Toronto International Film Festival 2016
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Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker on Their Noir-ish Stasi Doc, Karl Marx City
Now playing in New York at Film Forum, Karl Marx City, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s follow-up to 2013’s The Flag. An entirely different meditation on national identity, in Karl Marx City Epperlein — who emigrated to the States following the collapse of the Berlin Wall — travels back to her East German homeland, and the film follows her as she attempts to discover the reason for her father’s suicide in 1999. Evidence that he may have been a Stasi informant deepens the urgency of her journey, with a visit to the Stasi archives revealing thousands of hours of footage, somewhere in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2017 -
Festival Beat: Toronto, Camden and Fantastic Fest
Toronto International Film Festival By Scott Macaulay Following 2013’s The Flag, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker returned to the Toronto International Film Festival this year with an entirely different meditation on national identity, Karl Marx City. Here Epperlein, who emigrated to the States following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, travels back to her East German homeland, attempting to uncover the reason for her father’s suicide in 1999. Evidence he may have been a Stasi informant deepens the urgency of her journey, with a visit to Stasi archives revealing thousands of hours of footage, somewhere in which may be the clue […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2016 -
The Adventures of a Furie-ous Evangelist: Looking Back After a Toronto International Film Festival Premiere
My book editor on Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films — the venerable, celebrated Patrick McGilligan — once told me in an e-mail, “There is nothing like one’s first book. You forever feel a special connection to that first subject matter. I feel the same fondness about James Cagney, my first book’s subject, as you probably do for Sidney J. Furie, your first.” For certain, I find that to be true. But I feel an even stronger bond to Furie, by sheer virtue of the fact that I was the very first to write a book — or, for that matter, any kind of […]
by Daniel Kremer on Oct 13, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 7: The Dreamed Path + Wavelengths
I had the truly rare advantage of a loose enough schedule to accommodate seeing all four of the Wavelengths shorts programs at TIFF this year, and they were kind of a lifesaver. For someone who’s made my trade watching and writing about movies, I’m a (paradoxically?) terrible marathon viewer. Following full-length, narratively driven films, one after another, is hard work, speaking purely personally; an hour’s-ish worth of avant-garde-leaning shorts does wonders to clear the mind. It’s a different kind of stimulation, and if you don’t like one another will be along any moment. I’m going to punt on the vast majority […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 22, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 6: Yourself and Yours, Safari
Prior to arriving for my first TIFF, I’d been told the only films you needed to show up early for were those with either celebrities or “awards season buzz,” and this has proven to be completely true. Most P&I screenings appear to be occupied by buyers who arrive late and leave early. For sheer impatience, perhaps no one will beat the guy who entered The Human Surge five minutes late, gave it two, and then bounced, but there’s been heavy competition for worst manners: I’m particularly anti-fond of the guy who spent a portion of Ulrich Seidl’s Safari reading Yelp reviews before presumably heading out […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 15, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Prevenge Director/Actor Alice Lowe
Joining Ms. 45‘s blind, black-frocked avenger and Kill Bill‘s sword-wielding, catsuited femme fatale in the pantheon of female killer films is the seven-and-a-half months pregnant Ruth in Alice Lowe’s microbudget pitch-black thriller comedy, Prevenge, receiving its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ruth is just six weeks from delivering her first child, but she’s still grieving the death of her husband several months earlier. And she’s receiving messages from her fetus, who seems to be speaking to her… and urging her to kill. Giving Prevenge an extratextual yet inside-the-frame kick is the fact that its first-time feature […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 5: (Re)Assignment, Daguerrotype, The Human Surge, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
Decried as an offensive trivialization of trans reassignment surgery by GLAAD as soon its premise was announced, Walter Hill’s Re(Assignment) makes the subtextual defense for itself early on. Institutionalized for two years, surgeon Rachel Ray (Sigourney Weaver) — a formerly respected practitioner stripped of her license — is being questioned by a shrink (Tony Shalhoub) as to why four corpses were found in her illicit medical officet. Ray was performing gender reassignment surgery on the willing and unwilling, but she wasn’t just a doctor, she insists; she was also an artist, and — quoting Edgar Allan Poe — declares that proper art is […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 12, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for The Headhunter’s Calling Director Mark Williams
Making his feature directing debut at the Toronto International Film Festival with The Headhunter’s Calling is producer Mark Williams. Gerard Butler plays Dane Jensen, a hard-nosed corporate headhunter whose ambition to take over his job placement company is put in conflict by a sudden family tragedy. The world of corporate headhunters is a world well known by screenwriter Bill Dubuque (The Judge), and life balance difficulties posed by a demanding profession — headhunting but, one could also say, the entertainment business — are understood by Williams too. That’s because he’s a founder and partner of Zero Gravity Management, an L.A.-based […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Strange Weather Writer/Director Katherine Dieckmann
Receiving its world premiere as a Gala Presentation at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, Katherine Dieckmann’s fourth feature, Strange Weather, a Southern road trip movie in which the landscape is both physical and psychological. Holly Hunter stars as a fifty-something academic administrator whose job is suddenly in peril due to university budget cuts. Her son committed suicide seven years ago, and when she learns that his best friend is now profiting from a restaurant concept he stole from him, she decides to hit the road and possibly settle an old score. Before the festival we asked Dieckmann to tell […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2016 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 4: Austerlitz, Planetarium, Tramps
Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, a record of tourists visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, could be loglined as a movie about why it’s a transparently bad idea to take selfies at Holocaust sites, but that would be reductive and far too banal a point to need making at feature length. The film is in low-contrast black-and-white, and how could it be in color? The visual language of extant Holocaust footage is B&W, so Loznitsa maintains visual and historical continuity. The opening movement is not that far off from, of all things, In the City of Sylvia, with long shots of tourists milling about in multiple compressed planes the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 11, 2016
