indicates movies with four or five-N ratings

Program series are abbreviated as follows:

  CWC Contemporary World Cinema
  DISC Discovery
  GALA Galas
  HARVEST South Korean Renaissance
  MAST Masters
  MM Midnight Madness
  PA Planet Africa
  PC Perspective Canada
  RTR Real To Reel
  SPEC Special Presentation
  SPOT Spotlight
  TRIB Tribute
  VIS Visions

FESTIVAL THEATRES
Roy Thomson Hall (60 Simcoe)
The Varsity (Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor West)
The Uptown (764 Yonge)
Elgin Theatre (189 Yonge)
The Cumberland (159 Cumberland)
ROM (100 Queen's Park Circle)
Isabel Bader (93 Charles West)
John Spotton (150 John)

FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS

indicates movies with four or five-N ratings

NOWHERE IN AFRICA CWC D: Caroline Link w/ Merab Ninidze, Juliane Kšhler. Germany. 141 minutes. Thursday, September 5, 5:30 pm VARSITY 8; Friday, September 13, 11:15 am VARSITY 3 Rating: NN
Hitler's rise forces a Jewish family from the comforts of Breslau to the shock of dusty rural Kenya. Jettel's husband is only a minor "bwana," which consigns his family to life in the bush; under bruising British rule it's not easy. Based on Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel, Nowhere In Africa is ably made, but there's a numbing sameness to it. Each ratchet of Jettel's growth from princess to African farmer feels predicted by Out Of Africa or that awful Kim Basinger movie. And little Regina's forays through the sun-bleached nostalgia of an African coming-of-age also block the film from finding much insight into its characters, including the trusty slave... I mean, cook. A little more Jane Campion, please, and a little less Chocolat. And turn that bloody soundtrack music off! CB

ARARAT GALA D: Atom Egoyan w/ Charles Aznavour, Arsinée Khanjian. Canada. 116 minutes. Thursday, September 5, 8 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; Thursday, September 5, 7:15 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NN
Supposedly Atom Egoyan's deep thoughts on the Turks' 1915 attempt to wipe out the Armenians, Ararat actually isn't. By constructing the film as a group of people talking about the Armenian holocaust while making a film on the subject 85 years after the fact, Egoyan gives us third-hand emotions that let him keep the monster on a leash and emotional trauma at arm's length. I'm inclined, the older I get, to put more value on art that deals with emotion directly, not intellectually - Mahler over Stravinsky, Faulkner over Pynchon, Mike Leigh over Antonioni. Egoyan tends to back away from emotion, which is why his adaptation of Russell Banks's The Sweet Hereafter is so startling. But that's dangerous when dealing with something like this historical event, which happened a long time ago to people we don't know in a place most of us can't find on the map. Egoyan's job as an artist is to make us care about his people, and he simply fails to do that. He does a lot of telling and very little showing, and the film is so busy worrying about artistic responsibility that it declines to take any. JH

RUSSIAN ARK VIS D: Alexandr Sokurov w/ Sergei Dreiden, Maria Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy, Mikhail Piotrovsky. Russia/Germany. 96 minutes. Friday, September 6, 3 pm VARSITY 8; Saturday, September 14, noon VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
It took Alexandr Sokurov (Moloch, Taurus) eight years and over 2,000 extras to shoot, in one single high-definition shot, this eerie historical stroll through the splendid chambers of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The film relives scenes from Russia's turbulent past - Peter the Great, Nicholas II's last supper, the 900-day Nazi siege - while the characters muse on Russia's conflicted relationship with its history with cheerful but often opaque eccentricity. Though the premise sounds more colorful than Sokurov's previous films, Russian Ark is only marginally less impenetrable than his portraits of Hitler and Stalin. A cinematic curiosity, Russian Ark is as technologically dazzling as it is narratively hermetic. JC

MORVERN CALLAR VIS D: Lynne Ramsay w/ Samantha Morton. UK. 97 minutes. Friday, September 6, 6 pm VARSITY 8; Sunday, September 8, 3:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNN
In her follow-up to Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay abandons the Celtic miserabilism of her earlier film to give us a portrait of a working-class gal whose boyfriend decides to off himself, leaving her his bank card, a few hundred pounds and his just-finished manuscript. She decides not to tell anyone that he's dead and heads off to Spain with a chum for a holiday. The film has a loose, picaresque structure but is held together by Samantha Morton's stupendous performance as a girl with few brains and no moral compass but an intriguing eye for the main chance and a peculiar sense of fun. It's as if she's suddenly giving the performance that everyone said she gave in Jesus' Son and Sweet And Lowdown. JH

HEAVEN SPEC D: Tom Tykwer w/ Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone. France/Germany/U.S. 93 minutes. Friday, September 6, 6:30 pm UPTOWN 1; Saturday, September 7 noon ELGIN Rating: NNNN
Heaven, sang David Byrne, is a place where nothing ever happens. But when the architects are Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, "nothing" comes with a massive moral infrastructure. Cate Blanchett plays a woman whose murderous revenge on an Italian drug kingpin goes badly awry, landing her in custody. But her translator (Giovanni Ribisi) becomes smitten, and the two set out on an adventure full of distilled philosophy, grace notes of faith, and yawning overhead shots Hitchcock would have killed for. This script was to have launched a new trilogy for the late Kieslowski, and Tykwer (Run Lola Run) treats it with respect. His direction is spare and elegiac, sometimes to the point of slumber. Ribisi's work is disciplined, and Blanchett is note-perfect, which makes me wish she could have worked with the real Polish master. A beautiful film, but inevitably unsatisfying. Maybe it shoulda been Wenders. CB

THE INTENDED CWC D: Kristian Levring w/ Janet McTeer, Brenda Fricker, Tony Maudsley. UK/Denmark. 110 minutes. Friday, September 6, 6:30 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Saturday, September 7, 12:30 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE Rating: NN
A trading post on the Menkuang River in the Malay jungle in 1924 is the site of this steamy melodrama by the Dogme-tized Kristian Levring. Janet McTeer is the intended of the title, the girlfriend of a surveyor hired by the martinetish Brenda Fricker to help build a road to the nearest town. While our intrepid couple wait until the rainy season allows the river to become navigable again, they must contend with the usual misfits suffering from jungle fever - a sex-obsessed son and his compliant servant (a bizarre Olympia Dukakis), a jealous nephew and a world-weary priest - as well as fierce ivory-hunting indigenous people. McTeer and Fricker tear up the scenery all too briefly, alas. PE

UNKNOWN PLEASURES CWC D: Jia Zhang-ke w/ Zhao Tao, Zheo Wei Wei. Japan/France/South Korea/.China. 113 minutes. Friday, September 6, 6:30 pm CUMBERLAND 2; Saturday, September 7, 1 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NN
A Chinese slacker movie for those who think that people not doing stuff is intrinsically more interesting if it happens in a language they don't understand. One of a group of aimless guys just out of school fixates on the girlfriend of a local gangster. This is not going to end well. Very nice cinematography, including some remarkably poetic shots of nuclear power plant cooling towers, but someone should tell the people who go around calling Jia Zhang-ke the best director out of China that the inability to manage a narrative is not a talent. JH

BOLLYWOOD/HOLLYWOOD PC D: Deepa Mehta w/ Rahul Khanna, Lisa Ray, Moushumi Chatterjee, Dina Pathak, Kulbushan Kharbanda, Ranjit Chowdhry. Canada. 103 minutes. Friday, September 6, 7 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Tuesday, September 10, 4:45 PM VARSITY 3 Rating: NN
Bollywood/Hollywood promises the world in its title but turns out to be the least of both worlds. Rahul Khanna plays a millionaire Toronto playboy forced by his worrying mother to settle down. He pays a woman he thinks is Spanish (Lisa Ray) to play the perfect Indian fiancee. Turns out she's not Spanish (no surprise there), which launches the whole family on an unrollicking series of romantic comedy capers. Mehta (Fire, Sam And Me) clearly loves playing with this giddy, New World love story, but the froth wilts fast and the musical numbers pale next to what's on offer from Bollywood's best. A decade ago, Srinivas Krishna's Masala took the same sly approach to Eastern and Western genre convention. Unfortunately, Bollywood/Hollywood fails to push the form forward. CB

RESPIRO CWC D: Emanuele Crialese w/ Valeria Golino. Italy/France. 90 minutes. Friday, September 6, 7 pm UPTOWN 3; Monday, September 9, 9:15 am VARSITY 1 Rating: NNNN
Respiro exhales its timeless magic-realist charms on a flat, sun-drenched island in the middle of nowhere. Like Anthony Quinn's Zorba, Valeria Golino's Angela brims over with contagious joie de vivre. She's an emotional and physical free spirit whose loving relationships with her husband and children verge on the hyper-intense. Director Crialese paints a rich picture of life in a Sicilian fishing village. (Amazing what boys will do to amuse themselves without modern technology.) He fashions a wholly satisfying fable enhanced by Golino's exuberant, career-defining performance and John Surman's hypnotic soundtrack. PE

JAPON VIS D: Carlos Reygadas w/ Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores. Mexico/.Spain. 122 minutes. Friday, September 6, 8:45 pm CUMBERLAND 3; Sunday, September 8, 3 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE Rating: NNNN
A slow-moving sensory infusion, this remarkable first feature takes the simple premise of a man leaving the big city to prepare for his suicide in the remote countryside and runs with it. Cultivated but disillusioned, he gradually develops a relationship with an uneducated old lady. Life is like that, it can overtake you when you don't expect it. Shot in super-cinemascope, sometimes with full 360-degree pans - Reygadas believes that composition is one of the most visceral and intuitive aspects of two-dimensional graphic arts - Japon (the non-specific title is simply meant to be evocative) looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful, too, with its inspired use of Arvo Part's Miserere at the beginning and his Canticle For Benjamin Britten literally shaping the film's final scene. PE

SECRETARY CWC D: Steven Shainberg w/ James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal. U.S. 104 minutes. Friday, September 6, 8:45 pm UPTOWN 2; Monday, September 9, noon VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
Based on a story from Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behaviour, Secretary charts a developing sado-masochistic relationship between an emotionally unavailable lawyer (was James Spader born to this role or what?) and his apparently naive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Gaitskill's stories tend to be very good on the shifting balances of power in unstable relationships, and Steven Shainberg's film captures those tensions with the exquisitely judged performances of his principals. JH

CITY OF GOD VIS D: Fernando Meirelles w/ Alexandre Rodrigues, Matheus Nachtergaele, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phelipe Haagensen, Jonathan Haagensen, Seu Jorge. Brazil. 135 minutes. Friday, September 6, 9 pm VARSITY 8; Sunday, September 8, 12:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNNN
The buzz began at Cannes for this kick-ass epic, the first Brazilian film since Pixote to illuminate young urban poverty and violence slickly enough for North American consumption. Chronicling the rise of the drug trade in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, it's a tour de force of complicated narrative structure and striking cinematography energized by more than 100 first-time actors between the ages of 12 and 19. There hasn't been this much callous child violence in a movie since Takashi Miike's Fudoh, but here we're emotionally involved in the narration of a boy who simply wants to be a photographer. City Of God will get noticed. PE

RESPIRO CWC D: Emanuele Crialese w/ Valeria Golino. Italy/France. 90 minutes. Friday, September 6, 7 pm UPTOWN 3; Monday, September 9, 9:15 am VARSITY 1 Rating: NNNN
Respiro exhales its timeless magic-realist charms on a flat, sun-drenched island in the middle of nowhere. Like Anthony Quinn's Zorba, Valeria Golino's Angela brims over with contagious joie de vivre. She's an emotional and physical free spirit whose loving relationships with her husband and children verge on the hyper-intense. Director Crialese paints a rich picture of life in a Sicilian fishing village. (Amazing what boys will do to amuse themselves without modern technology.) He fashions a wholly satisfying fable enhanced by Golino's exuberant, career-defining performance and John Surman's hypnotic soundtrack. PE

MARIE-JO AND HER TWO LOVES SPOT.D: Robert Guédiguian w/ Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan. France. 124 minutes. Friday, September 6, 9:15 pm CUMBERLAND 2; Thursday, September 12, 7:15 pm CUMBERLAND 1 Rating: NNN
Well, they aren't hunting and fishing. Spotlight director Robert Guédiguian's latest (his 11th) finds him in his customary setting (Marseilles) with his usual cast (Ariane Ascaride is his wife). He realistically explores the sexual and emotional life of a middle-aged femme infid�le who maintains a loving relationship with her husband and teenage daughter while trysting with a lonely ship's pilot. All three characters are fully fleshed out ordinary working folks who are unhappy when they're not coupling. It's comforting to know that sex in middle age can be exultant and transcendent, but it's frustrating to be given a window into such a no-win situation. PE

BAADASSSSS CINEMA CWC D: Isaac Julien. U.S./United Kingdom. 56 minutes. Friday, September 6, 9 pm ROM; Saturday, September 14, 3 pm ROM Rating: NNNWho's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks? Thanks to the triumph of blaxploitation, the answer's known the world over. But the black-cast crime thrillers of the early 70s are remembered more in fondness than in fact. Baadasssss Cinema offers a punchy, informed history of the era. How blaxploitation movies revitalized Hollywood with unadulterated heroes and huge infusions of box-office cash. How black power principles went from treason to cliché in less than a decade. How Melvin Van Peebles came up with the idea for Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. "What's something everybody's interested in? Poontang!" Julien now makes his home in the art world, and this doc has the brisk feel of a money gig. But it marshals a strong cast of commentators, including Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, guru/scholar bell hooks and film critics Elvis Mitchell and Armond White, who point out how Curtis Mayfield's SuperFly soundtrack worked in direct opposition to the film. Screens with One Night The Moon, by aboriginal Australian director Rachel Perkins (Radiance). CB

TALK TO HER SPEC D: Pedro Almod—var w/ Javier C‡mara, Dario Grandinetti. Spain. 112 minutes. Friday, September 6, 9:45 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Monday, September 9, 12:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNNN
After the exhilarating All About My Mother, Almod—var returns with a more discreet but even richer melodrama. Famed for his magnificently vivid female characters, he ventures into somewhat more "male" territory in this weird and wonderful tale of an unlikely friendship born in the corridors of a Madrid hospital between a despairing journalist (Dario Grandinetti) and a bizarre nurse (Javier C‡mara), both of them lonely men linked to the precarious lives of two women frozen in deep comas. As usual with Almod—var, the fertile narrative is laced with enhancing "perks." This time he surpasses himself with two stunning dance sequences choreographed by Pina Baush, a live performance by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, dazzling bouts of bullfighting and, as if all this weren't enough, a delightfully wacky seven-minute black-and-white silent film of his own making about a "shrinking lover." JC

CHAOS AND DESIRE (LA TURBULENCE DES FLUIDES) SPEC D: Manon Briand w/ Pascale Bussiére, Jean-Nicolas Verreault. Canada. 114 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9 pm VARSITY 8; also Sunday, September 8, 3 pm UPTOWN 2 Rating: NN
Manon Briand was last seen at the festival with 2 Seconds, which starred Charlotte Laurier as a competitive-cyclist-turned-bike-messenger. La Turbulence Des Fluides stars Pascale Bussièères as a seismologist who's shipped home by the Japanese company she works for when the tides stop ebbing and peaking in her home town of Baie-Comeau, Quebec. There's
her old college friend who's had a years-long lech for her, the town hunk whose wife drowned in that very spot years ago, the dinette manager (Geneviéve Bujold) who used to be a nun, the sleepwalking child. This is a movie with an awful lot of plot, but it's mostly New Age tripe and old-fashioned ghostly oddness - halfway effective and halfway silly. JH

JET LAG GALA D: Danièle Thompson w/ Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno, Sergi Lopez. France. 91 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9:30 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; also Sunday, September 8, noon UPTOWN 2 Rating: NNN
Jean Reno (The Professional) and Juliette Binoche (Chocolat) play ill-matched strangers who keep colliding in Charles de Gaulle Airport during an air traffic controllers strike. She's a beautician running away from an abusive relationship to Mexico; he's a chef-turned-frozen-food-designer on his way to his ex-mother-in-law's funeral in Munich. She wears too much makeup and is really annoying; he's prone to fainting spells and hates smells.

Then he offers to share his room at the Hilton, spills vinaigrette on her and she comes out of the shower without her makeup (actually with all the makeup it takes to look like one isn't wearing any makeup), suddenly has better lighting and looks, well, just like Juliette Binoche. (He, on the other hand, seems to be pinch-hitting for Daniel Auteuil in his harried bourgeois businessman mode throughout). The chemistry of the stars is almost enough to hold this picture together, but given that being stuck in an airport is one of life's more hellish quotidien experiences, why would anyone want to see a movie about it? JH

BAD GUY HARVEST D: Kim Ki-duk w/ Cho Jae-hyun, Suh Won, Choi Duk-moon, Kim Yoon-tae, Kim Jung-young. South Korea. 100 minutes. Saturday, September 7, noon VARSITY 8; Sunday, September 8, 4:30 pm CUMBERLAND 3 Rating: N
When an exploitation film wears the guise of art, it's usually French or by Abel Ferrara. Here's a change. Kim Ki-duk (The Isle, Address Unknown) spins stories that look like S/M fantasies, but plays them straight. Here, a tight-lipped thug assaults a cutiefied young woman on the street. Then, through a sudden plot shrug, he forces her into prostitution. Bad Guy features several scenes of poor innocent Suh Won struggling and whimpering under the sexual aggression of men. But it's too sloppy to be a proper exploitation film. After a couple of genuinely unsettling scenes off the top, this film sinks to its own level of badness and stays there. CB

INTACTO CWC D: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo w/ Max von Sydow, Leonardo Sbaraglia. Spain. 108 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 6 pm UPTOWN 2; Friday, September 13, 1:45 pm CUMBERLAND 1 Rating: N
I'm a sucker for casino and gambling movies. But Intacto, which deals with a strange game in which people in an isolated casino in the middle of Spanish nowhere make wagers to win each other's luck, is a big flea-infested dog of a movie, with distemper and bladder-control problems. A great look cannot hide the funereal pacing, unconvincing characters and overextended central metaphor. Mind-numbingly inept. JH

LOST IN LA MANCHA RTR D: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe w/ Terry Gilliam, Johnny Depp, Jean Rochefort. U.S./UK. 89 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 3 pm, VARSITY 8; Tuesday, September 10, 9 am UPTOWN 2 Rating: NNNN
Essential viewing for anyone who thinks making movies is not a struggle. Lost In La Mancha fascinatingly details maverick director Terry Gilliam's unsuccessful attempts to complete The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a project the inspired iconoclast has been working on since 1991. ("Quixote, his madness and sanity, encompasses all my concerns," he says.) Gilliam in pre-production ingeniously draws scenes, is utterly delighted while shooting tests and gleefully attles against all odds. But then there's the fragility of the logistics, the bad luck of the weather and the loss to illness of the great comic actor Jean Rochefort, the perfect lead. Johnny Depp gives a view from the inside, and we're even treated to a busload of investors on location. In the end, the windmills of reality triumph and the insurance company ends up owning the script. PE

DOLLS VIS D: Takeshi Kitano w/ Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima. Japan/France. 113 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 3:30 pm UPTOWN 1; Friday, September 13, noon VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
Kitano eschews his gun for this cold study of passionate love morphing into extreme devotion. The title refers to the centuries-old Japanese art of Bunraku theatre, where colourful uppets enact a story set to a musical narrative. The puppeteers are cloaked in black and very visible, so focusing on the dolls' surprisingly expressive faces is essential for optimum enjoyment. Kitano would have us do the same in his tale of three very different couples, all of whom suffer for love. But like Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, it's Dolls' intensely blazing colours that take our breath away. PE

PAST PERFECT PC D: Daniel MacIvor w/ MacIvor, Rebecca Jenkins. Canada. 82 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 3:30 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Monday, September 9, 10 am UPTOWN 3 Rating: NNN
Scenes from the end of a Canadian marriage. Daniel MacIvor's feature film debut consists of snapshots of the marriage of Cecil (MacIvor) and Charlotte (Rebecca Jenkins) on the day they meet on a Halifax-to-Vancouver flight and on the day three years later when their union seems on the verge of collapse. This is respectable work from Toronto theatre veteran MacIvor, who's previously worked on films with Laurie Lynd, but it lacks a certain spark. It's spare, elliptical storytelling, but I kind of wish one of the characters would just once do something surprising. On the other hand, I have to watch my prejudices; if this were directed by Beno”t Jacquot and starred Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Auteuil, we might be calling it a masterpiece. JH 

MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY SPEC D: Hayao Miyazaki w/ the voices of Lauren Holly, Suzanne Pleshette. Japan. 125 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 6 pm VARSITY 8; Monday, September 9, 1 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NNNN
A hallucinatory anime from Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away is packed with gods and monsters. But it begins, as fables must, with an ordinary little girl. Chihiro gets separated from her parents - they're soon turned into pigs - and her identity. She ends up working in a literal ghost town, preparing baths for a whole pantheon of good and evil gods. In order to get back to her life, she knows she must first remember her name. Spirited Away draws deep from the well of Japanese folklore, and Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli animators turn in the rich first-rate work they're known for. This feels like a Japanese take on Alice In Wonderland, but with plenty of dread to balance the whimsy. CB

FRIDA GALA D: Julie Taymor w/ Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina. U.S. 120 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 6:30 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; Sunday, September 8, 9:30 am UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNNN
Hollywood movies try to equalize the size of actors. Julie Taymor's biographical look at Mexican artist Frida Kahlo takes the unusual tack of emphasizing how tiny alma Hayek is: Alfred Molina's Diego Rivera and almost everyone else in the picture towers over her. Concentrating on Kahlo's adulthood and drawing her own palette from the colours of Kahlo's paintings, Taymor (Titus) ignores most of the clichés of the artist biopic to concentrate on the emotional roller coaster that was Kahlo's life, mostly as a result of her 25-year relationship with Rivera. Hayek is tremendous, as is Molina, and the film also offers a couple of very juicy cameos, including Edward Norton as Nelson Rockefeller. Taymor is a visually inventive director, so this one's worth seeing on the really big screen at the Uptown. JH

 L'IDOLE CWC D: Samantha Lang w/ LeeLee Sobieski, James Hong. France. 110 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 6:30 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Monday, September 9, 9 am UPTOWN 2 Rating: NNN
Male directors look at LeeLee Sobieski and see an all-American dream girl; female directors look at the Slavic cheekbones and downturned mouth and see disaster, disturbance and instability. It's no accident that Sobieski's best performances have been for Christine Lahti (My First Mister) and Samantha Lang here, because neither director feels the need to glamourize her star. In L'Idole she plays an actress living in Paris who's understudying her lover's wife. She becomes strangely involved with the aged Chinese man who lives across the hall (James Long, best known for Big Trouble In Little China). Featuring American stars working in French - Sobieski is fluent - this is one of the odder mainstream projects at the festival, but an interesting film with an unusually stylized lighting plan. JH

CUBAN RAFTERS RTR D: Carles Bosch, Josep M. Domenech w/ Guillermo Armas, Rafael Cano, Miriam Hernandez. Spain. 120 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 6:45 pm VARSITY 4; Sunday, September 8, 11:45 am CUMBERLAND 4 Rating: NN
The 1994 flotilla of Cuban refugees prompted Bill Clinton to bar entry into the U.S., which left thousands stranded in limbo. Some found themselves, oddly, Cuban refugees in an American refugee camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Others sank to the bottom of the sea. Cuban Rafters follows the path from Havana to the promised land, but it's a mixed bag of a movie. For an hour it jumbles along, skipping from subject to subject, cutting manically and constantly introducing new people. It's only in the second hour, once some people have made it to the U.S., that the film settles down. Then it's the familiar landscape of big disappointments and painfully alloyed success. Bosch and Domenech play with a few nice techniques, including songs stitched together from interview subjects' words, and footage folded back into the film in the form of video letters. But the end result is over-busy and remote. CB

 LONG LIFE, HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY PC D: Mina Shum w/ Sandra Oh, Ric Young. Canada. 100 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 8:30 pm CUMBERLAND 2; Monday, September 9, 4 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NNN
Mina Shum is back with her second film since Double Happiness, which means we've got another dull comedy enlivened by the presence of the luminous Sandra Oh, an actor you wish could find better parts with great directors instead of appearing on the funny-as-a-crutch HBO sitcom Arliss. Here she plays a single mom whose 12-year-old daughter is trying to become some kind of sorcerer, only all her spells get misdirected and wackiness ensues. Shum must have shot the entire film during the rainy season or when everyone was on vacation - this is the most underpopulated Chinatown in movie history. She can't pace, and there's not a single interesting shot. But she does have some very good actors. JH

 WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD CWC D: Anthony and Joe Russo w/ William H. Macy. U.S. 82 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9:30 pm UPTOWN 1; Sunday, September 8, 9:30 am ISABEL BADER THEATRE Rating: N
This caper flick is so dumb it's incapable of even adding up its many parts. It ends up being closer to Louis Malle's total disaster, Crackers, than to the movie that inspired both films, Mario Monicelli's Big Deal On Madonna Street. A comic look at a group of incompetent misfits hoping to score the heist of a lifetime, it's so thin that (ˆ la Gertrude Stein) there's almost no there there. It would take more than George Clooney's megawatt cameo as a safe-cracking guru to save this tiresome misadventure from being something you'd carve up on Thanksgiving. PE

NEVER GET OUTTA THE BOAT CWC D: Paul Quinn w/ Nick Gillie, Darren Burrows. U.S. 97 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9:30 pm, ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Sunday, September 8, 9 am, UPTOWN 2. Rating: NNN
An ultra-low-budget shot-on-video entry from John Cusack's New Crimes company, Never Get Outta The Boat is about the lives, battles and relapses of recovering junkies in a halfway house. It's impressive for what it is, but it's not a kind of film I like. The relatively unknown cast does some very showy acting in a screaming-meltdown style that strikes me as much easier than the quiet balance of despair and optimism that Julianne Moore manages in Far From Heaven or the gleam that Kate Beckinsale develops in Laurel Canyon. JH

 FAMILY
RTR D: Sami Saif, Phie Ambo w/ Saif, Phie Ambo, Walid Khalil Kaid Saif. Denmark. 90 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9:45 pm VARSITY 4; Monday, September 9, 10 am CUMBERLAND 3 Rating: NN
Sami Saif's Danish mother died, his brother committed suicide and he doesn't even know his father. So at the constant urging of co-director Phie Ambo, he sets out at the age of 28 to track down his dad in Yemen. There's one heart-stopping scene in this film, where Sami first makes phone contact with his family in Yemen. But once he gets there the film falls into the familiar story of dipping one's toes in the foreign waters of home. Saif is no more insightful about his family than most of us would be, which makes him only sporadically interesting for the film's 90 minutes. Family is marked by compromised success, just like its music, which is haunting but awfully reminiscent of an Errol Morris film. CB

 LAUREL CANYON SPEC D: Lisa Chodolenko w/ Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale. U.S. 103 minutes. Saturday, September 7, 9:45 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Monday, September 9, 3:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNN
Frances McDormand plays an aging-hippie-turned-record-producer whose son the lawyer (Christian Bale) and his new bride (Kate Beckinsale) show up to crash at her Laurel Canyon house. They find a rock band in residence and Mom's freewheeling lifestyle unabated in middle age. An outstanding cast, but this is McDormand's show all the way. The character dynamic is much less interesting than in Chodolenko's earlier High Art, but the film is rather more fun. JH

AUTO FOCUS SPECIAL D: Paul Schrader w/ Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe. USA. 107 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 9 pm, UPTOWN 1, also Tuesday, September 10, 9 am VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
Schrader's latest film recounts one of those odd true stories, the life of Bob Crane, the amiable star of Hogan's Heroes, who had no survival skills and a not-so-secret life of sexual addiction and private pornography. With Greg Kinnear as Crane and Willem Dafoe as his best friend/chief sycophant/video equipment supplier, Auto Focus is the story of a relentless pleasure-seeker as told by a director who distrusts pleasure but is disinclined to turn judgmental. Schrader (American Gigolo, Affliction) has a tendency to put his characters under the microscope without putting them on the analyst's couch, so a film like this, where the chief character declines self-analysis, has a certain clinical distance built in. Kinnear, an actor of limitless shallow charm, is an interesting choice to play Crane.

The Four Feathers GALA D: Shekhar Kapur w/ Health Ledgder, Wes Bentley, Kate Hudson. USA. 125 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 6:30 pm ROY THOMPSON HALL, also, Monday, September 9, 9:30 am UPTOWN 1 Rating: NN
This is the fifth or sixth filmed version of the classic adventure novel. In 1884 on the eve of his regiment's shipping out to the Sudan, a young English soldier (Heath Ledger) resigns his commission, causing his three best friends and his fiancee to reject him, each sending him a white feather as a symbol of cowardice. He decides that he must redeem himself by following the army to Africa and returning the feathers personally, after acts of heroism. People back then had sterner ideas about duty than are common today.

The fun of this version is the sheer ethnocultural irony of it – none of the three principal actors is English (Ledger is Australian, Wes Bentley and Kate Hudson are American) and the director, a really interesting choice for a story that has a very romantic view of English colonialism, is Indian.

Of course, Kapur managed to turn a chamber drama about Elizabeth I's ascension to the throne into an action movie entirely through the way he used the camera, so giving him a couple of armies and miles of scenic desert to play with almost guarantees visual overkill.

The young cast acquits itself well – though Bentley (American Beauty) has the unenviable task of measuring up to Ralph Richardson's extraordinary work in the 1939 Zoltan Korda film of the story. Kapur is so in love with the visual possibilities of the story that he forgets to pace it, and will thrown in spectacular shots, for example the overhead shots in Omdurman Prison, whether they are needed or not.

 THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER RTR D: Eugene Jarecki. U.S./UK. 79 minutes. Sunday, September 8, noon CUMBERLAND 3; Wednesday, September 11, 3 pm ROM Rating: NNNN
Broadcast news journalism as good as it gets. It's a thorough, well-argued inquiry into the war criminality of Henry A. Kissinger - brilliant mind, bon vivant, baseball nut, Robert Evans pal, squirer of starlets, best-selling author, national security adviser and secretary of state under Richard Nixon. The Trials Of Henry Kissinger makes a strong case that this disciple of Metternich and Bismarck may be guilty of having violated American law in the days before Allende's election was ratified in Chile. Not to mention the "peace with honour" in Vietnam that wasted seven years and thousands of American lives. Not to mention the secret bombing of Cambodia and the backing of Lon Nol that cost millions of Cambodian lives. Former colleagues defend him, attack his motives and confess they'd had enough. Christopher Hitchens, Kissinger's chief attacker in print, makes his argument, as do high-powered lawyers. Amazingly, we're privy to a phone call from Kissinger's editor, Michael Korda, in which Korda poo-poos the British judge's order detaining Pinochet in 1998. Very instructive. PE

A PECK ON THE CHEEK MAST D: Mani Ratnam w/ Madhavan, Simran, Prakash Raj, Nandita Das, P. S. Keerthana. India. 123 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 3 pm VARSITY 8; Wednesday, September 11, 10 pm VARSITY 3 Rating: NNNN
Mani Ratnam's latest is the story of a precocious Tamil girl named Amudha. It begins before her conception in a Sri Lanka that looks idyllic, except for the war, and moves toward her portentous birth in a refugee camp. In an absolutely sublime stretch of narrative, it leaps to Madras, where Amudha's adoptive parents reveal the truth about her birth. Turns out she inspired her father's first published stories and brought her adoptive parents together in marriage. But Amudha's desperate desire to find her birth mother brings the family to Sri Lanka. There, Ratnam plunges them into the conflict between Tamil rebels and the Sinhalese army. A Peck On The Cheek - I still can't believe the title - is epic in the best way. It's filled with sudden shocks of war, but the performances and direction are always emotionally precise. For Western audiences, its beauty and heart may evoke a mix of Central Station (Central Do Brasil) and The Thin Red Line, but Ratnam gives it political backbone rarely found on this turf. Magnificent, gorgeous and powerfully human. CB

HEATSCORE, FLUX, SPRING CHICKENS, LITTLE DICKIE, STRAIGHT IN THE FACE, COUNTDOWN, BLUE SKIES PC D: Adam Brodie and Dave Derewlany, Chris Hinton, Matthew Holm, Anita McGee, Peter Demas, Nathan Morlando, Ann Marie Fleming. Canada. 106 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 3:30 pm ROM; Tuesday, September 10, 3 pm ROM Rating: NN
Fleming's film is the standout here. Too bad it's been thrown among the dogs. This is a long, mostly exasperating program of shorts. Heatscore lurches from one slavish imitation to the next, spinning a story of a geek hero and switched suitcases into an endless half-hour. Chris Hinton's Flux serves up pro-grade, kinetic line animation, but the cartoonish violence and sudden shifts of scale and setting make it more enervating than entertaining. The mix of comedy and music in Anita McGee's Little Dickie and Peter Demas's Straight In The Face promise more, but Little Dickie's Lumberjack Song gambit falls limp, and the writing in Demas's straight-gay mix-up story can't deliver the laughs or the sparks it wants to. Countdown is nothing but sparks. The story has a bike courier dreaming of action-star fame, but director Nathan Morlando shows scant interest in his character. Instead, this is a film about making stuff look wicked cool. Thank god for Ann Marie Fleming. In Blue Skies, a performer weeps in his dressing room, finds comfort from his dresser, then emerges onstage to sing the Irving Berlin song. Simple, but watch how this film is cut, paced and composed. There's not a false frame here. This is Fleming's nod to 9/11, but it won't be confined by that context. Must-see in this program: Blue Skies. Best time to check voicemail/get a coffee/pee: Heatscore. CB

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE CWC D: Phillip Noyce w/ Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Kenneth Branagh. Australia. 94 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 6:30 pm, UPTOWN 1; Tuesday, September 10, noon, CUMBERLAND 3. Rating: NNN
This is the true story of a 14-year-old mixed-race Aboriginal girl and her two younger sisters who escape a from government forced-assimilation camp and try to walk home through 2,500 kilometres of wilderness. The film easily avoids the built-in perils of self-righteousness by focusing on quiet naturalistic acting that lets everyone's behaviour speak for itself, and the story's strong suspense emerges unforced. The powerful landscape and Peter Gabriel's ominous score add much to the film's emotional power. AD

GAMBLING, GODS AND LSD PC D: Peter Mettler. Canada/Switzerland. 180 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 8:45 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Tuesday, September 10, 6 pm VARSITY 5 Rating: NNNN
Director/cinematographer Peter Mettler (Visions Of Light) spent eight years shooting the various elements of this non-linear documentary about altered states of consciousness at locations ranging from religious meetings to the Las Vegas strip. The fascinating three-hour exploration/autobiography/Zen meditation actually deserves a more prominent spot than some of the festival's conventional features. Strangely enough, Odeon Films has actually acquired the film for theatrical release. To see something this peculiar in the Elgin would be a different trip entirely. CB

FAR FROM HEAVEN GALA D: Todd Haynes w/ Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert. U.S. 107 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 9:30 pm, ROY THOMSON HALL; Monday, September 9, noon Uptown 2 Rating: NNNN
This is a profoundly odd experience. The film functions in Todd Haynes's career (Safe, Velvet Goldmine) as his version of Gus Van Sant's Psycho - it's a perverse yet visually precise uncredited remake of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Julianne Moore plays the Jane Wyman role of the Connecticut matron who falls for her gardener. This time she's married rather than widowed, her husband (Dennis Quaid) drinks because of his dark sexual secret, and the gardener isn't Rock Hudson but Dennis Haysbert, who's a little too black to be romantically involved with a Connecticut matron in 1956. It's hard to know exactly what to make of the film, because despite the ironic Brechtian distances implied in the gelid Sirk style, I don't think Haynes intends for it to be ironic. Moore gives a stunning performance, but she and Haynes are walking a very curious tightrope indeed. One occasionally suspects that Haynes didn't build the sets so he could make the film but rather made the film so he could build the sets. Executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney. JH

 SHAOLIN SOCCER SPEC D: Stephen Chow w/ Chow, Vicki Zhao. China. 111 minutes. Sunday, September 8, 10:30 pm VARSITY 8; Tuesday, September 10, 9:45 am CUMBERLAND 2 Rating: NN
One of Stephen Chow's low, silly comedies, about a group of down-and-out kung fu masters who bring their skills together to form a soccer team for the national championship. There's a believe-in-yourself theme, a lot of obvious wire work and about six good laughs, if you count homosexual panic jokes. Miramax's dubbed print isn't quite bad enough to remind us of the comically horrific dubbing of kung fu movies in the mid-70s. This is, quite frankly, a movie that doesn't belong in a film festival. I'm waiting for the sequel, Shaolin Soccer Mom. JH

STEVIE
RTR D: Steve James w/ Stephen Fielding, Steve James. U.S. 140 minutes. Monday, September 9, 6 pm VARSITY 8; Tuesday, September 10, 2:45 pm VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
Stevie is an asshole from southern Illinois up on charges of sexually abusing his 8-year-old cousin. His mother is a permed, tight-mouthed tyrant who beat him as a boy and handed him over to his grandmother in the trailer down the road to raise. His grandmother prettifies Stevie's every screw-up he makes. He's a lit explosive, and this film by the director of Hoop Dreams feels like a long, slow wait for the manchild to blow up and take new victims with him. Steve James was once Stevie's Big Brother, and at every appearance he makes in the film he appears to be mottled with old guilt. He abandoned the boy, and the boy grew up to be a scruffy, angry monster. There are two flaws. First, Stevie deflects blame and feelings through the whole film, and shows practically no introspective powers. Second, James imposes urban, middle-class expectations on Stevie's every move, which makes James look like an idiot far too often. CB

 MOONLIGHT MILE GALA D: Brad Silberling w/ Jake Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon. U.S. 112 minutes. Monday, September 9, 6:30 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; Tuesday, September 10, 9:30 am UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNN
With its Oscar-winning stars, sensitive family story and delicate period recreation, Moonlight Mile is tailor-made for gala presentation. Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon are a long-married couple playing host to Jake Gyllenhaal, who was to marry their daughter until her murder before the story begins. The relationships unfold as the film moves toward the trial and Gyllenhaal's inevitable departure. Tremendous work by Sarandon, but someone should tell Gyllenhaal, who was so effective in Donnie Darko, that Tobey Maguire's already given this performance. And, for period detail nitpickers, the title song by the Rolling Stones plays at some point on a jukebox in a bar - a neat trick, since Moonlight Mile was never on a single. JH

BLIND SPOT. HITLER'S SECRETARY RTR D: André Heller, Othmar Schmiderer w/ Traudl Junge. Austria. 95 minutes. Monday, September 9, 10 pm UPTOWN 3; Tuesday, September 10 4:30 pm, VARSITY 2 Rating: NNN
Hitler was very soft-spoken in private - typically Austrian. He liked cold rooms and didn't like to be touched. He always washed his hands after playing with his dog Blondie. He enjoyed coaxing Blondie to sing low, like Zarah Leander. He complained that he was losing his pretty secretaries to marriage. He said that maybe they should wear rings in their lips like negroes. He wasn't a criminal; he only followed his ideals. These are some of the things we learn in this chilling document, the result of more than 10 hours of interviews with the 81-year-old Traudl Junge by André Heller (who happens to be an Austrian Jew). Junge worked as one of Hitler's four secretaries for the last 18 months of his life. She remembers names, dates and events as if they were yesterday, so effortlessly do they fall from her mouth. Of course, she had no idea what was going on outside the bunker. PE

 TALK TO HER SPEC D: Pedro Almod—var w/ Javier C‡mara, Dario Grandinetti.Spain. 112 minutes. Friday, September 6, 9:45 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Monday, September 9, 12:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNNN
After the exhilarating All About My Mother, Almod—var returns with a more discreet but even richer melodrama. Famed for his magnificently vivid female characters, he ventures into somewhat more "male" territory in this weird and wonderful tale of an unlikely friendship born in the corridors of a Madrid hospital between a despairing journalist (Dario Grandinetti) and a bizarre nurse (Javier Cámara), both of them lonely men linked to the precarious lives of two women frozen in deep comas. As usual with Almod—var, the fertile narrative is laced with enhancing "perks." This time he surpasses himself with two stunning dance sequences choreographed by Pina Baush, a live performance by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, dazzling bouts of bullfighting and, as if all this weren't enough, a delightfully wacky seven-minute black-and-white silent film of his own making about a "shrinking lover." JC

PUNCH PC D: Guy Bennett w/ Sonja Bennet, Meredith McGeachie, Michael Riley, Marcia Laskowski. Canada. 90 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 9:15 pm VARSITY 4; Thursday, September 12, 1 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NN
Some strong dramatic potential is KO'd by an overwritten, over-earnest, contrived story performed with ordinary, TV-like acting and pedestrian visuals. Meredith McGeachie stands out as the topless boxer who goes out for revenge against the troubled teen who decks her sister, only to find her aggressive impulses have mired her, like the film, in a mild father-daughter psychodrama. In the end, everybody tries hard to be nicer. AD

 CHIHWASEON GALA D: Im Kwon-taek w/ Choi Min-sik, Ahn Sung-kee. South Korea. 117 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 9:30 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; Wednesday, September 11, 3 pm UPTOWN 2 Rating: NN
After dozens of films, Im Kwon-Taek decided that he wanted to be a film artist, not a hack. Ever since, his films, most notably Chunhyang, have had art-house virtues and vices. If you like that kind of thing, they're beautifully shot and meditatively paced, but if not they're pretentiously pictorial and slower than a studio executive's thought processes. Chihwaseon is the story of a late 19th-century peasant painter who challenges the artistic bigwigs of his age. Most of them sit around arguing over the younger painter's talent and wearing hats that look like something kicky Givenchy might have whipped up for Audrey Hepburn on a pilgrim theme. The peasant must prove his kung fu is stronger. This film was co-winner of the directing prize at Cannes, which shows that film festival juries are as easily fooled as anyone else. JH

DIRTY DEEDS
SPEC D: David Caesar w/ Bryan Brown, John Goodman, Toni Collette. Australia. 110 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 9:30 pm UPTOWN 1; Thursday, September 12, 9 am VARSITY 8 Rating: NNN
Well, it's finally happened. The Aussies have come up with a Guy Ritchie imitator, someone who imitates someone who imitates Quentin Tarantino without actually understanding him. Here, Bryan Brown is the boss of the Sydney underworld in 1969 - so the snap-brim fedoras make sense - when the American mob shows up in the guise of John Goodman. Goodman's looking for a toehold Down Under, and nefarious schemes ensue as the Americans bring pizza to 'Rooville and find that the locals aren't nearly as dumb as they expected. It's eminently watchable, and Goodman and Toni Collette work really well in uncharacteristic roles, but I hope Tarantino's working on a western or something, so people will stop copying his crime pictures. JH

RUB & TUG PC D: Soo Lyu w/ Don McKellar, Lindy Booth, Kira Clavell, Tara Spencer-Nairn. Canada. 90 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 9:30 pm CUMBERLAND 2; Saturday, September 14, 1 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NN
Soo Lyu makes her feature debut on the She's Gotta Have It tip, with a comedy about sex and strong women. Lindy Booth, Kira Clavell and Tara Spencer-Nairn play workers in a massage parlour where the boss is at their mercy, the cops are at the door and the johns are begging for full release. For prurient eyes, there's precious little rubbing, and no tugging at all. Instead, Lyu makes a sex-trade version of Nine To Five, with Don McKellar in the Dabney Coleman role as the new manager trying to take charge of the girls. Rub & Tug shoots for giddy office comedy, but a stronger, more insightful film can be glimpsed at the end of each weak laugh. CB

8 WOMEN SPEC D: Fran�ois Ozon w/ Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart and Virginie Ledoyen. France. 103 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 9:45 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Thursday, September 12, 3:30 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNNN
8 Women is more movie than you can stand. It's a melodrama-mystery-musical set in a country house in the 50s, and as constructed as a 50s bosom. Arch, arch, arch, and glorious every minute of it. Fran�ois Ozon is a recent fave rave in Europe, partly thanks to his uncanny channelling of Fassbinder via Douglas Sirk. Here, he navigates movie artifice masterfully and pulls a brilliant ensemble performance from his super-charged cast. Isabelle Huppert turns in whole arias of repression, and it's a relief to see the bitch back in Deneuve. CB

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM CWC D: Gurinder Chadha w/ Parminder K. Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. UK. 112 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 10 pm UPTOWN 3; Thursday, September 12, 4:30 pm CUMBERLAND 1 Rating: NNN
Like Shaolin Soccer in Hong Kong, this British romantic comedy did boffo box office over 'ome. The title refers to English footballer David Beckham's uncanny ability to score on penalty shots by kicking the ball in an arc around the keeper. The film's spunky 18-year-old heroine uses it as validation for bending the rules imposed by her tradition-bound East Indian parents to prevent her from playing the game she loves. Director Chadha steps out of the narrow focus of her earlier Bhaji On The Beach to create a true multi-ethnic picture of middle-class success and girl power, even if its centre is a round ball.

SMALL VOICES CWC D: Gil M. Portes w/ Alessandra de Rossi, Dexter Doria, Gina Alajar, Amy Austria. Philippines. 109 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 10 pm VARSITY 2; Friday, September 13, 10 am UPTOWN 3 Rating: NNN
Not a good place to start if you're new to Philippine movies and not a good place to return to if you're already a fan of their strong stories, raw emotions and hard-edged social commentary. The story is predictable from the moment the new young teacher arrives at a backwoods school to find lackadaisical colleagues and kids kept out of class to work on the families' farms. The film strives for warm-hearted and morally uplifting,but delivers only mild drama, fuzzy conflict, stereotyped characters, a dragging pace and a visual style that looks like television.

PROMISED LAND PA D: Jason Xenopoulos w/ Nick Boraine, Yvonne van den Berg, Daniel Browde, Louis van Niekerk, Dan Robbertse, Ian Roberts. South Africa. 100 minutes. Tuesday, September 10, 10:15 pm VARSITY 3; Thursday, September 12, 9:30 am VARSITY 4 Rating: N
An expat Afrikaner named George (Nick Boraine) returns from London to bury his mother in rural South Africa. But he's waylaid at an ominous, under-lit family farm where everyone acts like they're about to sprout fangs. Poor George discovers that nothing is what it seems! Somewhere underneath all the needless gilt that first-time director Jason Xenopoulos inflicts on the story, there's undoubtedly a sincere tale of what happens when roots are torn up because they have to be. However, each scene in this film is beaten till it can't breathe, and the intrusive, over-slick style fits the rural setting like sequins on a duck. Promised Land is Southern Gothic directed like a jeans commercial, though not as seductive. CB

KEDMA CWC D: Amos Gita• w/ Andrei Kashkar, Helena Yaralova, Yussef Abu Warda, Moni Moshonov, Juliano Merr. Israel/.France/.Italy. 100 minutes. Wednesday, September 11, 6 pm UPTOWN 1; Friday, September 13, 9:45 am CUMBERLAND 2 Rating: NN
A group of eastern European Jewish refugees arrive on the shores of a Palestine in turmoil on the eve of the creation of Israel: a red-hot premise for a film. In the hands of courageous and uncompromising Israeli director Amos Gita• (Kadosh, Kippur), Kedma has all the makings of a potentially explosive film. Unfortunately, the crusading passion that animated Gita•'s earlier work is missing, leaving a stringent austerity conveyed in long, static, angst-ridden shots, heavy silences and declamatory monologues. It's a film that's as commendable as it is - I'll just come right out and say it - deadening.

MADAME SATA CWC D: Karim A•nouz w/ Lázaro Ramos. Brazil. 105 minutes. Wednesday, September 11, 6:30 pm UPTOWN 2; Saturday, September 14, 7 pm VARSITY 2 or 3 Rating: NNN
Six feet of gay, black, hard body resplendent in tight pants, silk shirt and Panama hat, Jo‹o Francisco dos Santos has been living by his wits (and cruising Rio de Janeiro's bohemian Lapa district) since his mother purportedly sold him for a mule when he was eight. When this absorbing biopic begins, in 1932, he's just about to become Madame Sat‹, a kind of Brazilian Josephine Baker in drag. The tender, proud, but explosively violent 30-year-old first tries on his new persona in the nightclub where he tends bar. Ramos's multi-faceted, confident performance brilliantly conveys dos Santos's complex personality. The Biography Channel won't be able to handle this one.

WAITING FOR HAPPINESS PA D: Abderrahmane Sissako w/ Khatra Ould Abdel Kader, Maata Ould Mohamed Abeid, Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed, Nana Diakité, Fatimetou Mint Ahmeda. Mauritania/France. 95 minutes. Wednesday, September 11, 6:30 pm ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Friday, September 13, 4 pm UPTOWN 3 Rating: NNNN
Africa has found its Buster Keaton and its Tsai Ming-liang. Three years ago, Abderrahmane Sissako made Life On Earth, one of the most timeless of the 2000 Seen By... series of millennial films. In its tone and style, Waiting For Happiness could be a sequel. This time, a quiet young man named Abdallah returns to a port town in Mauritania, where he has roots but no connection. But the story is no more than a whisper. Instead, Sissako seems more interested in how the slow creep of time and tradition work on Abdallah and the characters around him. The compositions are meticulous, the lighting sublime and the studied minimalism matched by windows of absurdity that give the film its philosophy of life. This is a remarkable portrait painted in wind, sun, sand, tea and days.

SEX IS COMEDY MAST D: Catherine Breillat w/ Anne Parrillaud, Grégoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida. France. 92 minutes. Wednesday, September 11, 9 pm UPTOWN 1; Friday, September 13, 9 am VARSITY 8 Rating: NN
The controversial Catherine Breillat (Romance, Fat Girl), usually dedicated to pushing the boundaries of art-house sex, indulges in a navel-gazing exercise in the form of a making-of doc. Behind the catchy title lies a semi-autobiographical story about a female director (Anne Parillaud) trying to direct two very young actors through a steamy sex scene. What could have been a sexy, playful and insightful film soon becomes tedious, burdened by an insufferably self-conscious script littered with forced and hollow philosophical musings. Fans of Breillat's provocative fare will be disappointed. Others will not be converted. JC

MY MOTHER'S SMILE MAST D: Marco Bellocchio w/ Sergio Castellitto, Jacqueline Lustig. Italy. 102 minutes. Thursday, September 12, 7 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Saturday, September 14, 3 pm UPTOWN 2; Saturday, September 7, 7:15 pm CUMBERLAND 1; Monday, September 9, 2:15 pm CUMBERLAND 4 Rating: NNN
After a series of excruciating historical pieces, Marco Bellocchio delivers a bizarre mix of Catholicism and surrealism that sparked heated controversy in Italy and is not without its mystifying charms. Ernesto (Sergio Castellitto), an established painter, suddenly learns that the Church is thinking of canonizing his mother. The bewildering news that his mother, who was killed by his brother, might become a saint, along with a whirlwind of other puzzling events, plunges the resolutely atheist artist into a period of conflicted and eerie self-examination. Though the film will not have the same blasphemous resonance outside Italy, it remains an enigmatic and at times entrancing cinematographic curiosity. JC

THE LAST LETTER MAST D: Frederick Wiseman w/ Catherine Samie. France. 61 minutes. Thursday, September 12, 7:15 pm VARSITY 8; Friday, September 13, 5:15 pm VARSITY 2 or 3; Monday, September 9, 6 pm ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM; Friday, September 13, 9:45 pm VARSITY 7 Rating: NNNN
A woman stands alone on a stage reciting a letter she has written to her son. Gradually we learn she is a loving mother, cultured woman and Russian-Jewish doctor living in a small Ukrainian town that has just been invaded by the Nazis. She speaks of her life, past and present, and her eloquence has the directness and power of someone who knows she is about to die. Catherine Samie's heartfelt naturalism brings the letter to life, but Frederick Wiseman's subtle direction elevates the material even higher. His varied use of shadow and light - sometimes many shadowy figures move around like Matisse cut-outs - underlines and reinforces the doctor's understated emotions. The effect is cumulative and deeply moving. PE

THE SON VIS D: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne w/ Olivier Gourmet. Belgium/France. 103 minutes. Thursday, September 12, 9 pm UPTOWN 2; Friday, September 13, 12:30 pm VARSITY 4 Rating: NN
Star Olivier Gourmet won the best-actor prize at Cannes over Jack Nicholson and Ralph Fiennes for a performance he gave largely with the back of his head, due to the Dardennes' habit of placing the camera in close pursuit of the characters. (The operator must have the shoulders of an ox.) Gourmet plays a shop teacher who becomes obsessed with his newest student, who was just released from prison after the murder of Gourmet's son. JH

TOM PC D: Mike Hoolboom w/ Tom Chomont. Canada. 70 minutes. Thursday, September 12, 9:15 pm ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM; Friday, September 13, 3 pm ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM Rating: NNN
A prismatic portrait of New York artist Tom Chomont, Mike Hoolboom's latest is remarkable most for its approach. When one of Canada's best filmmakers chooses to abandon shooting new footage in favour of found images, it counts as a manifesto. Tom tells the story of Chomont's life and work in glimpses, using thousands of shards gathered mostly from other films. But unlike most remixes, Hoolboom does not attempt to collect the audience into a mnemonic whole, forcing us to recall the original source of the footage and comparing it to present use. Instead, he uses archive images the way authors use nouns. Unfortunately, Chomont doesn't come across as a brilliant artist, a compelling voice or a particularly sympathetic person, so the technique feels a bit stranded. CB

IRREVERSIBLE VIS D: Gaspar Noé w/ Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci. France. 99 minutes. Thursday, September 12, 9:30 pm UPTOWN 1; Saturday, September 14, 3 pm CUMBERLAND 2 Rating: N
Dropped in the middle of the Cannes festival as a potential succ�s de scandale, Irréversible plays like a combination of Memento and The Blair Witch Project, beginning with Vincent Cassel being dragged out of a gay sex club on a gurney. The heavily caffeinated cinematography puts the camera on a rig that allows it to move through 360 degrees in three dimensions on a crane. From here, the film moves backwards to the event that initiates Cassel's quest, the rape and beating of his girlfriend, Monica Bellucci. For this sequence, which takes nine excruciating minutes, Gaspar Noé finds a stable spot for the camera, a jolly capper to a film that's already featured the beating of a transexual whore, racial abuse and macing of a Chinese cabbie and beating of a man's face with a fire extinguisher until he doesn't have one any more. Noé is playing the old French art-house game of épater le bourgeois, but he's also getting off on the violence in his own film. It's way beyond creepy. JH

THE LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE TRIB D: Julio Medem w/ Fele Martinez, Najwa Nimri, Nancho Novo, Maru Valdivielso. Spain. 114 minutes. Friday, September 13, 9:30 pm VARSITY.2 or 3 Rating: NN
This movie runs rings around itself, concocting elaborate circles within circles to come to the remarkable conclusion that love's a funny thing. A boy and girl (Najwa Nimri and Fele Martinez) meet by coincidence and grow up joined forever by a dazzling series of happy accidents. Lovers Of The Arctic Circle is ambitious as hell and impressively edited. Julio Medem arranges a nice, geometrical puzzle plot for his lovers, with clever parallels, repetitions and fractures. But they don't make the story better, just trickier. CB

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE SPEC D: Paul Thomas Anderson w/ Adam Sandler, Emily Watson. U.S. 91 minutes. Friday, September 13, 11 pm UPTOWN 1; Saturday, September 14, 2:15 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) Rating: NNNN
The first and probably only time we'll hear Adam Sandler thanked from the stage of the Cannes Palais was when Paul Thomas Anderson shared best-director honours for Punch-Drunk Love. He said that after Magnolia he wanted to work with Sandler because he was fascinated by his rage, and that's what the film's about. Sandler plays a man who's accumulating frequent flier miles by buying pudding, even though he never goes anywhere. His repressed youngest brother falls for Watson despite his own misgivings. Certainly, the strangest film in any of the participants' filmographies. JH

FEMME FATALE GALA D: Brian De Palma w/ Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas. France/U.S. 114 minutes. Saturday, September 14: 8 pm ROY THOMSON HALL; 8:45 pm UPTOWN 1 Rating: NNN
Having caught Femme Fatale during its commercial run in France, I look at this choice for the Closing Night Gala and ask, "Huh?" This isn't a prestige production that's going to reflect Oscarish glory on the festival. Femme Fatale, the story of an elegant bisexual jewel thief, is trashy even by Brian De Palma's standards. He ladles on the style, as is his wont when his projects have no content. A virtue is that supermodel-turned-actress Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (X-Men) takes off her clothes a lot and has an extended lesbian scene. JH