Cultural Mining

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

With movies it’s feast or famine. Some weekends have tons of new releases, while others have virtually  nothing to watch. This week, though, is definitely a feast. Like Chandler Levack’s wonderful coming of age story, Mile End Kicks, set in Montreal’s music scene in the 2010s; and I Swear, a hilarious, and cringe-worthy biopic about an Englishman with Tourettes syndrome. Both of these are must-sees.  

But I’ll be talking about two new movies — a dramady and a documentary — about people in arts and entertainment. And before that, I’m looking at the upcoming HotDocs film fest, and some of the treasures being offered there.

Hotdocs

Toronto’s International Documentary Film Festival brings next year’s best new docs and crucial issues to the big screen. I always knew documentaries are important and informative. But until I started going to hotdocs I didn’t know how good they are. They’re eye-opening and jaw-dropping entertainment that keeps you knowledgeable and mesmerized at the same time. 

Here are a few docs I’m looking forward to seeing:

Hotdocs opens Thursday night with the much-anticipated Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, directed by Michelle Mama, about the sex-and-drugs 70s and 80s Queer Toronto band Rough Trade. Toronto’s own Mark Myers brings us The Tower That Built a City, a nostalgic look at the CN Tower.

In the tech sector, Valerie Veatch’s The Ghost in the Machine looks at the topic on everyone’s mind, AI, and how its algorithms could impose terrible unanticipated consequences on our lives.  Shalini Kantayya’s Love Aptually delves into the questionable, hidden workings of dating apps. While Tommy Avallone’s Myspace follows what happened to that now- defunct platform.

Hotdocs takes us around the world. Maya Annik Bedward’s Black Zombie explains the history of the West African religion and its ties to slavery and Haitian culture.  Quebec filmmaker Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest examines two seminal events in Vietnam. And the highly personal Birds of War traces the love between Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian cameraman Abd Alkader Habak over thirteen years of revolutions, war and exile.

In international politics, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Steal this Story, Please! brings us a behind-the-scenes look at Amy Goodman’s  independent news channel Democracy Now! Norwegian documentarian  Håvard Bustnes and Sámi filmmakers Johannes Vang and Kati Eriksen expose the clash between indigenous reindeer herders and Europe’s largest wind power project, in Let Our Mountains Live.

Raha Shirazi’s A War on Women documents the history of feminism and revolution in Iran. And Kenya-Jade Pinto’s The Sandbox looks at surveillance at international borders where migrants are turned into the raw material for observation, experimentation, and control.

These are just a few of the many documentaries that will be playing at Hotdocs this year. 

Lorne

Co-Wri/Dir: Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies, Iggy Pop, Search and Destroy, Piece by Piece)

Lorne Michaels is a kid growing up in postwar suburban Toronto who wants to be funny. He’s dating the daughter of one of the most famous comedy duos in Canada (Wayne and Shuster). And though he does a short lived comedy duo show on CBC, he ends up behind the camera in Hollywood. He lands a job writing for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in and worked on summer shows for Burns and Schreiber and specials for Lily Tomlin.

But his big break comes in 1975, with the release of his own baby, Saturday Night Live, a late night TV series featuring live bands and improv comedy that was “not ready for prime time”. He quits after five years, but returns in 1985 with some new ideas… and stays on for the next four decades and beyond. He branches out to producing, movies and other TV series, and cultivates the comics and writers he discovers, propelling them to ever greater success as stars, celebrities and talk show hosts. And he’s still doing it every week, even now, after 50+ years.  What’s on the horizon? What makes him tick? What sort of a person is he really?

Lorne is a documentary looking at one of network TV’s most successful producer’s ever. The filmmaker is allowed back stage and into his office for a week or two, but do any walls come tumbling down? None. We get to see how he produces, but not why. His family life and his private life is completely verboten. We do find out he likes popcorn and Italian food, he’s good friends with Paul Simon, and he wears a tiny Order of Canada pin on his lapel. Other than that, nada. A brick wall.

The dozens of people who work with Lorne Michaels (and are featured in the doc) might know more about him but they’re not talking, either. Past or present, performers from Saturday Night Live look terrified of saying the wrong thing about their boss, so he remains just as opaque as before. What we do see is the way he launches a new 90 minute show each week, without ever missing a deadline (which begs the question, why couldn’t this doc keep it to 90 minutes, too?) This movie is neither deep, nor revelatory, nor complete, but like any SNL skit, it offers some superficial and repetitive lines that are instantly forgotten.

The Christophers

Dir: Steven Soderbergh

Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) is a Londoner devoted to fine art. A painter, an art critic, and a restorer of old works, she lives in an actual studio. But she is still surprised by an unusual job offer that comes her way. Sally and Barnaby (Jessica Gunning, James Corden) are the son and daughter of a notorious portraitist, known for his distinct style, including a combination of paint brushes and pallet knives. But Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) hasn’t produced anything of value in decades, and is known chiefly as a boorish and louche philanderer. What job could his adult children possibly be offering her? 

For a substantial sum of money, they want her to get a hold of eight unfinished paintings of a young man on canvas he made decades earlier, known as The Christophers.  They’re locked up in his attic, but they believe Lori find them, finish the paintings (using Sklar’s own paint and brushes), and then put them back again… to be “discovered” after his death as unknown masterpieces of untold worth. And Lori is probably the only living artist who can forge Sklar’s styles perfectly. (Sally went to art college with her, and remembers her uncanny abilities.) The thing is, Sklar is a recluse who seldom ventures out of his large but crumbling Kensington home, never mind allowing visitors. Could Lori pose as a naive, personal assistant and get away with it? Are The Christophers still there? Who posed for the paintings? And what secrets do Lori and Sklar both hold?

The Christophers is a funny and ultimately touching story of a clash between two artists.  I was expecting a mediocre caper story, with an obvious ending; Steven Soderbergh churns out 2-3 movies each year, some of which are good, others atrocious. This is one of his really good ones. The script (by Ed Solomon) has more twists than a plate of fusilli. The acting is superb. Ian McKellen, from his first moment on the screen, hits you with his portrayal of an egotistical bisexual artist given to lounging around in half-tied bathrobes. (I think he’s channelling the ghost of Lucian Freud). And Michaela Coel is devastating as Lori, so measured and reserved but seething beneath her outwardly cool exterior. The two work so well together, it’s a pleasure to watch.

If you like art, you’ll love The Christophers.

Hotdocs starts next Thursday, with free daytime screenings for students and seniors. The Christophers and Lorne 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