I kept the two big star movies for today so after George it’s off to see Brad in another target for the Academy. This one tells the story of Billy Beane the manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team in the late 90’s. Beane was a fan of sabermetrics, a statistical analysis of baseball teams and players developed by Bob James. The theory is that baseball can be analysed like a complex mathematical problem and a team can and should be built on this analysis more so than on the assessment of individual player skills and talents. Oakland was very successful under his direction despite the nay sayers who objected to his approach. Jonah Hill plays the young Yale economics grad who understands and crunches the numbers. Oakland never won a World Series using this approach but with one of the lowest salary budgets in professional sport, the team played well above their financial weight setting a modern era record for the most consecutive wins (20) in 2002. But the film is not just about baseball and statistics, it is also about Beane and his life. The ending is great and the script smart and funny. This was a very enjoyable two hours and if there is anyone who can challenge Clooney for the smooth actor title it would be Brad Pitt.

This is the major George Clooney movie at TIFF this year. I saw the Ides of March (see below) but this one stars Clooney in a major role. He plays the patriarch of a large Hawaiian family with roots going back to Hawaiian royalty. The family, as a result of its roots owns valuable property but must sell it off within seven years. The income from the sale will set up everyone (all the cousins, aunts and uncles) with a huge windfall profit so they are keen to complete the sale. While he works through this situation his wife suffers a fatal accident and is in hospital in a coma. The plot thickens as he wrestles with both these major issues. Clooney has to play the family man, a role he does not play in real life and about which he clearly has no clue. So while this movie is big budget and will get lots of Oscar attention, I am not sure George deserves to be rewarded for his role. Regardless of my opinion, Clooney is the smoothest actor on the planet and may bluff his way to a Golden Statue. I will not be terribly disappointed if he does win because while this is not a great role he has definitely done some very good work in smaller and bigger films like Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, and Michael Clayton to name three. The supporting cast is very good and the story rich and enjoyable despite his wife’s situation. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Okay the first really violent downer movie of the week. This one stars Woody Harrelson and if none of his previous films has driven Cheers from your mind, this one will. He plays a really mean, racist, sexist, misogynist, violent, sociopathic, need I go on? Cop. It is set in 1999 in Los Angeles and Rampart is the district that came under investigation for a police force that was racist, sexist, misogynist, violent, sociopathic etc. It focuses on one cop who becomes a scapegoat for the force which is unfair on one level but not unfair on another. He is guilty. Harrelson is basically the major focus and is in every scene in a virtuoso performance. He may get a nomination for this and likely deserves it but this movie is ugly in lots of ways and gritty in story and film style. This may lose it the credit it deserves. At any rate it’s not just Harrelson. There is a great supporting cast including Sigourney Weaver, Harrelson’s character’s two ex-wives (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) and two daughters are also wonderful as is Steve Buscemi. This movie is written by James Ellroy a very noir mystery writer and Clarke Peters of Treme and The Wire. Tough stuff. – watching this movie was like being a voyeur of a nasty nasty scene.

Side note: Everyone in this movie smokes. Actually everyone in almost every movie I have been to this year smokes. This is really a change and mostly completely unnecessary to the plot or the characters. I have started to wonder if in fact this is subtle product placement. No brand names or anything but hey! Everyone smokes! If you have seen Thank you for Not Smoking from a few years back you would definitely share my paranoid perception here.

This was the premiere of a lovely French comedy. It came with a bit of an annoying element however. A side note for those who do not do the Festival – most crazy fans like me have our schedule. It is often timed to the second. Movie 1 is 93 minutes and it is 21 minutes to the next theatre and the next movie. Movie 1 starts at 1PM and ends at 2:33PM. Movie 2 starts at 3PM and I have 21 minutes to get there. I will arrive at 2:54PM just in time to make movie 2. Now what is really annoying to fans like me is when Movie 1 starts late, even five minutes late. Le Havre started 15 minutes late!!! About 20 percent of my fellow queuers (is this a word?) were very cranky and would have to leave Le Havre early. This was my situation. Sigh.

Anyway I managed to settle down and stayed until about 10 minutes before the end but I had to leave early. I did manage to stay long enough to see how the movie would end. The charming thing that calmed me down was the presence of the star of the film, a wonderful French actor Andre Wilms. The film speaks to the increasing presence of illegal immigrants in Europe. The protagonist, Marcel Marx is an aging and poor but happy shoe shine man who has about him a loving wife and collection of friends who see him as a bumbling charming member of their community. While we learn about him and his circle of friends a group of illegal immigrants is discovered in a shipping container on a wharf in the harbour. They are going to be sent back to North Africa where they were smuggled from but one, a young boy, escapes. He and Marcel connect and Marcel decides to rescue him, hide him from the police and find a way to get him to London where his mother is waiting for him. He manages this while we learn that his wife is discovered to be terminally ill. While all this sounds pretty depressing, somehow it ends up being charming, witty and fun. Must be the French. At any rate I highly recommend this movie to everyone and I suspect it will show up in Toronto sometime in the near future. However at the end, or rather near the end, I leapt up with 20 minutes to get to my next movie. I walked from the Jackman Theatre at the AGO to the Ryerson Theartre at Church and Gerrard. Got there with 5 minutes to go.