Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Summer’s here and it’s the right time to cool off by seeing movies outdoors. Open Roof Film Festival, which is on all summer on Sterling  in the Junction, pairs new Canadian and international films with live music by local bands.

Keeping with that theme, this week I’m talking about three great summer movies. There’s a misanthropic girl in Québec looking for a summer job; a man in San Francisco looking for a home; and some college students in Sweden looking for fun in the summer solstice.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Dir: Joe Talbot

Wri: Joe Talbot and Jimmy Fails

Jimmy Fails is a homeless skater from San Francisco, who travels by boardfrom placeto place. Brought up in a group home when his parents split up, he once lived in a car, and now crashes outside the city at his friend Montgomery’s place (Jonathan Majors). But he is constantly drawn back to the Fillmore district of San Francisco – once known as the Harlem of the West – and a particular house there. It’s a stunning piece of Victorian architecture complete with a witch’s hat tower. He’s helping preserve it in a gentrifying city. But he also has a hidden motive: His grandfather built that home by hand in the 1940s and Jimmy wants it back. So when the current owners move out in an inheritance dispute, Jimmy moves right in, bringing all the original furniture, carpets and photos with him. It’s an enchanted house, with intricate woodwork, hidden doors and a working pipe organ built right in. And Monty – who draws everything he sees in a sketchbook – writes a play to commemorate the house and its history. But how much is true and how much family legend? Can Jimmy actually live there permanently? Or has San Francisco become a city only for the rich?

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an unusual, warm and wonderful story, part fact and part fiction. It’s based on Jimmy Fail’s own story – he plays himself. Another character, Kofi, jimmy’s frenemy from a group home, is played by the real Jamal Trulove, a San Francisco man falsely convicted of murder under Kamala Harris. It’s also an homage to an older San Francisco. It paints a disappearing city of soapbox preachers, panhandlers, buskers and organizers while subtly dealing with issues of poverty, housing, violence, renoviction, and environmental ruin. It’s narrated by a greek chorus of black commentators, Monty’s drawings, Jimmy’s family lore, and local legend.

This is a great movie, not to be missed.

The Fireflies are Gone (La disparition des lucioles)

Wri/Dir: Sébastien Pilote

Léonie (Karelle Tremblay) is a misanthropic teenager just finishing high school. She lives in a small city, a gorgeous inland port in northeast Quebec. near Sagueney. It’s a beautiful town but she hates it. She hates the smalltown attitude, she hates her hick friends and their pickup trucks and she despises her stepfather. She blames Paul (François Papineau) – a rightwing talk radio shock jock – for her parents divorce. Her Papa (Luc Picard) is a union organizer forced to leave town for work up north when the lumber mill closed, and now only visits every so often. Leo can’t wait to get out of this place, but in the meantime she gets a summer job tending to the local ballpark. It’s perfect – no human contact.

But when she meets a new face at the local diner she thinks things might be changing for the better. Steve (Pierre-Luc Brillant) is a loner like her, a middle-aged musician, formerly in a band, now supporting himself by giving guitar lessons in his mother’s basement. She signs up for lessons, they hit it off, and soon become friends. But can it last?

The Fireflies are Gone is a bittersweet coming of age drama about life in a picturesque but declining Quebec town. The title refers to the loss of innocence of an earlier era, but it’s also about Leo’s own ideals called into question when she discovers a hidden family secret. Tremblay is amazing as the angry young Leo and she holds this film together. And Brillant is brilliantly understated as Steve. While not perfect, Fireflies… is a good, realistic drama.

Midsommar

Wri/Dir: Ari Aster

Dani (Florence Pugh: Fighting with my Family) is a young woman in a long-term relationship with her non-commital boyfriend. Christian (Jack Reynor: Sing Street) likes Dani but doesn’t like all the responsibilities. He’d rather drink beer and smoke cannabis with his buds from college: Josh (William Jackson Harper: The Good Place) an anthropology keener; Mark (Will Poulter: The Revenant, We’re The MIllers) a self-centred twit, and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) who’s from Sweden. They’re planning a summer solstice bro trip to Pelle’s home village, where there’s lots of beautiful blond women, halucinagens and free sex. But when Dani suffers an unspeakably horrible loss, they let her come too.

At first glance the isolated village seems like a happy commune full of flower children, a holdover from the sixties. They sleep and eat communally, select their sex partners, and wear handwoven traditional outfits. They still sing their ancient songs, and write their scriptures (predicted by a handicapped oracle) using ancient runes. But in fact, their beliefs predate the hippies by centuries, dating back to pre-Christian days. The friends arrive to a warm welcome but soon reveal themselves as the prototypical “ugly Americans”, photographing sacred texts, urinating on an ancestral tree, and just generally behaving horribly. But the Swedes aren’t so nice either. And when people start disappearing, one by one, they suspect foul play. Will Dani and Christian’s struggling relationship survive? And can the Americans get out of this crazy place alive?

Midsommar is a fantastically strange horror/comedy/drama, Director Ari Aster second film after the great Hereditary, but is totally different from that one. In fact it defies all usual classifications. It’s a horror movie, but shot in bright sunlight, full of happy songs and dances. It also totally reverses the moralistic streak of most American horror movies. Victims aren’t “punished” for drug use or premarital sex; in fact that’s encouraged. Rather, it’s about naïve people facing a much older and darker world than they ever imagined. It’s scary, hilarious and grotesque, overflowing with intricate anthropological hints and winks. While definitely not for everyone, I love Midsommar.

It’s a weirdly perfect movie.

Midsommar is now playing in Toronto; check your local listings. The Fireflies are Gone and The Last Black Man in San Francisco both open today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.