Born, reborn. Films reviewed: Spark, Wilfred Buck, Babes
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s Spring Festival season continues with TJFF, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, starting on May 30th. I haven’t seen any of the films yet but some of them look really interesting: The Catskills, a doc about the heyday of borscht belt comics; Just Now Jeffrey, a coming-of-age comedy set during the last days of Apartheid South Africa; The Goldman Case, an historical chronicle of a French revolutionary; The Anarchist Lunch, a doc about the 30 year-long friendship of a group of Vancouver leftists; and Midas Man, a biopic about Brian Epstein, the man who made the Beatles into stars.
But this week I’m looking at three new features, two directed by first timers and one by an accomplished pro. There are two women preparing for births, a man who sees the same day constantly reborn, and another man who passes his knowledge on to the next generation.
Spark
Wri/Dir: Nicholas Giuricich
Aaron (Theo Germaine) is a young artist who lives with his platonic roommate Dani (Vico Ortiz). He’s single and on the prowl, looking for a lover, but with not much luck. So he is intrigued when he gets a mysterious invitation in a red envelope. A friend of his is planning a big party and she want to match up some of her friends before they arrive. So Aaron drives to the appointed place. He’s an artist at heart and draws little sketches on post-it notes to lead his potentially perfect match to his car. He is pleased to meet Trevor (three-time Olympic medalist Danell Leyva) a swarthy and smouldering athlete. In an otherwise empty house they tenuously chat, take a selfie, and pour a couple Old Fashioneds. Aaron is smitten, Trevor less so. But sparks do fly, and they wind up having passionate sex. But just at the point of climax… Aaron wakes up, groggy headed, and back in his own bed. Was that all a dream? But when Dani repeats the same 
things they had said the day before, and his publisher calls again for his drawings which he had sent him yesterday, he realizes something: it’s as if that day never happened. In fact, it’s the same day. He goes through the steps again, with Trevor, this time trying to fix his past mistakes, but to no avail — he’s back in his home, in a flash, right after sex. He repeats this date, over and over, testing out tiny changes to see how they might effect him or Trevor’s reactions, but no luck. Is he doing something wrong? What can he change to fix things? Or is he trapped in a never-ending cosmic sex loop.
Spark is a queer fantasy drama about a man caught in the never-ending cycle of a repeated day. I like these kinds of movies, from Groundhog Day to Russian Doll, where people are caught in a time warp. It’s also “queer” in that it’s about a gay relationship of sorts, between Aaron a gay transman who desires Trevor, presumably a gay cis man. And this is where it gets even more interesting. First that Aaron’s gender and his sexuality are never mentioned by anyone in the film; they don’t need explanation — they’re accepted as given. And Aaron is played by a non-binary actor, Theo Germaine, who was also a terrific — though very different character — in the TV series The Politician. Dani is played a non-binary performer as well. Perhaps in some future world this will be commonplace, but for now at least this is rare in its casually deft handling of identity, gender and sexuality within a science fiction milieu.
Very good first feature.
Wilfred Buck
Wri/Dir: Lisa Jackson
Wilfred Buck is an indigenous astronomer, educator and writer. He was born in the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, near the Saskatchewan border. As a child he learned the thrill of the hunt with his friends, fishing at a nearby lake. As a young man, he made his way south to Winnipeg, where he was jailed almost immediately. In the 1960s, he fell in with a bad crowd, there. He liked the music, the drugs and alcohol a little too much, and ended up living on the streets, a self-described liar, thief and drug dealer. He was harassed, beaten up and almost drowned left to die in icy waters. But things started to change when he was taken under the wing of elders from his first nation and educated about his culture. He learned about rocks and nature, participated in a pow wow, and gradually learned about preparing crucial ceremonies like the Sun Dance: how to build a sweat lodge, and when to present tobacco. And he learned to look up into the night sky and 
understand the stars there. He became a knowledge keeper and an astronomer telling stories of what the constellations are, where the stars point and what they mean.
I grew up loving trips to the planetarium where the astronomer pointed out the three stars of Orion’s belt, or the chair-shaped throne of Cassiopeia. I took it for granted that they were discovered and named by the ancient Greeks and were accompanied by their stories. But what I didn’t know was that there are whole other constellations up there with their own stories attached to them. Wilfred Buck has devoted his life to passing on this knowledge of the skies to a new generation.
Wilfred Buck is a beautiful retelling of this charismatic man’s life story, partly narrated, partly reenacted, partly composed of period footage. Actors recreate the four stages of his life. All this is combined with the man himself pointing out gorgeous images in the night skies and on a planetarium dome. This story is both inspiring and invaluable as Buck passes on his knowledge to new generations.
Babes
Dir: Pamela Adlon
It’s early morning on Thanksgiving Day in New York City. Eden and Dawn (Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau) are meeting in Greenwich Village for a movie. It’s a tradition, one the best friends have kept for decades, ever since they were neighbours in Astoria, Queens. Eden, a yoga teacher, still lives there but Dawn is a dentist now, married with a kid and lives in a fancy brownstone in the Upper West Side. And she’s 9 months pregnant. But their tradition changes suddenly when her water breaks. To make sure it’s a birth to remember Eden sets out to buy her the most luxurious and expensive sushi ever… but is turned away from the hospital. Instead she shares it with a stranger in a red tux she meets in the subway. She ends up sleeping with Claude (Stephan James) and a few months later, she’s pregnant! He’s out of the picture, but she can’t wait to see her experience through from now till birth with her besty Dawn by her side. But how much time can a married mom with a full-time job, a 3 year old, and a crying newborn devote to her friend?
Babes is a comedy about how two friends deal with pregnancy and 
giving birth. It’s funny, surprising and audacious. It looks at morning sickness, amniocentesis, labour, placentas, lactation, breastfeeding, daycare, and everything — I mean everything — else, in an entirely new way. But it’s mainly just funny schtick, both in dialogue and their whole-body style of acting. The lines are clever and twisted, with virtually nothing I can repeat verbatim on daytime radio. I was laughing my head off, especially in the first half hour. And the bawdy acting — things like Dawn on mushrooms shooting imaginary jets of breast milk across the room, or Eden crawling between Dawn’s legs to see how dilated her vagina looks — is just brilliant. They’re both former standup and sketch comics — Ilana Glazer is known for Broad City, Michelle Buteau for Survival of the Thickest — and with their totally different body types, size and ethnicity, they play off each other with a sort of sloppy synchronicity. Not every gag works, and the serious parts of the story are less interesting than the funny ones. It’s also loaded with scatological references, way too many for my taste, but at least they talk about their bowel movements rather than showing them. And the men serve mainly as sidekicks — this is a women’s movie. Does’t matter; the side roles, from Elena Ouspenskaia as a doula, to Susanna Guzman as a babysitter, there are a couple dozen great characters.
Babes knows how to work it just fine.
Wilfred Buck now playing at the Hot Docs cinema in Toronto; Spark had its world premiere last night at the Inside Out Film Festival; and Babes opens this weekend at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto; 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.
Daniel Garber talks with Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung about Extremely Unique Dynamic
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Daniel and Ryan are best friends who moved to LA to make it big in show biz. But a decade later, neither one is famous. So Ryan is moving with his fiancé to Edmonton, Alberta. And Daniel, who is secretly gay and may have a crush on his best friend, feels this big turning point deserves doing something special: so they decide to shoot a movie over the weekend to commemorate their friendship. But what will they use for a plot? How about something they both know well? Like a movie about two guys, Gregg and Tim, making a movie! And what will their movie be about? How about two guys — named Jasper and Jake — making a movie? And if they can stay away from edibles and pull themselves together this film will surely be something extremely unique and dynamic.
Extremely Unique Dynamic is also a new film written, directed and
starring Ivan Leung and Harrison Xu as Daniel and Ryan (and Gregg and Tim, and Jasper and Jake). Ivan is an actor and rap artist known for his love of tacos, while fellow actor Harrison has also struck it big as a voice actor specializing in anime and Korean soaps. This extremely unique film might be the only Indie, Meta, Asian-American Stoner, Coming-Of-Age, Bromantic Dramedy, ever made! Well maybe…
I spoke with Ivan and Harrison via Zoom.
Extremely Unique Dynamic is having its international premiere at the 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival on May 25, at 7PM at Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox.
From Venus to Limbo. Films reviewed: The Strangers: Chapter 1, Limbo
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s Spring Festival season continues with Inside Out, the 2SLGBTQ+ film festival which opens this Friday, and runs through June 1st. The opening night show is the comedy My Old Ass, starring Aubrey Plaza, and the closing night show is a must-see for Toronto music-lovers; it’s called We Forgot to Break Up, and features tunes by iconic artists like Peaches, Gentleman Reg, The Hidden Cameras and Torquil Campbell of Stars.
But this week, I’m looking at two new movies — a mystery and a horror — about what can happen when you end up in a small town. There’s a police detective caught in Limbo an outpost in the Australian outback, and a young couple looking for a way out of Venus, a small town in Oregon.
The Strangers: Chapter 1
Dir: Renny Harlin
Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) are a young couple driving from New York City to Oregon in a fancy new SUV. Maya is a young architect aiming for a position at a Portland firm, and Ryan is willing to relocate if she gets the job — they’ve been together for 5 years and things are looking good. Until they turn off the highway for a bite to eat, and find themselves in an isolated town called Venus, Oregon. GPS doesn’t work here and wifi and telephone signals are intermittent at best. And the people all seem like extras from the movie Deliverance. And when they come out from the local diner their car — mysteriously — isn’t working anymore. Says the mechanic: We gotta wait for parts before we can fix it. So they are forced to spend the night at an Air BnB, a small cabin in the woods isolated even from the town. It’s a creepy place, filled with scary, old things like… record players! And a piano! And a chicken coop out front! They’re disturbed by a loud rapping on the door by a young woman in a hoody, her face obscured. But when the girl leaves, 
everything seems kinda normal again. So, like the sensible couple they are, he drives back in town, leaving her alone in the cabin to smoke a joint. That’s when things get really scary.
A man in a mask keeps sneaking up on her and spying on her but he disappears as soon as she turns around. Not eventually she discovers it’s not her imagination. There are three sadistic killers chasing her and Ryan all over the place, holding a giant axe. They’re all wearing masks: a burlap sack with a face drawn on it, a baby doll mask, and one that looks like a 1920s flapper. Can Maya and Ryan somehow escape these scary people, and get away from this awful little town? Or will they just die?
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a cabin-in-the-woods horror movie. Cabin in the Woods movies are sub-genre I like. And the acting is not bad — Madelaine Petsch is Blossom from the TV series Riverdale. You can sympathize with the two main characters. And it even a bit scary. But there’s something wrong with this movie. It’s non-stop deja vue. It’s like a collage of scenes blatantly stolen from countless other horror movies. I’ve seen all these masks before. I’ve 
seen the guy with the axe. The wooden house, the chickens — it’s like they didn’t even try to think up something new. I’m tempted to blame this on AI, but I think it’s just lazy writers. And it doesn’t even make sense. Do the killers wait around for hapless strangers to arrive at random so they can put on their stupid masks and terrify them. And if so… Why? The title should tell you something — it’s “Chapter 1” in a potentially endless series. So don’t expect it to explain anything — maybe that comes in chapter 19 or 20.
I was actually looking forward to seeing this movie, because it’s by Finnish director Renny Harlin who was a big name in the 90s for his classic action thrillers like Die Hard 2, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. But The Strangers is so deeply stupid it tarnishes his reputation.
Limbo
Dir: Ivan Sen
Travis (Simon Baker) is a police detective in South Australia. He has buzzed hair and beard, aviator-style glasses and tattoos all over his body. He’s also a junkie — he carries his paraphernalia wherever he goes. This time, he’s been sent to the outback to investigate a cold case about a girl named Charlotte who disappeared two decades earlier. The police never caught the actual criminal, nor find the missing girl… maybe because she’s aboriginal. So Travis pokes around for clues. Unsurprisingly, the locals are not impressed. Charley (Rob Collins) Charlottes brother, had been blamed for her disappearance.
He tells Travis to fuck off. Emma (Natasha Wanganeen) the waitress in the town diner, wants to help — and likes having Travis around. And the three kids she takes care of also want to find out what happened to Aunt Charlotte. And then there’s Joseph (Nicholas Hope), a sketchy old guy who lives in a cave, and who used to run dodgy party nights for teenagers with a friend. He denies any involvement but seems to know a lot. Meanwhile, Travis is stuck there till they fix his car — he’s forced to drive around in an ancient jalopy. Can he get the locals to talk? Will he ever discover what happened to Charlotte and why? And as he uncovers deep dark secrets, will the people there end up better or worse?
Limbo is a detective drama about an old mystery. It’s a slow burn — very slow in fact — more like a revelatory drama than a mystery. It deals with dark secrets and the pervasive class divisions and racism toward the indigenous people there. It takes place in the lunar landscape of an area once exploited for opal mines, with deep tunnels drilled into the ground and hills made of the rubble they dug up. The hotel he stays in has walls drilled into the earth. Everything is dirt, sand, rock and sun. The people all seem to live in caves or mobile homes.
This indigenous Australian director, Ivan Sen, is also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor and the composer of the soundtrack, so it has a completeness about it, the work of a single mind. It has amazing panoramic views, all done in black and white. The production design and aesthetics of the film — sets, costumes, cars — is very cool as well. And great acting. If you want to watch a moody, noir-ish drama under a bright summer sun, I think you’ll like Limbo.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 opens theatrically this weekend; check your local listings. Limbo is now available on VOD.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Places. Films reviewed: The Burning Season, We Grown Now, Evil Does Not Exist
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
If you’re looking for a fun night out, check out a beautifully renovated movie palace known as The Paradise Theatre in Toronto. It’s now running Flurry of Filth, the aptly titled John Waters retrospective, including camp classics like Female Trouble, Hairspray, Polyester and Cry Baby, featuring Divine, Mink Stole, Tab Hunter and many more, on now through May 18th.
But this week, I’m looking at three new indie movies, from Canada, the US and Japan. There’s a jack-of-all-trades in a mountain village near Tokyo, a hotelier on a lake in Northern Ontario, and two kids in a housing project in Chicago.
The Burning Season
Dir: Sean Garrity (Interviews: 2013, 2016, 2022)
It’s summer at a resort on Luna Lake in northern Ontario. JB (Jonas Chernick) is preparing to marry his longtime girlfriend Poppy (Tanisha Thammavongsa). Guests at the lavish outdoor wedding include Alena (Sara Canning) and her husband Tom (Joe Pingue), a couple who make it a point to visit the resort each summer. This is where JB grew up — his family owned the place — and he knows every inch of the woods. But it turns into a wedding from hell when the groom-zilla starts snorting coke, improvising his vows, breaking dishes, and getting in a fistfight with Tom. What’s the cause of all this anger, confusion and mayhem? It seems JB and Alena have been having a secret affair at the park since they both were teenagers. This summertime relationship continued even after they both met their life partners. And it all stems back to a fire at the cottages the first time they met. What’s the attraction? What rules do they play by? And will they ever own up to their secret past?
The Burning Season is a bittersweet chronicle of a longtime furtive 
romance set in Algonquin Park. The very first scene shows the teenaged couple taking vows of secrecy in front of a big fire, but from there it jumps forward to the faulty marriage many years later. The rest of the movie fills in the blanks, summer by summer, going back in time in reverse chronological order. Winnipeg director Sean Garrity has a history of making identifiably Canadian movies — including location, story, actors and music — but often with a dark, twisted theme. This one is co-written by Garrity’s long-time collaborator Jonas Chernick (The Last Mark, James vs his Future Self, A Swingers Weekend) and carries on this tradition. What does that mean? It means you get a twisted plot, good acting, beautiful scenery, and a fair amount of sex.
What more do you need?
We Grown Now
Wri/Dir: Minhal Baig
It’s 1992 in Cabrini-Green, a vast, mainly black public housing project in Chicago’s north side. Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) are best friends in elementary school. They study and hang together, often staying at Malik’s home with his mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett) and his Grandma. Eric’s Dad works at a pizza place and his much older sister helps out at home. They don’t have much money but life is still good. Until everything changes when a classmate is killed by a stray bullet.
Mayor Daley declares war, and suddenly the kids all have to carry IDs, and their homes are broken into, without warrants, by swarms of police. Cabrini-Green is suddenly made a symbol of crime, and its days are numbered. Should Delores look for somewhere else to live? Even outside of Chicago? And what will happen to friends like Eric and Malik?
We Grown Now is a coming-of-age drama about two kids living in a long gone housing project (it was torn down a few years after the film takes place.) It’s well-acted and brings back to life an important place and its historical significance. The problem is it didn’t grab me. It’s missing something: the joys of childhood and friendship don’t seem real. The whole movie is drab and dreary, not fun. Where are the 
games they play, the comic books they read, the TV shows, the video games, the music they listen to? What are their favourite sports teams? Not in this movie. When they play hooky it’s to go to an art museum but back home do they start drawing and painting their own art? No. Aside from jumping on mattresses on the street these kids don’t ever seem to have fun, or do anything exceptional except being poor. The filmmaker says she talked to people who used to live there, but it translates into an earnest but lifeless movie set in aspic.
Evil Does Not Exist
Co-Wri/Dir: Hamaguchi Ryusuke
Takumi (Omika Hitoshi) is a jack-of-all-trades living in a tiny mountain village outside Tokyo. He chops wood, forages for wild vegetables, and carries water from a stream. (The villagers prize the delicious, clean taste of their well water.) And he devotes himself to his young daughter Hana (Nishikawa Ryo). Hana loves exploring the woods nearby, picking up things she finds along the way, like feathers. Everyone knows everyone in this village — the school kids, the retired folks, the local noodle shop owner — and Takumi is the de facto spokesman. So he takes the lead when rumours of a huge change strikes the town.
A Tokyo-based company apparently plans to open a “glamping” resort just outside the village. “Glamping” means glamorous camping, a luxury, outdoor encampment for city folk. And they set up an information meeting in the town hall. But there’s no one from the company — just a pair of friendly actors from a talent agency (Kosaka Ryuji, Shibutani Ayaka). After their glitzy presentation comes the Q&A, and the locals are not pleased. This glamping venture would 
ruin their idyllic, back-to-nature lifestyle and contaminate their water with a leaking septic tank upstream. Can the two sides find common ground?
Evil Does Not Exist is a stunning clash of cultures and the unexpected spinoff a seemingly-inoffensive idea can generate. It’s also a great character study, both of the stubborn NIMBY townsfolk and the affable talents who realize they’re actually the pawns of corporate treachery. It’s beautifully shot at a leisurely pace with amazing cinematography, and a jarring soundtrack that features lush romantic music that will stops suddenly, without warning. The film is written and directed by Hamaguchi Ryusuke, who brought us Drive My Car a couple years ago, which garnered four Oscar nominations. Evil Does Not Exist has a totally different theme but shares the same dark undercurrent.
This is a very good movie.
We Grown Now and Evil Does Not Exist open this weekend at the TIFF Lightbox; The Burning Season also opens in Toronto; 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.
Guy stuff. Films reviewed: The Fall Guy, The Ride Ahead, Pelikan Blue
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I have some movies about guy stuff — two documentaries and an action movie. There’s a guy in Sydney not afraid to get his hands dirty, a guy in New Hampshire who wants to know the real dirt, and three guys in Budapest playing dirty with some train tickets.
The Fall Guy
Dir: David Leitch
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is the stunt double for a heartthrob Hollywood action star named Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Tom claims to do all his own stunts but those in the know know it’s Colt falling off buildings, crashing cars, and catching fire. Colt loves the excitement and thrill of doing the undoable — and he’s really good at it, too. Especially at his current film, because he works beside a camera operator named Jody (Emma Blunt). They’re spending time together, on and off duty, trading quips on set or making out behind the klieg lights. It’s his dream job. Until a terrible accident breaks his back, and he disappears from the scene entirely. And from Jody, too. Until, 18 months later, he gets a call from a producer. Gail (Hannah Waddingham), a big shaker and mover, wants him on Tom’s latest flick, a sci-fi action rom-com. He doesn’t want to, until she drops the other shoe: Jody is directing this movie and she specifically asked for him.
So off he flies to Sydney, Australia, to join a shoot in progress. It’s a shlock-fest about a space 
cowboy fighting aliens using weapons that look like heavy-metal guitars. Turns out Jody had no idea he’s coming and is still offended he dumped her for no good reason. Then Gail, the producer, asks for Colt’s help. Tom has disappeared with a gang of undesirables and she’s worried he’s in trouble. Can’t Colt find and rescue him? If not they’ll have to cancel the movie… and Jody’s career (this is her first time as a director). Tom agrees, but soon discovers he’s the target of a slew of gunmen, trying to get back a missing video. Can Colt rescue Tom, survive the bullets, catch the baddies and make it back to set in time to woo the love of his life?
The Fall Guy is a combination rom-com and action movie set within the confine of the film industry. So it’s full of references to mediocre movies. I thought the witty banter wasn’t particularly clever, and the plot twists propelling the story pretty threadbare. There are lots of unnecessary 
jokes written into the script with a nudge and a wink. Like when Jody asks Colt if she should use a split screen in the film she’s directing… immediately after which The Fall Guy movie starts using a split screen, too. That’s just weak. And yet I walked out of this film feeling totally entertained. Why?
First of all the acting is great, all the main characters well-played, especially Gosling’s Colt Seavers. More than that, though, the action is really good. The chase scenes are elaborate, the fight scenes are like watching ballet, and even the gratuitous explosions — and there are quite a few of them — are just fun to watch. And of course, in a movie about stuntmen, the stunts are all done just right. So if you’re looking for a couple of hours of forgettable entertainment, this one’s for you.
The Ride Ahead
Dir: Dan Habib, Samuel Habib
Samuel Habib is a young man who lives with his parents in Concord New Hampshire. He has tattoos, likes music and sports. He went to public school and is getting ready for college, but realizes he hasn’t yet done a lot of things many high school kids have already done: things like going on a date or having sex. Yes, the media is filled with sexual images and porn but rarely relevant to people like him. Samuel is disabled. The thing is, movies and TV shows portray people like him in one of three ways: get help, get cured or die. He wants some advice that’s relevant to him, preferably NOT from his parents (awkward…) And he can’t stand being talked down to or underestimated by people who only see his disability. So he decides to go to the source and talk with some well-known disabled people, including many of his heroes. He does it — and makes a film out of it.
He meets with musician Keith Jones, co-founder of Krip-Hop, for some basic rules about having sex. Says Jones: “always remember: put a bag on it!”Judy Heumann, the late, great leader of the Disability Rights Movement, says “using a wheelchair means spending a lot of time staring at people’s butts!”
Andrew Peterson who lives with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder tells how he became a long-distance runner and a sports coach. And Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian-American
Dan and Samuel Habib, The Ride Ahead at HotDocs, Photo by Jeff Harris
stand-up comic, provides both constant humour and some really tough talk. The film takes Sam (and his father, co-director Dan Habib) across the country, in boats, planes and automobiles, each of which pose separate accessibility issues, especially airplanes; Samuel uses an electric wheelchair to get around and they don’t go well with those tight spaces on planes. He also turns to his own big brother for all-around moral support and inspiration. But will Sam ever move beyond his parents’ house?
The Ride Ahead is a touching, funny and informative documentary told from the subject’s point of view. It helps correct a lot of misconceptions about disabilities, and introduces a lot of other things you probably never considered. The film is made in the form of a dialogue between Samuel, his dad and the people he encounters, often with the camera positioned either facing him or facing out. At times, Samuel’s both the subject and the filmmaker. He can speak, but in the film mainly uses an electronically generated voice whose texts he writes in advance.
I liked this documentary a lot, partly the way it makes people with disabilities the subject not the object. It covers diverse intellectual territory, from disability rights to ableism and disability justice. It also deals frankly with real aspects of everyday life. And the cast and crew, both behind and in front of the camera, from editor to soundtrack, are largely disabled themselves.
The Ride Ahead is a good movie to watch.
Pelikan Blue
Wri/Dir: László Csáki
It’s the late 1980s in Budapest, Hungary and the iron curtain may be rattling but it’s not yet opened. Still, the government is introducing new measures. It’s now legal to keep foreign currency and travel abroad. Everyone, especially young people, are dying to see what it’s like in Western Europe. But train tickets are prohibitively expensive, and no one has any money. When three guys — Rozi, Petya, and Akos — buy a forged ticket on the black market, they are dismayed and disgusted by its poor quality: smudged ink, misspelled words… They’d be caught immediately. They can do better than that using just advanced planning and simple high school chemistry. So they decide to take the bull by the horns, and make themselves some fake tickets. This involves spying on the sellers, stealing some covers, and getting a phony rubber stamp made (not an easy task in communist Hungary). But they also have to buy a cheap ticket, bleach out the ink and carefully enscribe the forgery through a page of Pelican Blue carbon paper.
After much trial and error, they manage to ride a train to Scandinavia for pocket change. But 
when they get back, rumours leak, and everyone wants a piece of the action. Should they expand their business or get out of it before the police find out?
Pelikan Blue is a beautiful, animated feature-length documentary that follows the story over three decades, using old voice recordings and new interviews. This is basically a heist movie, but one involving minimal stakes — just forged tickets across Europe. But what really struck me was the stunning art. It involves the garish lavenders and electric blues of 1980s colours, distinct characters, and simple but instantly recognizable images: a payphone, an answering machines, the brutalist rooftops of Budapest. Backgrounds are brushed with tempera paints, and the faces have squashed noses, and eyes that are tiny green dots. I cannot describe the joy I felt looking at this animation, it’s unique, it’s amazing, it’s handmade, it’s just so cool. There’s also a chill soundtrack of 1990s Hungarian music percolating through the whole film. There are lots of funny parts, and some psychedelic dream sequences, too…I just can’t get enough of Pelikan Blue.
The Fall Guy opens this weekend; check your local listings. The Ride Ahead, Pelikan Blue are two of the many movies playing at Hot Docs through Sunday.
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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