TIFF 2018: Greta, The Hummingbird Project, The Dig

One of the quietest buzzes coming into TIFF this year was for Neil Jordan’s “Greta,” which one would presume would have been a highly promoted and anticipated title given who was involved. Yes, Jordan may not quite be the director he once was, but I personally have found something interesting even in recent perceived misfires like “Ondine” and “Byzantium,” and he always struck me as a filmmaker who could have another masterpiece in him. Add his direction to a cast that includes Maika Monroe, Chloe Grace Moretz, and the legend who is Isabelle Huppert, and the lack of buzz becomes even more confusing. Sadly, seeing the film explains a little bit of it. It is far from a complete disaster, but it only becomes the film you really want it be after about an hour of flat dialogue and convoluted behavior. That the last third nearly save it is a testament to Huppert’s ability once Jordan finally lets her off the leash.

Huppert plays the title character, a woman who leaves her purse on a New York train one day, found by a sweet young woman named Frances, played by Moretz. She decides to bring Greta’s purse to her personally, and the two form a friendship. Frances has recently lost her mother; Greta says her daughter is studying in Paris—they fill a need for each other. Well, that is until Frances discovers something truly upsetting at Greta’s house, and tries to break off all contact. Greta doesn’t take this well and Jordan’s film basically turns into “Single White Mommy Dearest.”

Well, I should say it eventually turns into that. If you’re thinking that a crazy Huppert sounds like some awesomely GIF-able material, the movie does eventually scratch that itch, but it takes too long to become the B-movie you want from the beginning. Too much of this is flat, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that watching a movie about a mother-daughter bond written and directed by men hampered the final product. There’s something just slightly off about these characters, as if Jordan never quite figured them out, or why they need each other. Maybe he was too excited to get to the “good stuff” to bother with the set-up.

There’s a fascinating performance near the center of "The Hummingbird Project," but director Kim Nguyen never finds the urgency in his feels-true-but-isn't narrative. It’s a movie about people trying to do something faster than anyone else that can’t match that forward momentum. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could have learned as much about this specific story and even the human conditions reflected in it from a “60 Minutes” segment (were it true), and this one runs 111.

Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton Zalesky (Alexander Skarsgard) were tired of merely working for the system and decided to try and beat it. The cousins quit their day jobs, stole a bit of coding from their ruthless boss (Salma Hayek), and set off to do what most would considering impossible—build a thousand-mile-long, four-inch-wide tunnel from Kansas to New Jersey. What could that possibly do, you ask? Lay a fiber wire that would transport information one millisecond faster than the competition between the two city’s stock exchanges. Believe it or not, that one millisecond—the flap of a hummingbird wing—could mean millions of dollars in profit.