The Top 10 movies of the year are …

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 7:19 AM - 14 Comments

What a strange year it’s been at the multiplex. In real life, the biggest celebrity stories in 2009 were calamities that struck two black superstars: the King of Pop and the King of Golf. But onscreen, African-Americans played inspirational heroes defying vast odds—the abused teen saved by literacy in Precious; the homeless musician saved by a newspaperman in The Soloist; the homeless football player adopted by a white family in The Blind Side; and Nelson Mandela using a rugby team to heal the wounds of apartheid in Invictus. These Oscar-buzzed titles are all rousing tales trafficking in the triumph of the human spirit. Yet oddly enough, for all their powerful performances and heavy themes, these earnest dramas lacked weight. And, as it turns out, none of them has landed on my Top 10 list.

I was, however, wowed by the most earnest spectacle of all—Avatar’s rainforest fable of blue-skinned aboriginal aliens. Any Top 10 list is subjective, and it’s an uneven playing field. Some titles I saw nine months ago, some last week. Until you see a film twice, you can never be sure. But here are the movies that made the deepest impression at the time, and that I’d be happy to see again. The order is whimsical, but the list happens to begin and end with movies directed by Canadians.

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Ivan Reitman warms up Whistler

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 1:21 AM - 3 Comments

Marie-Helene Bellavance wins Best Actress at Whistler in top prize-winner, 'Les Signes vitaux'

I spent the weekend at Whistler and got excited about snow. Not just the stuff on the mountains. Sure, last month the B.C. ski resort was blessed with the heaviest snowfall of any month in recorded history—5.5 metres—laying down an early base for that Olympic thing in February. And yes, I admit I did a little skiing. I even entered a “celebrity challenge” slalom race and came home with a silver medal that looks convincingly like the real thing. It’s heavy. But what got me excited was the snow onscreen in a Quebec movie called Les Signes vitaux, which played in competition at the 9th annual Whistler Film Festival and won its top prize, the $15,000 Borsos Award for Best New Canadian Feature Film—presented by Hollywood Canadian Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters). Written and directed by Sopie Deraspe, this exquisite drama is set against the bitter, austere beauty of a Quebec City winter, where snow serves as a bare canvas and a rich metaphor—for the naked  void between sex and death. This is not the  snowman-snow of Quebec’s Winter Carnival. It’s the snow that falls in silent shades of grey and squeaks underfoot, articulating cold, while it buries the past and turns a fresh page.

Les Signes vitaux—which is titled The Living Rate in English (though I’d prefer the literal translation, Vital Signs)—is the compelling story of a  young woman who becomes a volunteer in a palliative care home after the death of her mother. Sounds deadly, I know, and it’s not an easy sell.  But the drama hinges on the tension between this woman’s frustrated search for life amid death and her capricious, carnal romance with a failed musician she refuses to accept as her boyfriend. That’s not all. The woman is a double amputee below the knees. And we’re not talking CGI. She’s played by Marie-Helene Bellevance, who had both legs amputated at the age of 11. Continue…

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

So a blond walks into a courtroom

Mississauga, Ont., native Jordan Wimmer cleared more than $1 million last year working for Nomos Capital, a London-based hedge fund. But all was not a bed of roses for the attractive, 29-year-old blond financier. Indeed, her blondness is at the heart of her $7-million wrongful dismissal suit against her multi-millionaire boss Mark Lowe. Sexist jokes, piggish behaviour and even an attempt to run her down on the street were part of a campaign of harassment, Wimmer testified last week. She told a London employment tribunal that Lowe made cutting personal remarks, emailed sexist “dumb blond” jokes throughout the office and cavorted in front of her with a stripper, causing her to suffer depression and an eating disorder. Lowe accused Wimmer of “gross distortions,” though he admits “entirely as a joke” to calling her “decorative” and a “dumb blond.” As for his emailed gag about a blond confusing a Corn Flakes box with a jigsaw puzzle, he says that “feeble joke” wasn’t told at her expense. Depending on the tribunal’s sense of humour, the joke may be on Lowe. Continue…

Opening Weekend: Tripping with Carrey, Clooney and Hana

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 4 Comments

Now that the November winds are blowing and the nights are getting longer, it’s time to fly away. To go anywhere, as long as it’s elsewhere and there’s a glow of magic to warm the heart. Magic—in Hollywood, they like to think they can manufacture the stuff. But it’s not that simple. This week I’m looking at three very different films that deal in magic. But only one of them really makes me believe it. It’s also the smallest of the three and, believe it or not,  it’s a documentary—Inside Hana’s Suitcase, which is beautifully directed by Canadian filmmaker Larry Weinstein, is a real-life fable about lost child of the Holocaust, a miraculous film that draws  hope and inspiration from horrific tragedy. The other two movies are the A Christmas Carol, a 3D opus starring Jim Carrey as virtually every character in the cast, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, an off-kilter comedy starring George Clooney as a U.S. solider trained in para-normal powers.  A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis is the weekend’s designated blockbuster, and although it has some of my colleagues dancing an early Xmas jig, it left me cold. But then I wasn’t especially fond of Forrest Gump either. My humbug response to A Christmas Carol appears in this week’s magazine, and you can read it by clicking on: Everybody wants a piece of Scrooge.

George Clooney meets his match in 'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

The Men Who Stare at Goats

This may be a George Clooney movie. But it’s not the George Clooney movie. Because this fall there are two, both having premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The other is Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which is not out until December. And there are also two George Clooneys, at least. There’s Serious George, the shrewd professional who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. You find him movies like  The Good German and Michael Clayton. Then there’s Uncurious George,  the know-it-all goofball who pops up in Coen brothers pictures like O Brother Where Art Thou and Burn After Reading—an idiot who thinks he’s a rocket surgeon.  Both of Clooney’s new movies are comedies, up to a point, and both are based on books. The Goats picture is an outlandish zany farce about guy trying to walk through walls, although it’s inspired by a true story;  Up in the Air is a serious comedy about the world we live in, although it’s fiction.

And here’s the thing. If you’re going to see just one George Clooney movie this fall, you should wait for Up in the Air. It’s by far the better film; and it’s the one for which he’s guaranteed to get an  Oscar nomination. Which doesn’t mean Men Who Stare at Goats isn’t worth a look, if you’ve some free time, and free money, and you don’t want to wait for the video. Hmmm. Talk about damning with faint praise. Continue…

Top 10 Best Moments at TIFF

By Tom Henheffer - Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 12:46 AM - 0 Comments

Click here for the Top 10 Worst Moments at TIFF

Masters of the universe in free fall

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

You forget you’re watching Matt Damon. He’s playing a spy. But with a dorky moustache, a toupée and an extra 20 lb. puffing out his features, there’s no trace of the dynamic secret agent from the Bourne franchise. In Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, an off-kilter comedy based on a true story of corporate corruption, Damon plays Mark Whitacre, an agri-biz honcho who became the highest-ranking whistle-blower in U.S. history during the late ’90s. But unlike most whistle-blowers—such as the one in The Insider or Soderbergh’s own Erin Brockovich—he is no straight-arrow hero. Far from it. While spending years wearing a wire to help the FBI expose a price-fixing conspiracy, Whitacre spins an elaborate web of lies, and embezzles millions from the company he was ratting on.

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 10-19) and opening commercially next week, The Informant! is one of a new breed of movies about men of influence in dire straits who invent their own cracked ethical code. Each year, TIFF showcases the fall line of serious films that vie for Oscar glory, pictures that presume to tell us something about the human condition. And whether by accident or design, many of this year’s most prominent titles reflect a new fashion in heroism that seems tailor-made for the recession: moral bankruptcy.

The new Hollywood hero is a high-flying master of the universe who’s losing altitude as fast as the ground vanishes beneath his feet. He’s a liar, a fraud, a womanizer, a drug addict, a nutcase, or all of the above. He’s Michael Douglas as a disgraced car magnate with a wrecked marriage and a runaway libido in Solitary Man. He’s David Duchovny as the head of a model family that turns out to be an utter sham in The Joneses. He’s Nicolas Cage as a crack-smoking cop who hallucinates reptiles in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Or Peter Sarsgaard as a smooth con artist who seduces a 16-year-old English schoolgirl in An Education, soliciting her father as a gullible accomplice. Or Ricky Gervais as a screenwriter who discovers the marvel of dishonesty in The Invention of Lying—a comedy set in a world where everyone tells the truth.

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Men who stare at George Clooney

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 12, 2009 at 9:03 PM - 0 Comments

George Clooney, staring at me

Missed a whole day of blogging. Here’s my excuse. Yesterday I saw four movies, went to a George Clooney press conference and ended the night dragging my tired butt to a George Clooney party in the Glass House, a swanky modernist mansion on the Bridle Path—the millionaire’s row in Toronto’s north end. I should clarify that George and I weren’t exactly partying together. In fact, he left almost as soon as I arrived, while Jeff Bridges, his co-star in Men Who Stare at Goats, lingered late, ensconced in conversation with a young woman. And the goats stayed late—there were some cute goats in pens on the red carpet dressed in T-shirts that read “stop staring at me.” There were also young women serving drinks who wore the same T-shirts. I’m not sure which was more cruel. George wasn’t wearing the T-shirt, but he might as well have been, because he gets stared at constantly. And I have to confess I’ve been seeing far too much of George lately. The staring has to stop. This afternoon I went to another press conference at which he was the main attraction. Today’s was for Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which is shaping up to be the hit of the festival so far. George, meanwhile, has become TIFF’s amiable superstar mascot. We love George. We all love George, even though he won’t grant us interviews or dish about his personal life. And George loves us, because, we’re nice, but not too nice. Unlike that unruly male journalist in Venice (his previous stop), we don’t rip off our clothes at the sight of him. And at a press conference, George behaves like the perfect dinner party guest. He’s Mr. Charm, like a cool Vegas cat working the room, yet without the sleaze. It’s as if he’s gone to movie-star school and taken Debonair 101. He’s charismatic, self-deprecating and funny. If this acting thing doesn’t work out, George could do stand-up comedy without breaking a sweat. In response to an idiot journalist who asked him to create a Facebook page, he shot back: “I would rather have a prostate exam on live television by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page.” Oh dear, more grist for that scurrilous gay bachelor gossip. Continue…

Updated: The Best of the Fest

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 6:03 PM - 4 Comments

I’ve only got two eyes to work with, and among TIFF’s 335 films from 64 countries, there are far more that I’m dying to see than I can possibly fit it. And I’ll be concentrating on the significant over the obscure. Here’s my tip sheet of favorites, a list that will continue to expand as the festival unfolds, thrown down in whatever order strikes my fancy. Click on each title for a capsule review: Continue…