Tag Archives: Don McKellar

Rocchi's Retro Rental: Toronto International Film Festival 2008

Posted on August 9, 2008 by James Rocchi

Up in Canada’s largest, loudest, most vibrant city for the 33rd annual Toronto International Film Festival, my schedule’s a blur of movies and interviews, films unspooling in the dark and talking with actors, directors and writers in the fluorescent light of busy, bustling hotel suites. And I can’t really think of any one movie for Rocchi’s Retro Rental this week, if only because my mind’s full of very many movies right now, which is part of the reason behind this slightly even more retro edition of Rocchi’s Retro Rental.

For example, I’ve had the chance to see Blindness, the film adaptation of the novel by Nobel Prize-winning Jose Saramago, and interview the screenwriter, Don McKellar; McKellar’s look at a world where people are afflicted by a mysterious “white sickness” that renders the population sightless is raw, and riveting. It’s also curiously parallel to his directorial debut, the funny and powerful Last Night, where a group of Torontonians cope with the fact that the world’s going to end at midnight, each in a different way. If you don’t know recent Canadian cinema but might like a good place to start — or just want to see a brilliant, human film about who we are in our modern age — Last Night is a must-see, as I explained last year in “Apocalypse Soon.” But, of course, that’s not the only movie on my mind. …

I also had the chance, here in Toronto, to catch Richard Linklater’s new film, Me and Orson Welles, about a young man (played by Zac Efron) who winds up part of the Mercury Theater’s famed 1930′s production of Julius Caesar. The youthful energy and scenes of Efron wandering through New York’s record stores immediately brought to mind Slacker, Linklater’s debut; there’s a big difference between ’90s Austin hipsters and Manhattan’s 1930′s literary scene, but a lot of similarities, too. It made me want to see Slacker again just as much as I wanted to revisit it two years at the South by Southwest Film Festival, as I explained in “Deep in the Heart of Slackness.”

Later in the festival, I’m going to have the chance to see Charles Martin Smith’s Stone of Destiny — which, of course, brought to mind Smith’s work in the excellent Never Cry Wolf, based on a book by Farley Mowat, inspired by Mowat’s own experiences in the wilds of Canada’s north among the wolf population and stark beauty of the vast tundra — which, to clarify for those of you with a limited knowledge of Canadian geography, I must hasten to add I’m nowhere near — that wrote about in “Unto the Wild.”

And, of course, a walk down the crowded urban streets of Toronto may be rushed, but not so much that I can’t think of a few favorite films as I pass pertinent landmarks. My hotel’s just a few blocks up from the mall where The Silent Partner was filmed, a lesser-known ’70s crime film that many of the friends of this column know and love; walking home after a couple of midnight screenings, I’ve kept one eye open, looking out for Christopher Plummer’s creepy crook from that film … and if you want to know more about one of the great unseen ’70s crime films, it’s all in “‘Twas the Heist Before Christmas.”

I also had the chance to talk with Ed Harris about his new western Appaloosa; between that and a friend’s enthusiastic Twitter about The Dark Knight, I’ve been thinking about The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the John Wayne/Jimmy Stewart western classic about the rule of force against the rule of law, and how now and then, you have to print the legend; brooding, blunt and beautifully black-and-white, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a movie that may be a fifty-year-old vision of the past, but still feels relevant today, as I talked about in “The New Old West, the Old New West.” …

And that’s, perhaps, not something you can say about this column this week, but my tired brain keeps kicking up ideas and movies and moments and scenes, and sitting to write about just one film felt, you know, just so 20th Century; I’ll be back next week, a little calmer and a little smarter and a little more focused — and between now and then, if you have something you’ve Retro Rented and loved recently, let me know below — when I get back, the irony is that I’m sure I’ll feel like unwinding with a good movie.

–Rocchi’s Retro Rental, SFgate.com.

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Rocchi’s Retro Rental: Last Night (1998)

Posted on September 18, 2007 by James Rocchi

I’ve just gotten back from the Toronto International Film Festival, and the last thing on Earth I want to do is see a movie; this, of course, immediately makes me think of Don McKellar’s Last Night, which is a brilliant, Toronto-set comedy about a group of people actually facing the issue of what they’d like to do as their last thing on Earth.

They’re asking this question not out of academic interest or as a dorm-room bull-session time-waster; they’re asking it because something’s wrong with the workings of the cosmos (no one ever mentions what, exactly, but that’s hardly the point) and everyone knows the world is going to end at midnight. The clock is ticking, and we glimpse people’s lives in the still spaces between the tick and tock of the countdown. A gas-company drone calls customers to thank them for their patronage and to promise reliable service up to the end; another man is working on realizing his — and anyone else’s — sexual fantasies before the big finish; some people are simply going out to party hearty in the last few hours. Our hero Patrick (played by writer-director Don McKellar, perhaps best known in the States for his work on Slings and Arrows) just wants to deal with a few family obligations and then retreat to his deck, picking out the perfect bottle of wine and the perfect LP to accompany the apocalypse. And, the more we see of Patrick, the more we realize that while he may be our protagonist, he’s hardly a hero.

But then, there’s a knock at the door disturbing his isolation; it’s a stranger, Sandra (Sandra Oh of Grey’s Anatomy). She’s pregnant. She’s lost her car. She must get across town through the chaos of the final revels to meet with her husband, so they can be together for the end. And Patrick, who simply wanted to be left alone, gets dragged into the final, flailing bump and rush of the human carnival. Last Night began when writer-director McKellar was asked to think about a film about the change of the millennium; he abandoned that to come up with Last Night –a much less dated and more lasting pitch that manages to evoke pre-millennial anxiety and post-modern sensibilities.

Last Night isn’t a big-budget end-of-the-world movie; it’s a very specific comedy of manners with a rich and ruined streak of something like magical realism in it. I used to joke that Last Night played out as if Woody Allen had made Armageddon. And sure, that’s a good, glib line — but that obscures how well McKellar’s wacky, woozy big idea turns into a thoughtful and astonishingly moving examination of what it means to be alive. McKellar and Oh are terrific, but the supporting cast is also impressive. Director David Cronenberg makes the gas company exec both caring and creepy in his down-to-the-wire commitment to customer service. Callum Keith Rennie (again, best known in America for his work on Battlestar Galactica) plays his fetish-facilitating character in a way that turns it from a one-note joke into something much fuller and deeper. Sarah Polley plays Patrick’s sister; Genevieve Bujold’s brief scenes are filled with sad, mournful humanity.

And yet, Last Night is funny; a radio DJ announces that “We’ve reached number twelve on the top 500 of all time, according to … me, alright? So don’t bother calling in. This time, it’s my choice!” Patrick rebuffs an advance on the logically illogical principle that “I don’t want to risk having bad sex today; I don’t want it to be the last thing on my mind. …” And the Wheeler clan’s final family Christmas meal is a perfectly-pitched comedic sketch of the loves and regrets and resentments in any family. There’s no last-minute mission to save humanity in the cards in Last Night; no big speeches; no sci-fi exposition explaining what’s going on. It’s just a movie about a group of people — like us — who know they’re going to die. Unlike us, though, they know precisely when.

Last Night’s been in and out of print on DVD for the past few years — a pan-and-scan version was available for years; the DVD’s finally been released in Canada in its original aspect ratio, but without any extras. I sincerely think that Last Night is one of the best, most overlooked films of the 1990s; it has all the directorial flourishes and hipster wit of that decade’s best films yet also manages to have a true and human heart, building from a series of sneaky sight gags and razor-sharp shards of observational comedy to a devastating, moving finale. All the carefully-crafted build up and slow-boil comedy, all the wit and whimsy and wry humor — they all fade away as the minutes count down to the inevitable and Last Night actually, truly reaches your heart in a way as real as it is unexpected. It’s probably going to take a little work to track Last Night down; trust me, it’s worth it.

–Rocchi’s Retro Rental, SFgate.com.

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