Here, in my order of preference, are the films I saw at the 2001 festival:

 

·          My Favourite: Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain (although it has been here as simply Amelie)

An absolutely heartwarming and charming French romantic comedy. Quirky in most of the ways you would expect of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Alien 4), but without the dark atmospherics that characterized those movies. Indeed it manages to be downright life-affirming, without discounting life's imperfections. The endearing characters and creative and often hilarious situations make it truly delightful. I was very pleased that it won the People's Choice award at the festival...it had my vote.

 

·          Honourable Mention: Mulholland Drive

I deliberated long and hard between Amelie and Mulholland Drive, and I think if you ask me a few years from now, I might well choose Mulholland Drive over Amelie, but in the end I gave Amelie the nod. Mulholland Drive is David Lynch's latest, and it's a triumph of Lynchian surrealism. It's not for everybody, but if you liked Eraserhead or Lost Highway, you absolutely have to see it, and if you liked Wild at Heart or Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks or Dune, I would highly recommend it too. It really is the masterful culmination of the direction he was headed with Eraserhead and Lost Highway. It's deeper and more textured than Eraserhead, and it's more cohesive and coherent than Lost Highway. So, if you're a Lynch fan, or if you just enjoy a good brain-twisting movie, this one's for you.

 

I also recommend:

·          Samsara - A beautifully-constructed tale of a Buddhist monk who leaves the monastery for the love of a woman. It blends spirituality, humanism, and awesome landscapes to convey the majesty of life and tell the story of the universal struggle between spiritual idealism and earthly temptation. I recommend it highly...in a lesser year, this could easily have qualified as my favourite.

·          The Grey Fox - A Canadian classic from the early '80s, this story of The Gentleman Bandit, Bill Miner, will be rereleased early in 2002. While it does have the slow pace typical of so many Canadian films, the great performances of Richard Farnsworth, Wayne Robson, and Jackie Burroughs, along with the magnificent western Canadian landscapes and brilliant vignettes of life at the turn of the 20th century make it a subtle, beautiful, very Canadian classic.

·          To End All Wars - The real-life story of a British WWII POW in southeast Asia, this movie packs a pretty powerful punch, (although I must admit it may have been magnified for me because I saw it just four days after Sept. 11).

·          Buffalo Soldiers - The crazy narcotic milieu of Trainspotting placed in the sort of lazy military setting of MASH, without the preachy bits of either of those movies...entertaining Hollywood fare, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris, and Scott Glenn.

·          Chicken Rice War - Romeo & Juliet converted to a comedy and set in modern-day Singapore. Some cheesy dialogue and really bad acting almost make me stop short of recommending it, but it is so much fun and so surprisingly substantial in content that I can easily justify recommending it.

 

Also worth seeing:

·          The Man From Elysian Fields - The story of a man driven by desperation and pride to do things he normally wouldn't, and the price he ultimately has to pay for it. With strong and interesting performances by Andy Garcia, James Coburn, Olivia Williams, and Mick Jagger, I found it quite entertaining and suspenseful, which justified its relatively slow pace and dark atmosphere.

·          Strumpet - A riff on creativity by Danny Boyle, (Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, The Beach), I really enjoyed the sense of freedom and endless possibility created by the first half of this movie. The second half goes on to make a statement about commercialism and how it co-opts and corrupts creativity, which I think ironically corrupts the creative atmosphere of the movie, but it's still well worth seeing.

·          Vacuuming Completely Nude In Paradise - An over-the-top comedy also from Danny Boyle, about salesmanship and the capitalist drive to succeed, the lead actor Timothy Spall, (Life Is Sweet, Rock Star), really sells this, as a manic salesman from the dark side, pathologically driven to sell, no matter what the cost. Really quite funny, as sad as the commentary may be...

·          The Navigators - The latest from British director Ken Loach, (Riff-Raff, My Name Is Joe, Bread and Roses), this film chronicles the story of a group of British Rail workers and the effects of corporate restructuring on their lives. It's not a movie that will have you on the edge of your seat, but neither is it as dry as that description may sound...like most of Ken Loach's films, it delivers social commentary in a very palletable and realistic way, drawing entertainment value from character interactions and largely improvised dialogue.

·          Dust - This latest film from Academy-award winning Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski tells the story of two American brothers in Macedonia around 1900, and their effect on Macedonia's struggle for independence. It's not based on a true story, although according to Manchevski, there really were some Americans in Macedonia around that time whose stories were even more incredible than the one he told. The style is very novel and makes the movie well worth seeing, along with the relevance of the story to modern-day Macedonia, but the story of the two brothers is obtuse and confusing, and I was further turned off by the overabundance of gratuitous violence.

·          Jalla! Jalla! - A Swedish comedic slice-of-life story about two young men, one whose Lebanese family is pressuring him to get married, and the other whose lovelife is flagging. The comedy here comes from real life situations, and the characters are all quite endearing. It didn't contain anything that I thought was really special, so I'm not going so far as to recommend it, but it is a fine way to spend an hour and a half.

·          Who Is Cletis Tout? - A lightweight romantic caper comedy starring Christian Slater, Tim Allen, Portia deRossi, and Richard Dreyfuss, this movie has something to appeal to just about everyone. Very Hollywood, but certainly clever enough to be worth seeing as a fun escapist movie.

·          Picture Claire - Bruce MacDonald's latest is about a Francophone woman who comes to Toronto and gets mixed up in a web of intrigue due to a case of mistaken identity. Mildly entertaining, but certainly not up to the standards of his earlier films.

·          The Profession of Arms - A heavy yet interesting account of European medieval warfare, with an epic visual quality to it. It gets quite slow toward the end, as it focuses on the effect of the war on one officer's family, but the gritty battlefield scenes and the cat-and-mouse intrigue of the war make it worth seeing.

·          Musa - The Warrior - A sort of Korean medieval western, about a Korean diplomatic party trying to get home past Chinese and Mongol warring parties. Too heavy on the fighting and gore for my taste, and lacking much depth, but if you enjoy westerns or movies like The Seven Samurai and The Road Warrior, this could be perfect for you.

·          Last Wedding - A black comedy about three relationships in distress, this is particularly accessible and humorous for a Canadian film, but it doesn't really go anywhere, and it really left me feeling cold at the end...more black than comedy, when it comes right down to it.

·          Westray - A documentary about the Westray mine disaster in Nova Scotia, it doesn't hold many insights about the hows and whys, but it tells the human story in a fairly innovative way, including some very interesting stories of the families and survivors in the years after the disaster.

·          The River - A fairly bleak slice of life in a small town in Finland. The clever construction of parallel timelines, and what I believe is probably an accurate portrayal of Finnish life make it worth seeing, if not especially entertaining.

·          Waking Life - A terribly wordy and pretentious film from Richard Linklater, (I can't improve upon the description of the Rogers cable Reel to Reel reviewer who termed it a "pseudo-intellectual wank"), but it's well worth seeing just for the innovative visual techniques, which convert live action into bustling animation.

 

I don't recommend:

·          The Icelandic Dream - A realistic story about a dubious Icelandic entrepreneur and all the various aspects of his life, (his ex-wife, his daughter, his teenage girlfriend, and the ups and downs of his business). There's some entertainment value in it, (especially the American boyfriend of the main character's ex-wife), but for the most part it's about people who are not very nice being not very nice to one another.

·          Passport - A Hungarian movie about a Ukrainian woman who thinks she'll find a better life in Hungary, but ends up disappointed. There are some giddily fun visuals and creative scenes that keep it from being a complete waste of time, but for the most part the material just beats you down and doesn't leave you feeling very good about life in general.

 

Feedback is welcome...thanks for reading!