After the insanity of ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans‘, iconoclast director Werner Herzog switches back to documentary mode for his latest film. To prove that he’s never afraid to challenge himself, no matter the material, he’s made it in 3-D. Today’s coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival takes a look at this, plus a lovely little Canadian movie that will probably never play near you – but should.
You’d have to be a real cold-hearted bastard not to get at least a little bit of enjoyment out of the following amateur short film about a pair of precocious kids who take their parents’ car for a joyride that goes disastrously wrong. I know that some of our readers are indeed cold-hearted bastards (and I can be one myself sometimes), but come on, these kids are adorable.
I realize that I post about ‘Dune’ a fair amount in this blog. It’s my favorite movie, and this is my blog, so I feel I’m entitled. Anyway, my friend and fellow ‘Dune’ enthusiast Mark recently sent me a link to a page of concept art for one of the aborted attempts to remake the movie. While I’m personally glad that the project fell through, the artwork offers an interesting glimpse at what almost was.
As I write this post on Tuesday afternoon, I’ve only had time to see one movie so far today. However, it’s perhaps the biggest, most buzzed-about film in the festival – and also the one that you, our readers, told me you were most interested to have me report on. Yes, it’s Darren Aronofsky’s surreal psychological thiller ‘Black Swan’. Does it live up to those crazy trailers or the hype? Read on to find out.
As the summer movie season draws to a close, one film stands pretty tall above the rest. Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ is a critical favorite and (despite some early studio hand-wringing) a massive box office hit. There’s even Oscar buzz about it already. But not everyone has been so in love with the movie. I’m curious where our readers fall on the scale. Is ‘Inception’ brilliant or overrated? Vote after the break.
Technically, the Toronto International Film Festival opened last Thursday, the 9th. However, Mrs. Z and I didn’t arrive in the city until late on Sunday. We didn’t get a chance to see any movies that night, so our festival-going finally started in earnest on Monday. We did, however, cram in three movies on that first day. Among them were at least two hotly-anticipated titles: ‘Never Let Me Go’ and ‘Let Me In’. Follow after the break for a brief rundown.
I may have walked out of ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife,’ but that doesn’t mean everybody did. It was the only major studio movie this weekend and it locked down 2,000 of the country’s 3,203 3-D screens. That’s more about math than any sort of groundswell of popular opinion. I’m betting that Sony went out of the way to get all those screens because the studio knew that this was going to be a one-weekend warrior, without much in the way of staying power. Although, with the largest opening for the franchise ever ($28 million domestically and performing well overseas), we probably haven’t seen the last ‘Resident Evil’ entry. The franchise will be as undead as the zombies that populate it.
So this isn’t technically a review, because I didn’t watch the whole movie. I’ll say that I watched about forty minutes of the new, oh-no-zombies-all-over-the-place sci-fi/horror yarn ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ before bailing. It was a late showing on Friday night, I was not in the mood, and I knew there was a whole stack of unread issues of ‘Scalped’ waiting for me at home. That said, I wanted to explain myself, to tell you all why, in such a short amount of time, I was so reviled that I kicked off my 3-D glasses in disgust and stomped out of the theater. Actually, that’s not true, I gingerly placed my 3-D glasses in the recycling bins provided. But the disgust part is legit.
For the next week, I’ll be on vacation. Mrs. Z and I will be traveling to Toronto to visit friends and to attend the Toronto International Film Festival. This may result in some disruptions to our normal blog posting schedule here at The Bonus View. More importantly, I’ll be seeing a bunch of new movies. So I figured that would make a good Roundtable topic. What should I see at the festival?
So this is the lull between the blockbuster summer and the more prestigious fall. Whew. Times are tough. There is basically only one major new release this week, and it’s one that almost all of us could do without. (I didn’t get a chance to see it early because I had other things to do and, oh yeah, it looks terrible.) There aren’t even that many intriguing independents to seek out. Instead, you’ll just have to resign yourself to either not going to the movies, or maybe seeing ‘Inception‘ one last time before the home video release. That works too.
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