TIFF 2015: LOUDER THAN BOMBS Review

If there has been a single trend in all of the films I've seen so far at TIFF it is that of the one focusing on depressed white people. Apparently, a lot of these folks become so bored with their seemingly perfect(ly fine) existences, that many others would no doubt kill for a piece of, that they feel the need to create senseless drama for themselves to feel something, anything. It's a sign of some type of narcissism as the three main male figures in this film are so self-involved in their quest to get past canonizing a woman who, despite being gone for several years, still dictates much of their daily lives. This isn't to say the death of a loved one is an easy thing to cope with, but it is the actions and the inability to communicate between these three in the wake of their loss that places them each on different roads that see them looking to heal themselves in ways of aggression or impulse or hatred instead of trying to sit down and figure it out together. Director Joachim Trier, who has made two previous features (Reprise, Oslo, August 31st) that I haven't seen has written an original screenplay with frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt and while it is easy to see where he is coming from with his examination of the effects we can each have on one another's lives, even in the smallest senses, Louder Than Bombs still feels like something more appropriate for a forty-five minute short rather than a nearly two-hour slog that keeps piling on the bad, conceit-ridden choices that push these individuals farther and farther from where they need (or want) to be.

THE D TRAIN Review

The D Train is an odd movie. It's an interesting one, don't get me wrong, but it's an odd one for sure. I'm a rather faithful comedy fan and have said many times on this site before that I carried a rather rabid affinity for the fan appointed "Frat Pack" that originally consisted of Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Owen and Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. Any time any of these guys decided to head up a film there was a desperate hope they would include a couple of the others in the proceedings. Soon, Judd Apatow and his gang emerged and the universe has been expanding ever since. In the wake of this merger it always felt like Black was somewhat left behind. This was obviously unfortunate given Black is one of those guys who can make you laugh with a simple facial expression, but his output has become increasingly stale since hitting a high mark in 2008 with Tropic Thunder and Kung-Fu Panda. Looking back through his filmography it is almost alarming how little he has done in the past few years with his last out and out feature being the horribly marketed and little-seen The Big Year in 2011. With The D Train, Black seems to be making something of a statement in that, at the very least, he'd like to see his career go in a more mature way, one that puts him in the position of actually investing in his characters and developing his skills rather than simply cashing the quick check and making the same faces. We've seen this before from the comic, especially in the underrated Bernie, but here it is more of a concentrated effort than the seemingly haphazard way in which Black picked projects prior.