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.