So the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival has wrapped. The parties are over, the celebrities have left town (actually, they left several days ago), and red carpets are rolled up and sales at Starbucks have returned to normal. This year’s festival wasn’t without some grumbling though. I’ll get to that in a minute.

As you would have seen if you followed along with my blog during the fest, I graded each film as I saw it. It’s hard to do this, especially in the early days when you’re kind of making up the scale as you go, but I think it feels about right. Here’s a recap; there’s no ranking within each letter grade, they’re just alphabetical.

A: Slumdog Millionaire

A-: Lion’s Den; Waltz with Bashir

B+: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; The Brothers Bloom

B: 24 City; A Christmas Tale; It Might Get Loud; Martyrs; New York, I Love You; Under Rich Earth

B-: Ghost, Is There Anybody There?; Me and Orson Welles; Miracle at St. Anna; Public Enemy Number One; Religulous; RocknRolla; Tokyo Sonata; Zack and Miri Make a Porno

C+: Acolytes; Fifty Dead Men Walking; Sauna; Synecdoche, New York; The Hurt Locker

C: Flash of Genius

C-: Birdsong; Deadgirl; Katia’s Sister

D: Not Quite Hollywood

I clearly wasn’t the only person who thought Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie at the festival. Yesterday the Danny Boyle film was named the Cadillac People’s Choice Award winner. That, however, is indicative of one of the problems people had with this year’s festival: the top films this year were already the top films elsewhere. Peter Howell writes in this morning’s Star:

Many of the films that drew attention and praise – The Wrestler, The Hurt Locker and Slumdog Millionaire among them – arrived with laurels already bestowed at the Venice and Telluride festivals. I can’t think of a single world premiere that really mattered at TIFF this year. The fest seemed like a giant second-run theatre.

Pair this with the fact that the Hollywood schmooze factor seemed to kick into overdrive this year — the screening of a vapid Paris Hilton (is that redundant?) documentary seemed to disappoint people, and I now know more people who attend parties and after-parties than who see any films — and people are starting to worry. There’s always been a mix of important films and celebrity worship at this festival, but it seems the latter is winning.

I suspect the two are unrelated, though. True film fans can shrug off all the red carpet bullshit as a necessary evil, but I suspect they’re less willing to accept that their festival will lose the relevance and reputation it’s acquired as a home for big, important films — the kickoff to Oscar season, if you will. Those film fans can take comfort knowing that there are still dozens of great small, independent and rewarding films screened at the festival each year, but to me the variety has always been a big draw, and the justification for the high ticket prices.

The afore-mentioned Star article offers some remedies, first among them to hold their ground against the likes of the Venice, Telluride and New York festivals. Here’s hoping Piers Handling, Noah Cowan and the rest of the festival organizers can tear their attention away from the Bell Lightbox long enough to do so.

[tags]tiff, tiff08, slumdog millionaire, bell lightbox[/tags]

Our final film, and one of the last screenings of the festival, was Miracle at St. Anna (tiff), Spike Lee’s latest effort. Given that we were pretty tired, and our asses were pretty sore, I didn’t relish the idea of sitting through a nearly-three-hour film, but it never felt that long. There was plenty to keep us occupied right from the opening scene.

If Spike Lee set out to add a film about black soldiers to the WWII canon, I think he accomplished his goal. This had all the right elements of action, humour and character with a little intrigue thrown in. I can’t say whether he faithfully recounted James McBride’s novel, but he delivered a good story in his own voice. There are some scenes that are just so quintessentially Spike Lee, like the portrait shot of the four soldiers glaring into the camera and peeling off one by one until the camera swings around and you see what they were looking at. Very Lee, and always interesting.

There was some mild overacting and an overly sappy ending, but overall this was a good way to close out the festival.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, miracle at st anna[/tags]

Normally the Real to Reel programme is a big one for me at TIFF, as I’m a big fan of documentaries, but this year I chose only two. It Might Get Loud was all kinds of fun, but different than the kind of documentary I’d normally enjoy.

Under Rich Earth (tiff), on the other hand, is precisely the kind of documentary I like to watch. It grabbed you right away, something I wouldn’t necessarily expect from a story about mining politics in a small Ecuadorian village. I knew nothing about this story, despite it having a local connection: the mining company involved in the dispute is Canadian mining company Ascendant Copper Corporation. It centered on a series of recent confrontations between the villagers and paramilitaries (whom the villagers allege were hired by Ascendant, which the company denied), and from there spirals out to include politics, government corruption, economic pressures, PR, globalization and a host of other factors which the documentary maker just didn’t have time to go into, but did touch on in his Q&A afterward.

If you want to know more about the film and the topic, check out UnderRichEarth.com.

B

[tags]tiff, tiff08, under rich earth[/tags]

Also known as Domovoy (tiff) this was a decent little Russian assassin movie. Good story (if a wee bit predictable), slick action and a cool bad guy made it a respectable entry in this year’s lineup.

My biggest complaint was the music. It was bad, which I can deal with, but it was also unbelievably loud. Some shrill woman’s voice singing in Russian with the volume so high in the mix that several people in the theatre actually had to plug their ears, including Nellie. The rest of the sound was fine…dialogue, gun shots, cars, everything…but when the music came in it was like nails on a chalkboard. Hopefully they clean that up.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, the ghost, domovoy[/tags]

Was this one called Public Enemy Number One? (tiff) Or L’Instinct de Mort? Or Mesrine? Who knows? It was pretty good, whatever it was called. The stylized biography of a French criminal (who also spent a lot of time in Canada) named Jacques Mesrine, it rode on the estimable talent of Vincent Cassel.

Trying to squeeze a man’s life (half of it, anyway) into a two hour film always feels choppy and broad, but it was an interesting story, lots of action, funny in parts and sometimes hard to believe (difficult to say how much of it was bumped up for the big screen). Not great cinema, but highly entertaining.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, public enemy number one, l’instinct de mort, mesrine[/tags]

I think I may have seen a new TIFF record tonight at the screening of Birdsong (tiff): most walkouts. Maybe not by raw number, but I counted 30 escapees from a theatre that holds 120, maybe 130 people. They weren’t shocked or offended…they were just bored. And probably a little confused.

Here’s the gist: three kings trudge through the desert and mountains to bring their gifts to Jesus. In black and white. With almost no talking, and what talking there was happened to be mainly Catalan. For a long time. There was one shot of them walking away across sand dunes and then coming back that went on for seven minutes. No dialog, no other events…just a stroll. That was it, for the whole film. Oh, and Joseph and Mary sat outside their house and played with a sheep. And Jesus.

I don’t know…some of the photography was beautiful, especially one particular underwater shot, but some of it was so dark you couldn’t even see it. Points for the shots and trying something I’d never quite seen before, but…yeesh.

C-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, birdsong[/tags]

It’s always interesting to see a repeat screening of a Midnight Madness film at noon, just because of the completely different makeup of the crowd. So it was with today’s screening of Acolytes (tiff), which was full of retirees and, presumably, Hitchcock fans. While it was likely the tamest horror flick I’ve ever seen programmed for MM, it drove a few older viewers out of the theatre early on. The lady behind us warned her friends up front that she didn’t like scary, but she was a trooper and stuck it out. I guess it helped that it wasn’t that scary.

Sure, it had a few jumpy moments, but those were mostly achieved with sudden cuts to violent scenes accompanied by screeching music. It did manage a little better on the tension scale than most horror films, and was a little longer on story. None of the characters were ridiculous, but the dialogue was often weak.

If you’re sort of a fan of horror films but like tension more than violence, this one’s probably for you.

C+

[tags]tiff, tiff08, acolytes[/tags]

Tokyo Sonata (tiff) started off quietly, built slowly through the middle, came to this crashing crescendo and then quietly wrapped up with a sonata within a sonata. By turns funny, tragic, frustrating and mundane, this film had me and lost me multiple times.

It wasn’t until I walked out of the theatre that I realized this is exactly what any sonata would do to me…grab me during the allegro or presto, lose me to boredom during the andante or adagio, gain back my interest as it picked up speed once again and then tie it all together at the close. Now that’s meta.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, tokyo sonata[/tags]

To sum up Synecdoche, New York (tiff) in one word: quoi?

Look, I’m a smart guy, and I like a challenging film as much as anyone, but there are limits. In the beginning the sharp-witted script and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s acting were enough to keep me interested, but for the last hour of the film I felt like I was chasing the actors down a maze in Charlie Kaufman’s mind. I didn’t enjoy that, and I certainly wasn’t intrigued enough to watch it again and figure out what I’m missing.

This film’s gotten really good reviews, and it does deserve some credit for the performances and occasional humour or insight, but I have to wonder how often people are scared to give it a bad rating for fear it’ll look as if they didn’t get it. Whatever. Maybe I’m slow today. Check that: I’m definitely slow today, but I could still keep up with the likes of Being John Malkovich or Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine if I were seeing them for the first time. This was just one onion I couldn’t peel.

On the way out of the theatre the guy in front of me said, “So, that was in English and I still didn’t understand it.”

C+

[tags]tiff, tiff08, synecdoche new york[/tags]