This afternoon I saw Little Fish (imdb | tiff) with T-Bone. Though I liked it slightly more than she did, I didn’t think it was great. The two best parts about it were Hugo Weaving’s performance and the little details that slipped into the frame…like how Cate Blanchett looks at a bunch of bottles on a dresser. But it was a bit too long, too slow, too…not predictable, but unsurprising.

Rating: 5 out of 10.
Star Power: Zip. Nothing. Zero. No cast, no crew. Not even a festival programmer.

However, Nellie and I suffered no such disappointment with Sorry, Haters (imdb | tiff). It was an extremely tense film, very thought provoking. Not difficult, though; by that I mean that it wasn’t working hard at making you think, but it was working hard at making you try to understand Robin Wright Penn’s character. The best sign of how interesting and challenging the film was: after the credits began to roll it took a good 30 or 45 seconds before anyone clapped…we all just sat in our seats, murmuring about what the final few scenes had meant until our Canadian politeness took over.

The director gave some terrific comments up front (he stuck around to see the third festival screening after his flight to New York was cancelled…he figured it was “destino”) and answered several questions afterward. All in all, an excellent film, well worth the hour-long wait in the cold rain and the lack of leg room.

Rating: 9 out of 10.
Star Power: Just director Jeff Stanzler.