Christmas Movies! Films reviewed: Sing 2, Licorice Pizza
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Christmas today, with time off for most of you, meaning lots more time to spend at the movies, whether in theatres or at home. So this week I’m looking at two new movies opening this Christmas weekend. There’s a cute cartoon about musical animals trying to put on a show, and a coming-of-age story about two young people in California trying to get to know each other.
Sing 2
Wri/Dir: Garth Jennings
Buster Moon is a producer-director who runs a small-town theatre. His current production, Alice in Wonderland, is a smash hit, selling out each night. The performers, young and old, are singing and dancing their hearts out.,
And audiences love it. So now they’re ready to make it big… they just have to be “discovered” first. But when a talent scout from the big city is uninterested, they decide to take their show to the big city, and show up for the auditions anyway. They disguise themselves as janitors and sneak onto the stage, and to their great surprise, the big boss, Mr Crystal, who has rejected dozens of acts before them… likes them! He signs them on the spot under certain conditions. One: they must bring a celebrity — specifically the reclusive rock singer Clay Calloway — into their 
show. And two, if anything goes wrong that might embarrass Crystal, he will literally throw them off the roof of his high-rise.
Sing 2 is a sequel and in case you never saw the first one, this is an animated movie, and all the characters are animals. Moon is a koala (with the voice of Matt McConaughey), Crystal (Bobby Cannavale) is a wolf, the faded rock star is a lion (Bono) along with various other pigs, gorillas, and elephants (Reese Witherspoon, Taron Egerton) as well as a cute porcupine named Ash , voiced by Scarlet Johannson unfortunately dressed in what looks like a fake indigenous headdress. (Why…?)
Although it has a kiddy plot meant for three-year-olds, Sing 2 is a consistently entertaining, highly watchable and fast-moving cartoon movie suitable for kids and adults alike. There are some great scenes, like Johnny the break-dancing gorilla being forced to learn broadway dancing from a cruel choreographer, and a long audition sequence like a fast-motion American idol This is a musical, where the characters sing a huge selection of popular contemporary songs (mainly from the last decade or so), plus a few new ones written for the movie. But always as performers on a stage or in rehearsal, never spontaneously breaking into song in real life (like in a traditional musical). So if you’re looking for a cute and fun family Christmas pic, a film you can leave the theatre humming in your head, you’ll probably like Sing 2.
Licorice Pizza
Wri/Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson
It’s 1973 in Encino, California in the San Fernando Valley. Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is a teenager who lives with his single mom, a business woman and entrepreneur. Gary’s an actor, part of a. song-and-dance kids troupe known as the Tiny Toes. Today is photo day at the local High School. Gary sees a young woman in the hall who takes his breath away. It’s Alana Kane (Alana Haim) He approaches her point blank and asks if she’ll go out for dinner with him. She flatly rejects him. Turns out she’s not a student, she’s in her twenties, she works for the school photographer, and she wants nothing to do with this aggressive, chubby kid. But he is nothing if not persistent. So they end up having non-alcoholic drinks at a local bar & grill 
where Gary is a regular. She adamantly tells him they are not and will never date. But she agrees to be his chaperone to a TV appearance in NY city along with his Tiny Toes colleagues. She ends up dating his rival, an older and better-looking singer- dancer-actor, but it doesn’t last.
They form a sort of a friendship and business partnership, trying out Gary’s various get-rich-quick schemes, some of which work, others that don’t. Gary wants fame and fortune, while Alana 
wants to support political causes (US Soldiers are still in Vietnam and Nixon is embroiled in the Watergate scandal.) Can the two of them get along, and will they ever take it to a higher level?
Licorice Pizza is a stupendous, period comedy-drama, a coming-of-age story about a largely unrequited romance. It’s set within the rapidly-changing social and sexual mores of southern California in the turbulent ’70s. It has cameo appearances by celebs playing other celebs, like Sean Penn as a movie star who seduces Alana and an unrecognizable Bradley Cooper as a wild-eyed Jon Peters (Barbra Streisand’s husband at the time) in an unforgettable scene where he’s a customer at their fledgling 
waterbed business. Because they’re in the Valley, Alana and Gary are constantly interacting with semi-famous people in their daily lives, but not quite making it big themselves.
Aside from these cameos, the movie is based on real people, or at least previously unknown actors in their first movie roles, and they are unbelievably good. Gary is played by Cooper Hoffman (son of the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Kane is played by Alana Haim a musician/singer from the eponymous trio Haim. And if you look at the cast list, everyone is related to someone famous, with a Spielberg kid here, a Demme there, and more Hoffmans, Haims and Andersons than you can shake a stick at. And maybe that’s what makes this movies seem so incredibly real, even though it’s clearly just a movie. Everyone’s acting and playing scripted roles in costumes from a different era, but it just seems so honest, so true. And Hoffman and Haim have amazing chemistry.
I don’t usually gush over movies, but Licorice Pizza is so very entertaining, delightful, surprising, funny, sad, and moving, from beginning to end, that I walked out of that theatre thinking, wow, this is a movie everyone should see. It’s got direction, acting, music, locations, costumes, dozens of unforgettable characters,…I’m telling very little about what happens because I saw it blank, knowing nothing about it, and I think you should too. This is one of the best movies of the year.
This Christmas weekend Sing 2 and Licorice Pizza open theatrically across Canada with Licorice Pizza playing at the TIFF Bell Lighbox; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Men on the Run. Films reviewed: Flee, Red Rocket, Nightmare Alley
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With Award Season quickly approaching — from the Golden Globes to the Golden Turkeys — the studios are releasing a lot of its big ticket movies in hopes of being considered for some of the major prizes up for grabs. This week I’m looking at three potential Oscar nominations, all stories about men trying to flee from their dark pasts for a potentially better future. There’s a man who leaves a burning house to join the circus, a middle-aged porn star who leaves LA to find a job in small-town Texas, and a young man who runs for his life from Afghanistan in hopes of finding a better one in Europe.
Red Rocket
Co-Wri/Dir: Sean Baker
Mikey Sabre (Simon Rex) is down on his luck. He was an LA porn star in his heyday, along with his wife,
Lexi (Bree Elrod). But the good times are long gone. Now he’s back home in Texas City, Texas, with no money, no possessions, no reputation, the prodigal husband knocking at his ex-wife’s door. Naturally she and her mother, Lil (Brenda Deiss) want nothing to do with him, but he manages to sweet talk his way into letting him sleep on their couch. And after an exhausting search for employment — no one will hire a former sex worker — he falls back on his teenage job as a pot dealer. And soon enough, with the help of his blue happy pills, he’s sleeping wth Lexi again each night. But everything changes when he meets a beautiful naive young woman with red hair, who works at the local donut shop. Her name is Strawberry (Suzanna Son), who loves pink hearts and everything sweet. Mikey becomes infatuated by her, both as a focus of his lust and his imagined ticket to wealth. He tells her 
he’ll take her away from this dead-end town and introduce her to the top names in Hollywood porn, after, of course, she turns 18. Wait… what?
Red Rocket is an outrageous comedy about the misadventures of a former male porn star, including an extended across town by a panicking naked Mikey brandishing his Sabre. This is Sean Baker’s third such film — Tangerine about two black transwomen 
in LA, and The Florida Project, told through the eyes of kids in Orlando — shot, guerilla-style, on location on a budget using mainly first-time actors (who, I have to say, are all great!) And he helps normalize marginal sex workers by defying the usual stereotypes. At the same time, a movie about a predatory 40-year-old guy seducing a Lolita-like teenaged girl is not the same as rambunctious kids in Florida or wisecracking transwomen in LA. Don’t worry, everyone gets their comeuppance in the end, but Red Rocket will make you squirm and cringe uncomfortably along the way.
Flee
Co-Wri/Dir: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Amin is born in Kabul where he grows up under communist rule, watching Bruce Lee movies and dancing to pop music on his walkman. Now he lives in Copenhagen with Kasper, his lover — they’re thinking of buying a house in the countryside. After that is, he finishes his post-doctoral work at Princeton. But how did he get from Afghanistan to Denmark? When the US-backed Mujahideen invaded Kabul his family is forced to flee. Russia is the only place offering a tourist visa — but Moscow is a mess; the the Soviet Union has just collapsed and is now run by oligarchs and corrupt police. Now they’re stuck in limbo, supported by his older brother a janitor in Sweden. Can the 
family stay together? Can they ever make it to somewhere safe? Or will unscrupulous human traffickers lead them to disaster?
Flee is a deeply moving drama about one man’s journey as a refugee from danger to sanctuary, and all the moral 
compromises he is forced to make along the way. It’s sort of a documentary, in that it’s a true story told by the man it happened to, even though it’s voiced by actors using animated characters. And by animation, I don’t mean cute animals with big eyes, I mean lovely, hand-made drawings that portray what actually happened. Far from being the heavy, ponderous lesson I was dreading, Flee has a wonderfully surprising story, elegantly told.
Nightmare Alley
Co-Wri/Dir: Guillermo del Toro
It’s the dustbowl during the Great Depression. Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a bright and fit young man with great ambitions and a shady past. Leaving a dead man in a burnt house behind him, he sets out to find his fortune He comes upon a circus, and makes his way through the tents to Nightmare Alley, the area where the carnies do their work out of sight. He gets hired as a roustabout, hammering nails, pitching tents, but soon rises quickly within the circus ranks. Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette) seduces him, and in return she provides access to her partner Ezra (Richard Jenkins) an aging alcoholic. Ezra holds a little black book outlining exactly
how to con strangers out of their money by convincing them you can read their minds and talk to the dead. But he warns Stan, don’t fall into the trap of believing you it’s real — that can kill you. Meanwhile, Stan only has eyes for the beautiful and innocent Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), the electric woman. She’s fiercely defended by the other carnies, but they let her go when she says they’re in love.
They move to the big city where they find great success in their 
psychic act. Stan loves their new rich lifestyle, while Molly pines for her previously life at the circus. But trouble brews in the form of a femme fatale, a beautiful blonde woman with an ivory-handled gun who attends one of their acts. Dr Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) is a successful psychoanalyst who listens to — and records — the confessions of the richest and most powerful men in the city… and she is intrigued by Stan’s psychic abilities. (She completely ignores Molly). Perhaps they can combine their resources for even greater success?
Nightmare Alley is a dark movie about an ambitious but ruthless man in his quest for success. Bradley Cooper is credible in the lead, but even better are all the supporting actors, from Willem Dafoe to Cate Blanchett. It has a novelistic storyline with a plethora of characters, almost like a classic Hollywood film, 
which makes sense. Based on a novel, it’s a remake of the 1949 film noir of the same name, starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. And it fits perfectly in del Toro’s body of work, with his love of freaks, legerdemain, underdogs, young women with pageboy haircuts, and of course many actors who 
appeared in his previous films. Guillermo del Toro (who shoots his movies in studios and locations around Toronto) has a troupe of actors he uses over and over, like Ron Perlman, dating back to his earliest movies. NIghtmare Alley is quite long — two and a half hours — but kept my attention all the way to a perfectly twisted finish. It’s a good, classic drama.
I quite like this one.
Red Rocket, Flee and Nightmare Alley all theatrically in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
On the Brink of Collapse. Films reviewed: This Game’s Called Murder, Don’t Look Up
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In these uncertain times sometimes dark humour allow us to laugh at our troubles and worries. So this week I’m looking at two new movies that look at a nihilistic planet on the brink of collapse.
There’s a high-heeled shoe magnate who wants to control the world, and a pair of astronomers who want to save the world.
This Game’s Called Murder
Wri/Dir: Adam Sherman
Jennifer (Vanessa Marano) and Cane (James Lastovic) are dating, but they live very different lives. He runs a restaurant and bar in an old abandoned warehouse, and hangs with an all-woman gang of thieves, headed by Cynthia (Annabel Barrett). Cane hates anything technological — cel phones are forbidden in his space. Jennifer is a media star, posting selfies for her countless followers. But to accommodate Cane, she only takes polaroid pics around him — nothing digital. She lives in a huge mansion with her filthy-rich, bible-thumping parents the Wallendorfs (Ron Perlman, Natasha Henstridge). Her Texan dad — using his hypnotic abilities — runs an international business selling his hugely popular red, high-heeled shoes. His company’s ads are as infamous as the shoes they sell. They feature scantily clad models blissfully playing “games” which end up with more 
aesthetically perfect dead bodies.
Her mom is a socialite, and also quite mad. She does whatever a mysterious voice — coming from inside her vanity mirror — tells her to do even it involves killing people. So Jennifer escapes to Cane’s world to see if she can find something real and honest there. Sadly, Cane’s life is equally hollow and alienated. The gang of thieves regularly murder delivery-truck drivers, using a bow and arrow, to steal the contents. Cane himself attacks a chef with a baseball bat, for the crime of being overweight. Neither Jennifer nor Cane can find the meaning they’re so desperately seaking. But when she sneaks him into a costume party at the mansion, and he witnesses both the 
decadent orgies and the extreme cruelty he had only heard about, he experiences a sea-change Can they stop the Wallendorf Shoe empire from its cruel plans?
This Game’s Called Murder is a bizarre, comedy/horror movie about our alienated and disconnected world. It’s done in an over-the-top, campy style, which is fun if you’re in the right mood. It’s full of carousels and chicken-friend steaks, instant ramen and high-heeled shoes, bows and arrows and Froot Loops. The problem is, while there’s lots of eye candy to take in, it’s strung together in a clunky, confusing way. There are no real heroes or characters you can root for (though you eventually come to appreciate Jennifer, Cane and Cynthia). It seems at first to be a critique of the ultra-rich, but you soon realize everyone in this movie is equally evil and cruel. At best, some characters are ambivalent observers. The film has lots of nudity and tons of bloody and gore, but not much substance. And much of the dialogue is painfully bad. To tell you the truth, I hated this movie at the beginning, but it gradually got better and better, until I actually got into it. I learned to like it by the end, once I accepted its impossible premise. I can’t call this movie great, but it certainly is unique with some very memorable images.
Don’t Look Up
Co-Wri/Dir: Adam McKay
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is a disgruntled pot-smoking grad student studying the stars at Michigan State. One night she notices something strange: a previously unknown comet hurtling toward earth at a very fast pace. She reports this to Dr Randall Mindy, her supervisor, (Leonardo DiCaprio) who immediately calls Washington. Why? Because that comet is big enough and travelling fast enough to wipe out life on this planet, and if we don’t do something to stop it, we’ll all be dead in about 6 months. They’re flown to Washington and meet the President (Meryl Streep, doing her best imitation of a female Donald Trump) and her toady son (Jonah Hill). But their reception is less than stellar. This narcissist president seems more concerned her poll ratings than with the fate of the planet. They don’t realize the urgency even when it’s explained in plain terms. So Kate and Randall turn to mass media. They appear on a morning show hosted by Brie
(Cate Blanchett) a beautiful but seemingly-vapid celebrity. But their shocking news doesn’t fit in the plastic world of breakfast TV. Kate ends up looking like a raving lunatic, while Randall remains calm. He becomes the national face of the presidential campaign to stop the comet, while Kate ends up working at a convenience store. But can either of them do anything to stop this impending disaster?
Don’t Look Up is a brilliant political satire about American politics and social media. Like an updated Doctor Strangelove, it takes us into the backrooms of Washington. The story comes from David Sirota, the journalist and political advocate, and director Adam McKay is known for movies like The Big Short (all 
about the Wall Street crash of 2008) so these guys know what they’re doing. It’s superficially a classic disaster/sci-fi pic — along with humour and sex — which makes it fun to watch, and is filled hilarious caricatures set against a polarized country. (The title, Don’t Look Up refers to the comet-deniers, while the Just Look Up-ers are their opposites) but of course it’s really about our inaction in stopping climate change (even though they never mention those words in the movie). It has a huge cast, including Mark Rylance as an enigmatic tech billionaire and Timothée Chalamet as an ambivalent skateboarder.
Don’t Look Up is a really fun, enjoyable movie that’s also about something real and important, but without falling into that ponderous “nobility” that drags some films down. This stays funny and light till the end. I really like this one.
Don’t Look Up opens theatrically in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings; and This Game’s Called Murder is now available digitally and on all VOD platforms.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Desirée Mckenzie about the Jayu Human Rights Film Festival
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movies are made to entertain — they should be interesting, novel, funny, exciting, or surprising. But movies can also inform, opening our eyes to important issues. Well, there’s a film festival in Toronto that does all that… and more. The JAYU Human Rights Film festival offers movies, poetry, art talks and films for 
audiences to watch and to discuss afterwards.
Desirée Mckenzie is the iAM Program Coordinator at JAYU — she’s also an award-winning poet, arts educator, and national poetry slam champion.
I spoke with Desirée in Toronto, via ZOOM.
The JAYU Human Rights Film Festival is entering its 10th year; it runs through Dec 10th.
Organized religion. Films reviewed: Hand of God, Agnes, Benedetta
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s December and we’re entering holiday season, so I thought it’s time to talk about movies involving religion. So this week I’m looking at three new movies with (small c) catholic themes. There’s an adolescent boy in 1980s Naples who witnesses the “Hand of God”, a lesbian nun in renaissance Tuscany who is in love with God, and another nun in the US who may be possessed by the Devil.
Benedetta
Co-Wri/Dir: Paul Verhoeven
It’s the 1600s in Tuscany Italy. Benedetta (Virginie Efira) is a beautiful young nun with blond hair and a quick wit. She was placed in small town convent as a young girl, paid for by a rich dowry her parents gave the Abbess (Charlotte Rampling). Now Benedetta is married to God, both metaphorically, and literally, in her mind. She goes through vivid spells, where she has sex with a violent Jesus after he slays all her attackers with a sword. She also has a streak of cruelty since she was told that suffering, by oneself and others, brings one closer to God. The cynical Abbess thinks Benedetta’s trances are just an elaborate hoax. But everything changes when Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia) a gorgeous young novice, appears at their doorstep.
She is illiterate, and the victim of horrific abuses from her father and brothers. Benedetta takes her under her wing, nurtures her and schools her in divinity, reading and math. In exchange, Bartolomea sleeps with her, awakening hidden desires. Could this be love? Benadetta says she’s having chaste, spiritual sex 
with Jesus himself, not carnal passion with the young novice. And her spontaneous stigmata — bleeding that appears in her hands and feet like Jesus on the cross — attracts pilgrims and followers from far and wide seeking advice and cures. But when she’s caught using a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary as a sex toy, things take a turn for the worse. A cruel Nuncio (Lambert Wilson) arrives from plague-ridden Florence for an inquisition. Will he manage to wring a confession from the two women? Or will Benedetta’s spiritual powers protect her from being burned at the stake?
Benedetta (based on actual historical records) is a bittersweet and passionate look at the life and love of a lesbian nun in Northern Italy. It’s sexually explicit with lots of matter-of-fact nudity throughout the film as well as some horrific violence (remember, this is a movie by the great Paul Verhoeven who knows well how to keep bums in seats). This is a visually stunning film, with sumptuous views of sunlit cathedrals, long-flowing costumes, diaphanous bed curtains and beautiful faces and bodies. Never has a convent looked so erotic. But it’s also a fascinating look at faith in the face of cynical religious practices. Benedetta is a beautiful and shocking film.
Agnes
Wri/Dir: Mickey Reece
Sister Agnes (Hayley McFarland) is a young nun in a convent whose birthday celebration turns into a disaster. Now he’s tied to her bed, foaming at the mouth and speaking in strange otherworldly voices. What is going on?Enter Father Donoghue (Ben Hall). He’s a grizzled priest with a shady past, but also many successful exorcisms under his belt. And he takes a newby with him, the devout Benjamin (Jake Horowitz) a divinity student who has yet to take his vows. Father Donoghue doesn’t believe that they’re actually possessed, just that they think they are. And only the elaborate song and dance of an exorcism will allow them to give it up. At the convent, Mother Superior (Mary Buss) a stickler for rules, is much less enthusiastic. She’s not comfortable with men under her roof, 
especially a young one without a priest’s collar. But she allows it to proceed. And the routine exorcism takes an unexpected turn.
The story picks up with Sister Agnes’s friend Sister Mary (Molly C. Quinn). She left the convent after the incident. Now she works at two jobs — a convenience store and a laundromat, —and is trying to live a normal life. But she doesn’t know what to do or how to act. Can she keep the faith? Matters aren’t helped when she meets a cynical stand up comic at a local dive bar (Sean Gunn). Can he teach her what she needs to know?
Agnes is a look at faith, and self-doubt within the church. It starts as a genre pic, a conventional, low-budget horror, but it ends up as a deeper and darker melodrama propelled by scary undertones. It’s called Agnes, but it’s actually in two acts, the second part mainly about Sister Mary. It’s unpredictable and uncomfortable, and sometimes a bit bloody. This may be the first Mickey Reece film I’ve ever watched but I can see why this indie filmmaker has such an avid following. The film has an interesting mix of experimental film and conventional, even kitschy, horror, comparable to avant-garde filmmakers like Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland. Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it — and I think want to see more Mickey Reece.
Hand of God
Dir: Paolo Sorrentino
It’s 1984. Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) is a young man at Don Bosco high school in Naples, Italy. He is precocious and well-read, — constantly quoting classic verse — but has neither friends nor sexual experience. He gets most of his advice from his big brother (who shares a room with him) and his parents. Dad (Toni Servillo) is a self-declared communist while his mom (Teresa Saponangelo) is a inveterate practical joker. Then there are all the odd-ball neighbours in their apartment building (including a former countess) and his even stranger family members. But foremost in Fabio’s eyes is his aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri). She suffers from delusions which cause her to innocently expose her flawless naked body at unusual times — which provide fodder 
for the sexually-starved Fabio’s fantasies.
It’s also the year when rumour has it that international soccer star Maradona may start playing for the local team — an obsession of most of his family. Third on Fabietto’s list — after sex and football — are the movies. Fellini is casting extras in Napoli — he goes to the audition — while another up-and-coming director is shooting his latest film downtown. That director is also dating the very actress Fabio is dying to meet. Will he ever fulfill any of his wishes? And how will this pivotal year affect the rest of his life?
Hand of God (the title refers to a legendary goal scored by Maradona) is a coming-of-age story based on the filmmaker’s 
own recollections. It seems like the straight version of the popular Call Me By Your Name, another Italian feature. Set in the 80s, it’s also about a precocious adolescent’s first sexual experiences, situated within a quirky but loving family. There’s lots of 80s music, fashion and hairstyles to look at. Filippo Scotti also happens to looks a hell of a lot like Timothée Chalamet. That said, it is its own film, and fits very firmly within Sorentino’s work, including his fascination with celebrities as characters,
perennial actors like the great Toni Servillo hapless men, as well as the requisite “naked woman with perfect breasts” who manages to turn up, in one form or another, in all his movies. Although Hand of God isn’t that original, and a bit contrived, it does have some very funny and a few honestly shocking scenes that should not be missed. I liked this one.
Hand of God and Benedetta both open theatrically in Toronto this weekend at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; check your local listings; and Agnes starts next Friday at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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