "A young ronin stares at his sword with ardour," questioning whether he'd be capable of killing a man with it, even if ordered to do so by his master

BARRY JENKINS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ONE OF THE BEST FILMAKERS WORKING TODAY. THIS FOLLOWUP TO THE CLASSIC MOONLIGHT IS ANOTHER OUTSTANDING FILM ACHIEVEMENT. ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF FALSE IMPRISONMENT AND WHY BLACK LIVES MATTER NEEDS MORE ATTENTION. World Premiere English Director Barry Jenkins’ ambitious follow-up to Moonlight adapts James Baldwin’s poignant novel about a woman fighting to free her falsely accused husband from prison before the birth of their child. From the director of the Oscar-winning Moonlight comes a plunge into a world of Black love, with all the pain and the joy that can go along with it. In his third feature, Barry Jenkins draws deep from the well of James Baldwin, whose profound insight into African Americans' unique place in American society serves as inspiration for this gorgeous tone poem on love and justice. Tish (KiKi Layne) is only 19 but she's been forced to grow up fast. She's pregnant by Fonny, the man she loves. But Fonny is going to prison for a crime he didn't commit. As the film begins, Tish must break the news to her family, and his. Tish's mother, played with heartbreaking depth by Regina King, soon must decide how far she will go to secure her daughter's future. As Fonny, Toronto's own Stephan James gives a career-best performance of both grit and grace as a young man deeply in love but furious at what has befallen him. Jenkins reveals the layers of conflicting motivations in a filmmaking style that approaches music — dipping into Baldwin's elevated language and following his characters with unabashed devotion, fully capturing the texture of '70s New York. If Beale Street Could Talkis without doubt a romance but it's stronger than that because it refuses to indulge fantasy. Infused with Moonlight's deep lyricism and Medicine for Melancholy's flirtatious spark, Barry Jenkins's latest shows him to be our most clear-eyed chronicler of love.

IF FOR NO OTHER REASON, THIS FILM SHOULD BE SEEN TO SEE THE WHITE NATIONALISM OF STEVE BANNON, RANKING RIGHT UP THERE WITH HITLER. Errol Morris films a conversation with the alt-right guru Steve Bannon, but instead of confronting him he gets lost in the fog of Bannon's war. This is one of those drill-bit solo interview films in which Morris, in theory, adopts a stance that’s adversarial and exploratory as he grills world-shaking power players like Robert S. McNamara (“The Fog of War”) or Donald Rumsfeld (“The Unknown Known”). In this case, though, Morris abandons his trademark Interrotron camera, the contraption that locked his previous subjects into a vise-like gaze meant to reveal their every brain flicker of ego and doubt. “American Dharma” was shot in what looks like a military airplane hangar, where the 64-year-old Bannon, wearing a modified Army jacket (remember when rebel kids in the ’70s sported those?), with graying stubble and a head of thick Irish hair that he brushes back with shaggy professorial élan, sits opposite Morris, who is sometimes on camera, and joins in a spirited dialogue with him.

STEVE MC QUEEN SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A MASTER AT FILM PRODUCTION WELL KNOWN TO ALL OF YOU FOR HIS 12 YEARS A SLAVE WHICH WON THE OSCAR FOR BEST PICTURE, BUT TO ME HIS GENIUS WAS IN HIS 2008 FEATURE hUNGER, TO ME ONE OF MY FAVORITES OF TIFF 1018. VERY ENTERTAINING, SO PUT IT ON YOUR LIST OF FALL FILMS TO SEE. What could have remained just a solid crime thriller about bereft women who take matters into their own hands has been electrified by racial, political and gender issues in Widows. Handling a genre piece for the first time, director Steve McQueen ups the ante of nearly every scene by doubling and tripling the import by various means, creating in the process a provocative portrait of life on the troubled south side of Chicago. Commercial prospects look robust for this potent female-centric action drama. Adapted by McQueen and Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Widows is based on two six-part British television crime drama seasons broadcast in 1983 and 1985 and written by Lynda La Plant, who also penned a novelization published in 1985. La Plant is best known as the writer of the classic British TV series Prime Suspect. McQueen seems intent here on keeping the drama sizzling on several burners at every moment. Most filmmakers would have been content to stick with the surface story, which is certainly involving and good as far as it goes. But McQueen, in his first outing since 12 Years a Slave five years ago, really loads it on in nearly every scene, nay, every shot, as if to prove that he can deliver the kinetic goods with the best of them while also talking about the things he cares about most. The director slashingly puts across loads of incident, much of it grimly tragic, in the first few minutes. Veronica (Viola Davis) and husband Harry (Liam Neeson), hardly spring chickens, engage in some very deep kissing in bed in their stylish apartment. Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) tends to her dress shop. Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) has a jerky boyfriend, while Belle (Cynthia Erivo) is a hairdresser. In short order, all the women are bereft, their men killed in some shockingly explosive action. The primary focus throughout is Veronica, who seems most deeply aggrieved but soon learns she has the most to lose, as local black gang boss Jamal (Brian Tyree Henry) informs her that her late husband owes him $2 million; if she doesn’t fork it over within the month, his hyper-violent goon Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya, very scary) will make sure it’s the last payment she never makes.

LAZLO NEMES NEXT FEATURE IS THIS ONE. HIS SON OF SAUL TO ME WAS THE BEST FEATURE FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS. THIS ONE WAS SHOT IN THE OLD FASHIONED 35 MM FILM, NOT DIGITAL WHICH MAKES IT SO OPTICALLY PURE WHICH IS A PLEASURE TO WATCH. A HUNGARIAN DELIGHT WHICH SHOULD BE SEEN, BUT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO FIND. A BEAUTIFUL FILM FROM A VISUAL POINT OF VIEW. DO NOT FORGET THAT THE GREATEST CINEMATOGRAPHERS OF RECENT DECADES ARE FROM HUNGARY. Shot in 35mm, the latest from László Nemes (Son of Saul) focuses on a young woman eager to work as a milliner at the legendary hat store that belonged to her late parents, but when she is turned away by the new owner, she embarks on a quest to uncover her lost past. László Nemes's first film since his heart- rending debut feature Son of Saul, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016, is an equally impressive piece of filmmaking. Cut, in many ways, from the same cloth as its predecessor, Sunset takes a highly personal and distinctive look at another period in his country's history. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1910s, immediately preceding the First World War, the enigmatic Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), while young and beautiful, carries the weight of the past with her. Visiting an elegant Budapest department store that specializes in women's hats, she is immediately noticed and a stir is created. This sense of unease and disquiet becomes the modus operandi of the entire film. The store used to belong to Írisz's parents. Her visit is not innocuous. It is a voyage back into her past and childhood. Furthermore, she is about to unearth more dark and troubling secrets about her family. Nemes recreates the pre-World War I era in all its sensual detail - the attention to high fashion and the art of millinery here rivals those of a recent film set later in the 20th century, Phantom Thread. The intensity of Sunset is unmistakable, confirming Nemes's extraordinary talent in this sophomore film.

THIS BEAUTIFUL FILM OF EXTRAORDINARY CINEMATOGRAPHY AND MUSIC IS LIKE A POEM FROM IRLAND. IT WAS A VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE FOR ME. DONT LET THE NARRATIVE ABOUT A LADY BOXER DISSUADE YOU FROM SEEING IT, ALTHOUGH THAT MAY BE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE From the producers of Once and Sing Street, Float Like a Butterfly is a powerful and timely story of a girl's fight for freedom and belonging. In a gender-reversal of classic film Billy Elliot, 15-year-old Frances has to fight for the right to fight back. Raised in roadside camps in rural Ireland, Frances wants to champion her people inside the boxing ring and out, like her idol Muhammad Ali. But society is determined to break her spirit and destroy her way of life. And her father, once her greatest ally, is too defeated himself to imagine any better for his daughter. But Frances was not born to be broken. In the mother of all fights, she must dig deep to find in herself the Champion her father once knew her to be.