The Final Take with Parker Mott

(in no particular order)
Note: All films are rated out of four stars.

Twixt  (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 90 mins)- ***.5
Jeff, Who Lives At Home (dirs. Jay & Mark Duplass, 83 mins) – **
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope(dir. Morgan Spurlock, 88 mins) – ***

My favourite film at TIFF was Steve McQueen's "Shame". It just keeps haunting me.

Violet & Daisy (dir. Geoffrey Fletcher, 96 mins) – **
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (dirs. Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, 106 mins) – ***.5 (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(90 minutes)

Twixt is Coppola's return to gothic cinema in a purely experimental form. You've been warned.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt is a movie for novelists and filmmakers, but not audiences.

There’s no plot here, little room for character, and hardly any need for a sensible conclusion. This is Coppola’s retreat to his early days when he worked for Roger Corman doing gothic horror, and his memories it seem couldn’t be any fonder. The result is a fun, brisk, and perversely dark yet highly skilled piece of filmmaker by a once-declared master. Twixt is an excellent return to a previous form from a director who has long needed it. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(82 minutes)

Jeff (Segal) and Pat (Helms) causing a fuss in Jeff, Who Lives At Home.

The weird thing about Jay and Mark Duplass’s Jeff, Who Lives At Home is that we don’t see Jeff (Jason Segal) live at home. Okay, besides the first shot: Jeff sits on his home toilet, brooding about the signs that come and go across the world. He analyzes M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, quite perceptively. His favourite character is the little girl whose fear of glasses of water ultimately saved her family from tragedy. This is key foreshadowing to Jeff, Who Lives At Home but it doesn’t support the film’s empty feelings of underdevelopment. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(88 minutes)

Designer Holly Conrad presents her talent after winning a prize at Comic-Con.

Here is a documentary that you will have trouble resisting. It’s called Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope; its task is bringing energy and inspiration to the far away galaxy of Comic-Con. But Star Wars puns aside, A Fan’s Hope is a nimble trot through the big yearly convention and, as a result, profits more as light stuff for documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. But then again most of his films are. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(96 minutes)

Violet and Daisy unload on a target. The film itself shoots blanks.

Violet & Daisy proves what French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said is true: “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” Well, make it two girls and two guns. But Godard left out whether the movie would be good or not, and Violet & Daisy is not. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(106 minutes)

From left: Bruce Sinofsky, Damien Echols, and Joe Berlinger.

In my reviews of the first Paradise Lost documentaries I noted that I was unsure if these films would conclude on triumph or tragedy. One calamity had already stormed through West Memphis, Arkansas and that was the brutal murders of the eight year-old boy scouts Christopher Byers, Steven Branch, and Michael Moore on May 5, 1993. But instead of searching for justice, the West Memphis courts jumped to conclusions, replacing a tragedy with another tragedy. Under ridiculously sketchy evidence Damien Echols (18), Jason Baldwin (16), and Jessie Misskelly (17) were sentenced to multiple life sentences – Echols on death row. I can never look justice straight in the eyes after that. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(115 minutes)

Anthony Hopkins is a father searching for his lost daughter in 360.

360 begins with a paradox: “if there’s a fork in the road, take it.” What direction? What end? It is uncertain how 360 finds its way across its characters. In the process however, there is a clash of identity, age, and culture through sex – the far from erotic kind – in a world that seems to be shrinking, so we decide to grow close to one another. The film is about relationships but not necessarily love, as emotion seems to be scattered but unfound among us and the intimacies we share with others. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(115 minutes)

Matt (Clooney) and daughter Alexandra (Woodley) in The Descendants.

Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is a film we’ve seen before, but not like this. Like most of his films, it involves characters escaping their current space in order to flee the grasp of reality. It follows the common drama standard of parenthood and dealing with children in the face of misfortune. But The Descendants is a rare film that gets better and better as it progresses. The characters realize something about themselves, as does the audience. There’s even a little suspense to whether things will work out or not. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(88 minutes)

Something wicked this way comes in The Incident.

The Incident couldn’t be a more perfect title for what this gore d’oeuvre offers. It’s an ordeal of a horror film, shot like a Lady Gaga video crossed with the unflinching violence of a Sam Peckinpah. It takes place in the bleak and narrow hallways of an anemically-lit insane asylum, a setting that will immediately register The Incident as a Shutter Island geek show. It’s at least the latter of that term. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

Dave (Woody Harrelson) is the charismatic scapegoat in Rampart.

Rampart is a Woody Harrelson movie, not director Oren Moverman’s. In every scene, across every moment Moverman forgets storyline and exposition and thrusts the camera towards the brooding eyes of Harrelson’s Dave Brown. His nickname is “Date Rape Dave”, and you could only wish it was ironic to his personality. But no: Dave is a monster. Or is he? Harrelson’s humble yet fierce performance is enough, but not plentiful, to save Rampart from failing to explore the potential depth of its title. (continue reading…)