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

imagineNative — Toronto’s own indigenous film and media arts festival — is on now through Sunday with docs, films, exhibitions and performances from around the world with both free and paid events.  Check it out!

But this week I’m looking at three new movies: an art house comedy, a religious horror movie and an action thriller. There’s a devious mogul preparing his daughter to take over his busines, a priest attempting an exorcism, and a professional assassin fighting to avenge her dad.

The Phoenician Scheme 

Co-Wri/Dir: Wes Anderson (Reviews: Fantastic Mr Fox, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch, Asteroid City)

Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicia Del Toro) is the richest industrialist in the world. He amasses millions by embarking on huge projects in developing countries using virtual slave labour. He’s ruthless and cruel. He has sired a dozen kids whose names he can’t remember and whom he keeps locked up in a threadbare orphanage. Except, one. Liesl (Mia Threapleton) is a novice, brought up in a convent and dresses like a nun but who who has yet to take her vows. Korda is grooming her to take over his huge business interests after he dies. And attempts on his life — like poisons, bombs and sabotaged airplanes — are a routine part of his life. But he always seems to survive. And so he embarks on a grand scheme to involving interconnected tunnels, waterways and cornering global markets. But first he must raise the money from investors. He takes Liesly along with him as he carries out his complex plans. And accompanying them is Bjorn (Michael Cera) a Scandinavian tutor, ostensibly hired to educate his kids, but instead tags along on these journeys. But they face hostile business partners, revolutionaries, spies and assassins, quicksand, plane crashes and other symbols of disaster. Will his scheme be successful? Will Liesl learn to love him? And will he survive the final attempt on his life?

The Phoenician Scheme is an art-house comedy film, the latest in Wes Anderson’s collection. It’s stylized and formalistic, shot in almost two-dimensional geometric settings with precisely directed sequences. Combining social satire with silliness, it’s wacky and always surprising. It consists of a series of segments as he checks off the list of the projects he planned as he swindles repeated capitalists out of their investments. The story line is punctuated by repeated dreams fantasies of Korda — in his near-death experiences — as he faces judgement in Heaven, but always ending up back again on earth. Threapleton is fun to watch as she gradually transforms from an avowed zealot to a lover of luxury, as Korda replaces her rosary with semiprecious stones, and her simple corncob pipe with an inlayed treasure from Cartier. Cera is hilarious as the insect-loving tutor Bjorn, and Del Toro is sufficiently both grand and seedy to convey his anti-hero’s character. Like all of Wes Anderson’s films, many members of his stable of actors reappear in short, cute roles: Tom Hanks, Willem Defoe, Bryan Cranston, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Ayoade, Scarlett Johansson, Ris Ahmet, Bill Murray, and Benedict Cumberbatch, to name just a few. Some people are put off by Anderson’s emphasis on style and form — which, admittedly, doesn’t always work — but in this case, I think he’s made a fine movie that’s a pleasure to watch. 

The Ritual

Co-Wri/Dir: David Midell

It’s the late 1920s in a small town in Iowa and Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens) is mourning the death of his only brother. But his grief is interrupted by a young woman in his parish. Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen) says she is possessed by a demon. For many years she has seen doctors and psychiatrists but no one can explain her strange condition. So she has turned to the Church to cure her, and says only an exorcism can free of from her very real torment. This is unheard of, but the ritual has been approved by the local Bishop, with an expert in demonic possession heading their way. Father Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) is a shaggy-haired little monk who wears a cowl and talks like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. But he knows the practice of exorcisms inside and out. Along with a bevy of assorted nuns to help out, the ceremony begins. Emma is tied to the bed as her body writhes. She  pukes pea soup and breaks out in weird rashes. The furniture flies around the room as she curses in five languages. But can they exorcise this demon before it consumes her?

The Ritual is a horror movie that (supposedly)  reenacts an actual historical event: the performance of an exorcism in the US. The script is based on documents from that era. Thing is it is also the inspiration for William Friedkin’s iconic film The Exorcist, and the novel, by William Peter Blatty, it was based on. This version has atrocious writing, painful acting, and cheap-ass special effects. Fear and grief is conveyed by actors covering their faces with their hands, over and over. The whole movie is shot with in extreme close-ups using a hand-held camera that jiggle enough to make any viewer feel nauseous. Although the chapters of each ritual is documented, there’s minimal difference from one to the next. It isn’t even vaguely scary, more boring than anything else. It feels more like a Sunday school sermon than a horror movie. Al Pacino? Dan Stevens? These are famous actors! What are they doing in this dreadful movie? They must really be desperate. 

The obvious question is, what possessed the filmmakers to attempt to retell a story that’s already been told so well?

What a clunker. 

Ballerina

Dir: Len Wiseman

Eve (Ana de Armas) is a little girl raised by her father in a hidden palace somewhere in Eastern Europe. She is kept hidden from the rest of the world for her own safety. Until a man named The Chancellor  (Garbiel Byrne) tracks her down, kills her father and takes her away. All she has left to remember her dad by is a music box snow globe with a dancing ballerina inside. She is immediately enrolled in a school run by The Director (Anjelica Huston), a cruel teacher in the tradition of the Ruska Roma who trains her girls to endure the pain of classical ballet dancing. They also learn how to kill their adversaries using fists, kicks, knives or any other dangerous object. Upon graduation, only those with true bloodlust are farmed out across the globe as killers to hire. And Eve is at the top of her class. She is highly successful as an assassin, but has another hidden motive: vengeance for the death of her father and sister.

Her relentless search leads her to a picturesque alpine village filled with jolly bakers and wood carvers. The women have blond braids and rosy cheeks while the men happily quaff steins of pilsener. Unfortunately, everyone in the village, I mean everyone, is a trained killer. And they happen to belong to a criminal outfit in an uneasy truce with the clan works for. Can she find her father’s killer and escape the village alive?

Ballerina is an action/thriller about a young, female assassin out for revenge. Its a spin-off of the John Wick franchise with many of the same recurring characters, including cameos by Keanu Reeves as John Wick himself. The plot is simple, and the script has relatively few lines. What it does have is fighting and lots of it, which it does really well, whether hand to hand or using enormous lethal weapons. The fight choreography is skillful and creative — it’s ballet. And I liked Ana de Armas as the protagonist… enough that if there were another Ballerina movie, I’d watch that one too. This is good action feature.

Ballerina and The Ritual both open this weekend in Toronto and The Phoenecian Scheme expands 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.