Here are the best reviewed films (4/4 stars) screening at TIFF (as per THE GLOBE & MAIL):
The Good, the Bad, the WeirdKim Jee-Woon (South Korea)With one of the most exciting and possibly longest horse-chase gun battles committed to celluloid, this Korean spaghetti western is both an exotic treat and an old-fashioned rollicking action pic. After meeting on a train in the Manchurian desert in the 1930s, the destinies of a gifted bounty hunter, a sadistic gang leader and an eccentric train robber become intertwined with that of a valuable map. The biggest budget Korean flick to date, this film is visually rich and fully loaded with wildly inventive comedy and action sequences. The director has fun with conventions, yet the movie feels fresher than Hollywood's most recent batch of westerns. J.P.
Rachel Getting MarriedJonathan Demme (U.S.)Many films have used the ritual of a wedding to peer into the dysfunctions of a troubled family, but none better than this. In its raw honesty and emotional grit, Demme's work here is unsurpassed. Borrowing a little from Robert Altman, and a little more from the Dogme directors, Demme brings a probing camera to the gathering of a Connecticut clan, digging beneath the surface of the rehearsal party chatter — the gaiety real and forced, the speeches graceful and cringe-making — to examine some very large themes at a very intimate level, themes like sin and atonement and the blood that sometimes runs thinner than water. As the sister who gets checked out of rehab long enough to attend the wedding,
Anne Hathaway delivers a nuanced and revelatory performance (expect Oscar to call). But so does Rosemarie DeWitt in the title role. The love/hate tension between them, filtered through the crowd around them, is almost voyeuristic in its intensity. Normally reserved for action flicks, that edge-of-your-seat cliché has a new home here — the rawness will have you leaning into the screen, often uncomfortable but always entranced. R.G.
HungerSteve McQueen (U.K.)The debut film from Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen is a harrowing experience and a rule-breaking tour de force. Hunger focuses on the 1981 death of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands over the course of 66 days in the Maze prison. Without endorsing Sands's and his fellow IRA soldiers' tactics, the film places his death in the context of religious martyrdom and portrays the choice of extreme physical degradation — naked and starving in excrement-covered cells — as a form of sacrifice echoing Christ's death. That's not the same as saying McQueen endorses their actions. At the film's centre comes an extraordinary, single-take, 20-minute conversation between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a sympathetic priest (Liam Cunningham) who tries to convince him this is an ego-driven suicide mission by a man who is no longer in his right mind. For those who are expecting Ken Loach-style propaganda, that's not McQueen's aim. This is a portrait of a hideous human drama, with distinct resonances of the martyrdom and torture in the post-9/11 world. The prison guards here are also victims in a literal sense: They were killed by IRA assassins at the same rate as the prisoners starved to death. L.L.
JCVD [Woohoo! - oilgun]
Mabrouk El Mechri (France/Belgium/Luxembourg)Loaded with hilarious in-jokes and packing an unexpected emotional wallop, this smart postmodern hostage pic stars martial-arts action thesp Jean-Claude Van Damme as a washed-up version of himself. In this brave career jolt, Van Damme transforms his leaden acting into Buster Keaton deadpan, pitch-perfect for the string of humiliations — a custody battle, losing a role to Steven Seagal, an unco-operative ATM — that lead his character to a botched Brussels post-office heist. Cops, fans and his parents gather, believing he's gone postal. But can this celebrity become a real-life hero? Shot in dreamy sepia hues, with a fab cast and intellectual and visual zip, JCVD opens the Midnight Madness program in style. J.P.
RRJames Benning (USA)Barring a change of mind or circumstance, RR will be the last of James Benning's films shot on 16 mm, and it ends with a locomotive, pointedly stopped in front of a wind farm outside Palm Springs, Calif. It's the last in a line of 43 trains shot across the U.S., each one a witness to America's overconsumption. Those familiar with Benning's recent landscape films will be comforted by the fixed camera and the film's continental scope, but in RR the signified (the train) takes over from the signifier (the camera), each shot lasting as long as it takes for a train to traverse the frame; this is both an aesthetic and a political choice. Each shot comes as a surprise, and every one is mesmerizing (yet unspectacular), yet RR acquires a cumulative power over its running time, as the simplicity of the structure gives way to infinite experiences. A masterpiece of structural filmmaking. M. Peranson
For the films rated 3.5 stars and less:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080902.wtiff_minireviews/BNStory/tiff2008/home/?pageRequested=2