The Ghost was a pretty darned good straight up Russian thriller.  Again, part of the TIFF summary:"Though The Ghost is just his second feature, Armeni

"Though The Ghost is just his second feature, Armenian-Russian director Karen Oganesyan shows the confidence of a veteran. He displays a remarkable control of mood and pacing while unfolding this story of a novelist who is drawn into the world of an assassin. Every element – the precise cutting, the cool autumn colour palette and especially the layered and nuanced performances – contributes to a gathering sense of danger. Oganesyan knows how to keep the viewer guessing."

The film had a few places where logic failed... well, actually, on second thought, it's more that there was a big motive left unexplained.  In this case, though, I don't think I minded that, because I can come up with reasons for it.  And there's one death that... well, I'm not sure who the victim was.  But otherwise, it was pretty tight, as thrillers go.



More, though, it just looked cool, and had great atmosphere.  I particularly liked the way the director used Moscow.  He shot in not very many famous, postcard places--the conservatory was probably the most famous place, but even that's not really touristy, necessarily.  Instead, he used both kind of old courtyards and buildings, and weird grassy areas between new towering apartment blocks, and also very snazzy new restaurants and offices.  You can kind of see it in the trailer.  I was perhaps a little too involved thinking "do I know that place?" or "where is that?" while watching, which is the same problem I have with things shot in Chicago.



On a completely different note, one of the fun things about knitting while waiting in lines and before the movies is that you can listen in on people's conversations.  Yesterday I heard two young guys going on and on about their various computer equipment, one upping each other with the sizes of their hard drives. And another set of young guys describing to each other their personal philosophy of film rating.  Both The Lives of Others and Tropic Thunder got very high reviews from both.   And I heard a fairly scathing mini-review of the opening film of the festival, Passchendaele, which is a big WWI drama with Paul Gross, perhaps best known as the cutie Mountie in Due South.  The review was "Paul Gross is starting to look like Norm McDonald, and I just can't take him seriously."  Damn!