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

This week, I’m looking at three new movies, a drama, an adventure-comedy and a sex-comedy.  There’s a gang of thieves in the Middle Ages, a middle-aged couple in Québec with a seductive nanny, and a mom in Harlem with an undocumented son.

Babysitter

Wri/Dir: Monia Chokri

Cédric (Patrick Hivon) is a middle-class guy in a Montreal suburb, with an obsession with women’s breasts. He’s happily married with a newborn daughter but his sex life has completely dried up. Maybe that’s why, in a drunken stupor at a UFC fight, he throws himself at a sportscaster on live TV and kisses her. His immortal words Je t’aime Chantal! went viral, and made Cédric famous, but not in a good way. Now he’s on extended leave as the company investigates his sexual harassment. But with a colicky baby, neither he nor his wife on maternity leave Nadine (Monia Chokri) are getting any sleep: the baby never stops crying. So they hire a nanny named Amy (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) to take over some of the pressures of parenthood. And she has a magic touch with the baby, calming her down in an instant.

Amy is 22 years old with beautiful blonde hair and scarlet lips. She is both innocent and seductive. And soon enough she has Nadine and Cédric under her thumb, with Jean-Michel, Cedric’s brother (Steve Laplante) close behind. But when she shows up the next day in a semi-pornographic “French maid” costume — compete with short skirt, white stockings and high heels — the three of them don’t whether to faint or explode. Will Amy save their marriage by releasing tension, or has she gone too far? Will Cédric ever learn from his misogynistic behaviour? Will Jean-Michel ever get a hold of himself? And why does Amy act like she does?

Babysitter is a funny and campy Québecois sex comedy. It’s done in the classic manner of French and Italian movies from the 60s where the arrival of an unexpected visitor disrupts a whole family, but updated for the “#MeToo” generation. It’s highly stylized done in a retro manner, with bright red colours popping up in every frame, from lipstick to poppies in the garden. And the main characters’ sexual fantasies are played out in soft focus in their heads, like David Hamilton’s softcore porn of the 1970s. There’s even a gratuitous scene with a group of teenaged girls in hot pants and roller skates gliding down a suburban street, a new generation thumbing its collective nose at uptight middle age. And while the movie seems to be shown through the male gaze, filmmaker Monia Chokri adds a satirical feminist subtext, keeping it entirely tongue in cheek. 

A Thousand and One

Wri/Dir: A.V. Rockwell

It’s New York City in the early 1990s. Inez (Teyana Taylor) is a young hairdresser, just released from Riker’s. But when she goes back to her old neighbourhood, no one wants to talk to her and she can’t get her old job back. Worst of all, she is heartbroken to see her six-year-old son Terry maltreated by his foster parents. So one day she simply takes him away with her. And after a few weeks of couch surfing, they find a home in an old Harlem tenement, apartment number 1001. To keep them both safe from the law, she gets Terry a new social security number and a new name. He’s shy and rarely speaks but proves to be an excellent student, so much so his teacher helps him transfer to a highly competitive tech school for bright kids. Inez, meanwhile, gets back together with her boyfriend Lucky (William Catlett). Though he makes it clear he is not Terry’s father,  eventually they marry and form a loving family. But life is not easy. They have to deal with an unscrupulous landlord, suspicious teachers and aggressive cops. And always hanging over their heads is the fact they’re living under fake names and could be caught at any minute.

A Thousand and One is a powerful, realistic and moving drama about the life of a family in Harlem in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring. It traces their lives through changes of government, from Giuliani’s “Broken Windows” policy through Bloomberg’s “Stop and Frisk”, and how it affects Terry as a young Black man. It’s also a coming of age story, with three actors playing Terry at 6, 13 and 17 — Aaron Kingsley Adetola,  Aven Courtney, and  Josiah Cross — as he struggles through his best friend, his first crush, and his fractious relationship with his mother as they face the world. I love the period costumes, hair, locations and music. And Teyana Taylor is just amazing as Inez. 

A Thousand and One is not a light movie, but it’s a good one.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Co-Wri/Dir: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

It’s sometime, somewhere far away in a mythical, mystical, medieval kingdom. Edgin and Holga (Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez) are former thieves locked up in a remote panopticon prison. They were caught trying to steal a magic totem but were double crossed by one of their gang. But they manage to escape. Now they want to form a new gang to pull off the ultimate heist: a charm that can bring Edgin’s wife back to life and restore his family including his daughter, Kira.  Edgin is the brains, while Holga is the brawn, but they need more. They enlist Simon (Justice Smith) an insecure sorcerer with questionable powers (he earns his living picking pockets at a carnival side show.) Doric (Sophia Lilis) is a ginger-haired druid who can change, in a flash, into any animal she wants, from tiny worm to giant monster. And Xenk (played by Bridgerton heartthrob Regé-Jean Page) — an honest and noble member of an evil clan — agrees to join the heist but only if its for good reasons, not for profit. 

But they must face their former ally Forge a con man (Hugh Grant). Up to now, he has taken care of Edgin’s little girl, but has since crowned himself King in alliance with a nefarious, all-powerful sorceress. To find his daughter, liberate the riches, and defeat the sorceress, the gang must first accomplish a series of nearly-impossible tasks, worthy of Theseus. Can this ragtag gang of miscreants pull it together? Or are they all headed back to prison?

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves is a surprisingly entertaining adventure/comedy, based on the role-play board game of the same name. Players will delight in the more obscure references — from Gelatinous Cubes to Owlbears — but ordinary audiences can fully enjoy it without any background. It also incorporates the story-telling aspects of the game, giving the whole film a rich, mythical feel. I went into this movie expecting nothing — previous Dungeons & Dragons incarnations have been dreadful. I shouldn’t have worried about this nerd paradise, seeing its co-written and directed by none other than John Francis Daley, from the TV cult classic Freaks and Geeks (he was a geek, of course). If you like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, but with more laughs and less excessive gore and ponderous speeches, then you’ll love this one.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour among Thieves and A Thousand and One both open this weekend; check your local listings. Babysitter is playing at the Canadian Film Fest, on now. 

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