Daniel Garber talks with Alanis Obomsawin about her new NFB documentary Trick or Treaty? premiering at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In 1905, Treaty No. 9 was signed by representatives of the Canadian government and Cree and Ojibway first nations. Newly elected chiefs draped the Union Jack over their shoulders in a gesture of acceptance. The treaty
said, on paper, that the people there would cede the land around James Bay, in perpetuity, to the crown in exchange for their protection and well-being. It’s there on paper… but is this what both sides actually agreed to? A new documentary from the National Film Board of Canada says No.
The film is called TRICK OR TREATY? It examines, in depth, the issue of treaty rights, whether the 
Canadian government lives up to its end of the bargain, and whether the treaties themselves were legal documents. It brings the story up-to- date with footage and interviews with the IDLE NO MORE movement, the status of first nations’ women, and other current issues. It’s filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin is the doyenne of documentaries at the NFB who for 40 years has recorded the issues and past and current history of the indigenous peoples in Canada. Trick or Treaty premiers at TIFF14, the Toronto International Film Festival and I reached Alanis Obomsawin by telephone, at NFB headquarters in Montreal. Producer, writer, director and narrator, Alanis talks about treaty rights, Crazy Horse, David Kawapit, Bill C-45, Idle No More, Tina Fontaine, Chief Theresa Spence, and more!
Stars as Commodities. Film Reviewed: The Congress PLUS TIFF14 Whiplash, Mommy, Heartbeat
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.
Are movies and movie stars and their images commodities? Things that can be bought sold and traded, just like stocks and bond, like bitcoins and pork belly futures? In some ways, they are. International film festivals — like TIFF, which opens in Toronto in less than a week — are partly there to put films on the market. This week I’m going to talk about an unusual new film about movie stars as commodities, and, first, three must-see films coming to TIFF.
One movie that jumped out at me and slapped me in the face is
Whiplash
Dir: Damien Chazelle
Andrew (Miles Teller) is a 19-year-old drummer just starting at a prestigious music conservatory who is spotted by Fletcher a music teacher (JK Simmonds). He’s allowed to audition for their award- winning jazz band, and feels everything is turning out great. But he soon discovers that Fletcher is a cruel and twisted perfectionist, who brings his players up to the top, and then has them crash down into the dirt again. He treats them worse than the toughest marine sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. The acting, the passion and the relentless tension in this movie is just incredible… you gotta see it. Don’t want to say Oscar bells are already ringing, but… Whiplash definitely deserves one.
Mommy
(Dir) Xavier Dolan
Another great movie is Quebecois director Xavier Dolan’s latest, Mommy. It’s a reworking of his first film J’ai Tue Ma Mere, but takes it to a new level. Steve-o (Antoine Olivier-Pilon) is a working-class, foul-mouthed teenager with ADHD. He’s kicked out of boarding school and sent home to his single mom Diane (Anne Dorval) who is as gutter-friendly, violent and sexually charged as her boy. It’s up to Kyla, the psychologically-damaged ex-school teacher next door, to try to fix things and keep Steve from being locked up. Dynamic, shocking and hilarious performances from all three actors, Mommy is not to be missed.
Also catch a gentle, quirky, musical story called
Heartbeat
Dir: Andrea Dorfman
Justine (Tanya Davis) is a creative soul trapped in a boring cubicle job in Halifax. Her best friend is in babyland, her artist-boyfriend-with-benefits Ben has dumped her, and she dresses in her late grandma’s wardrobe. But when she starts jamming with Ruby (Stephanie Clattenburg) she met in a music store window, things begin tot look up. Justine starts to Esty-fy her wardrobe and arts-and-crafts her love life. Heartbeat starts slowly but toasts like a marshmallow on a stick, ending strangely shaped, but crispy, gooey, warm and delicious.
Look out for Heartbeat, Whiplash and Mommy at TIFF.
The Congress
Dir: Ari Forman
Robin Wright (Robin Wright) is an over-the-hill movie star who just ekes out a living. She lives beside desert airport with her jaded hollywood daughter Sarah and her innocent but ill son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McFee). She needs money to keep him safe. One day her agent (Harveyt Keitel) makes her an offer she can’t refuse.
A studio wants to buy her name, face, image, voice… basically everything, to turn her back into a superstar. And theyre giving her a huge contract and a starring role in countless big budget action movies. The catch? She’s not allowed to act or appear in public ever again. Huh?
You see, they want to scan her to make a CGI image that will take her place in all 
future roles. A star who never ages, never gets into scandals, and never has tantrums on-set. It’s all digital.
Will she do it? 20 years in the future, they up the ante.
They invite her to give a speech at a mysterious Congress, where she — like everyone else — exists only as an animated image of herself. Sort of a Second Life only more so. With the help of Dylan (Jon Hamm), a handsome cartoon character 
who created her image himself, she tries to escape from this strange psychedelic cartoon version of her world, and maybe save her now-adult son.
This is a super-bizarre movie, filled with glorious animation modeled on Max Fleischer-type characters from the 1920s and 30s mixed with 1960s psychedelia. At parts I’m totally into it, but other parts have dismally awful lines. Its flawed, not perfect, but worth seeing if your into mind-stretching and super-weird fantasy epics.
The Congress opens today, check your local listings, and Heartbeat, Mommy, and Whiplash are all playing at TIFF which starts up next Thursday. Details at tiff.net.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Bromance vs Romance. Movies Reviewed: The November Man, Are You Here, Señoritas
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.
Can bromance ever trump romance? Do BFFs really last forever? Can friendship follow courtship or loveship? This week I’m looking at three movies that explore these themes. A thriller set in Belgrade has a former spyteam turned into enemies, an art house flick about a young woman in Bogota and her friends and lovers; and an American dramedy about best buds facing big changes.
The November Man
Dir: Roger Donaldson
Devereaux and Mason (Pierce Brosnan and Australian actor Luke Bracey) are a kill team team – mentor and mentee – working at the CIA. Devereaux chooses the spots, Mason takes the shots. But something goes wrong, they have a falling out, and Devereaux retires to Switzerland. Years later, he is brought back to rescue a female operative who works for a top Moscow politician. She carries crucial information: a name. Devereaux is known for his cold and calculated mentality. He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way. But this woman is somehow different. In a tense car chase, the woman is shot, and Devereaux escapes. Turns out, she was his longtime lover. Also turns out the shooter is Mason! Now the former allies are arch-enemies, both based in Belgrade, with Mason out to kill Devereaux for the US Government. But that’s not all.
The name refers to a woman who holds secret information that could bring the Russian politician down. Only she knows all about his shady past. But the only one who knows how to find her is the secretive but beautiful Alice Fournier (Olga Kurylenko). She’s a French NGO worker, based in Serbia, who rescues victims of human trafficking. Devereaux has to find and hide her before a Russian assassin gets to her. He also has to deal with US congressmen and intelligence bosses, some of whom may be corrupt. And avoid Mason, the killer he once personally trained and who knows all his tricks.
Generally, The November Man is a good (if shallow) spy action/thriller. Pierce Brosnan is another cool-as-a- cucumber James Bond-type, but without the special gadgets. But there were some odd parts: for a movie supposedly dealing with female trafficking it sure shows a lot of stripper scenes, purely for audience tittilation. And I gotta say, Russia vs America spy movies just don’t have the same punch anymore. They just feel old.
Are You Here
Dir: Matthew Weiner
Steve and Ben (Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis) are best buds from schooldays. Lovers may come and go, but these two faithful friends stick with it. Steve works as a TV weatherman by day, and as a singles bar Lothario by night. In between, he’s usually with Ben in a rundown shack, smoking pot.
Ben is in a rut, still not progressing in his academic writing, and supported financially by Steve. He’s also unpredictable and unstable, prone to showing up at Steve’s TV studio looking like crazy, homeless person (which he basically is.)
But then the two of them return to their hometown in Lancaster County — Pennsylvania Dutch country — for Ben’s father’s funeral. There they have to deal with Terri, Ben’s bitter older sister (Amy Poehler.) She hates them both. Then there’s Angela (Laura Ramsey) the widow, a beautiful, young hippy in her early twenties, who lived happily with the octogenarian for five years before he kicked off. And he has a house, a store, and hundreds of acres of farmland to pass on to the next generation. Who will inherit what?
Steve has the hots for Angela… can this be love? Ben decides to move into the house and straighten himself up. He plans to confront his inner demons. But who will take care of him if Steve‘s not around? Can their bromance survive? And sister Terri thinks everyone’s plotting against her. She wants her slice of the pie – or the whole pie if she can get it.
The movie is directed by the creator of the TV show Madmen, but if you’re expecting slickness and high fashion, you’re looking at the wrong movie. It’s a bit of a mess. It’s not terrible, but it plods along as more of a social drama than the comedy it seems to be at first. Because it’s not actually funny. I think it tries to be deep and profound: Should we trade away our dreams for stability? Get rid of creativity to fit in to society? It’s trying to solve these big dilemmas… but it’s actually just a mush of meandering, unfinished storylines.
Senoritas
Wri/Dir: Lina Rodriguez
Alejandra (María Serrano) is a Senorita, a single woman in her twenties. She lives with her mom in Bogota, Colombia. (She’s an Amy Millam lookalike) seems to spend most of her time just hanging with friends, going to nightclubs, listening to music, and making out with guys she likes. She calls them all dudes. Sometimes she goes out shopping, or makes out in the front seat of a parked car. She floats in swimming pools, walks down long, long country lanes, and chats with her friends in a particular local dialect. And at a game of truth or dare, her friends and erstwhile lovers reveal some true feelings.
So, you might ask, where’s the plot? Well it ain’t in this movie. It’s more of an introspective look at one woman’s life. For example, one ten-minute scene has her walking down a deserted path. The camera follows her from behind. But when we hear a wolf-whistle off camera, her pace increases. We learn that despite her seemingly casual ways, she sometimes is insecure. And as a woman is never completely safe.
Take it as an introspective art house film and you won’t find it boring. It keeps my attention. There are a lot of sex scenes, dance scenes, party scenes, music scenes. But the scenes are very long, almost always in extreme close-ups. It takes place in Colombia, but it’s not full of panoramic city views, or natural vistas, that’s for sure. Just lots of close-ups… often with their backs to the camera.
November Man and I Am Here are now opening on the big screen or play-on-demand, and Senoritas starts today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. 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 talks to Emmanuel Shirinian and Michael D. Cohen about their new film It Was You, Charlie
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Poor Abner.
He was once a successful sculptor and a popular art prof, in love with a beautiful girl, best friends with his brother. A bearded bohemian, high on life.
Now he’s a total wreck, lonely and depressed, working as a doorman in a monkey suit. How did he sink into this pit of despair and degradation and can he claw his way back out? Or will he just end it all…?
So asks a new, dark comedy called IT WAS YOU, CHARLIE. It’s a first feature by film 
fest favourite writer/ director Emmanuel Shirinian, and stars rising comic actor and ACTRA award nominee Michael D. Cohen as Abner. It opens today in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. I speak with Emmanuel and Michael about this film, its story, the character Abner, magic realism, Buster Keaton… and more!
Real / Not Real. Movies Reviewed: Frank, The Trip to Italy PLUS The Dog
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.
Ever heard of “native advertising”? Well, you should. It’s when newspapers or websites – like the Globe and Mail and the New York Times – plant advertisements disguised as journalism right alongside real news articles. So it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between what’s real and what’s made up. Well, this week, I’m looking at movies that cross the line between fiction and reality. There’s a comedy from the UK about actors on a trip who play themselves, a comedy from Ireland about a musician who hides his face, and a documentary about a bank robber who inspired a movie.
Frank
Dir: Leonard Abrahamson (based on an article by Jon Ronson)
Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is a ginger-haired nerd in his twenties who still lives with his parents. He lives in a seaside English town and works at a boring desk job. But he imagines himself as a successful singer-songwriter and keyboardist. He spends his free time recording feeble, unfinished verses on his computer… He’s of the Twitter generation and can’t think longer than 140 characters. But one day he witnesses an attempted suicide on a beach by an actual deranged musician – a keyboardist. And just because Jon is in the wrong place at the right time he is asked, spontaneously, to take his 
place at a gig.
The show is a disaster. He’s terrible, the band can’t play, and the performance generates an on-stage fight. But Jon is mesmerized by the lead singer, Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank is a charismatic man, with huge blue eyes, neat black hair and enigmatic features. He has a friendly, enthusiastic style that everyone likes. He’s everything Jon would want to be.
The thing is, his features are enigmatic because they never change. His big blue eyes are entrancing because they are enormous. In fact, Frank wears a gigantic, painted papier-mache globe over his real head. What does his face look like? Nobody knows. He never takes it off and eats his food through a straw.
John invited to join them in a cabin in the woods to record an album. But he soon discovers this group is a strange bunch. Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) plays the Theramin ad looks like a smouldering heroin addict, with her pale skin and art-school hair. She’s outright hostile to John. She thinks he’s the Yoko Ono, tearing the group apart. The rest of them include a sneering Frenchman, a burnt-out American, and others, who come and go. Days turns to weeks, then months. They’re broke. Will they ever finish it? But without telling the others, John posts clips on youtube and reports their progress on Twitter. Soon they have a solid fanbase without ever performing beyond the cabin. Newfound success draws them to SXSW in Texas. Will they have a hit? Will the people adore them? And will Frank ever take off his fake head?
Frank is a great movie, strange quirky and funny. It’s a new look at sex and fame and rock and roll. As Frank, Fassbender is a combination Jim Morrison and Mr Dressup, with his music morphing from prog rock to silly electric piano pop. Maggie Gyllenhall is terrific as the brooding musician and love interest and Gleeson is a new Michael Cera. This is a good movie to watch.
The Trip to Italy
Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Steve Coogan is an English movie actor, at a slow point in his career. So he sets out with his travel companion, Welsh comedian Rob Brydon, for a drive down the coast of Italy. You see, they’ve been hired to relax at exclusive resorts, putter around on yachts, and enjoy meals at 3-star restaurants. All they have to do is comment on the experience. And along the way they retrace the steps places visited centuries earlier by British poets (and early tourists) Keats, Shelley and Byron. Steve is divorced with a teenaged son and considers himself a bit of a womanizer, while Rob is happily married with two small children, who he talks to by phone each day. But who will pick up the most beautiful women for casual sex? This is a sequel to an almost identical movie set in England a few years back.
This sounds awful and boring as hell, right? No! it’s absolutely hilarious. Basically, the two 
actors play exaggerated, fictional version of themselves, while, the rest of the cast – the photographer, tour guide, family members – are all other actors cast in the roles. Aside from views of gorgeous scenery and delicious looking cooking scenes for foodies, what this movie is really about is two guys in a car, singing along to songs from the 90s by Alanis Morisette. And they re-enact entire scenes from The Godfather, Part II (another sequel), reciting every line in the voices of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Arguing about who was the best James Bond. Commenting about people at the next table at a restaurant in Rome or amongst the ruins of Pompeii. Not every joke hits the mark – I’m at a loss when it comes to comments about, say, European sportscasters – but there’s a cumulative effect, with all the jokes, comments, plays on words, competitive punning and imitations of Michael Caine, each building on the one before, until it’s just wipe-the-tears-from-your-eyes hilarious. It’s a particular style of improvized, spoken humour. There’s no pratfalls, no racial jokes, no gross-outs, no silly comments on “those crazy foreigners”, no stand-up comedy humour that depends on a punchline… It’s just two guys engaging in caustically funny conversations. It’s just great.
And finally, I want to recommend The Dog, a great documentary by Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren. It’s the true story of folk hero / criminal John Wojtowicz. A self-described pervert, John is the guy who robbed a bank and took hostages in Manhattan in the early 1970s to pay for his girlfriend’s sex change. They were soon surrounded by cops but he entranced the crowd – and the news media — by talking to them, to his mom, and to his wife Carmen. It’s one of the earliest TV as-it-happens news stories, with a twist. It inspired Dog Day Afternoon, but his story is even wilder, encompassing his bisexuality and his early role in queer politics. This funny-looking guy is an amazing, absurd character, filled with Brooklyn bravado. And his story is amazing and well-worth seeing.
Frank, The Trip To Italy and The Dog all open today in Toronto: check your local listings for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Acts of God. Movies reviewed: Into the Storm, Calvary PLUS TIFF Canadian Films
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.
The names of the Canadian films opening this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival were announced this week, and they look really good. Haven’t seen any yet, but a few caught my eye. From Quebec, there’s a drama about a young man in Montreal who joins the nascent FLQ in the 1960s. It’s called Corbo, directed by 
Matthieu Denis. Xavier Dolan’s movies are always worth seeing. His fifth one, called, simply, Mommy, revisits the themes of his first film (J’ai tue ma mere) about a mother/son relationship and all its perils. With Anne Dorval back as the mom. And Master filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin is bringing another NFB 
doc on First Nations issues. This one, Trick or Treaty, covers the battle for treaty rights. There are many other too, including a new one from Cronenberg, a remastered film by Atom Egoyan, and movies from Jean Marc Valee, and Phillipe Felardeau, both starring Reese Witherspoon for some reason. Go to tiff.net for more info.
This week, I’m looking at two movies about 
brave people facing “acts of God”. One’s an American disaster-adventure about the danger brought to a family by unstoppable winds; the other’s an Irish drama about the dangers brought to a priest by an emotional loose cannon.
Into the Storm
Dir: Steven Quale
On graduation day in Silverton, a single dad (Richard Armitage) and his two sons, Donnie and Trey (Max Deacon, Nathan Kress), are making a time capsule on video. 25 years from now they’ll look back in wonder — or so they think. Instead, a series of unusually powerful, super – tornadoes strike their town during the graduation ceremony, wreaking havoc in its path. Donnie is trapped with a classmate in an abandoned paper mill on the outskirts of town. (He skipped graduation to help a girl he has a crush on get some footage for her 
environmental film.)
Dad and Trey set out to find them but encounter another group on the way. It’s a team of storm chasers — people who make their living by pursuing tornadoes and capturing it all on video. Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) is a scientist, while Pete (Matt Walsh) is her boss. It’s Pete’s dream to pass through the eye of a tornado and live to tell the tale — and this is the biggest twister he’s ever seen. With the help of his tank-like car (called Titus) he treats the storm as his great white whale.
But when Dad rescues Allison from blowing away – literally! A manly man relying on the brute strength of his handgrip to overcome the tornado and save her from blowing away like a leaf — she decides to help him. They drive off to save his son; she chooses people’s lives over fame and fortune.
But can anyone beat this Grandmother of a superstorm? While there are some nice shots of huge objects bring blown away, and some wicked “flame-nadoes”, it wasn’t enough. Where are the sharks?
Terrific special effects don’t excuse the mediocre plot and script, and ho-hum acting. And it’s dripping with Tea Party subtexts: The school principal is an Obama surrogate. A good speech-maker but it’s the Paul Ryan-type Dad who can save the day. It’s also a movie about irregular weather systems that never talks about climate change. But the biggest problem is you can’t have a disaster movie that’s also an adventure flick; the two types are diametrically opposed. Disaster movies are all about sadness and braveness in the face of terrible disaster. Adventure movies are all about fun and excitement. This movie doesn’t know which way to turn. Into The Storm, while diverting, will disappear as fast as a tornado.
Calvary
Wri/Dir: John Michael McDonagh
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a priest in a small, isolated village in Ireland. A husky bearded man in his 60s, he still wears the traditional black cassock. He’s attended by a novice priest and a Machievellian altar boy who steals bottles of sacramental wine. The movie begins in confession where a disembodied man’s voice says he was savagely raped as a child – repeatedly, over many years – by a priest. That priest is now dead, but the man declares he will kill this good priest, Father James, in his stead. And he tells him he has one week to make peace with the world, and to show up next Sunday on the beach outside town to die. Quelle Calvaire!
From there the movie follows Father James as he visits his parishioners to make amends, offer forgiveness, and maybe discover who plans to kill him. But the people’s problems are not what might be expected in small-town Ireland. There’s a woman who cheats on her husband (Chris O’Dowd) with a Senegalese mechanic. The local policeman is gay, the priest’s novice is a toady, a local lad says he wants to join the army so he can murder people, and the arrogant local millionaire tosses his money around like toilet paper.
Father James also has a beautiful grown daughter. (Not what you think – he joined the priesthood after his wife died.) They were estranged can they get along again? Everyone knows he’s a good man, but not many of them still carries the faith like he does. He’s a combination social worker, therapist, enforcer and drinking buddy, and, well, priest. Surrounded by such unrelenting cynicism, he’s beginning to question it all, too. Does he have the strength to face his upcoming Calvary?
This is a very good movie from Ireland. It has a large cast, but each character, each part seems perfectly played. Visually, it’s fantastic, with huge, aerial shots of mammoth, grass-covered rocky plateaus and beaches. And jarring images, like a discussion inside the grocer’s freezer played against an oddly beautiful background of cow carcasses. Father James is a tough, Jesus-y character facing a troubling fate even as he tries to do good and forgive the worst sins of others. Calvary challenges our perceptions of traditional Irish life and the role of the Catholic Church there — warts and all.
Into the Storm and Calvary both open 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 talks with Thorben Wieditz about Toronto’s movie industry, employment, and use of city space
Toronto is a movie-loving city with over 80 film festivals each year. But it’s also a movie making hub, a creative centre with the motion picture industry as a major player in the urban creative economy. But what role does it play? How does it affect the design and development of a city like Toronto? Can it survive gentrification? And what is its effect on the city’s workforce?
A series of articles, to be published later this year, looks at these and other questions. It’s called Labour in the New Urban Economy and studies the cities of Toronto and New York and how they interact with their respective movie industries.
One of the studies’ authors is Thorben Wieditz, a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University. His piece is titled Toronto’s Film Unions Struggle over Space: From Toronto Film Studios to Revival 629. Thorben is a graduate of the University of Dortmund, and is a teacher, writer and researcher in Toronto, who focusses on the local politics of re-negotiating the use of urban employment lands in this post-industrial city.
Here, Thorben talks about the movie industry, the 629 Eastern Ave Studio and how they affect our neighbourhoods, urban space, workers, and our economy. (Go to yorku.ca/city for more information.)
Tricksters. Movies Reviewed: Let’s Be Cops, Magic in the Moonlight
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.
Is a simple change of clothes enough to convince a casual observer you are someone you’re not? Can a thump on a table at a seance make people think you can talk with the dead?
This week I’m looking at two movies about fraudsters, tricksters, and those who want to expose them.
There’s an action/comedy about two ordinary guys in LA who disguise themselves as cops; and a comedy about a magician in the Cote d’Azur who wants to unveil a false psychic.
Let’s Be Cops
Dir: Luke Greenfield
Damon Wayans, Jr. and Jake Johnson (from New Girl with Zooey Deschanel) play best buds and roommates living in LA. They like karaoke and nightclubs but they get snubbed by women, disrespected by tough gangster types, and made to stand in long line-ups. They went to the same college, joined the same frat, and left Ohio with big ambitions. But O’Malley’s (Johnson) pro football career tanked before it started. Now he’s a kids’ football coach.
Damon’s character is doing a bit better – he’s following his passion: video game design. He puts together an elaborate pitch to his work team about his latest project, a police-action-type game. But they trash it before they even play with it. “You need zombies” they tell him. He goes home with his tail between his legs, 
carrying the pair of police uniforms he had planned to use in his pitch.
But he finds a good use for them after all. The two of them wear the uniforms to a costume party that night. And, to their amazement, on their way home, they are mistaken for the real thing. This being LA, immediately a parade of beautiful women ogle them and then smother them with hugs and kisses, because, well, they’re cops.
They also get the respect they miss in their real lives. Strangers listen to them and do what they say. They can walk to the front of the line of any nightclub. And, at the diner they frequent, the cute waitress (Nina Dobrev) suddenly says she likes “Chang” (that’s the name on Damon’s police uniform, and the one he goes by for most of the movie). Their scam starts to escalate. Damon wants to call it quits – it’s totally against the law to impersonate a cop. But O’Malley doesn’t see it that way – he takes it all very seriously. He gets hold of a police car, and starts studying official codes and techniques on-line. Soon enough, they’re behaving like real cops.
They go doubly undercover – now they’re civilians disguised as police disguised as civilians. They become in involved with real police work, alongside local police (Rob Riggle) who take their outfits at face value. Will their plans fall apart when they face real danger, and organized crime? And will Chang’s budding love affair fall apart if his girlfriend ever finds out he’s not a cop?
I thought this movie was a lot of fun. It started as a one-joke comedy – Let’s be Cops, but it gets carried through quite nicely, turning into a good action flick along the way. Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. are really funny (except for the offensive Chinese accent) keeping their characters believable without overly mugging to the camera. I liked this movie.
Magic in the Moonlight
Wri/Dir: Woody Allen
It’s the late 1920’s (before the Great Depression). Stanley (Colin Firth) is a professional magician, touring continental Europe. He performs in a riot of chinoiserie under the stage name Wei-ling Soo. He makes elephants disappear and saws women in half. He’s also a rude and snobby egotist. So sure is he of his expertise, that he will gladly debunk any mystic he encounters. So he gladly takes up on a friend’s offer of a vacation in the south of France. Once there, he promises to expose a young psychic operating out of a villa owned by millionaire American industrialists.
But he is surprised to meet the adorable Sophie (Emma Stone), a plain-spoken and pretty young woman from Wisconsin. She doesn’t seem like a charlatan; just a simple girl who falls into momentary fogs… and comes back with uncanny visions. Even Stanley is surprised by how much she knows about him.
He still vows to expose her. But during a séance he is shocked to see what appears to be 
real magic: a floating candle with no strings attached. How does she do it? he wonders. His beliefs are further called into question when they visit his maiden aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins) at her villa in Provence.
Meanwhile, Sophie is being wooed, relentlessly, by the heir to a fortune. Brice (Hamish Linklater) plays the ukulele and croons off key to Sophie, telling her if she marries him she’ll live in luxury. He is young, handsome and loaded. The much older Stanley is already engaged to a upper-class, educated Englishwoman. And yet, despite their adversarial stance – of a psychic and a magician sworn to expose her tricks — there seems to be an attraction growing between Stanley and Sophie. And when they are caught in a rainstorm on a country road, they share an intimate 
conversation by moonlight. But can it last? And will it stand up to scrutiny?
Magic in Moonlight is just delightful. It’s the first of a long stream of annoying movies Woody Allen made in Europe that actually works. Well-written, perfectly executed, great acting, beautiful scenery and period costumes, nice music… And Colin Firth and Emma Stone have great chemistry. It’s not a deep movie with any subtle subtext, but it is a very cute romantic comedy, in the best sense of the word.
Magic in the Moonlight starts today, and Let’s Be Cops opens in Toronto on August 13th. Check your local listings. Also look out for An Honest Liar, a wonderful documentary about another magician who exposes fake psychics. It’s playing at the HotDocs theatre in a week. And Toronto’s Palestinian Film Festival has an outdoor screening and party in Christie Pits on August 8th. Go to TPFF.ca for details.
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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