Oscar Time! Movies reviewed: Omar, The Great Beauty
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
It’s time for my Oscar picks. Warning – I’m almost always wrong.
Best Actor. Should win: Matt McConoughey. Will win: Chiwetel Ejiofor.
WINNER: Matt McConoughey X
Best Actress. Should win: Judy Dench. Will win: Cate Blanchett.
WINNER: Cate Blanchett
Best Supporting Actor. (No idea… Jared Leto?)
WINNER: Jared Leto
Best Supporting Actress. Should win: Lupita Lyongo. Will win: Jennifer Lawrence.
WINNER: Lupita Lyongo X
Best Documentary. Should win: Act of Killing. Will win: 20 Feet from Stardom.
WINNER: 20 Feet from Stardom
Best Director. Should win — Steve McQueen. Will win: Russell or Cuaron
WINNER: Alfonso Cuaron
Best Picture. 12 Years a Slave (Should win and will win.)
WINNER: 12 Years a Slave
Best Movie in a Foreign Language. Should win: The Hunt. Will win: The Great Beauty.
WINNER: The Great Beauty
Sunday, March 2, 2014 , midnight. Oscars Results: My predictions weren’t bad this year — I got 6 or 7 out of 9 correct. The two I got wrong were winners I labeled “should win” not “will win”: Lupita Lyongo, and Matthew McConoughey. And I gave myself two “will win” options for best director (Russell or Cuaron).
So, in keeping with this theme, this week I’m looking at two movies nominated for best foreign language picture. One’s a dramatic thriller from the Palestinian Territories about a young man caught between a rock and a hard place; the other is a nostalgic look at contemporary Rome.
Omar
Dir: Hany Abu-Assad
Omar (Adam Bakri) is a young Palestinian who works in a one-man pita bakery. He’s a clean-scrubbed guy with an indefatigable spirit. Nimble on his feet, Omar can climb a three-storey wall — and back again — in a few seconds. And climb he does, over the Separation Wall that runs along the long border between Israel and the Occupied Territories. Because walls mean nothing to Omar — the border is porous, an arbitrary line.
Why does he cross the wall? Ostensibly to visit Tarek – serious, stern (Iyad Hoorani) and Amjad, a teller of jokes (Samar Bisharat).
But his real motivation is Nadia (Leem Lubany) Tarek’s younger sister, who lives on the other side of the wall. Omar is as tall dark and handsome as Nadia is kind, witty and beautiful with tousled black hair. 
One day he’s stopped by a particularly cruel unit of the border patrol. The Israelis are about his age, but they beat him up and publically humiliate him. A shift in Omar’s thinking?
So he joins Tarek and Amjad for a planned action. They are all prospective members of the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. Their initiation? A shooting. Omar doesn’t personally kill anyone but he’s the one arrested.
In prison, he’s tortured and interrogated. Finally he’s approached by a member of Al Aqsa. He warns Omar that spies are everywhere – they’ll pretend to make friends with him to get him to confess. The only way out is to collaborate with the Israelis – and any collaboration will last forever. His words are prophetic.
Soon enough, he’s out again, working to marry his love, trying to find the traitor who gave up his name, and, meanwhile, regularly speaking from a phone booth with his Israeli contact Rami (Waleed F. Zuaiter) an Arabic-speaking agent.
Whose side is he on? Which side does he really support? Can he even trust his friends, his love, his fellow militants?
Omar is a dramatic thriller about the Israel/Palestine conflict told decidedly from the Palestinian point of view. As a drama, it shows the psychologically draining toll non-stop surveillance takes on the lives of 
Palestinians. The movie’s done like a chess game: each side makes a move, countered by his opponent. But you soon see there are multiple chessboards, operating simultaneously, with countless players, alliances and betrayals until it’s hard to figure out who is black and who is white.
The acting is great, especially Adam Bakri and Leem Lubany as the young lovers, and Waleed F. Zuaiter as Omar’s handler. While not perfect, this is a thoughtful, informative and disturbing film, one that makes you think… and then rethink.
A Great Beauty
Wri/Dir: Paolo Sorrentino
Jep (Toni Servillo) is a bon vivant living in the floating world of contemporary Rome. It’s still the Dolce Vita. Ostensibly, he’s a novelist, but hasn’t done anything great in decades. He coasts along, living off his reputation, and partying with faded royalty, vapid models and the ultra-rich. He is a camera, experiencing and recording all of this in mind.
His Rome is one filled with gilded palaces, rococo night clubs and 
velveteen Vatican chambers. His editor at a popular magazine, Dadina (Giovanna Vignola), is a little person, given to wearing electric-blue dresses. As his 65th birthday approaches he confides in her: he needs to find something or someone important, genuine – the “great beauty” of the movie’s title.
Slowly, the movie chugs along, heading toward his dinner party, with an elusive guest. Will he be touched by God? Or will it all prove as superficial as the rest of his life?
The Great Beauty is a nostalgic look at Rome’s faded glory, the cool elegance of old Fellini movies. Wonderfully acted, carefully shot. But does it add up to anything new?
I found this movie hollow at the core.
And, aside from a few minutes of genuine beauty, it’s not attractive at all. It’s drenched in a 1970s aesthetic of awful opulence, far from the coolness of 50s and 60s Italian cinema. And both its story and its look exists more as a tribute (or a rehash) of older Italian movies than as a new one all its own.
The Great Beauty is now playing and Omar opens today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber interviews director JIM BRUCE about his new film Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The world’s economy was brought to a standstill after the crash of 2008 – we’re still recovering. What 
happened? A new movie posits that it was the policies of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan that were largely responsible for the meltdown.
This in-depth documentary explains the history of this powerful but opaque agency and how it works. It’s called Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve, (opening today in Toronto at Hot Docs). Director JIM BRUCE (editor: King of Kong) tells us more.
Movie Movies. Films Reviewed: Pompeii, 3 Days to Kill PLUS AKP Job 27
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Do you ever get tired of movies with deep meanings and avant-garde styles? Do you ever just want to see a “movie” movie? Well this week I’m looking at some movie movies, each with a bit of a twist. There’s a sword- and-sandal romance that’s also a disaster movie, an action-thriller that’s a family comedy, and a Yakuza movie… that has no lines!
Pompeii (in 3D)
Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson
The Roman empire is reaching its apex, planting the golden eagle on Brittainia. A particularly cruel general named Corvus battles the Celts. When it’s over he says to his henchman: Kill them all! But one little boy survives.
Milo (Kit Harrington, Game of Thrones) grows up to be a champion fighter, with stringy hair, a wispy beard and killer abs. He’s sent to Rome to compete as a fighter-slave. But on the way he comes to the aid of a beautiful, upper-class woman with porcelain features named Cassia (Emily Browning) Her horse has an accident, and Milo has a way with horses. He was “born on horseback”, he says. But will they ever meet again? You can count on it.
Now, Milo is sent to Pompeii (a holiday spot outside of Rome) to fight to the death in the arena there (Cassia’s dad controls Pompeii’s stadium). The ultimate fight will be between Milo and his rival Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-
Agbaje) an African gladiator about to win his freedom.
Who comes to town, but a suitor, a senator from Rome. He says he’ll approve the new stadium, if — and only if — Cassia marries him. But she hates him (they had an earlier run-in in Rome) and she has a thing for Milo. And who is this 
senator? Why it’s Corvus (Keiffer Sutherland) who, along with his henchman Proculus (Sasha Roiz) massacred Milo’s family as a child!
So all of these plots are going on right at the base of Mt Vesuvius. And as we all know now, the volcano is about to blow, pouring lava and volcanic ash over 
everyone, rich and poor, who doesn’t get out of there soon.
This movie has three things going on. There’s the frequent action scenes – lots of fights, great gladiator matches, chase scenes; then there are the romantic parts: Cassia and Milo are constantly risking their own lives to rescue each other from death and danger; and there’s the inevitable disaster part: ground rumbling, buildings crumbling, spectacular collapses… The movie uses way, way, way too many CGIs. It makes everything look dark. You long for some blue skies. Nevertheless, I totally enjoyed this movie. Excitement, interesting plot, fights, romance, tears… it’s got everything.
And believe it or not, this movie about ancient Rome was shot in Toronto’s west end, all in enormous soundstages and backlots.
Three Days to Kill
Dir: McG (The O.C.)
Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is just a regular guy who wears Dockers and roots for the Pittsburg steelers. He’s been away from his wife and daughter for five years. Why? Because he’s also a CIA assassin. He is in Belgrade to kill a sadistic criminal named the Albino (played by Icelandic actor Tómas Lemarquis as a James Bond-type super-villain). He’s known for chopping off the heads of his enemies. A young CIA agent named Vivi (Amber Heard) is there at the same time to kill another criminal known only as the Wolf. But something goes wrong.
Ethan collapses to the ground just when he should have shot the Albino.
Turns out he has inoperable brain cancer. He decides to spend his last days with his estranged wife and resentful teenaged daughter Zooey (Haillee Steinfeld, True Grit) in Paris. This is where the action is supposed to turn to laughs.
Back in Paris, his apartment has squatters: an extended family from Mali. (He’s white, they’re black… Get it?) And his teenaged daughter Zooey is angry because he neglected her. (She’s young, he’s old… Get it?) Well, somehow, he convinces his wife he can be trusted to take care of their daughter for three days while she’s away on a business trip. But then Vivi reappears to say: I’ll cure your cancer with some secret drugs if you murder the Wolf (Ethan’s the only one who saw his face in Belgrade.) So now he has to juggle bonding with Zooey, with dying of cancer, and torturing suspects and killing alleged criminals.
This is such a craptastically messed-up movie. Believe it or not, the script was originally co-written by Luc Besson, the notorious French action movie director. So it does have some good chase scenes and shootouts.
But the humour? So lame, it’s absolutely devoid of laughs. Costner is a terrible comic actor, and Amber Heard is embarrassingly bad as the multi-wigged Vivi. The script feels like it was written in French, rewritten in Serbo-Croation with the English version courtesy of Google Translate, alpha edition. Just dreadful.
AKP Job 27
Dir: Michael Suan
And in a tribute to the old Luc Besson comes a silent gangster pic from Toronto. A Yakuza hit man travels to on assignment in Canada and falls for a beautiful woman in the sex trade… who reminds him of a long lost love. This is a purely visual movie with a smorgasbord of images: gunshots in a field of air 
turbines, sex scenes in red and blue. There is too much slo-mo and choppy jump cuts for my taste — at times it feels like an extended 1980s music video. But it’s commendable as a first film, with Suan re-imagining a noir-ish Toronto as a city full of dark allies, rainy streets, neon lights, and strip bars.
Pompeii, Three Days to Kill and AKP Job 27 all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The glorious Chilean film Gloria continues, and also opening this week is Tim’s Vermeer.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Rom not Com. Films Reviewed: Gloria, Tim’s Vermeer, For No Eyes Only
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
It’s Valentine’s Day. For some reason, romance in movies has been inexorably tied to comedy. You’re in love? It must be a joke. Well, today I’m forsaking the romcoms and the soppy romances. I want to talk about some unusual movies about love, sex, and obsession. A Chilean movie about a divorced woman’s search for love, an American doc about a man’s search for proof, and German flick about a kid’s search for secrets.
Gloria
Dir: Sebastien Lelio
Gloria (Paulina Garcia) is an average, middle-aged divorcee in downtown Santiago. Her life is stale, worn-out. She lives alone in an apartment, with just a noisy neighbour and a hideous, hairless cat intruding on her privacy. Her home life is depressing, her office job is stultifying. And her kids are adults now. But she’s not willing to give up. She’s still full of energy – she wants to enjoy life, sing songs, fall in love, be in a one-on-one relationship. And, well, she wants to get laid.
So she starts hanging out in discos that play seventies music. (The people there all look like they went to this club back when those songs were new.) She goes there to pick up men – much older men. Ideally, she wants a man who is honest, who respects and desires her.
After some misfires, she falls for Rodolfo, a very conservative, rich, elderly 
man. He takes her for a drive to show her his wealth, his power. At first their relationship seems solid… but can she trust him? He interrupts their lunches with extended calls on his cel. And he’ll drop everything to run home whenever his daughters say they need him (He’s divorced – he says — but he’s still responsible for his girls.)
She wants him to meet her family and friends. Will he commit? And will he fit in with her lifestyle? (Gloria’s a free-thinking Chilean, Rodolfo’s roots are with Pinochet’s right-wing military.)
Although this movie is told in an everyday manner, this is a fantastic, bittersweet look at one woman’s life. The actress, Paulina Garcia, completely embodies and embraces Gloria – flaws and all. She convey’s what she’s thinking; not through words, but in her eyes. The whole movie is told from her point of view, and she exposes everything – body and soul — for the camera. This is a fantastic movie, and Garcia’s performance is flawless and unforgettable.
Tim’s Vermeer
A Penn and Teller film; directed by Teller, narrated by Penn.
Tim Jenison is a tremendously successful Texan inventor of devices gadgets and software. Somehow, he became fascinated by the paintings of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. How could they be so perfectly 
lit, so realistically focused, so uncannily lifelike? He embarks on a mission – an obsession really – to discover the mechanical basis behind Vermeer’s art. He is convinced that Vermeer used a camera obscura – a dark room that projects inverted light images against a wall – long before photography and electric light was discovered. To his theory he adds the element of dentist’s mirrors, little discs on sticks.
Next he sets out to prove it – by rebuilding an exact replica of all the things portrayed in one of Vermeer’s paintings! Why? He recreates the furniture, the windows, the musical 
instruments, everything… then sets up his camera obscura and dentist mirrors and begins to paint. Can he do it? Told by the team of magic debunkers Penn and Teller, this is a strange but fascinating story of a rich man who has the time and money to pursue his obsession. The strangest thing about his painting is the complete and total absence of any artistic feeling or aesthetic sense.
For No Eyes Only
Wri/Dir: Tali Barde
This is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg but – through his apartment’s rear window he can see into the windows of the apartment behind him. And he thinks he witnesses a crime.
In this movie, Sam (Benedict Sieverding) is a high school student in Germany.
He’s the star field hockey player but has a broken leg. He was mowed down by the new kid, a tall and intense guy named Aaron (directorTali Barde). Sam is sure Aaron is up to no good. With too much time at home, Sam discovers a hacking system that allows him access to his classmates’ computer cameras – his personal rear window. This gives him an inside view of all his friends’ bedrooms – everything they don’t want anyone else to see. Including Livia (Luisa Gross), his secret crush.
Luisa is mature confident and sophisticated, while Sam loses all his bravado and stumbles when talking to her. She takes the lead and invites herself to his home for some “computer lessons”. She’s figured out Sam’s been watching.
At first she’s angry, but, soon she’s joining in on his intramural spy-project. That’s when they notice something strange is going on with Aaron. Where’s his dad? Why does he hide a kitchen knife in his bedroom? What’s he carrying to the basement? Is 
there really a crime? Or is it just their overactive imaginations?
It’s a fun movie but with an after-school-special feel to it – it’s a little too cute for a thriller. But if you consider it was made for just a fistful of Euros (less than 4000) by a recent college grad… Incredible! Though made in 2012, with Snowden’s recent revelations about NSA spying on ordinary people, this film is even more relevant today.
Gloria opens today in Toronto and Tim’s Vermeer opens next week: check your local listings. For No Eyes Only is playing this weekend at the TIFF Next Wave festival. Go to tiff.net/. Also opening today is the fun Paraguayan thriller 7 Boxes, and the amazing courtroom documentary Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer about the Moscow trial of Russian activists/musicians Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Adam and Andrew Gray about their new documentary FLY COLT FLY
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
was revealed that he escaped in borrowed prop planes that he’d taught himself to fly, his reputation soared. He was chased across the continent until he was finally caught in the Bahamas.
Daniel Garber talks with writer/director Jeremy Lalonde about his new comedy Sex After Kids
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
What do these people have in common? A lesbian couple, a single british woman, a newly married couple with a baby, an agent married to an ex-model, and a pair of grandparents? They all have kids and they all wonder what happened to their sex lives.
A funny new comedy, shot in Toronto and opening today, asks the age-old question: What happens to Sex after Kids? Writer/ director Jeremy Lalonde tells us all about it.
Kids above and beyond. Movies Reviewed: 7 Boxes, Igor and the Cranes’ Journey PLUS Tiff NEXT Wave Film Fest
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Sometimes kids feel they have to be something above normal. Girls are princesses, boys superheroes. It’s reinforced in movies, TV shows, comic books, birthday parties… What’s less common is stories about ordinary kids put into bad situations who behave extraordinarily.
This week I’m looking at two movies, both about kids going above and beyond. One’s a Russian-Israeli film about a kid who follows birds online; the other’s a Paraguayan film about a kid mesmerized by video images.
7 Boxes
Dir: Juan Carlos, Maneglia, Tana Schembori
Victor (Celso Franco) is a kid who lives in the hustle and bustle of an outdoor market in Asuncion. He hangs out with a friend, Liz who wanders through the aisles. He pushes a giant wheelbarrow around to make a few dollars moving boxes from here to there. Victor knows every corner and alleyway, and all the merchants, the shoppers, the homeless and the cops who work there. His favourite spot is the closed-circuit TV shop, where he can see his own face on the video screens. (His sister works in the kitchen of a Korean restaurant, and likes the son of the owner.)
And when she shows up one day weilding a super-deluxe cel phone that can
make videos, Victor knows he has to buy it.
Things are looking good. That same day, he gets hired by a shady character in a butcher’s shop for a very important job. He has to transport seven flat wooden crates. But to where? He won’t say. And what’s in them? He won’t say. The butcher gives him half a US 100 dollar bill. He gets the other half once the goods – all seven boxes – are delivered.
There’s something strange about this whole job, but he doesn’t know what it is. Soon enough, a rival wheelbarrow pusher sees the money and decides he should have the money. He hires a gang to hunt Victor down and steal 
the boxes. Bumbling police inspectors are also looking for the boxes, and are quick to arrest criminals and victims – anyone near the scene of a crime.
And the shady characters behind the unnamed crime run into trouble of their own.
Can Victor keep the boxes safe – without looking to see what’s inside? Will the criminals get their just deserts? And will Victor live to see his reward?
7 Boxes is a great action/thriller, about everyday life for working class kids in a Paraguay market. Most of the movie is not in Spanish but in Guarani, a language spoken only in Paraguay and countries bordering it. (Because of the gun violence this movie is not meant for small kids) I like this movie.
Igor and the Cranes’ Journey
Dir: Evgeny Ruman
Igor’s dad Peter (Tomasz Sobczak) is an ornithologist who studies migration. He’s especially interested in the flight patterns of cranes. They fly from Russia down to the Black Sea, and onward to the Middle East and Africa. His young son, Igor (Itai Shcherback) visits him each year at a nature reserve in Russia.
This year Igor witnesses a baby crane’s birth – he names him Karl. He sets up a website so he and his dad – and any viewers — can watch him grow up and migrate (Karl is tagged with a sensor).
His Polish dad’s projects are sponsored by a rich Russian oligarch who’s mainly out for profit. He treats biology like a circus act: We need bears! Lots of bears! If we follow birds they must be happy and healthy – no birds die on my projects!
The rest of the year Igor lives with his divorced mom in a big city where 
she’s a music teacher. Mom (Ola Schur Selektar) wants to emigrate to Israel so she can head up a genuine choir. (She later learns it’s not exactly what she expects).
Igor has no desire to move there — it doesn’t even have a great football team like Barcelona. And he’d lose all his best friends. So he asks his dad if he can go live with him and help him follow the cranes. But he’s rejected. So he moves with his mom to a small town in Israel.
Igor has no friends, can’t speak the language and the other kids tease and laugh at him. He spends all day drawing flipbook animation drawings of the cranes in his math book. Only Vered (Clil Arbel) — the girl he sits with and the daughter of the school principal — is nice to him. She likes his pictures and is drawn to Karl’s (the young crane) plight.
So, even while Igor refuses to speak to his dad by telephone or read the letters he sends him, he and Vered still follow Karl’s plight — and listen to his father’s personal messages — on the website.
How can Igor help Karl survive? He comes up with a plan: create a crane sanctuary in a dirty pond near his school. Will the other kids help? Will he ever see his father again? Will he find Karl? … and will he and Vered share their first kiss?
The film varies from straight drama to B&W flip-book style animation, based on Igor’s drawings. Igor and the Cranes’ Journey is a sweet, gentle family drama about a young Russian boy coping with big changes.
7 Boxes opens next Friday in Toronto — check your listings, and Igor and the Cranes’ 
Journey is playing for one show on Sunday in Vaughan: go to tjff.com for details. And next weekend, the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival, (February 14 – 16) shows films for young adults, partly selected by a group of 12 teens from the Toronto area. Details: tiff.net/nextwave . And The 24-Hour Film Challenge has 20 teams of high school students making a short film in 24 hours including a specific line of dialogue and a prop: a red beret. Winners will be announce next Sunday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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