From Toronto: Part One

The two most-talked about films here at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival showed at the press and industry screenings Sunday.

Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, which he apparently finished just days ago. Seeing it, you can understand why. It’s Moore’s most ambitious film, his “epic," so to speak, as it tries to embrace everything from what brought the US economic situation to its current state (in two words, uncontrolled greed) to putting a face on how the economy affects ordinary people--heart-wrenching episodes with people getting evicted from their homes after foreclosure. In one, a Peoria farm couple whose family had lived on the land for generations, but who fell behind in escalating mortgage payments because the husband was injured at work and is on disability is offered $1000 by the bank for emptying and cleaning their former house, including hauling all the trash to the dump.

There are typical Moore hijinks, with him wrapping yellow “Crime Scene” tape around Wall Street buildings, but in reality, he tries to put a face on the anger people feel from being ripped off by the system.

The Israeli film Lebanon, which just won a prize at the Venice Film Festival showed here to a packed house. It's a relentlessly claustrophobic drama of three soldiers in the close confines of a tank, during the invasion of Lebanon…


- Milos Stehlik

*Check back all week for more TIFF updates from Milos.