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From: oscar@utcsrgv.UUCP (Oscar M. Nierstrasz)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: FESTIVAL OF FESTIVALS (1 of 3)
Message-ID: <26@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Sep-84 16:59:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.26
Posted: Sun Sep 23 16:59:07 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Sep-84 17:22:39 EDT
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 86

Here's a bunch of capsule summaries of the films I saw at this year's
Toronto Festival of Festivals :

Stranger Than Paradise  (Jarmusch, Jim; USA; 1984; 95m)
	Decidedly strange.  Very funny series of blackout sketches
	involving a slimy low-life who reluctantly puts up his visiting
	cousin for a few days.  In black & white, and shot entirely in
	long takes with no cutting.  This one won't get much
	distribution, so see it if you can.

De Witte Waan  (Ditvoorst, Adriaan; Netherlands; 1984; 100m)
	Lazlo, a heroin addict and a mediocre painter, comes to help
	his mother after she has had an auto accident.  Lots of
	beautiful photography and good acting can't rescue this
	basically silly and empty movie.  Surrealist claptrap
	masquerades for social commentary.  Dumb.

Mickey One  (Penn, Arthur; USA; 1965; 93m)
	An early Warren Beatty film.  Unusual study in paranoia.
	Beatty is a comic who believes the mob is after him.  He leaves
	town and changes his name and identity.  Endless digressions
	make the whole thing fall apart, however.

Courage of Others, The  (Richard, Christian; Upper Volta; 1982; 92m)
	A Christ-like figure helps an oppressed tribe that has been
	captured for the slave-trade.  Fascinating, though there isn't
	a word of dialogue.

Where the Green Ants Dream  (Herzog, Werner; West Germany; 1984; 101m)
	Myth-meister Werner Herzog has set this film in Australia where
	a tribe of aborigines tries to prevent a mining company from
	blasting and developing a sacred region.  Definitely not
	Herzog's best film.  Rather short on good ideas.

Old Enough  (Silver, Marsia; USA; 1984; 91m)
	Excellent film on two young girls growing up, if you like that
	sort of thing.  I don't.

Boy Meets Girl  (Carax, Leos; France; 1984; 105m)
	Off-beat movie about a morose young man whose girl-friend has
	left him.  Black humour galore.  A bit too long, and too much
	of a build-up for a rather pretentious ending, but worth seeing
	nonetheless for a great deal of highly original material.

Blood Simple  (Cohen, Joel; USA; 1984; 97m)
	Bizarre and totally enthralling film about murder gone wrong.
	A wife leaves her jealous husband.  He hires a hit man to
	murder her.  Then things get interesting ...  This film will
	undoubtedly be released theatrically, so keep an eye out for
	it.

Burroughs  (Brookner, Howard; USA; 1983; 86m)
	A documentary on writer William Burroughs.

Memed My Hawk  (Ustinov, Peter; GB; 1983; 105m)
	This is *horrible*!  I am bewildered at how Ustinov ever got a
	reputation as a film director.  Self-indulgent is the only way
	to describe this film.  (To tell the truth, I only lasted ten
	minutes, but I think I could easily predict the last hour of
	the film.)

Three Crowns of the Sailor, The  (Ruiz, Raul; France; 1983; 117m)
	Beautiful to watch, but utterly opaque.  Something to do with a
	sailor who had to find three Danish crowns to pay back his
	captain.  Lots of strange surrealistic nonsense.  It's probably
	best to watch this one on drugs, since you're not going to be
	able to follow the story-line.

Banana Cop  (Leong, Po-Chick; Hong Kong; 1984; 90m)
	Great trash from Hong Kong.  A police inspector from Hong Kong
	brings a dangerous (but loveable) criminal to London to help
	him solve a murder.  Everything imagineable crammed into ninety
	minutes.

Brother from Another Planet, The  (Sayles, John; USA; 1984; 104m)
	Not to be missed!  A black alien crashes just off New York city
	and finds his way into Harlem.  He cannot speak, but his
	strange power to fix things helps him make friends.  Meantime,
	two white aliens are searching for him, apparently wanting to
	do nasty things to him.  Some great satire.

Season in Hakkari, A  (Kiral, Erden; Turkey/West Germany; 1983; 111m)
	Oh no!  Not *another* Turkish pseudo-documentary about
	sheep-herders in the mountains.

more ...