Calgary International Film Festival: Comedy Shorts (2012)
- BEAR (dir. Nash Edgerton, Australia, 2011) Easily the best and greatest film of the collection. Too bad it was first since the rest had a hard time measuring up. A man goes through great effort to surprise his girlfriend with a gift on her birthday, but the sheer horror of his good intentions and their consequences are blindingly hilarious.
- BOYS NIGHT IN (dir. Brian McElhany and Nick Kocher, USA, 2012) Multiple episodes of the same joke: a guy's friend comes over and it gets increasingly gay.
- GAMES PEOPLE PLAY (dir. Two Trick Pony, USA, 2012) A very dull and clichéd story with board game themes. Too bad. I like board games.
- GROOVE YOUR LIFE (dir. Vincent Burgevin and Frank Lebon, France, 2011) A dark comedy about a music group you can call to follow you around and jazz up, oops, groove up your life. A suicidal man gets a second chance.
- BUYER'S MARKET (dir. Nathan Fielder, Canada, 2012) I really enjoyed this tale of a squatter foiling a real estate agents sale. A really gross moment makes this epic.
- SPECIAL DELIVERY (dir. Graham Lester George, Spain, 2012) This was close to the best I saw in this set. Some great comic moments when a postman accidentally drops a lit cigarette through the mail slot.
- DAD DRIVES: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (dir. Daniel Beirne, Canada, 2012) A father gives his mature son the sex talk - pretty funny and uncomfortable.
- BLITZEN TRAPPER MASSACRE (dir. Joshua Homnick and Rainn Wilson, USA, 2011) Rainn Wilson of The Office fame goes on a killing spree. Not funny, not even once.
- LAST WORDS (dir. Tony Yacenda, USA, 2011) This was just crass and irreverent without being funny at all.
- PARACHUTE (dir. Martin Thibaudeau, France, 2012) Skydiving hustle which leads to awkward decision making - fun enough.
- CANOEJACKED (dir. Jonathan Williams, Canada, 2012) I don't remember much about this except that it was some dark humour about escaped convicts and I laughed.
- TALKING DOG FOR SALE: TEN EUROS (dir. Lewis-Martin Soucy, France, 2012) An old joke gets the film treatment, so if you've heard the joke, you know the punchline. I had heard the joke before.
- THE PROCESSION (dir. Robert Festinger, USA, 2012) A funeral procession is interrupted, a great set up for comedy, but it just falls flat with boring dialogue and cliché.
Oh, this is a great film, if only to fantasize of living in a great city full of culture and croissants. Woody Allen continues to work his way around Europe (London, Barcelona before this and Rome after - I hope he makes it to many more), this time transporting his title character, another writer, to early 1920s Paris to mix with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Baker, Dali, Stein, Porter, etc. Will he cast caution to the wind to live among some of history's greatest misfits or will be bow to economic and social pressures and stay with his boring wife?
One of the greatest films I have ever seen.
The City of Lost Children is one of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's (Amélie) early films (a collaboration with Marc Caro) and it certainly bears his marks of humour and fantasy. One of the lead actors, Dominique Pinon, appears in nearly all of Jeunet's films.
This documentary is told from a future perspective of the last man living on earth, so it's a bit hyperbolic. It extrapolates our environmental damage to the planet to the point where all the polar ice caps have melted and all humanity (except one Brit) is lost to drought, storm, etc.
The Illusionist is a lovely tale from the makers of The Triplets of Belleville - this one is far more melancholy and far less violent.
When evaluating a film, I do my best to consider the intent of the filmmaker and their intended audience. I wouldn't hold the characters of this film to the same kind of standards I would in The Thin Red Line for instance. I believe the intent of Martin Scorsese was to tell Hugo's story of loss, imagination, and salvation in children's terms, much as how the book did so. So, the people in the story are more austere or more fat or more tender than they would be in a typical drama. It's also a classic happy ending which is rare these days among the film elite.
Audrey Tautou portrays a skillful gold digger on the French Riviera in Priceless. After a misunderstanding which leads to a tryst with a bartender, she makes it clear that she is not interested in pursuing a relationship that doesn't produce pricy gifts and extravagant holidays.
As my son is named after this theologian/philosopher/scientist, a work buddy lent me this made for TV bio-pic, now a part of the Criterion Collection. The production is both elaborate in its sets and costumes, and yet quite simple in its script. The film essentially follows Blaise Pascal from his late teens through to his death giving him opportunity to speak some of his writings out loud and with props. There is little story or character development. In fact the setting draws the viewer in most as we are exposed to Catholic politics, scientific rivalries, provincial taxation, and superstitions.
While I think this is terrific film making, I'm pretty dismayed with the message it promotes: we can hear from the dead. If we believe this, then we open ourselves up to extortion, theological heresy, and a life that can be interfered with by the dead.
This is what I love about European dramas (the not shocking ones) - ordinary people facing ordinary struggle in ordinary time. This French film focuses on an immigrant transit train conductor and the people in his life. Rather than focusing on racial tensions that are commonplace in Paris, it relies on his humanity and the dynamics of his relationships - particularly with his daughter.
Vincent was fired from his job in the finance sector a few months ago, but he still hasn't told his wife. Instead, he departs on lonely "business" trips and returns with lies for his wife, children, parents and friends. The lies become elaborate and rehearsed. He begins extorting his friends and family as a means of maintaining his illusion.
This is perhaps my favourite of director Michael Haneke's films. The persistent darkness surrounding the good family lifts for such brief moments that the light is dazzling when we see it.
From another time - generational angst that defined the 1960s. Chock full of anti-establishment, lust, and recklessness. A cop killing Frenchman pines over a blond American girl trying to get her to escape with him. She half-heartedly gives in to his advances only to half-heartedly flee. There is a back and forth that shows they both really don't know what they want. 
An odd and quirky flick with a very dark story line from Amelie maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The stuff that comes out of France is often so different than what comes out of North America that it takes a major shift in being able to appreciate it fully, but it is definitely worth the effort. 
Shoot the Piano Player is a black and white French classic about the resurrection of a piano player facing his demons. And it really plays out like a pre-cursor to post-modern thrillers with all of their twists.
After a 9 year hiatus, Jesse and Celine reunite in Paris to pick up the conversation they left off in Before Sunrise. The film is much the same, but the topics they bring up are for thirty-somethings rather than university grads. They have lived life and have learned to settle for mediocrity. 
This really long documentary isn't entirely silent. For a few minutes the monks are sitting on a patio and chatting, but yeah, aside from that, pretty quiet...
I've Loved You So Long is a gorgeous film from France. It tackles some difficult issues, but very graciously and from a character's perspective.
In the ongoing tradition of French biopics, Coco Chanel gets her turn (and a second turn in a new film about her alleged liason with Igor Stravinsky).
