TIFF 2024 Day 2 - THE BRUTALIST is everything you've heard and more

Intro [Music] hey what's up hello welcome back to Fantasy film balls coverage of Tiff 2024 my name is Matt right now it is 7:30 a.m. my first movie is at 9:45 a.m. I'm just getting here early to be extra safe I'm seeing the brutalist right away and it's in a tiny 250 seat theater I want to make sure I get there as early as possible because the worst thing that could happen this entire Festival is me missing the brutalist because I decided to sleep 30 minutes more this is Tiff we make sacrifices here take your sensitive ass back to tell your ride anyways I'm going to head right over there and I'm going to edit yesterday's video so I just got out of the brutalist The Brutalist Brady cor Bay's 3 and 1 half hour long magnum opus what people are comparing to The Godfather Once Upon a Time in America There Will Be Blood a very tall order but those comparisons are definitely valid the film follows a Hungarian Refugee Holocaust Survivor and famed architect llo to who arrives to America with nothing and after a coincidence brings him together with the van Bean family he ends up being hired to design a major Community Center and church for the family the first thing that hits you is the scope the feeling of it all from the moment that this begins there's this ambition to it this level of visual complexity and Mastery that reminded me frankly I can't come up with a better comparison than the Godfather there's this new Hollywood feeling to it extremely classic while also being very contemporary the film starts with an overture by the end of that little musical section I was completely in I was sucked in on board 100% the musical score feels like a train coming both imitating the trains going to the camp as well as the railways of America Paving way towards the American dream that scores just this thumping growing sound of horns anytime that chorus comes there's just this wave of ecstasy that hit me it's one of those scores that feels generational and speaking of generational this is Adrien Brody's best work by far his performance is on another level it's incredibly vulnerable powerful he goes to places that I didn't know were possible for him which is crazy because he's the guy that did The Pianist which is an excellent performance and this just took everything from there and built even further on it thematically the film has a lot to say about the American dream and the pursuit of financial gain the pursuit of happiness and all of that almost as though it's a continuation of what had happened in Nazi Germany and those observations felt very fresh very new I don't think I've ever exactly seen that done before outside of moments of zone of Interest last year where it seemed to compare the lifestyle this sort of Western colonialist lifestyle directly to the events of the Holocaust and showed that these two ways of life are completely inextricably linked and here the brutalist does it in a different way almost leaning back to the words that hung over the Gate of aitz which is work will set you free here we have a story of a holocaust Survivor who in moving to America to pursue the American dream has to work for what very much seems like potentially a a white supremacist family in a way it almost feels like through the film llo has traded one Camp just for another one and as I mentioned before Brady Corbet directs this with such a masterful visual language every single shot every single frame is needed is perfect there's no question to me why this was 3 and 1/2 hours long it deserved to be that this is the Great American novel one of those films that I feel like we'll be talk about for years and years and years this is the type of movie that they talk about when they say they don't make movies like that anymore it's breathtaking uh everything about this film was magnificent this is what I hoped megalopolis would be all those months back at the beginning of the year when I was saying that people are craving a return to that style of film making this is the type of film I was talking about now the question is will this get distribution I think people would be foolish not to take it because this is the type of film that's going to have a legacy sorry if I'm overhyping this a little bit I'm just really overwhelmed by what this film did top five of the Year easy easy top five of the Year anyways I'm currently in the rush line for the last showgirl the new Pamela Anderson movie and just a little bit how Rush works I have lined up behind all of these people we're going to wait for people to not show up and we're going to take their seats so if I can get in uh which I probably can because this is the Princess of Wales theater and the Princess of Wales theater usually in past years at least has left entire rows open for rush lines which means that at least 50 people should get in probably more so we will see and we will hope I'm going to start a rush line counter through this video series so you can keep track of how many worked out for me and how many didn't and how long I waited for each of them so for the last show girl I got here at 1:30 and it is a 3:00 movie so I'm doing 90 minutes for this we're going to see if this works out Rush number one down so as sometimes happens during film festivals I got a little too caught up in talking to people between movies I saw my buddy Justin AKA brother bro and we CH about the brutalist which I have so much to say about so much more that I haven't said this is going to be one that I'll probably like record a huge video about I have so many thoughts on the brutalist anyways though it means that I forgot to talk about the last show girl so I will quickly do that before I talk about the other film that The Last Showgirl I just saw the last showgirl is the Pamela Anderson vehicle directed by Gia Copa this film follows a showgirl at the age of 57 years old she's been dancing ever since she was 18 or 19 years old in a Vegas show and she's very proud of her work and when the owner of the show announces that they will be closing within the next 2 weeks her life is thrown into turmoil as she realizes that she has no idea what else to do with her life and as she counts down the day counts down the performances she also does her best to reconnect with her daughter a daughter who for years felt abandoned this film feels like a feminine version of the wrestler with Mickey roor it's someone who forever has made a living with their physicality made a living as someone who performs gender in the wrestler's case performs an extreme masculinity and in the show girl pamel Anderson's character performs this extreme femininity through her dances it's about someone who's faced with the realization at the end of a life of doing all of this that maybe she missed something that maybe there was more to it and it's about trying to reconcile with those mistakes with those flaws Pamela Anderson is fantastic in this movie truly career defining work in the sense that she leans on the Persona that people have known her for for years he plays the sort of Dy bubbly character and yet through that it's a shell that hides this great sadness I will say that even though Pamela Anderson's performance is really well done the script does doesn't always allow it to flourish the way I feel like it should hang on I think like Andrew Garfield is here or something never mind I can't see anyways back to the last show girl there's a lot of scenes that feel like they're repetitions of other scenes you can only have so many scenes of her explaining how she's actually not a nude dancer and so a lot of this film does sort of retread the same territory over and over but it's still very entertaining it's humorous and Pamela Anderson's performance is definitely one that will go down as one of my favorites at the festival to catch you up with everything so I got out of the last show girl and immediately got in line for the The Life of Chuck life of Chuck that said I did not get a rush ticket I did however find seats online and I got maybe the best seat that I've ever had anyways life of Chuck is the new film by Mike Flanigan of course the director of The Haunting of Hill housee midnight mass Gerald's Game of oculus has always done horror or horror adjacent films and this is his first non horror film this is however still adapted from a Stephen King Nolla which is a very strange story it's it's very hard to put down into a few sentences so I'll do my best essentially it's in three acts going backwards through someone's life the First Act is about two people who are in the midst of the apocalypse and they keep seeing advertisements saying goodbye to this guy who's an accountant it's a very strange opening to a film but within the next two chapters everything becomes clear and things come into Focus I won't say anything more than that it starts out as an apocalyptic mystery that becomes something more personal and More Beautiful the best way I could describe this film is Steph King's big fish in that it comes out of a place of hope it comes out of a place of imagination looking at our mortality the stories that we tell and the stories that we hold in our heads we are an entire universe in ourselves and to lose one person is to lose the world I felt deeply emotional watching this reflecting on mortality reflecting on what life means and what we mean to each other as well as reflecting on seizing the moment and appreciating the time that we have it's a delightful bright film even though it is a film about death it's still full of beauty and lightness and humor I do wish it was filmed with a little wee bit more visual creativity I did not find it to be as aesthetically or visually pleasing as I wanted it to be I didn't feel like they were making too many very interesting cinematic choices throughout for the most part it is a very plain looking Studio Movie it could have been shot for TV this could have been a Netflix film and you'd be none the wiser and so while I found the script to be deep and profound through its themes I did find that it might have been presented a little bit flat as well the surrealist elements that have happen in the First Act don't feel quite as well developed as I would have liked them to be I feel like Stephen King's brand of surrealism didn't quite come together in the right way by the end of the film when all of it clicks into place and all of it makes sense when everything is understood it definitely would make the First Act feel a little bit sharper I just feel like the surrealism of it all was a little bit clunky but still definitely like this one definitely would recommend all right now I am in front of the light box I'm finishing my day off not with a movie but with a party I've been invited to the festival programmers party this is where last year G Del Toro randomly showed up and kissed my mother so that was a weird thing that happened I don't know what is going to happen this year but I'm going to go in I'll probably film a few shots okay so my phone did die um so I don't have videos from that party that I went to just got to take my word for it it was a cocktail party with people talking about film festivals nothing exciting there no G mod Del Toro this year unfortunately so I'm home now I'm just settling to do some editing cuz I didn't get much done today because um I keep talking to people in lines I love talking to people in lines it is the best part of Tiff I love meeting people at Tiff I love meeting ciles and talking about movies also means that I am very far behind with my editing so that's what I'm going to do right now and I will see you tomorrow for another packed day of movies thanks so much for watching my name is Matt and this has been fantasy film ball