Last month I had the privilege of attending the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) as press. This was my 2nd time attending the festival and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to attend. It was a challenging time for me because it was the same time that my channel was hacked and disabled. This meant I couldn’t cover the festival in the same way I had the previous year with out of theater reactions on my channel and such but it was a welcome distraction to everything that was happening in my life. I ended up seeing 20 films (I was there from Sunday to Friday.)

Here is my ranking of those 20 films (I didn’t really have anything I hated although some I didn’t go fresh on)

20. Love of Your Life- this was actually my first movie of the festival. It’s ok as a romantic weepie but particularly the husband character was painted as so perfect that it hurt the realism. Still if you want to watch beautiful people in beautiful places it delivers on that front.

19. Sunburn- this is well done. It’s just not my style of indie. There isn’t much plot here and the acting isn’t the best but I do appreciate the tone is positive which isn’t always the case for stories set in the inner-city.

18. The Idiot(s)- I love Johnny Flynn and it was fun to see him at the festival but this  is kind of a mess. It is about Dostoyevsky and his wife but then has modern moments but does so inconsistently. The tone is also all-over-the-place. Also his selfish gambling makes it hard to root for him in any way or find it funny.

17. Back in Black– this s a one joke movie of the mortician who needs more dead people so his granddaughter decides to help him with this problem. It’s ok but nothing memorable.

16. Ink- I have to admit my feelings on Ink have sunk lower the more time I have had to think about it. This tale of Rupert Murdock and Larry Lamb has an energy to it I enjoyed and the performances are good. The problem is it all feels undercooked. Everything feels like it was almost special but didn’t quite make it. In particular the second half revolving around a  kidnapping feels like a different movie. I hope they remove the AI. It was so unnecessary.

15. Babies- there is some humor that works quite well in Babies and I’m sure some childless by choice couples will feel seen by it. Unfortunately it also feels a bit out of touch with the extreme privilege of its characters. Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick have the luxury to act like child care would be a given and they just happen to live in an LA mansion. That kind of annoyed me.

14. Bitter Christmas- Pedro Almodóvar’s latest feels very personal diving into the heart of a writer and what it’s like to create a story. Here you have a director writing a screenplay and that story also taking place. It feels a little more forgettable from Almodóvar but entertaining with terrific lead performances.

13. A Talent for Murder- in this fun mystery Helen Mirren plays Patricia Highsmith in a fictional portrayal (but evidently she was a very strange personality in real life) that’s entertaining. Alden Ehrenreich has come to Switzerland to try and convince Highsmith to write another The Talented Mr Ripley novel but she is resistant to say the least. The story-within-a-story is less compelling but Mirren is great and the back and forth with Ehrenreich is a good time.

12. Tangles- I can’t completely review this because the projector broke and I couldn’t stay for it to be fixed because of my plane flight so I only watched the beginning. Still a sweet and tender story that I look forward to watching in completion soon.

11. Elsinore- bio-pics were all the rage at the festival and Elsinore is a bit of a mixed bag. Andrew Scott is terrific as actor Ian Charleson who wants to play Hamlet before he dies of AIDS. I wish the script was stronger. The dialogue often feels inauthentic particularly for Olivia Coleman’s character. Still it’s moving and worth seeing for Scott’s performance.

10. Tenzing- It’s nice to see a movie like Tenzing about driven but genuinely good people. It tells the story of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary who ascended Everest for the first time in 1953. This doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it is inspiring with likable performances and characters. The kind of movie my Dad would love.

9. The Stunt Driver– this tells the story of Ken Carter who was basically Canada’s Evil Knievel (who is a character in the film.) He wants to jump his car over a lake and this is a goal over many years. Jay Baruchel brings warmth to Carter who is a pretty selfish character. Ed Helms plays an engineer helping him build the car. I thought given the cast it was going to be funnier but still enjoyed it.

8. The Debut- I must admit I was a little disappointed this isn’t more of a traditional musical (it advertised original music and lyrics in the trailer but very few to be found) but aside from that it is entertaining. Julianne Moore is Oscar-worthy as mousy housewife who becomes a bit overzealous in her first role in her local community theater. I wish they had used the Broadway cast more but it is sweet and funny.

7. In Waves- this is an animated bio-pic about an artist that meets a girl who teaches him the joys of surfing. It is a romantic weepie but it feels genuine and touching. The animation is beautiful and the sound design/voice performances are excellent. It was neat to be seated in front of the girl’s real life family and hear how much she sounded like her.

6. Julian- another animated film. This one from Cartoon Saloon but a different environment than they normally use with young Julian going to visit his Grandmother in Brooklyn and learning they are a family of mermaids. Delightful

5. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother- this reminded me a lot of last year’s One Battle After Another. Fans of that film will enjoy this. They are both about Dads in violent situations still trying to take care of their kids. In this case it is Mahershala Ali trying to find breast milk for his baby. Some times the tone can be a little wonky but I overall enjoyed it. Great action and it endears us to Ali’s character given he’s trying to help his baby.

4. Resident Evil– now this technically was not part of the festival but it was part of my festival experience so I’m counting it. I wanted to make connections with new PR people and the studios so when I found out Resident Evil screening was happening in Toronto I had to go. Fortunately it proved to be a super fun movie with creative setpieces like a maternity ward I wont soon forget. It also had very silly jump scares and dialogue that kept me laughing throughout.

3. Being Heumann– I did a full review of this film and talked about my disabled experience at the festival (read here.) This a crowd pleasing portrayal of the 1977 sit-in for disability rights at a federal building in San Francisco. I honestly didn’t know anything about this sit-in, and I appreciate it doesn’t portray the activists as paragons of virtue. They have flaws like anyone else. Also nice to have actual disabled individuals playing these characters.

2. Wild Horse Nine- I’m actually not the biggest Martin McDonagh fan. I don’t dislike his films but usually don’t love them as much as everyone else. This film, however, I thoroughly enjoyed. I love the friendship story with Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich having great chemistry together. The banter is first rate.

1. I Play Rocky– some may see this as a unsophisticated top pick but at the end of the day I go to the movies to be entertained and that’s what this film is. I loved learning how Rocky was made and Anthony Ippolito is uncanny as young Sylvester Stallone. It’s crowd pleasing and a ton of fun seeing how everything came together for one of my favorite movies. I can’t wait for everyone else to see it!

So there you go! The ranking of all 20 movies I saw at TIFF. Like I said, it was a stressful time because my channel was hacked but I’m grateful to have had the distraction and to have seen so many terrific films. Thanks to TIFF for inviting me and I look forward to next year.

 

I’ve always been a big fan of historical films. Even when they are a little fast and lose with the truth (Braveheart I’m talking to you) often they inspire me to do the actual research on the historical figures and that’s a fun experience to take part in. I particularly love American history especially in places I’ve been to and lived in. The latest example that is premiering at Tribeca Film Festival is Young Washington about the formative early years of our first president George Washington. Not only did this movie inspire me to learn more about Washington but I found it thoroughly entertaining as a piece of blockbuster filmmaking.

To be honest, I have actually seen Young Washington 3 times already because I ended up doing 3 interviews which will be coming closer to the wide release on Hallmarkies Podcast. I also was so inspired by the movie that I wanted to learn more and read Ron Chernow’s captivating book (ad) called Washington: A Life. I highly recommend this book and the movie too!

Young Washington is directed by Jon Erwin and starts with Washington as a child after the death of his father when he was 11 and follows him through the French and Indian war, the disaster at Fort Necessity and Washington’s courageous stand with the Virginia Regiment in 1758. This was all done extremely effectively in the film. It’s particularly impressive with the small budget ($20-$35 million is what I read) I was especially impressed with the Fort Necessity sequence which was as captivating as it was devastating.

The cast Erwin has assembled is also excellent. William Franklyn-Miller is endearing and easy to relate with as Washington and he is surrounded by talent such as Mary-Louise Parker as his mother, Kelsey Grammar as Thomas Fairfax and Andy Serkis as Edward Braddock. The movie does expand on the truth with the romance Washington had with Sally Fairfax who in real life was the wife of one of his friends but it’s a small part of the film so not a big problem.

After reading Chernow’s book I am even more impressed with the historical accuracy of many of the scenes in Young Washington. Like I said, they don’t expand upon much and it also doesn’t feel like American propaganda. Afterall, we are seeing Washington at his greatest failure, literally surrendering because of partly his failure of leadership. His other weaknesses are mainly foibles of youth in the film but if anything that makes him easier to relate with than if he was portrayed as some paragon of virtue.

This summer we have the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate such an event than watching Young Washington. Hopefully you’ll be as entertained by it as I was and it will also inspire you to learn more about Washington and other Founding Fathers. At the very least it’s a rousing reminder that even our greatest heroes start out as young men and women brimming with potential.

Covering festivals is not easy and small sites like Rachel’s Reviews need help to provide such extensive coverage of film and theatre. Make sure you check out the patreon for perks, exclusive reviews and to be part of our monthly events and watch-alongs. If you value honest criticism, check it out. Find out more here.

One of the most ever-present questions about human nature is that of nature vs nurture. How much of who we are is innate to our beings and how much is pushed out of us by those that teach, parent and nurture us? Nobody knows for sure but at the very least teachers and others in authority can have power to draw us to different choices and convince us to go against our nature. This power has been explored in many films most recently in the Oscar winning film Whiplash. Now director Sophia Takal has taken Whiplash into the world of acting in her tight little thriller Act One.

Instead of drumming, in Act One we have acting as our talent of choice and young Hannah dreams of becoming a great actress. She wants to be a serious actress, and her mother is less than supportive of what she see’s as a silly career choice. Instead Hannah turns to an acting coach named Melanie who takes method acting to a whole new level. Melanie’s teaching is especially manipulative because she can defend anything as the cost of getting into character. Anyone who doesn’t participate fully is not as committed to the roles and the transformative experience of becoming a character. Of course this is a ridiculous reason to participate in toxic even criminal behavior but then again Hannah is young and inexperienced (even more so than Andrew in Whiplash who was at least in college.)

The main strength of this film is in Takal’s script. We can all relate to the draw of perfecting ones art and the intoxicating appeal of just the right kind of praise. Controlling people often know what to say to get insecure people to make one small step down the road of dedication to their cult. This is made even more powerful when fellow drama class member becomes Hannah’s sexual partner and Melanie uses that vulnerability to gain more power over her students.

Oddly enough in a movie about acting the performances in Act One are probably the weakest aspect. Ella Beatty plays Hannah and she captures the mousy nature of the character but Ari Graynor was less convincing as Melanie. The rest of the performances are more amateur in feel but as the movie is about amateur actors I suppose it fits well enough.

Still, like I said, the script is where this film shines as I was enthralled to see what was going to happen to Hannah next and if she would get out of this maddening spiral. Act One is playing June 10, 12, 13th at the festival and worthy of your time.

Covering festivals is not easy and small sites like Rachel’s Reviews need help to provide such extensive coverage of film and theatre. Make sure you check out the patreon for perks, exclusive reviews and to be part of our monthly events and watch-alongs. If you value honest criticism, check it out. Find out more here.