Moviemartyr @ TIFF

Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) 58 [Exquisitely rendered emotional suffering, visually spellbinding in its use of digital video, yet somewhat thin... It clearly wants to be a great film, but it's too neatly conceived to feel like one. The pat ironies of the plot are far too easily resolved, the metaphorical sound design too on the nose, and the performances rely too much on inference (don't expect much in the way of clear motivation). Certainly a step forward in a lot of ways, but at the same time less than it wants to be. In many ways it reminds me of Tarr's The Man From London. Both films use dazzling visuals and slo-mo noir plotting, but there's no question in my mind that I prefer Tarr's work.]

Linha de Passe (Walter Salles) 36 [Inadequate melodrama, with a mild neo-realist bent. Contrived plotting and cross-cutting that lowers the energy level conspire to sink this one before it's far out of the gate. I fully admit that I'm not the target audience for a movie as blatantly populist as this one, but at the same time, I fail to see who really could find this stuff to be emotionally gripping.]

Tyson (James Toback) 55 [Toback's approach here initially seems like a recipe for disaster... he has Tyson himself tell his tale, only occasionally stopping for brief moments of archival footage. Through some miracle of editing, the gambit works, though, and the boxer emerges as a genuine, if genuinely sad & genuinely delusional, storyteller. Never for a moment is any perspective other than Tyson's offered, but the sheer amount of his perspective that comes through makes the movie mildly gripping.]