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

As summer starts to wind down, I’m looking at two new movies that take you to places you’ve never been. There’s a drama about a young woman’s sexual secrets in a tiny Newfoundland outport and an action/comedy about a middle-aged man trying to keep his profession a secret while on vacation at a run-down amusement park.

But first I’m looking at more movies coming to TIFF in September.

TIFF Directors

TIFF is less than a month away, and I haven’t seen anything yet, but here are a few more movies —  by international directors — that caught my eye.

Laura Poitras, has made two crucial docs so far: Citizen 5 about whistleblower Edward Snowden and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed about artist Nan Goldin’s fight with the Sackler family. Her newest doc, Cover Up, looks at the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib stories.

Guillermo del Toro — who splits his time between Toronto and Mexico City — is a specialist in gothic horror, (Devils Backbone, Cronos, Pinocchio, Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak ) so it’s no surprise he’s doing his own version of Frankenstein. This should be great.

You may not have heard of Christian Petzold, but he’s one of the most creative and distinctive German directors around. (Barbara,, Phoenix, Transit,  Undine,,  Afire) He makes mannered, artificial-looking movies, that still deeply affect the viewer. His newest pic, Miroirs No. 3 is about a woman who moves in with a witness to the accident that killed her boyfriend. I’m really looking forward to this one.

Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes who won an Oscar for his harrowing Son of Saul, and whom I interviewed on this show in 2018, is back with a new film called Orphan.  It’s about a young man in 1950s Budapest who is raised idolizing his late heroic father, until he meets a brutish, horrible man who claims to be his real dad.

Raoul Peck is the Haitian filmmaker known for his powerful, political documentaries, like I Am Not your Negro about James Baldwin. His latest is Orwell: 2+2=5 a biography of that writer and how his book 1984 is still relevant.

I first encountered Annemarie Jacir’s film When I Saw You back in 2012, but it stuck with me. Palestine 36 — having its world premiere at TIFF —  is about fighting the British in 1936, and it stars Hiam Abbas and Jeremy Irons.

Steven Soderbergh churns out several new movies each year — some great, some terrible. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on his newest one about art fraud, The Christophers — starring Ian McKellen and James Corden —  cause it looks kinda good.

Director Claire Denis who grew as a white French woman in colonial West Africa has made so many great movies (White Material, Beau Travaille) that I’ll watch anything she produces. Her latest The Fence is in English, and stars Matt Dillon, Mia McKenna-Bruce (who I interviewed on this show last year) and Ivorian actor Isaach De Bankolé.

These are just a few of the movies premiering at TIFF50.

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Sweet Angel Baby

Wri/Dir: Melanie Oates

It’s a cold Sunday morning in a tiny outport in Newfoundland. It’s a picturesque town, with brightly coloured wooden houses scattered on hills overlooking crashing waves at the foot of cliffs down below. But this day the town’s priest has some bad news. The Vatican is selling the church and the land it stands on to pay court-ordered restitution for the child abuse crimes of a previous generation. But the chapel has been there for centuries, built by the villagers’ own great, great grandparents. And though it’s the centre of their lives, they can’t think of any way to stop it from being sold. Until one voice asks: Why don’t we raise money ourselves to buy it on behalf of the town. That suggestion comes from the much-loved Eliza (Michaela Kurimsky). She has pale skin and long auburn hair, is savvy, kind and pretty. And still single. The men all hit on her — even Shawn (Peter Mooney) her high school crush who is married with children. What they don’t know is she has a secret lover named Toni (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) an out-lesbian who works as a waitress at the local diner and raises chickens for eggs on the side. They keep their relationship casual and hush-hush. 

But Eliza has another secret even Toni doesn’t know about. She has an anonymous website — with many followers, worldwide — where she posts her artistic photos. They are all of herself  — posed on the cliffs, in the woods, lying on lichen covered rocks. But these aren’t your usual selfies.  In all these carefully composed pictures, she’s naked or scantily clad (with her face obscured, naturally.) But when someone in the village, somehow figures out she’s the woman in the photos, everything changes. Once one person knows, everyone knows, and her bucolic world collapses all around her. 

Sweet Angel Baby is a moving drama about secrets, sex, frustration  and cruelty in a small town in Newfoundland. It’s a lovely and touching story, filled with highly erotic — and occasionally absurd —  images. Michaela Kurimsky is fantastic as Eliza a woman yearning to burst out of a culture that’s repressing her but still holds so many good parts of her life. I love the cinematography and art direction from the little red houses to a dead moose. 

Sweet Angel Baby shows us a a new and different Newfoundland.

Nobody 2

Dir: Timo Tjahjanto

Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) is an average middle-aged, middle-class suburban guy, with a wife and two kids. He’s nobody, really. He goes to work each day, and comes home after everyone’s asleep. So what does he do all day? Fights and kills bad guys, sometimes 5 at a time. He’s good at it and likes his job. He works for a secretive syndicate that sends him out on death-defying assignments each day — he’s a professional killer, a hitman extraordinaire. But lately he feels like he’s missing out on life. He wasn’t there for his son Brady’s big game, or his daughter Sammy’s fleeting innocent years. And he barely sees his wife Becca at all (Connie Nielsen). So he decides to take his family to Plummerville, the same cheesy rundown amusement park his dad (Christopher Lloyd) took him and his brother to (RZA) when they were both kids. So they pile into the car and head out on the road for some good clean fun.

Problem is, trouble has a way of finding Hutch, wherever he goes. It starts with just a minor fight in a pinball ally involving the local highschool’s bully and his son. Hutch tries to stay calm, and not get involved, but it turns out the bully’s dad owns Plummerville, and the town itself is ridden with corruption and organized crime; they use the theme park to launder money and smuggle guns and drugs. The local Sheriff (Colin Hanks) is a bad hombre, and on top of the heap is a sadistic gangster kingpin (or queenpin?) named Lendina (played by the much-missed Sharon Stone). She’s as bloodthirsty as she is cruel, and takes notice when an unknown tourist starts interfering with her profit-making.  Can Hutch fight off all the villains and protect his family while keeping them all totally clueless as to the nature of his work?

Nobody 2 is an action comedy about an ineffectual dad who is secretly a killing machine. It’s a sequel to the original movie a few years back. Think: National Lampoon’s Vacation starring John Wick. The violence is great, running from choreographed fight scenes (using fists, knives, guns, and improvised weapons) to bigger stuff like booby traps, gattling guns and hand grenades… all set against an aging, seedy amusement park (filmed near Winnipeg!). I know, we shouldn’t laugh at people being killed, but the humour — and the violence — seldom stops.

Nobody 2 is 90 minutes of violent fun.

Sweet Angel Baby and Nobody 2 both open this weekend 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.