Daniel Garber talks with Stevie Salas and James Burns about Boil Alert premiering at #TIFF23
Canada has about one fifth of the world’s drinking water, with less than half of one percent of the world’s population. So much water. Why then are there boil alerts in some communities, where the water is consider unfit to drink? Why have these warnings continued over many years? And why are so many of these communities indigenous? So asks a 
woman named Layla Staats. Layla travels across North America searching for these answers even as she explores her own connection with water and her indigenous heritage. On the way she encounters indigenous activists like Autumn Peltier and witnesses some of the most horrendous examples of ecological violations, contaminations and desecrations in Wet’suwet’en, Grassy Narrows, and the Navajo Nation. Will these boil alerts ever cease?
Boil Alert is also the name of a new documentary directed by Stevie Salas and James Burns. Stevie is a world-famous musician, called one of the 50 best guitarists of all time, and a producer of music, film, and TV shows. He composed the score for Bill and Red’s Excellent Adventure and as a director is best known for the doc RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World.
I spoke with Stevie and James in Austin via Zoom.
Boil Alert is having its world premiere at TIFF on September 15th, 2023.
On the “Boil Alert” Red Carpet
The TIFF premiere for “Boil Alert” was a who’s who of Indigenous A-listers… click on the thumbnails below to launch a gallery.
Photographs by Jeff Harris
Second chances. Films reviewed: Dreamin’ Wild, Scrapper
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF, North America’s most important film festival, is starting less than two weeks from now, bringing us some of the best upcoming movies in the world. But if the SAG-Aftra and WGA strikes aren’t settled by then, it will be unusually lacking in big star energy (obviously because Hollywood actors can’t promote studio premieres during the strike.) That means no crowds on King street trying for a glimpse of someone famous. So the people at TIFF are scrambling for other big names to replace them. Of course actors from Asia and Europe will be there, and the directors aren’t on strike so I think if a movie star directs they can show up — like Bradley Cooper, Michael Keaton to name just two. There are also people having “conversations”; the four members of Talking Heads — David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison — will all be there together again as actual “talking heads” with Spike Lee leading a Q&A after a screening of Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense (1984). Then there are subjects of documentaries — like Lil Nas X. So if you’re into big names and big crowds, looks like there will be quite a few at TIFF this year.
I’ll be talking more about TIFF films next week, but in the mean time I’m looking at two new movies about second chances. There’s an unknown record album from the late 70s that becomes famous 30 years later, and a 12-year-old girl who meets her dad for the very first time.
Dreamin’ Wild
Co-Wri/Dir: Bill Pohlad (Love & Mercy)
It’s 2011 in Washington State. Joe and Donnie Emmerson are brothers who live on a remote farm. As teenagers in the late 1970s, Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer) and Donnie (Noah Jupe) cut a record album together. While Joe just played the drums, Donnie wrote the music and lyrics, did the vocals, played all the instruments and did the recording, editing and producing. The album was called Dreamin’ Wild because the ideas came to Donnie in his dreams. He was often up all night trying out his latest, writing new ones every night. It was a labour of love… but the album failed miserably, and sold virtually no copies.
Thirty-some years later, Donnie (Casey Affleck) is still a musician, and still working and living with his partner Nancy (Zooey Deschanel). He’s depressed and moody. Joe (Walton 
Goggins) gave up drumming years ago and is happy hauling logs on the farm. And then something remarkable happened: someone found an old copy of the album, put it online and it went viral. Everyone is looking for Donnie and Joe, but they live on a farm without wifi. But a record producer finds them and says he wants to remaster the album… and sell them. Is this for real? Or will it be yet another colossal let-down in Donnie’s miserable existence?
Dreamin’ Wild is a tender but slow-moving drama based on real events. The acting is A-list, with Casey Affleck, Zooey Deschanek, and Walter Goggins (the rangy cowboy from the TV series Justified) plus Beau Bridges as their Dad. But Noah Jupe as young Donny really stands out. Unfortunately the story is way too slow and too depressing, with lots of long silences that lead to nowhere and a plot without any big conclusions. Luckily the constant images of vast forests and fields, hills and skies are magnificently photographed. And about half of the movie is just the actors — and the original musicians — playing their music, which I quite liked.
So I think it balances out in the end.
Scrapper
Wri/Dir: Charlotte Regan
Georgie (Lola Campbell) is a young girl who lives alone in a small town in Essex outside London. She does all her chores — laundry, vacuuming, cooking, and cleaning — without anyone asking. She also steals bikes to make enough money for food. She even gets the clerk at a convenience store to record random phrases she uses to deal with social workers on the phone. (They think she’s living with her uncle, Winston Churchill). And she hangs out with her best friend Ali (Alin Uzun). Her single mom died a while back but 
she’s been happily taking care of herself — who needs school? (She’s on extended leave for grieving.) It’s a dream life… until there’s an unexpected visitor.
A young guy in trainers and a trashy haircut jumps over her garden fence and makes himself at home. Who are you? Jason, he says. I’m your Dad (Harris Dickinson). He’s here to help her out — but she doesn’t trust him. Can he win over her affections? What are his real intentions? And can the two of them survive on the margins?
Scrapper is very good comedy drama about a feisty working 
class girl making her way in the world with her equally scrappy father. It starts out like a whimsical comedy — with shades of Home Alone — but once you get into it, you’ll see it’s actually quite a touching story. If this is Lola Campbell’s first role, she’s a natural — because she creates this unforgettable character and carries it through. Harris Dickinson has also invented an entirely new persona, after playing a gay thug in Coney Island in Beach Rats and a clueless male model in Triangle of Sadness.
I like this one.
Both of these movies open this weekend in Toronto — Scrapper at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Dreamin’ Wild at the Carlton and across Canada; 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.
August potpouri. Films reviewed: Bad Things, Lasting Impressions, Strays
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
August is a time to relax travel and have fun, not a time when people want to watch serious movies. So this week I’m looking at a potpourri of different sorts of entertainment than you’re probably used to. I’m talking about lesbians in a haunted hotel, French impressionist paintings on a bistro wall, and abandoned talking dogs in a big city.
Bad Things
Wri/Dir: Stewart Thorndike
It’s dead winter in upstate New York. Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) and her friends are up from the city to spend a night or two at a completely deserted hotel.
Ruthie inherited the place from her grandmother and has to decide whether to give it a go or sell it. With her, are her enthusiastic girlfriend Cal (Hari Nef: Barbie) their hard-boiled pal Maddie (Rad Pereira) and Maddie’s flirtatious acquaintance Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones). And it could be a fun weekend: there’s an indoor swimming pool, karaoke, a huge kitchen and tons of empty rooms for pillow fights or foolin’ around. On the negative side, the hotel might be haunted. Fran is the first one to see ghosts, a little girl worried about her fingers, and a pair of female ski champs. Worse, the ghosts can also see her. But when she freaks, the other three just blame it on drugs. Things heat up when Ruthie cheats on her 
girlfriend. But when things start getting really scary, like someone wearing a gas mask while brandishing a chainsaw — they have to decide whether to hightail it back to the city, or stick it out.
Bad Things is a new take on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining from a feminist perspective. It keeps some of the original concepts but twists them all into something new and original. Instead of blood in the hallway it’s mothers’ milk. And there are lots of psychological thrills and chills — it’s hard to know who is crazy, who’s a ghost, who is living, who is dead, and who is killing them all. The acting is good all around, along with appearances by token heterosexuals, Canadian Jared Abrahamson (American Animals, Hello Destroyer, Hollow in the Land, Sweet Virginia) as Brian the handyman and 80s icon Molly Ringwald as the Woman in Red. Bad Things is a low budget movie shot during the height of the pandemic — The Shining it ain’t — but it is good, funny and scary.
Lasting Impressions: The Magic of the Impressionists in 3D
When is a painting not a painting? When it’s an experience. Over the past 5-10 years there’s been a boom in exhibitions of the art of famous painters… but without the paintings. Van Gogh, Chagal, Monet — they take a huge space and fill it with enormous moving projections of their most famous works to view as you walk around a warehouse or convention centre temporarily turned into a pop-up gallery. These were especially popular during the pandemic when it was hard to travel. But this show is different: instead of an ersatz art gallery, it’s a show, almost like dinner theatre. You sit at small numbered tables, where servers bring wine and snacks. When the show begins, the lights dim and you turn your chair to face the screen. And here’s where out gets interesting. To the accompaniment of popular French music — Debussy to Charles Aznavour to Ella Fitzgerald — enormous blowups of French impressionist paintings — sort of a greatest hits — are displayed one by one. The projections use super-saturated colour with intense effect. Part of the paintings are animated: water ripples, clouds drift, leaves shake. And — with the help of 3D glasses — elements of a painting feel like they’re moving: you’re drifting down a stream, floating above Monet’s waterlilies, or at a ballet rehearsal with poised ballerinas drifting slowly toward you in mid-air. It’s not the same thing as seeing a painting on a wall; this is art as a commodity to be consumed. While the animation doesn’t always work — I’d 
rather see a Frenchman’s long beard or a Tahitian woman’s hair staying still in a Renoir or Gaugin painting, than to watch it sway rhythmically in the breeze — the technical quality is excellent: great sound and beautiful images. I’m of the view, if you want art, go to a museum — there’s a show on right now of Mary Cassatt’s impressionist painting at the AGO. But if you want a pleasant, nostalgic outing, where you can enjoy choreographed pictures, music and a glass of wine, this is it.
Strays
Dir: Josh Greenbaum
Reggie is the perfect dog. Though a bit scruffy around the edges, he is loving, faithful, and true to his master Doug (Will Forte). All he wants is a pat on the head and an occasional “good boy”. So what is Reggie (Will Ferrell) doing in a dark alley in some big city? Turns out Doug is a good-for-nothing, scum-of-the-earth master who abandoned poor Reggie 3 hours away from the small town they live in, so the dog could never make his way back home. Reggie is still hopeful — he’s naive and an eternal optimist — but he is quickly disabused of that notion by some big mean dogs who threaten him. Luckily, the street-smart Bug (Jamie Foxx), comes to his rescue like the Artful Dodger, showing him the lay of the land. Being a stray dog is paradise — you can live like a king with no responsibility. They’re soon joined by two other strays: Maggie (Isla Fisher) an elegant pooch with a keen sense of smell who was traded in by her mistress for a smaller cuter lapdog; and Hunter 
(Randall Park) a former therapy dog who is always sympathetic. But when they discover Reggie’s tragic story they decide to help him get revenge. Their mission? For Reggie to find his way back to Doug… and bite off his penis! Will they make it to the town? And what adventures will they encounter along the way?
Strays is a comedy road movie that’s coarse, bawdy, and raunchy. It’s a typical bro movie, with the sort of humour that appeals to 14-year-old boys… you know, lots of jokes about feces, vomit, urine and penises. But somehow, because it’s guileless dogs (not people) telling the jokes, you can laugh all you want without feeling guilty or self conscious. These are real dogs, not CGI images (except when their mouths move). It gets a bit dark at times — jokes about serial killers and lost kids — and I’m really not a fan of explicit, extended images of dog poop… but despite all that, Strays is quite a funny movie.
Lasting Impressions is now playing at the CAA Mirvish Theatre in Toronto; Bad Things is streaming on Shudder, and Strays is opening across Canada 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.
Scary? Films reviewed: The Beasts, The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
August is Emancipation Month in Toronto, commemorating the end of slavery in the British commonwealth, including Canada. So in honour of that there’s a free screening of RasTa: A Soul’s Journey, at Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park on August 13th.
But this week I’m looking at two new, scary movies. There are sailors who want to abandon ship, and farmers who don’t want to leave their land.
The Beasts
Co-Wri/Dir: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and Olga (Marina Foïs) are a middle aged professional couple living in Galicia in northwestern Spain. He’s a burly, reserved man, while she is direct and no-nonsense. They gave up their lives and careers to settle among the rocky hills, growing organic tomatoes and vegetables. They love the simple life, working hard, breathing the fresh air and taking long walking through the nearby forests and hills They get along well with some of their neighbours, but not all of them. And especially not Xan and Lorenzo, a pair of wiry, adult brothers who keep nomadic horses. Lorenzo (Diego Anido) may be simple-minded but is prone to cruel, practical jokes, with Antoine as the victim. Xan (Luis 
Zahera) is much worse. Xan insults him, calls him a derogatory name for French people, mutters veiled threats and even spits at him.
At the centre of their dispute is a contract which Antoine and Olga refuse to sign. A multinational energy corporation wants to turn the village into a wind farm. But after all the money, time and work they have put into it, they don’t want to throw it all away for a small buyout. It’s their home. This is what makes their neighbours so angry. They want to leave their ancestral homes forever. And as their fight grows, it gradually turns to violence. What will become of them?
The Beasts is an intense, dark drama played out in a clash of cultures and class. The film starts with a group of men physically wrestling with horses in slow motion. This motif comes up later in the movie in an 
unexpected way. It’s billed as a thriller, but it’s not — I’d call it more of a slow-burn drama, spread out over more than two hours. The dialogue is in French, Spanish and (I’m guessing) Galician, since it doesn’t sound like any Spanish I’ve ever heard before.
Is it a good movie? I like the characters, and the acting and the drama, and its beautiful cinematography, locations and music. But the film has a weird structure, with a very long ending after an intense chapter in the middle. It’s less thrilling or scary than it is creepy and disturbing, though it does have a satisfying finish. I just don’t quite get the point of this movie. If you like feeling uncomfortable for a couple hours but not really challenged, then you’ll probably like The Beasts.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
Dir: André Øvredal
It’s the 1890s and the three-masted Demeter is loading at a Romanian dock, preparing for its voyage to Dover, England. Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) has mustered all his sailors on the ship, as well as Wojchek, his first mate (David Dastmalchian), Joseph, his bible-thumping cook (Jon Jon Briones) and his eight-year-old grandson Toby (Woody Norman). It’s the captain’s last voyage so he wants to pass on some of his lore. The only unfamiliar face is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), the ship’s doctor. Not a sailor, but he does hold a medical degree from Cambridge (very uncommon for a black man in Victorian England). But with such a small crew, even the doctor has to take his turn steering the ship and on night watch. But the most unusual thing is this ship’s cargo: a series of large wooden crates filled 
with dirt and branded with a sinister-looking mark. The locals refuse even to board the ship, but the crew is happy that there’s a big cash bonus if they deliver the cargo in time.
Unfortunately, things start to go wrong pretty quickly. First, a female stowaway is found on board — and sailors considered women on ships bad luck. Anna (Aisling Franciosi) is half dead, speechless and frightened. Clemens keeps her alive with frequent blood transfusions. Then all the ship’s animals — from livestock, to a dog, to even the rats hidden in the hold — are found dead. And then the crew starts disappearing, one by one. Is this a disease? A stowaway killer? Or something even worse? And will the Demeter and its crew ever reach its destination?
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a well-crafted thriller/horror about a vampire on board a ship, based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And — no spoilers here — if this vampire looks familiar, it’s because he’s Nosferatu, the cadaverous, long fingered, pointy-eared creature made famous by the silent German expressionist masterpiece by FW Murnau, released a full century ago (1922). This Nosferatu can fly, 
swim, hypnotize its victims and seemingly pass through walls. He’s almost indestructible. The film is beautifully shot in a German studio, with the camera flying down long passageways, into the galley, under tables and up to the sailmasts. The soundtrack is punctuated with tapping sounds that reverberate the length of the ship. The acting is quite good all around. And this vampire is a scary one.
The one thing that’s missing is pathos — with a few exceptions, you don’t feel close or attached to most of the characters. But that’s a minor problem in a good horror movie. And this one gives new life to a very old vampire.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter and the Beasts are both opening this weekend in Toronto, with The Beasts playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
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 Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor about Satan Wants You!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In the 1980s, tabloids like the National Enquirer and daytime talk shows from Oprah to Jerry Springer were talking about everyone’s biggest fear: that animals and small children were being kidnapped by witches and sacrificed to the devil. A new psychological method known as Recovered Memory Syndrome was in vogue, and countless adults who suffered trauma as a child, were somehow recalling bizarre satanic rituals doing back to their earliest memories. And in courtrooms across America, daycare workers, teachers and social workers were accused of heinous crimes, leading to arrests, trials and prison sentences, based on dubious testimony. Who would have 
thought this all harkened back to a young woman named Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder in peaceful Victoria, BC?
Satan Wants You! is a new documentary that delves into the case of Michelle Smith, her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, the bestselling book Michelle Remembers that followed and the ramifications it led to. This compelling film tears the veil from this story, using period TV footage, and new interviews with family members and everyone involved. Satan 
Wants You is written and directed by Vancouver-based documentarians Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor. Steve and Sean are a prize-winning team known for their films on pop culture and queer topics and whose doc Someone Like Me won the Audience Choice award at Hot Docs in 2021.
I spoke with Steve and Sean, in person, at TIFF 2023.
Satan Wants You! had its world premiere at this years Hotdocs Film Festival, and is now playing at the Rogers HotDocs Cinema in Toronto.
Autobiographies? Films reviewed: North of Normal, A Compassionate Spy, Shortcomings
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
August is here in Toronto, a great time for some outdoor screenings. TOPS — Toronto Outdoor Picture Show — is showing films for free, after dark at Christie Pits, Corktown Common, Bell Manor, Old Fort York and the Evergreen Brickworks, with no tickets or advance registration required — just show up and sit on the grass.
This week I’m looking at three new movies — a memoir, a doc and dramedy. There’s a hippy in a tipi in Yukon, a spy in Los Alamos, and a frustrated filmmaker in Oakland.
North of Normal
Dir: Carly Stone
Cea Sunrise Person (Amanda Fix) is a teenage girl experiencing city life for the first time. She’s both naive and worldly. Her mother Michelle (Sarah Gadon) gave birth to her when she was only 15, and acts more like a sister than a mom. Since she was a child, she’s been raised, hippy style, in Yukon, by her grandparents, including Michelle’s dad Papa Dick (Robert Carlyle).
They shoot animals, go fishing and gather foraged foods. She grew up living in a tipi, where any visitor to their mobile encampments likely slept with one or more of the adults. She’s familiar with the concepts of free sex, a barter economy, and the use of soft drugs, as well as living off the grid, avoiding any government interference — Papa Dick hasn’t paid taxes in decades. So life down south (in an unnamed Canadian city) is totally alien to her. Though bright and friendly, she doesn’t understand school rules or social norms, and gets into fights with the locals. But she gradually adjusts — well, kind of — to a new life. But she really doesn’t get along with her mom’s new boyfriend, Sam (James D’Arcy) who happens to be a 
married man. Why does Michelle always fall for the bad boys? But one thing keeps her steady: Cea holds onto a childhood wish to move to Paris; she carries an Eiffel Tower snow globe wherever she goes. So when she is approached on the beach by a legit modelling scout, she wonders if this will be the fulfillment of her dreams.
North of Normal is a touching, coming-of-age film based on Cea Sunrise Person’s memoir about her unusual life (she ended up as a professional fashion model and entrepreneur.) She’s beautifully portrayed by Amanda Fix as a teenager and by River Price-Maenpaa as a little girl. And it’s shot amongst the forests and lakes of Canada’s north. The plot is eliptical, bouncing back and forward in time as her suppressed memories are gradually revealed, while leaving out large parts of her life. Even so, I liked this story.
A Compassionate Spy
Dir: Steve James
It’s the 1940s and WWII is raging, and there are rumours the Third Reich is developing an atomic bomb. So the US government initiates the secretive Manhattan Project in Las Alamos, supervised by the Army. It’s a collection of scientists brought together to create the ultimate weapon before Germany does. Most of the names are already famous: Oppenheimer, Teller, Niels Bohr, von Neuman. But the youngest one of all is Ted Hall. Only 18 years old, the child prodigy has already graduated from Harvard. He’s an ardent leftist, and wants to defeat fascism in Europe. As a drafted soldier, he has to wear a uniform and sleep in a barracks on the site, but otherwise he works each day beside other scientists. Aside from his age, he is different from the rest of them in another way. He is passing intel to the Soviet Union. Hall is disturbed by the idea of an impending nuclear holocaust, and doesn’t trust the US government to show restraint, if they’re the only holder of such a dangerous tool. So totally independently — with the help of is best friend, Savvy Sax — he seeks out the Soviets to tell them what’s going on. Is he arrested? Put in the electric chair like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg? No, he (and his wife Joan) keep their secret for half a century.
A Compassionate Spy is a fascinating documentary packed with info that sheds light on what Hall did and why, and what became of his 
life afterwards. Hall worked on cancer cures at the Sloane Kettering institute, and later became a professor at Cambridge University. Most surprising is that while he opposed the bomb, his own brother created and built ICBMs — Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles which may have brought the two sides closer to destruction.) The doc is made up of a confessional video Hall made before he died, new interviews with his wife Joan and their kids, as well as with Savvy Sax’s family. It also recreates dramatic scenes from the period, along with contemporary newsreels, diaries, letters and photos. Joan Hall is this really fascinating and feisty character who tells most of the story. Equally important, the film presents a lot of crucial information that is glossed over in the recent hit biopic Oppenheimer. Like the fact that many scientists (including Hall) petitioned FDR and Truman not to drop the bomb on Japan; the letter was stifled by Leslie Groves, and never sent. I never knew the US threatened to use the bomb on the USSR in 1946 after the Russian army occupied Iran. And lots more eye-openers. A Compassionate Spy is an excellent documentary by the Oscar-winning director of Hoop Dreams.
Shortcomings
Dir: Randall Park
Ben (Justin H. Min) is an aspiring filmmaker in Oakland, California. After dropping out of cinema studies at Berkeley, he’s now he’s the manager of an art house theatre, so he still has a peripheral connection. He loves all women but treats any man as a potential competitor. His best friend is Alice (Sherry Cola), a queer Korean American. They hang together ogling girls in local cafes — for Ben, that’s mainly women with blonde hair. He acts as her beard, posing as her fiancé when she has to visit her conservative family.
He lives with Miko (Ally Maki) who also wants to make films; she’s involved with the local Asian American Film Festival. She’s the love of his life. But despite the fact that he, his girlfriend and his best friend are all Asian American he is quick to point he feels no racial identity or kinship, and loathes identity politics. His abrasive and defeatist attitude leads to frequent arguments with Miko. But everything changes when she suddenly moves to NY City for a film internship, leaving Ben unexpectedly unmoored. Does their temporary separation offer him a chance to explore his sexual fantasies (that is, sleeping with a white woman)? Or will he try to win Miko back again?
Shortcomings is a hilariously deadpan look at the life and thoughts of an Asian-American man. Its observations are simultaneously scathing social satire and self-deprecating humour. It’s based on the graphic novels of Adrian Tomine whom I’ve read for decades now, so I was worried the comics wouldn’t translate well into film. 
Luckily, Tomine wrote the screenplay, and it’s told, like his comics, in a series of connected vignettes. The characters are brilliant — Justin H Min is sympathetically annoying as Ben, the guy who never misses a chance to mess things up. Sherry Cola is equally brilliant, as are the many priceless side characters — Autumn, a performance artist who photographs her own toilet use, Sasha, a frustrated bisexual, Leon, an annoying fashion designer who Ben calls a rice king, and Gene, a smug popcorn maker.
From the opening parody of Crazy Rich Asians to the closing scene, this perfect comedy has no shortcomings to speak of.
North of Normal is now playing; Shortcomings opens this weekend across Canada, check your local listings; and A Compassionate Spy is on now at the Rogers Hot Docs 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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