Cultural Mining

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

Do you know what a high-concept movie is? It’s a movie — often a genre movie — based on an easy-to-grasp idea, one where the plot might have been scribbled down on a cocktail napkin before it was developed. These kinds of movies are especially popular in the summer, when people don’t want to think too much. But do they work?

Well this week I’m looking at two such high-concept genre movies: a comedy/horror and a rom-com. There’s a small town where the kids start killing all the grownups, and a future America where singles are forbidden from having sex except one night per year.

But first, here are some more movies coming to the Toronto International Film Festival.

#TIFF26

Once again, I haven’t seen any of these movies yet, so I’m just relying on subject, filmmakers, actors and their “vibes”.  Here are a few that look really good:

Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias is her latest in a series including The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Who is this pervert? Slavoj Zizek, of course, the amusing and entertaining Slovenian political philosopher. He rants and spits and snorts non-stop, while posing his heterodox views on just about everything. 

Matthew Rankin is the Winnipeg-born filmmaker known for his fantastical looks at Canada, like Universal Language and The Twentieth Century. He manipulates images and turns them into a weird dreamlike world. This one, called Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, is ostensibly a documentary, but I have no doubt it will be just as surreal and mind-blowing as his other satirical looks at recent Canadian history. I hear a rumour it was partly shot on Super8 film… which sounds just like Matt Rankin.

And Stuffed directed by Theo Rhys is about a taxidermist who wants to stuff an actual human, and gets a volunteer… but everything gets messed up when love enters the picture. Never heard of the director but it stars two great British actors: Harry Melling (Pillion, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) and Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders, The Death of Robin Hood). 

These are just three movies premiering at TIFF that could be really good.

Ice Cream Man

Wri/Dir: Eli Roth

It’s an afternoon in late June when a white ice cream truck rolls into Bayleen Bay, a picturesque small town in Massachusetts.  The kids are out playing Little League and the teens are getting ready for “skip day” when they plan to play hooky at a nearby theme park. Until a rinky-dink song starts playing on the ice cream truck and all the kids run over to see. That’s where the Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen) — an enigmatic stranger with a cloying smile — is handing out popsicles, and ice cream cones and sandwiches in lurid colours to all the kids. All the kids except Jared Mayfair (Charlie Zeltzer), who regretfully turns it down; he’s lactose intolerant. He’s a wimpy tween who gets shaken down by bullies everyday, despite the fact his parents are prominent figures in town. 

He goes home, dejected, with his big sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), and without getting any ice cream. But the next day, everything seems strange. His friends (and frenemies) are all walking like zombies. They file into class with blank looks on their faces and blue and pink jimmies smeared across their mouths. Only Jarod, Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman) who pukes after eating anything and Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly) who is always in detention for acting out. The only ones who didn’t have ice cream. And then it’s bedlam, when all the kids start attacking their teachers, their parents, and the police and firemen who they used to respect. Now they’re swarming around, chopping off heads of unsuspecting grown-ups and gouging out their eyeballs. They’re playing tag using adult bodily parts, and seem to be loving every minute of it. Jared, Mia and Tommy try to get away, but the crowds of evil kids are encroaching. Why is this happening? And is there any way to stop it?

Ice Cream Man is a comedy/horror film about kids killing all grownups and laughing about it. It luxuriates in gruesome torture, decapitation and disembowelment as if it were another game kids could play. And it’s all done in bright colours, with happy children’s music under a glorious summer sky.   Maybe some particularly nasty 7 year olds might find all this funny, but I just found it gross. But is it scary? Again, no, not at all. Disgusting doesn’t equal scary. The plot is incredibly weak, and isn’t even consistent within its own conceit. One moment the kids are zombies, the next they’re having fun? What did I miss? Are they all part of a hive mentality controlled by the ice cream man? It doesn’t really matter.

What’s with Eli Roth, anyway? Is he a psychopath? This is such a dreadful movie: it’s stupid, inconsistent, bloody and totally unfunny. Some positives: the acting — especially Ari Miller in the title role — is pretty good, it’s filmed around Toronto, and it’s less than 90 minutes. 

Other than that, I can’t think of any reason anyone would want to watch this execrably awful excuse for a movie. 

One Night Only

Dir: Will Gluck

It’s the near future in NY City. Since an authoritarian, theocratic  government came to power, premarital sex has been banned across the country and all single adults have a red chip implanted on their wrists. But once a year, that biochip turns from red to green for 12 hours only, and that’s the time when everyone is scrambling to get laid.  

One such single person is Owen (Callum Turner) an attractive guy who runs a popular pizzeria in South Bronx. He spends all day kneading dough and making authentic pizza sauce. In the evening, he sees his girlfriend he lives with — but no touching allowed by law. So this night he plans to propose marriage and have a nice 12 hours alone together — legally — following a romantic dinner and diamond ring he’ll be handing her. 

Meanwhile, Allie (Monica Barbaro) a beautiful professional singer, is finishing her recording session — she’s singing a TV jingle for psoriasis cream — so she can meet up with her best friend and pick up some hot guys. It wasn’t terrific last year, but this year it’s going to be great. But when her BFF disappears almost immediately with a guy she just met, Allie feels abandoned and worthless.

Things go equally bad for Owen — his fiancee-to-be leaves his romantic dinner to sleep with some other guy who lives in their building. So Owen trudges home, also feeling rejected and alone. 

But when these two strangers walking down a NY street and literally bump into each other — something which never happens in a rom-com — sparks fly. They’re totally into each other and can’t wait to consummate the act… until Owen pukes all over Ally’s sequinned dress. She won’t listen to his apology, and leaves in a huff. They both vow to find someone else to have sex with that night, but for some reason, they keep bumping into each other, over and over, in remote places across Manhattan. Is this kismet? Or just a series of coincidences? And will they ever give in and just do it?

One Night Only is a largely unoriginal and nonsensical — but cute! — romcom. There are lots of cameos: LeVar Burton, Molly Ringwald, Julia Fox, Pete Davidson… but it relies on Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, who, fortunately have good chemistry.  They use each other, both as foils for their jokes — often slapstick and bawdy — as well as potential love or sex partners. I like the physicality; there are some very funny chase scenes, and pratfalls, and lots of half-naked embarrassments.

But, seriously, this movie doesn’t make much sense. Aside from the sex prohibition — or “mandate” as they call it — everything else is identical to contemporary New York. If it’s an autocratic regime, there would be tons of restrictions and surveillance everywhere, but nope, just this one rule. And why — if condoms are both required by law and readily available — why would they run out? (Because it’s a plot device?) Also for a pseudo sex-comedy, there’s a total dearth of both sex and nudity.

Anyway, this is not a deep movie that will stimulate long conversations after watching. It’s just a cheap, cute and kinda funny date movie.

And that’s good enough.

Ice Cream Man and One Night Only 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