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Film Friday: Stars’ Tropic
StarTropics was probably the very best game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). An ahead-of-its-time adventure following a teenager who tries to solve the mystery around his scientist uncle’s disappearance (killing monsters with a yo-yo in the process), it has absolutely nothing to do with Tropic Thunder. Ben Stiller’s first directorial effort since Zoolander doesn’t come out until Wednesday, so none of the local papers have reviewed it yet, nor have most other critics. The original trailer was excellent, but the real brilliance is this Hearts of Darkness/Burden of Dreams spoof. Oh, and Robert Downey Jr. becomes black.
Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit’s 1974 guerilla mission to string a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Centre so he can tightrope-walk across them, is this week’s real treasure, garnering some pretty amazing reviews. According to Ebert, “the documentary, a hybrid of actual and restaged footage, is constructed like a first-rate thriller.”
Playing at the Royal is Baghead, the mumblecore horror (mumblehorror?) movie. From its promotional material: “While the Duplass Brothers were shooting their last feature film, The Puffy Chair, a crew member raised the question ‘what’s the scariest thing you can think of?’ Someone immediately said ‘a guy with a bag on his head staring into your window.'” Watch the trailer. It looks a lot better than it sounds. Norman Wilner (or the editor who writes his headlines) calls it “brilliant“; Ebert disparages the title figure as “simply a device to make the movie long enough to qualify as a feature.”
The Varsity gets TIFF ’07 hit Amal, about a New Dehli rickshaw driver. It’s actually a Canadian movie (having ranked on last year’s Canada’s Top Ten) and sounds a tiny bit like the ending of The Last Laugh. We’re pretty much sold, though being stingy with our money, we’ll wait until it comes to the Bloor. (If you don’t mind paying Varsity prices, however, we strongly encourage you to support Canadian movies as early in their run as you can. The First Weekend Club is even holding a filmmaker Q&A on Saturday afternoon, followed by a reception at the Drake, entrance to which is included with your regular ticket purchase.)
Also out: Israeli Magnolia and fellow TIFFer Jellyfish, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (wherein Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, et al. face off against the Brotherhood of the Wolf), and American political satire Swing Vote, with Kevin Costner starring as the man who will cast the deciding ballot in an American presidential election; Kelsey Grammer (a Republican) plays the Republican, and Dennis Hopper (a Republican) plays the Democrat.
Rep highlights: Sergio Leone’s For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the Bloor [PDF], Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance Is Mine and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned at Cinematheque, and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment at the Fox.
Photo of a dude on the Hawaii set of Tropic Thunder by Kanaka’s Paradise Life.