If you want to see the movies you want to see, you have to get in early. They do sell out. Some good ones already have.
The thing is, I don't want to see the movies I want to see, because there aren't really any movies I want to see.
Of course that's an exaggeration. Out of more than 300 movies, which includes shorts and VR and other special events, there are always going to be some movies with an intriguing enough concept, a stellar enough cast or an accomplished enough director that I would go and see them, and even look forward to seeing them.
But in 2024, there are no big tentpole movies that feel like they might define the MIFF experience for me.
My past MIFFs have been characterized by this sort of thing. One prime example was Toni Erdmann, whose Cannes buzz had preceded it and
And that's where I left off on July 23rd.
Usually when I abandon a post, it stays abandoned. I have a sort of graveyard of drafts that I sometimes like to look through to remember what I wanted to say, and also possibly why I wasn't motivated enough to continue saying it. (A couple times, it was because I wasn't sure I should be saying it at all.)
This time, though, I'm picking up where I left off -- without changing any of what I've already written -- because MIFF is starting in a few days now, and it's still iffy.
I was about to launch into a list of high-profile movies that had underpinned past MIFFs for me, and maybe that's why I got interrupted and didn't get back to it. It isn't usually too much work to look through my past MIFF viewings -- especially because (surprise surprise) I have a list of them -- but since it's been two weeks, I don't actually remember if that was the reason I stopped writing mid-sentence.
Then there's also going through this year's offerings to show you why they don't fill me with glee. That also requires work. I'll do some of both types of work to quickly catch you up on that.
In past MIFFs, I have been particularly excited by known commodities on the director side, especially international directors -- your Asghar Farhadis, your Hirokazu Kore-edas, your Gaspar Noes. There has always been someone who got me excited about their latest offering, someone who works outside what I think of as the most obvious avenues of cinematic expression.
This is the first place MIFF 2024 comes up very short. If I consult my list of MIFF movies I put in a spreadsheet -- which, oddly, is the most organized I have ever been about it, in the year I am least enthused -- these are the only directors I saw it fit to single out as possibly swaying my choice of one movie over another:
David Cronenberg
Michel Hazanavicius
Larry Fessenden
Guy Maddin
Francis Ford Coppola
The noteworthy thing about these names is that I have not actually seen a film by either Fessenden or Maddin, they're just people I've heard of so it felt like I should make a note that they directed the movies in question.
As for Coppola, it was just a single showing of his new movie Megalopolis, on an inconveniently located screen, so it was never a serious consideration.
Actors? These are the names I wrote down as potentially reasons to watch the movie in question:
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Demi Moore
Sebastian Stan
Rooney Mara
Aubrey Plaza
Jessica Chastain
Peter Sarsgard
I am actually going to the Mara and Plaza movies, La Cocina and My Old Ass, respectively. The Louis-Dreyfus movie, Tuesday, sounds really promising, but it's already had a release in the U.S. and I'll likely be able to rent it within a few months.
Speaking of things already released, I ended up pairing my Friday night showing of La Cocina, which will kick off MIFF for me at 6 p.m. that day, with a movie that is way already available in the U.S.: I Saw the TV Glow. In fact, I'd been stalking it for a couple months already on iTunes, and only recently has it gone down to the reasonable $5.99 rental price. In fact, if I hadn't already booked it in at MIFF, I probably would have watched it last weekend.
To be clear, this was never one of my MIFF priorities, much as I do want to see it, because it's so otherwise available to me. But I was left with no other good options after both of the movies I ideally wanted to see that Friday night -- the Chinese film Brief History of a Family (which was described in the vein of Saltburn or Parasite) and the English language comedy Timestalker -- sold out so quickly that it defied explanation.
And missing out on the Chinese film raises another issue, which is: of the four movies I've already booked, none is in a language other than English. Oh, I expect there will be some Spanish sprinkled into La Cocina, but with Mara as the star, it will likely be primarily English. The I in MIFF figures to come up very short for me this year. (In addition to La Cocina, My Old Ass and I Saw the TV Glow, I am also seeing a movie called Grand Theft Hamlet, which is Hamlet done in the style of Grand Theft Auto. Might be a hoot, might suck.)
Why were my options so limited for these first four movies?
Well that gets into my obligation as a recipient of free passes to six MIFF films as part of the critical community. I need to pack movies into the first weekend so I can write reviews of them before their second and in some cases final screening, so readers can still theoretically buy tickets to them. An approach which totally backfires if the second screenings sell out.
There were actually some movies I really wanted to see on the second Saturday night. The aforementioned Demi Moore movie is a body horror called The Substance, and there's a Greek movie called She Loved Blossoms More that looks like it will have super trippy visuals. But I can't go to either of those because my mother-in-law is in town that night.
Feeling a bit deflated, I have not yet booked anything for my final two tickets, and at this point will just take the dregs of whatever's remaining.
I'm sure it will all be fine, and not every MIFF needs to be great.
But at this point, this MIFF seems iffy indeed.
Okay, now let me go publish this before the festival actually starts.
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