That would be Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
Saturday:
The Boy and the Heron is the newest from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. TBH I liked some of his other films better, especially The Wind Rises, that we also saw here at TIFF (I think). Miyazaki said The Wind Rises would be his last but he came back for The Boy and the Heron. It had his typical magical imagery, especially lots of vicious parrots and other birds, but it was loooong and the theater was freezing and we weren’t sitting together.
Walking to the subway Friday night we were happy to see that our former favorite coffee place, Hot Black was still there, so we stopped in for coffee after The Boy and the Heron. Like I said I was freezing and promising myself hot coffee and their sourdough toast and eggs, but they were out so we contented ourselves with coffee and plain toast and pastries. Somehow they got Mark’s coffee hotter than mine, but it was all good. Turns out they have several locations now, one only meters from the AirBNB, and the next morning (or maybe it was Monday …) when we tried that one out, the toast and eggs was being kept warm under a plastic dome and didn’t look very attractive. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Mother, Couch our midday movie, has a great cast: Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Ellen Burstyn, Lara Flyn Boyle, and it’s very funny. We decided that it was our first real film fest movie – very indie. I think IMDB has already removed the comma from the title.
We didn’t really have much time between Mother and our last movie of the day, American Fiction, or really between any of our movies Saturday, so we decided to treat ourselves to a real dinner at 8:00 at Tutti Matti afterward. We’ve gone there almost every TIFF – some people we talked to in line for a movie during one our our earliest TIFFs, 2012 or 2013, told us about it, and it has remained good over the years.
American Fiction is about a middle class Black guy who is fed up with the treatment of Black authors by the publishing business plus he sees too many books about the Black ghetto inner city gangster experience getting all the hype, like that’s the only Black experience there is, so he writes one under a pseudonym. The movie is based on a book by Percival Everett, Erasure and it was the first movie we walked out of and said, “that was really good” – no caveats. So good movie, great dinner = a really nice end to day 2.
Cameron Bailey (TIFF CEO) and someone from Studio Ghibli introducing The Boy & the Heron
Bruschetta at Tutti Matti
Lovely tomatoes
Salad. We followed this with a pasta with more nice tomatoes and pizza with very spicy andouille and corn, but I was too busy eating to take more pictures
Sunday:
Sunday turned into a 4-movie day with Dumb Money definitely the star and The Dead Don’t Hurt a close second. Dumb Money already has a commercial release date and Pete Davidson playing the brother of the main character and world’s worst Dasher – Door Dash delivery driver. The closing credits played over Jack White singing “going to Wichita” (lyrics from Seven Nation Army) and I heard at least 3 people still humming or whistling it as we all left the theater and walked down the streets.
Mark’s criticism of both The End We Start From and Ezra is there were too many impossible or at least unlikely situations and people making bad decisions. He pointed out that in The End We Start From, Jody Comer is supposed to be hiking the wilderness after apocalyptic floods with a backpack AND a baby, but there’re scenes where to him she looked radiant; I just thought her lipstick was too perfect for someone starving to death. And there’s a scene in Ezra where Bobby Cannavale’s character, who has essentially kidnapped his autistic son and is driving from Hoboken to L.A. in his dad’s Cadillac convertible, simply drives off the road into the woods to evade a road block. How could that be a good idea?
In between Ezra and The Dead Don’t Hurt we got pizza at a Blaze – one of those places where you pick your toppings and then they make the pizza in front of you. Pepperoni & cherry tomatoes on a thin & crispy crust.
I liked The Dead Don’t Hurt as a post modern Western – there were at least three actors who’d been in Deadwoood: Garret Dillahunt, who shot Wild Bill in the back early in the show, season one or two; the Preacher, Ray McKinnon, and Dan, W. Earl Brown. Both Viggo Mortenson and Vicky Krieps showed up, despite the strike, he because he’s the director and she because she’s from Luxembourg and TIFF was giving her a big award. Which she was carrying in a bag, and she apologized for being so fancy. The Q&A was pretty good – my favorite question was about the sword carried by the knight in armor on horseback that Krieps’ character sees in a recurring vision. Turns out it is Andúril – or a copy of it – Aragorn’s sword from the Lord of the Rings.
Monday:
Monday was September 11th.
Our first movie wasn’t until 4:30 and we had 12:30 lunch reservations at a place called Figo, part of a restaurant group where Al knows the executive chef. I had the express lunch, paninni and a salad and Mark got a pasta and side of focaccia and we shared everything.
Before that we biked and walked up to Whole Foods. That was all OK except Mark got irritated with me for moving the bananas and potato chips to the back of the conveyor belt at the checkout, so they’d come out last to be packed into the carrier bags.
I biked to Figo and then brought my bike back to the apartment since both of our movies were so late.
Knox Goes Away was another, “boy that was good” film, no reservations. Surprise hit for us – it starts off like a regular crime drama and then there’re really interesting twists. Directed by and starring Michael Keaton about a hit man with dementia.
I’m trying to remember what we did between Knox and our last movie of the day, The Royal Hotel, but I think maybe we just went to Starbucks. Or else that’s the day we got the gelato from the hole in the wall gelato place & ate it in the lobby of the Hyatt where lots of TIFF folks stay. (Gelato day was Tuesday.)
We both wanted to see Royal Hotel, and Cameron Bailey promised us a treat, plus Julia Garner who we all liked so much in Ozark is one of the stars and the woman who directed came to introduce. But it was our first real disappointment of the Festival – two women who run out of money traveling end up tending bar in some desolate small town in Australia, where there’re lots of drunks smashing things and hitting each other. Hugo Weaving is in it someplace & I didn’t even recognize him – probably he had a heavy beard. Not a lot of fun or enlightenment.
But lots more good ones to come … I’m writing this Wednesday night so I have six more movies that we watched today and Tuesday to tell you about … Real Soon Now.
Tuesday morning Black Bear coffee