I think I've been to enough editions of the festival now, and I find the quality (of the films I choose to see, at least) varies so significantly from year to year, that I have begun a list of all-time favourites that I've seen at the festival. Note that this is not a list of my favourite films that have played the festival, but rather only the ones that I've seen at the festival...for instance, just to name one such film, Memento would be very high on the list had I actually seen it when it played the festival.

 

Trevor's All-time Festival Top 10

1.Amelie (2001) - 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.

2.Mulholland Drive (2001) - 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.

3.Show Me Love (1999) - Review for public consumption: A truly poignant and touching coming-of-age story about teenagers in a small town in Sweden, centred on two girls, one of whom is infatuated with the other. Perhaps the most honest and believable movie I've ever seen, it felt much like a cross between My So-Called Life and Degrassi. I highly recommend it. Review for male consumption: Teenage Swedish lesbians. Need I say more?

4.Samsara (2001) - 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.

5.Whale Rider (2002) - For the second straight year, the People's Choice Award winner was again my favourite. I found this story of a Maori girl born into the family of the chief of a patriarchal tribe truly endearing and touching. I really seem to have a soft spot for New Zealand's cinema, because I've been impressed by virtually every kiwi film I can think of at the moment: The Price of Milk, The Man From Snowy River, The Piano...they all have strong emotional content and take advantage of the dramatic landscape, and I think they also really have something in common with good Canadian cinema in these respects.

6.Hotel Rwanda (2004) - For the third year out of four (I missed Zatoichi in 2003) I got to see the People’s Choice Award winner and agreed whole-heartedly with the selection. Don Cheadle is excellent as Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan Hutu hotel manager who found himself in the impossible position of trying to protect his Tutsi wife and eventually hundreds of other Tutsis fleeing the civil unrest of 1994. You may well already know how this true story ends, but I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t like to know how a movie ends before I see it. In any case, even if you do know how it turns out, the movie is a gripping testament to one man’s courage in the face of atrocity.

7.Revolver (2005) - Borrowing heavily from Tarantino, Guy Ritchie has created a clever, stylish, thought-provoking twist on the gangster movie. Not only does this work simply as an entertaining mobster tale (not unlike his earlier film Snatch) there are also philosophical and psychological layers to this that truly make it a work of art that I suspect will easily bear multiple viewings.

8.I Love Your Work (2003) - I loved the style with which this movie was put together, and the originality of the concept. It’s ostensibly a reverse stalker story, with a famous actor (played by Giovanni Ribisi) becoming so disenchanted with his fame that he covets the life of a struggling writer (played by Joshua Jackson). It suffers a little from some poor casting choices (Christina Ricci and Marisa Coughlan are supposed to look alike, but they were so much alike that I had trouble telling them apart) and disjointed ideas (think David Lynch at his least comprehensible) but the images are very imaginative, the plot is meaty, and the acting is good, so overall I really enjoyed it and found it very thought-provoking. This is only Adam Goldberg’s second film as a director (you probably know him as an actor) but he demonstrates a great deal of potential, and could very well be the next David Lynch or Michelangelo Antonioni.

9.Juno (2007) - It didn’t win the People’s Choice award, but it was the first runner-up, and with good reason. I think the best description I could come up with for this disarming and poignant comedy is a complicated recipe: Five parts Gilmore Girls, four parts Rushmore, three parts High Fidelity, two parts Heathers, and one part Amelie. Snappy dialogue, clever writing, and universally likable characters make this a real charmer almost anyone can like.

10.The Station Agent (2003) - A quintessential character piece, with three central characters who have all ended up in a small town in New Jersey through different paths not entirely of their own choosing. Each flawed in their own way but eminently likable, the characters played by Peter Dinklage, Bobby Cannavale, and Patricia Clarkson become friends and manage to help each other cope with their problems. Its sauntering pace might not be to everyone’s taste, but what surprised and impressed me most was how funny this movie was…I highly recommend it.

 

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