Canada Spry

TwentyFourSeven, a visually striking drama set in Thatcherite England and shot in velvety black and white by 25-year-old cowriter-director Shane Meadows, forgoes cleverness. The sentimental story, about a paunchy chap (Bob Hoskins) who organizes the local, directionless lads into a boxing club, gets a bit emotionally heavy-handed at times, but Meadows' confident cinematic flair is the real thing.

Scene for scene, nothing moved me more than La vie de Jesus, a stunning debut from French director Bruno Dumont, in which he conveys all the fragility, violence, and despair of dead-end youth in nearly wordless vignettes of everyday life in the northern French countryside. (The actors are all local nonprofessionals.) But I was also thrilled by writer-director-actor Takeshi Kitano's Hana-Bi (Fireworks), a gorgeously assembled story about gangsters, cops, and the relationship between one remorseful lawman (Kitano) and his dying wife.

Of course, one would never mistake Michael Moore for a guy prone to understatement. The creator of 1989's Roger & Me has created a kind of follow-up with The Big One, a chutzpah-packed bit of self-promotion (the action is built around a book tour for Moore's bombastic Downsize This!) that is, nevertheless, obnoxiously effective in sticking up for the unemployed and agitating for corporate reform.

But obnoxious is the only word to describe Gummo, a repellent, posturing feature from much-hyped 23-year-old writer-director Harmony Korine, who previously scripted the repellent Larry Clark film, Kids. Hell-bent on grossing viewers out, Korine as good as grins as he stages nihilistic scenes in a splattery melange of visual styles (cats are killed, feral children disconnect a comatose old woman from her respirator, etc.). And from this we learn...what? That art isn't pretty? That Super 8 and video stock can look cool? That kids say the darnedest things?

I think we learn that an unhyped film festival is the best place on earth to get a clear view of world cinema.