“Poolman,” Chris Pine’s directorial debut that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a pastiche of Los Angeles past and present. It’s a film noirlike “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” but its characters are the New Age-y, socially conscious, showbiz-adjacent type. The film was supposedly the first to be screened on 35mm at TIFF in years, only to be projected in DCP due to an unspecified technical issue.
Somewhat recalling “True Romance”-era Brad Pitt, Darren (Pine) is the titular eccentric dude who ritually checks the water levels in the Tahitian Tiki apartments’ pool and meditates while immersed therein.