I Love Mess

TIFF is starting, and the queen is dead. Not that those two things are connected to one another at all, except for the fact that most of the actors who’ve played Elizabeth II will be in Toronto over the next few days – Sarah Gadon, Claire Foy and Olivia Colman all have films here, and Helen Mirren provided the narration for Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, a documentary screening as a special event Tuesday morning. (I wonder how many people remember Sarah’s movie. It was really rather sweet, in an unapologetically hagiographical kind of way.)

Anyway. It kinda cramps the whole LET’S F***ING GOOOOO energy of the festival this year, but we will power through it just as I’m powering through this hastily revised introduction to a newsletter I prepared a few days ago. Life, huh? Also please keep an ear out for tomorrow’s bonus episode of Someone Else’s Movie, where we discuss a film that’s perfectly in sync with the current chaotic moment despite having been shot more than twelve years ago. Eerie, really.

I was going to devote this column to Shout! Factory’s new 4K edition of The Funhouse and Arrow Film’s new Blu-ray twofer of Johnnie To’s Running Out of Time movies, but now I’m thinking it might be best to nudge those a little down the line. The Funhouse will pair nicely with Warner’s impending 4K release of Poltergeist, for instance, and Johnnie To’s cinema is timeless. Basically, if you’re the slightest bit interested in those movies you should snap ’em right up; I’ll celebrate them in detail later.

Instead, allow me to take a moment and celebrate something good: My friend and (former) colleague in criticism Chandler Levack has gone and made a great film, I Like Movies, which is making its world premiere tomorrow night at TIFF. I got to see it earlier this summer, and I think it’s wonderful.

Set in Burlington in 2003, I Like Movies is the messy, deeply felt study of Lawrence (the amazing Isaiah Lehtinen), an obnoxious teenager who believes that having an artistic soul frees him to treat everyone around him like garbage. Convinced he’ll get into NYU because of course they’ll recognize his genius, Lawrence spends most of his last year of high school focused on that goal to the exclusion of everything else, including the fairly crucial question of how he’ll pay for an NYU tuition with a part-time job at a video store. Having alienated his one friend (Percy Hynes White), he spends his time whining about his vision to his thirtysomething manager Alana (Romina D’Ugo), who’s nice enough to listen. And then things take a turn, and Lawrence does not handle it well at all.

As a former obnoxious teenager who also had a part-time job in a video store and spent a lot of time thinking about film school, I found this film distressingly accurate. (Fun fact: Chandler says Lawrence is basically her, so maybe we all have the same origin story.) It’s like watching Rushmore, if Rushmore didn’t share Max Fischer’s perspective for so much of its running time, giving him that little cushion of sympathy.

But I Like Movies finds other ways to empathize with Lawrence, even if it doesn’t soft-pedal how insensitive and monomaniacal he can be to literally everyone around him; a lot that comes across in Krista Bridges’ performance as his mom, who is far more considerate of him than seems humanly possible. But she has her reasons, just as Lawrence has his, and Chandler makes sure we understand them both by the end of the film.

We also wind up understanding a great deal about Alana, thanks to D’Ugo’s perfectly attenuated performance; Alana’s a supporting character in Lawrence’s story – and, it seems, in her own life as well – but there’s a moment when the movie shifts its focus entirely onto her, and D’Ugo doesn’t just carry that scene but makes it shine. That scene’s a gamble, arriving when it does, but it works beautifully, and if D’Ugo doesn’t get a whole mess of work out of I Like Movies, there’s no justice in the world.

Speaking of career opportunities, the news broke earlier today that Chandler has signed with the WME talent agency, meaning it won’t be long until she’s writing Marvel movies or whatever. And I could not be happier for her; she’s a lovely person, she made a great movie, good things are supposed to happen. But seriously, if Disney doesn’t snap her up for the next Yelena Belova project it’s their loss.

I Like Movies premieres Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s already sold out, but I wanted to put a bug in your ear for the eventual theatrical release through Mongrel Media.

In this weekend’s paid newsletter: A whole lotta Star Trek. Subscribe now so you don’t miss out!