Three at-bats, but no TIFF hits on this day in cinema sports

#TIFF16: Critic’s Dispatches

Seasoned critic sacrifices a Blue Jays game to take in The Queen of Katwe, Planetarium and The Bleeder but finds little to celebrate beyond a sweet mid-movie slumber

By Jay Stone

TORONTO — I went to three films today, which means I didn’t get to watch the Toronto Blue Jays game on television. The films weren’t great as cinema, but they were excellent as distractions from the Toronto Blue Jays. For the record, the Boston Red Sox beat the Jays 11-8, and I went 0-for-3.

The first movie was The Queen of Katwe, a Disney movie based on a true story about a teenage Ugandan girl who lives in dire poverty on the bad side of a small African village — mud streets, bare shacks, a cacophony of people trying to sell maize to people in cars stuck in monumental traffic jams at red lights — and becomes a chess champion.

Yes, it’s that movie, which suited my fellow movie-goers to a T. They laughed and applauded on cue, which makes me think The Queen of Katawe will bring in big crowds and win awards and I will be left, yet again, wondering why people so love movies whose outcomes you can predict from the trailer. I don’t blame director Mira Nair for this: she’s following a well-established formula for success. I blame the system. What is wrong with you earthlings?

The Queen of Katawe will bring in big crowds and win awards and I will be left, yet again, wondering why people so love movies whose outcomes you can predict from the trailer.

The girl, Phioni Mutesi (newcomer Madina Nalwanga) is the spirited daughter of a feisty single mother (Lupita Nyong’o) and doesn’t seem to have much of a future — women in this movie are subject to the sexual whims of the men who can give them whatever sustenance they might accrue — until she learns she has a special ability for chess. Luckily, a pretty good chess player (a good-natured turn by David Oyelowo) lives in town, and he inspires her to enter the championships against the rich, spoiled (boo!) city kids.

You pretty well know where all this is going from the pitch: it’s a chess movie, the kind where the Ugandan championships are broadcast live on radio — no country is that desperate for entertainment — and one of the quirks of the game, that a pawn can be turned into a queen if it gets to the eighth row, becomes the secret weapon of our feisty heroine. I won’t spoil the ending, but stick around, if you dare, for the closing sequence in which the real-life people of the movie pose beside the actors who play them. It’s the best part.

Movie No. 2 was a drama called Planetarium. Here’s is the official TIFF description: “In 1930s France, two sisters (Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp) who perform as supernatural mediums cross paths with a visionary film producer.” I’m assuming that is correct; I soon fell into a long nap as gently if I was being immersed in a warm bath. I woke up to find that the film producer was on trial for something and that, since he was Jewish, it was probably all a metaphor for the long nap that Europe itself took during the Second World War. Fortunately, I don’t think Planetarium will ever open anywhere so I won’t have to nap through it again.

I soon fell into a long nap as gently if I was being immersed in a warm bath.

Things were brighter — or at least actually conscious — at the third film, The Bleeder. This is the story of Chuck Wepner, a prizefighter from New Jersey who was known as the Bayonne Bleeder for his ability to be endlessly punched in the nose and not fall down. The highlight of his career was a 15-round loss to Muhammad Ali.

Wepner was the inspiration for the Rocky movies, and The Bleeder — directed by Canadian filmmaker Phillippe Falardeau — starts with Wepner’s life as a fighter and then morphs into a story about how an ordinary man who did a lot of drugs and cheated on his wife becomes enamored of his own image when he becomes part of Hollywood lore. The character (well played by Liv Schreiber) adopts the Rocky myth as his own — he cheers the film’s Oscar successes as if he had actually won something — and spends the second half of his career taking credit for his fictional correlative.

There are several scenes from Rocky, but more from the 1962 film Requiem for a Heavyweight, in which Anthony Quinn plays Mountain Rivera (a character inspired by the real-life boxer Primo Carnera), a washed-up prizefighter who is forced to lose his dignity by becoming a professional wrestler. Like Rivera, Wepner joins the ranks of guys who coulda been a contender, with the proviso that in their cases, they actually couldn’ta.

The Bleeder is a lesser boxing film, a scattershot effort that seems as it was made for television — much information is imparted in telephone calls — rather than for theatres. But Schreiber is good, and Naomi Watts, his real-life wife, has an enjoyable turn as a sexy bartender. At the end, we also see the actual people who were played by the movie stars. As usual, the movie stars are better-looking.

I came home to discover the Buffalo Bills had also lost. Film festivals aren’t what they used to be.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 8-18, check in with The Ex-Press daily for updates.