Live from the Toronto Film Festival: Day 3

It's always nice to see old pros given the opportunity to ply their trade in new and revealing ways. Consider a pair of Christophers in films at the Toronto Film Festival.

Christopher Plummer is sublime as the title character in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the star-crossed film by Terry Gilliam that is most notable for the death of Heath Ledger during shooting and the scramble by Gilliam to figure out a way to finish the movie without him. As the good doctor, Plummer is limber and versatile, playing drama and physical comedy, bringing to bear the best that his mellifluous voice has to offer.

That voice seems to be ever present this year, at least in the animated realm. He was the villain in Up, the domineering No. 1 in 9 and he'll also be heard here in Toronto in My Dog Tulip.

Plummer most often plays silky villains these days, so getting the chance to play a hero gives him a role that makes much broader demands on his talents -- and he delivers. His performance almost makes the Gilliam film worth seeing -- that and the clever manner in which Gilliam created his own rules of fantasy to explain why Ledger transforms at various points into Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Unfortunately, Gilliam's astonishing visual sense can't compensate for a movie that's too short on script and story to pull itself together in the end.

Just as Plummer is the best thing about Gilliam's film, Christopher Lee salvages Danis Tanovic's Triage, a film that proves once more that Colin Farrell is an underrated actor with hit-and-miss taste in scripts. For every In Bruges and The New World, he seems to make a half-dozen duds like Cassandra's Crossing and Miami Vice.

Farrell is outstanding in Triage, a film about the traumatic effects of war on a veteran news photographer. But while he makes us feel this guy's pain, the story itself is clichéd stuff -- right down to the iconoclastic shrink who helps him face his problem.

But the shrink is played by Christopher Lee, with a playful Spanish accent (his character is the grandfather of Farrell's character's wife, who is played by Paz Vega). The grandfather is an 84-year-old a psychiatrist who treated the problems of fascists after Franco fell and who treats Farrell when he develops a psychosomatic inability to walk. Lee's eyes twinkle with mischief, even as he calls Farrell on the phony defenses he hides behind to keep from confronting his real secret (which you'll figure out long before Tanovic reveals it). It's great to see Lee play someone without supernatural powers for a change; he makes this guy the most interesting character in an otherwise predictable film.

Speaking of performances that bowl you over -- I wasn't, but let's -- there are a pair of them in Lee Daniel's shattering Precious (which actually is burdened with the unwieldy title Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire).

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Comments

[greybeardgray]

buzz ...(end) [THE UNMASKED AVENGER:] Nietzsche once wrote about it, how this guy's climbing the highest mountain in history, 'cause he had sunk into the lowest depths, absolute value 'n all. Anyway when he reaches the top he realizes he's got more parasites than chinese got hairs. But it all worked out, the gods had an arrow for each one of 'em; an arrow with each one of 'em's name on it! And all of 'em's name was me! Heh, a thousand deaths, somebody better call Guiness!`The good news is, that with that many deaths, there's gonna have to be a slew of ressurections, and even better, by the time all that's finished I'll be gone, used up! ... jaj-gbg!!! (That's as far as I got, sorry.)

[greybeardgray]

... buzzer (cont.): [THE UNMASKED AVENGER:] NARRATION: I'm the Unmasked Avenger. Avenging what, you ask. Avenging the thousands of deaths I suffered at the hands of others. It's like night-moths on a wool-sweater. A swiss-cheese Sherlock Holmes, that's me. Death ain't Killing, and Killing ain't Death. Get it straight mugs! Death---, some people run away from it as fast as they can. I ran at it so fast, I think I ran right past it, and also past a few unfortunate souls along the way! Alter ego, altered ego, it's like at it's limit approaching zero, with id in warp speed!be not deceived, the avenger is not mocked, all we got to protect ourselves is id; it protects from all the little us's out there, I got more me's than miney moe! ... jaj-gbg!!!

[greybeardgray]

... more buzz: [THE UNMASKED AVENGER:] [Later that same day THE AVENGER is walking past a newsstand---]:

NEWSPAPER BOY: Say mister, heard the news; the Unmasked Avenger struck again! A mug got it right between the eyes on Main Street, in front of City Hall last night!
UNMASKED AVENGER: Yeah sonny. Fold me one of those. And here's for the paper, and this is for your 'college fund'! Spend it wisely! ... jaj-gbg!!!

[greybeardgray]

BUZZED, try this: The Unmasked Avenger by joel a jones (GreyBeardGray)
[Story begins with a man, shabbily attired, ruffled suit, hat, old shoes, soiled shirt, tie, beard in shadows; standing, leaning forward, head on a plate-glass window in front of a major department store, talking to himself---]:
UNMASKED AVENGER: My name? Nowadays names don't matter. A Joe is born everyday, and before he can walk he'll probably be stripped bare of every tag he's given! If there's a most-wanted list in heaven, I'll probably be on it, and I'll probably be ten points higher than Number One! Gumshoe? No, I'm no gumshoe, I'm a glue-shoe. Yeah! A superglue-shoe, cause when I step on you, it sticks. And I ain't handing out sentences, I'm handing out Doctoral Theses, entitled: D.O.A.! ... jaj-gbg!!!