2011/09/28

Catching Up

I went immediately from the end of TIFF to a four-day work meeting in Gatineau, so my good intentions of catching up with the end-of-festival films went unaddressed. Finally have a moment to start to add to the record of this year.

Since getting back to the "real" (as opposed to "reel") world, I've been asked several times one of the following two questions:

1) What was my favourite film?
2) Was TIFF 2011 better than previous years?

After seeing about 45 films this year, there was no single film that stood above the rest. The year's experience is more like a classic bell curve -- there are a few really good films at one end; a few poor, if not terrible, films at the other and the bulk of the films rest somewhere in the middle. The hope is that more films occupy the first group than the third.

Fortunately, there were only a couple of films ("Goon" comes to mind) which truly underachieved. While not very good, "Killer Elite" and "Hard Core Logo 2" were more of disappointments than outrages -- there was potential, but the end results fell short.

The final impression of TIFF was that it was comparable to previous years. There wasn't a comedy on the level of "The Trip" last year nor was there a film that really pushed like the envelope like films I've seen in the past. That may be a result of the (good or bad) choices I made, but the overall impression was that it was "pretty good".

I'll add a few more entries on some of the other films I saw this year. Stay tuned.


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