They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?

The Toronto Film Festival Part 2

By J. Don Birnam

September 17, 2014

Period pieces are so boring. I could act this film in my sleep.

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The best way to enjoy the movie, I believe, is to not take it too seriously. The police drama that takes place in the background is one dimensional and predictable (some twist is obviously coming and it’s going to be simplistically stupid), and at times the plot has trouble moving along so the filmmakers resort to illogical sequences (at one point the police, who had been following Travolta for the whole movie, decide to chase him. His escape results in a key decision by another character, but, what happened to the police? They mysteriously give up the chase).

I think you get my drift. Things like that make the movie average at best if taken too seriously, which is why it’s best not to and enjoy the fluffy and at times touching ride that it provides.

In any case, it’s not clear that most will have a chance to experience this movie, as it is currently without a distributor and without a North American release date.




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Big Game Samuel L. Jackson plays a kidnapped President of the United States - who also happens to be a wimp and a coward (if this was a jab at our current President, it was a lame one) - in the Finnish movie Big Game. There is only one word to describe it: Ridiculous.

Yet again, you’ve seen this movie before and it was much better when it was called Air Force One. The US President’s plane is under attack, and he is then chased by terrorists through the Finnish mountains but is protected by a young 12-year old forager. Again, at first you think that this is a serious vehicle, but it quickly becomes apparent that it is not.

I will say this: kudos to the Finnish filmmakers for essentially making a movie about their country and culture (and using their citizens) and somehow turn it into a popcorn thriller starring a huge American movie star. And Felicity Huffman and Jim Broadbent also star in lukewarm roles, backstage during the management of the President’s crisis in scenes so choppy and contrived that they make Armaggedon seem like a Puccini Opera.

Yet despite its over-the-top cheesiness and predictable yet neck-cricking plot twists, the midnight madness audiences at Toronto liked the movie so much that it picked up a distributor, and it is now set for an early 2015 release in the United States. Not an awards contender by any means (other than perhaps Razzies), Big Game will nevertheless enjoy a core audience of those of us who enjoy disaster/action/big catastrophe type movies.


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