Revolution vs Devolution. Movies Reviewed: Zoolander 2, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
February is Toronto’s Black History Month, because Canada has a history all its own, both good and bad. There’s the black Empire Loyalists and the Underground Railroad. But there was also slavery in Canada, and the demolition of Africville in Halifax, and the rioting at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. So this weekend is a good time to catch up on some of this history at the Black Film Festival in Toronto.
This week, I’m looking at a documentary about 50 years of revolution by an African American party, and a comedy about 15 years of devolution by male models at parties.
Zoolander 2
Dir: Ben Stiller
Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) is a vapid former supermodel who lives in a log cabin in the Alps of northern New Jersey. His wife is dead and his son, Derek Jr, has been taken away by social services. Zoolander has been a hermit (or “hermit crab” as he says) since 2001. His former best friend and supermodel Hansel (Owen Wilson) lives in a tent in the middle of a vast desert near Palm Springs. He has non-stop orgies – involving sumo wrestlers, babushkas and goats — relieved only by intermittent yoga sessions. The two men hate each other’s guts. But they find themselves together 
again in Rome relaunching their respective careers.
Together with former swimsuit model Valentina (Penelope Cruz), now part of Interpol’s fashion police, they join forces to fight an evil cabal of supervillains who have infiltrated the fashion industry. Why? Because the bad guys, including Mugatu (Will Farrell), want to get their hands on the fountain of youth guarded by the Chosen One. He is a direct 
descendent of an unbroken line of vapid male supermodels dating back to the Garden of Eden. (Apparently there was an Adam and Steve). But who is the Chosen One and how can they save him?
I like comedies, they just have to be funny. This one’s not. it has a few very hilarious moments, but a stand-up comic with only one laugh for every 20 jokes would be booed off the stage. It’s also weirdly outdated. I can accept that Zoolander and Hansel have hidden away for 15 years, but why is the rest of the movie in a time warp, too? It’s filled with Calvin Klein perfume ads from the 1990s, titans of the fashion avant garde like Tommy Hilfiger, “hipsters” wearing dreadlocks, and Al Qaeda as the most dangerous terrorists. Even the plot is a take-off of a Dan Brown novel. Everything in the movie just seems so old. There’s no satire, and very little humour. The funniest moments come from the tickle of recognition that accompanies the countless celebrities — Bieber, Kardashian, Sarandon, Sutherland — who make cameo appearances. But it’s not enough to rescue this dud.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Dir: Stanley Nelson
It’s 1966. The US is fighting in Vietnam and anti-war protests are springing up around the world. The civil rights movement is in full swing in the southern states. But in northern cities, in places like Oakland California, the police are still arresting, frisking and beating black men with impunity. So two young leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, found a black nationalist movement there to counter police brutality and 
racial oppression and to express black pride and solidarity. And if attacked by the police, they vowed to fight back by any means necessary (in the words of Malcolm X). They named it the Black Panther Party. Members cut a mean profile: natural hairstyles, shades, black leather jackets, and military-style black berets. And, most shocking of all, they carried long guns — in the name of the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms — 
with leather straps of bullets across their chests. They were later joined by Eldridge Cleaver whose book Soul on Ice, written in prison, captured the nation’s mood.
Lyndon B Johnson, the president, and FBI chief J Edgar Hoover were shocked. They considered a black nationalist movement the biggest danger of them all — bigger than communism. They swung into action using the notorious COINTELPRO — counter-intelligence program — to infiltrate and spy on the group. They sent letters and ohone calls to women saying their husbands were cheating on them. The police were called into action to break up meetings and arrest its 
members. Dozens were arrested on trumped-up charges, and many killed in raids across the country. Some are still in prison to this day. At an infamous Chicago trial, the judge actually had Bobby Seale chained to a chair, bound and gagged, in the courtroom, making him the perfect symbol of state oppression. Eldridge Cleaver fled to Algeria. Later many of the top members changed their beliefs, leaving the party divided among warring factions.
This is a fascinating history of the movement, with tons of still photos, archival footage, and new interviews with members that tell you lots you’ve probably never heard of. Did you know they started a successful school breakfast program? And published a newspaper that was their main source of income? Their standard image is of armed black men, but the majority of rank-and
-file members were actually women, fighting for women’s rights within the party. The film doesn’t go deeply into the more controversial aspects of The Black Panthers. Some thought it undermined the non-violent civil rights movement. Or that it was big on image, weak on politics. But whatever your point of view, the Panthers made a huge mark on American history beginning 50 years ago, and this film explains it all.
Zoolander 2 opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is playing on Saturday at 11:00 AM at the Carlton Cinema as part of Toronto’s Black Film Festival. Go to torontoblackfilm.com for more info. And the Next Wave Film Festival is on all weekend long for 14-18 year-olds who love movies. Check out tiff.net for details — especially its great closing film Sing Street.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker German Kral about his new film Our Last Tango
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Juan Carlos Copes and Maria Nieves met as teenagers in a Buenos Aires dance hall. They became dance partners and tangoed together through thick and thin in a famously rocky relationship. But it ended in 1997 after almost 50 years 
together when they danced their Last Tango.
Our Last Tango is also the name of a new documentary that looks at the famous couple through the years, as they turned their dancing from recreation to performance. Through new interviews it documents their history using dance recreations. The film was created by award-winning director German Krall, and produced by Pena director Wim Wenders. The film played at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in Toronto on Christmas Day.
I spoke with German in Buenos Aires by telephone from Toronto.
B Movies. Films reviewed: Sisters, Black Christmas (1974), He Never Died, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A certain movie – which shall remain nameless – is opening today, but I’m not going to cover it. It’s getting more than enough airtime already. Instead, I’m going to talk about “B” movies and genre movies opening this weekend that might otherwise be neglected. There‘s a comedy about adult sisters, a classic horror movie about sorority sisters, a comedy/horror about a man who can’t die, and a French noir mystery about a woman who can’t remember.
Sisters
Dir: Jason Moore
Maura and Kate Ellis (Amy Poehler and Tina Fey) are adult sisters. Maura is the do-gooder – she always behaves responsibly, even excessively so. She just wants people to like her. Kate is the wild, irresponsible one. A single mom, she can’t keep a job, hold onto an apartment or even care for her teenaged daughter. But when the two sisters hear their parents are selling their childhood home, they jump into a car and head on south to Florida, to reclaim their childhoods. And once there, they decide to invite all their old friends to a final bash, complete with dating, drugs, loud music and debauchery. Except this 
party will be different. Maura can go wild while Kate has to be the responsible one. Maura invites James (Ike Barinholtz) a guy she likes who’s renovating a nearby house, while Kate has to deal with her high school nemesis, Brinda (Maya Rudolph).
That’s the story but it’s not really important. The movie is just a series of semi-improvised sketches about grown-ups behaving like teenagers. It also lets female comics – including lots of others in small roles — be the funny ones with the men as sex symbols, foils or goofs. It’s pretty sloppy: for example, the house swimming pool is emptied then full, emptied then full, in the course of a couple scenes… as if the film editor forgot to read the script. But it’s still pretty funny. I laughed a lot, at about 60% of the jokes.
Black Christmas (1974)
Dir: Bob Clarke
A group of sorority sisters live together in a shared house in a college town. Most have gone home for Christmas break, but a few are still there. Barb (Margot Kidder) is there for the sex, Phyl (Andrea Martin) is more bookish, Clare (Lynne Griffin) is conservative — called a “professional virgin” by Barb — while Jess (Olivia Hussey) is working things out with her boyfriend, Peter. And then there’s Mrs Mac (Marian Waldman) their alcoholic 
housemother who spends most of her time trying to keep track of all her hidden whisky bottles.
Then one day they start getting strange, obscene phone calls by someone who uses various voices and seems to know all their secrets. And when they start disappearing, one by one, they realize something is very wrong. But the town police are slow to react, dismissing them all as just silly girls. That is until a search party finds a body. Can they track the phone call and find the killer? And will anybody ever look in the attic?
Black Christmas was made more than 40 years ago, it’s a Canadian film, and was shot right here, in spitting distance from where I’m recording this. And it’s often called the very first slasher-type horror movie. But it’s much better than the flood of slasher movies – ones where the cast members are killed one 
at a time in their home — that followed it. And the cast is amazing. Besides the ones I mentioned, there’s also John Saxon (Enter the Dragon) as the police detective, and Keir Dullea (2001: a Space Odyssey) as Peter, Jess’s confused musician boyfriend. It also deals with big issues of the day: vigilantes with guns, abortion, sexual freedom, and feminism. They’re re-releasing it now on DVD and VOD, and it’s also great chance to see it on the big screen.
He Never Died
Dir: Jason Krawczyk
Jack (Henry Rollins) is an ordinary, monosylabic guy who lives alone in a dingy, downtown apartment. At the foot of his bed is a wooden chest filled with money. He uses it to pay for meals at the Times Square Diner (where he occasionally talks to a waitress) or for old people bingo games at a local church. He has an intern named Jeremy (Booboo Stewart) who brings him a large, unmarked bundle once a day. He needs it to stop the voices he hears in his head. He likes life to be as simple as possible.
Then things start to get complicated. A gangster (Steven Ogg) that Jack used to work for reappears on the scene. A teenaged girl names Andrea 
(Jordan Todosey) shows up saying he’s her father. And she tries to get him to date Cara (Kate Greenhouse) the waitress at the diner. Thugs come to his door demanding he tell them where Jeremy is. They say he owes them money. They hold a gun to his head and threaten him. But they don’t realize that death threats don’t work because Jack can’t die. He’s actually very old. In-the-Bible old. And he doesn’t hesitate to smite people who do bad things.
Then things get worse. They break the intern’s kneecaps, cutting off Jack’s supply. They kidnap his daughter, enters his domain and messes up the diner he goes to. It’s not like he seeks revenge, or wants to kill dozens of people with his bare hands. He just gets in these bad situations. Where people make him angry.
He Never Died is a funny but violent horror movie with a supernatural dimension. It was shot in an urban, gritty-looking Toronto. This movie is fun. It stars the 1980s hardcore hero Henry Rollins, who plays it very calm and chill… until he explodes. I wonder if I would like this as much as I do if I didn’t like Henry Rollins. Maybe, but it also has a good story, a cool look, and good acting all around.
The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
Dir: Joann Sfar
It’s the 1960s. Dany (Freya Mavor) is a young woman with fiery red hair and round glasses who lives in Paris. She’s just a secretary, she tells herself, but has wild fantasies and vivid nightmares. One day her boss (Benjamin Biolay) orders her to type up a 60-page report at his home before he flies off to Switzerland with his wife. The next day he hands her a cash bonus, and lends her his brand new Thunderbird to drive back to Paris from Orly airport. But on a sudden impulse, she turns south instead and drives toward the sea. She buys some new clothes in a seaside resort and examines her 
new self – she’s not just a secretary – she’s a star!. She feels free, glamorous, sexy. People ogle her as if she’s famous. That’s when things get strange. A woman from a café asks if she’s feeling better now. Truckers at a roadside gas station stare at her and a mechanic there swears he fixed her car the night before. At her hotel she finds her name already on the roster. And a cop stops her car and addresses her by name. It’s all so strange!
She meets a slick but sketchy man named Georges (Elio Germano) who asks her to drive him to the sea. He has to catch a boat to West Africa. There’s a definite attraction between the two, but can he be trusted? And when a dead body shows up, she wonders if she is losing he mind. Was she a killer and just can’t remember?
I like this movie. Have you heard of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady 
Vanishes? An elderly woman disappears on a train, but everyone except the main character swears she was never there. This film is more like The Lady Reappears. Everyone, except the main character herself, swears she was there the day before. The film is pure eye candy, and it looks like a graphic novel, with split screens and parallel scenes. Beautiful and stylized. Director Joann Sfar is a great comic artist, so it makes sense his movie looks like this. And I love seeing two non-French actors doing a movie entirely in this lingua franca.
Sisters, He Never Died, and The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun all open today in Toronto: check your local listings. And Black Christmas has a special screening on Saturday at the Royal Cinema with live appearances by Nick Mancuso and Lynn Griffin.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Divided personalities. Movies reviewed: Al Purdy Was Here, Legend, I Smile Back
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
People want their friends to be consistent, reliable, regular. But personalities don’t always work this way. This week I’m looking at three movies about people with shifting lives and divided personalities. There’s a US drama about a drug-addicted, bipolar stay-at-home mom; a British biopic about identical twin gangsters, and a Canadian documentary about a poet with a second life.
Al Purdy Was Here
Dir: Brian Johnson
Literature once ruled Canadian culture, with poetry at the top of the CanLit heap. Dudek, Layton, Cohen, Atwood, Bowering, MacEwan, Borson… But things change, and names get lost. This documentary looks at one of those poets, a man named Al Purdy. Have you heard of him? There’s a statue of him in Queen’s Park, about 100 metres away from here.
Purdy is born in small-town Ontario and drops out of school. He joins the Air Force, works with dynamite, and rides the rails all the way to Vancouver. In the 1950s he survives on UI and roadkill. 
Picture a bigger-than-life man in loud plaid pants with a foghorn voice. He’s imposing, obnoxious, and happiest talking loudly with a beer stubby in his hand. He makes his mark in Montreal among the better-educated English poets, depending on his prose poetry and rough working-class persona to pull him through. But what became of him?
This movie fills in the blanks. It uses amazing old snapshots, recordings and CBC footage, chapbooks, memorial concerts and twitter feeds to memorialize Al Purdy. It concentrates on the A-frame he built by hand with poet Milton Acorn. The house falls into disrepair so a bunch of writers and musicians get together to physically fix it up. The movie also uncovers the fact it was his wife’s work and salary that let him live the life of a poet. And some skeletons in the closet of another forgotten life. For example it was his wife’s income that let him live as a poet. This movie brings musicians and poets together again, and brings Al Purdy’s poetry back to life.
Legend
Wri/Dir: Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential)
Reggie and Ronnie Kray (both played by Tom Hardy) are gangsters in London’s Bethnal Green, in the 1960s. They make their money through extortion and gunrunning. They are well known to the police, but they still go on with their work with impunity. They’re also identical twins: they may look the same, but their personalities are night and day.
Reggie is popular with the ladies, a real charmer, while Ronnie prefers sex with guys. Reg is the shrewd businessman while Ronnie is more of the brawler. Reggie can hold his own in a fight, but Ronnie’s the really scary one, the loose cannon, ready to explode at any moment, guns ablazing.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the movie begins with him locked away in a high-security 
hospital for the criminally insane. Reggie strongarms a psychiatrist to declare his brother sane but the doctor puts it on Reggie to make sure Ronnie always takes his meds. (He doesn’t)
One day Reggie meets Frances (Emily Browning) the younger sister of one of his drivers. She’s 16, a petite, beautiful wide-eyed ingénue. They share a lemon sherbet candy, and bam! they fall in love. (She serves as the movie’s narrator). She likes everything about him… except the gangster stuff. And his brother. But Reg courts her relentlessly, even climbing up a drainpipe to her second story window to avoid her mum’s disapproving glances.
Ronnie, meanwhile, is pursuing his own interests: building a mythical utopian city in far-off Africa. And hanging out with his two boyfriends.
They join forces with Payne (David Thewlis) a man with a middle class accent, an impressive office and a big moustache. He acts as the frontman, while the Krays lurk behind are the muscle. They sit in the background looking threatening, rarely having to raise a finger. Soon enough they’re taking over nightclubs, moving banknotes on the black market, and even doing jobs for Meyer Lansky the US mafia kingpin (who founded Murder Inc.) And the money is rolling in.
Things seem to be going great, until Reggie spends some time in jail and Ronnie takes charge. Uh oh. 
Their businesses start to unravel at a rapid pace. What will happen to them now? Can the Kray twins handle a rival gang, the police, the mafia, the House of Lords, their love interests… and their own sibling rivalry?
I like this movie – the music, the look, the acting are all great. I did have some trouble understanding Ronnies lines (is it his cockney accent or his mumbling voice?) And having Tom Hardy play both the twins is pretty impressive. It really feels like two separate people. They even get in fist fights and end up wrestling on the floor.
But the central love story — Frances and Reg — just didn’t grab me. It didn’t seem quite right, ‘t works well as an action-filled historical biopic, but fizzles as a romance.
I Smile Back
Dir: Adam Salky
Laney (Sarah Silverman) lives in a nice middle-class home with her husband Bruce (Josh Charles) and her two kids, Eli and Janey. Bruce is an insurance agent who loves playing basketball with their kids. Laney loves them too but finds even dropping them off at school an almost unbearable chore. So she fills her days popping pills, snorting coke, and getting drunk. Or sleeping with random guys she meets in dive bars. She even has an ongoing fling with her best friend’s husband (and her husband’s best friend), who keeps her supplied with meds. She takes lithium to handle her mood swings, leaving her like a depressed zombie when she takes it. But when she skips her meds she goes wild – irresponsible, extreme, always searching for new sexual adventures. She finds herself waking up in strange motel rooms hungover from extreme drunken excess.
That she can handle. It’s her role as the good stay-at-home mom – and the guilt that comes with it – is almost 
unbearable. She ends up telling off mothers teachers or anyone who rubs her the wrong way.
Bruce’s patience is almost limitless, but she repays this by getting even more difficult to handle. (Does he suspect she’s sleeping with strangers?) And then there are her kids – some of her worries rub off on Eli who has horrible dreams, turning to weird, nervous habits to keep calm. She realizes she’s hit rock bottom when she goes to check on her sleeping kids and ends up masturbating with his teddy bear. Oh Lanie — get a grip! She checks into rehab to try to get back to normal, But lurking in the background is something from her past involving her dad who she hasn’t spoken to in decades.
Can Lanie handle her spiraling decline? Will rehab save her? Can she learn to see her kids again and just smile back? Or will she end up homeless, drunk and beaten up in a dark alley?
I Smile Back is a hard movie to handle. It’s not fun – it’s disturbing, shocking and depressing. But Sarah Silverman pulls it off. We’re used to seeing her as a comic, pushing the limits with her shocking potty humour and dirty jokes. But what’s really chilling is seeing her doing the things she jokes about but for real, not for laughs. Worth seeing.
Legend, Al Purdy was Here, and I Smiled Back all open today in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Zhang Yimou about his new film Coming Home at #TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s China’s cultural revolution. A jailed intellectual escapes from prison to see his wife, but they are prevented from meeting by a political bargain set up by someone he should trust. And in the scuffle his wife suffers a brain injury. Years later, after the cultural revolution, he returns home… only to find his wife doesn’t 
recognize him, and his daughter, a ballet student, has been kicked out of their home. So a family has been split in three as a result of his coming home.
COMING HOME is also the name of a film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars 
Gong Li as the mother. It was directed by Chinese master filmmaker Zhang Yimou, known, over the past three decades, for movies like Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, and Hero. As a Chinese director he is rare indeed as one who is commercially successful, critically acclaimed and acceptable to the government. I spoke to him at TIFF in September, 2014. Coming Home opens today in Toronto.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Mina Shum about her documentary Ninth Floor, world premiering at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In the 1960s, Canada opened its gates to new Canadians from the British Commonwealth and around the world. And in 1967, the 100th anniversary of Confederation, the world looked to Canada, especially Montreal, home of Expo 67, as the epitome of tolerance, progressiveness and multiculturalism. But just beneath surface trouble brewed. At Sir George Williams University, (now Concordia) a group of Caribbean students complained of racist treatment by a faculty member. Unrest gradually grew into the biggest student uprising in Canadian history. Crowds led to riots and a sit-in at the computer department became a conflagration on the ninth floor.
Ninth Floor is also the name of a new documentary that looks at the 
politics and history of this period through the eyes of the participants. It is directed by Mina Shum, the renowned Vancouver-based filmmaker, famous for her family dramas like Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. Ninth Floor, her first documentary, revisits a partly forgotten but vital piece of Canadian history. It’s having its world premier at TIFF. I spoke to Mina Shum, by telephone from Vancouver. She told me about Sir George Williams College, the computer lab, the sit-in, the mob, agents provocateurs, polite racism, housing discrimination, immigration, Montreal in the 1960s, Caribbean students in Canada, the RCMP, how she made the documentary… and more!
Summer in Sicily. Films reviewed: The Fiances, Seduced and Abandoned, Mafioso, PLUS Irrational Man
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Sicily is a part of Italy, but separate from it. It’s that huge island in the Mediterranean, influenced at times by Greece, Rome, Spain, or as an independent kingdom. This gives it a rich culture, dialect and customs that leaves most outsiders baffled. The island went through a slow economic downturn, but Italy’s postwar industrial boom eventually affected Sicily as well. Thousands of continentals were sent down to work there for the first time.
TIFF Cinematheque is running a series now called Summer in Italy, with many of the films set in Sicily. This week, I’m looking at three 1960s films about life on the island; and a contemporary American drama set on a campus in Rhode Island.
The Fiances (I Fidanzati, 1963)
Dir: Ermanno Olmi
A working class couple in northern Italy meet once a week at a formal dance hall. Giovanni and Liliana (Carlo Cabrini, Anna Canzi) are passionate lovers but their relationship is put on hold when he is sent by his factory to work in Sicily. Carlo feels lost and rootless in the very different world. But he’s also intrigued by their bizarre festivals, especially one where strangers can meet in the town square, their faces hidden by masks. Liliana 
meanwhile, feels abandoned and alone and wonders whether they are still together. Telephone calls are short and perfunctory, but can their love letters rekindle what they had?
The Fiances is a beautiful and deceptively simple black and white movie. It combines neorealism — documentary-style footage of Sicily with its beaches and dusty roads — with an experimental style. Past and present scenes are cut and pasted without explanation so it’s a bit hard at first to understand, but it looks amazingly contemporary in its form.
Seduced and Abandoned (Sedotta e abbandonata, 1964)
Dir: Pietro Germi
Don Vincenzo (Saro Urzi) rules his family home with an iron fist. Honour is paramount, and a loss of face could ruin a family’s reputation. So he reads every letter sent to his many daughters, just in case there is something lusty in them. He even checks underneath the postage stamps! Life is communal: multiple-generations all live under the same roof, so there’s a total lack of privacy. But they all manage to communicate using hidden notes and listening to sounds through pipes and vents. Peppino, a student (Aldo Puglisi) is welcomed as almost a family member since he is engaged to the clueless Matilde. But one evening, everything changes when he 
sneaks a kiss behind a curtain with the younger and prettier Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli). Sex follows and Agnese is in love. But Peppino, realizing what he’s done, stops coming by – he says has to study for exams. Agnese is mortified. And Peppino hypocritically says he wants nothing to do with a “despoiled woman” – even though he’s the only one who’s slept with her!
Eventually Don Vincenzo puts two and two together. He banishes Agnese to her room and decides that Peppino must marry his daughter… or die! Soon enough the police, lawyers, judges, a toothless aristocrat, a priest and the unruly mob on the street are all a part of this dispute. Will Peppino marry Agnese? Will Agnese agree even to see him again? And can Don Vincenzo rescue his family’s reputation?
This is a very funny comedy looking at virginity, family, honour and hypocrisy played out in a traditional Sicilian style.
Mafioso (Mafiosi, 1962)
Dir: Alberto Lattuada
Nino (Alberto Sordi) is a manager at an ultra-modern car factory in Milan. He is known for his punctuality and exactness. With a nuclear family — his wife Marta (Norma Bengell) and their two little girls — he seems to be a true northerner. But he’s a Sicilian at heart. After decades of work he finally gets a chance to visit his hometown so his wife and kids can meet his parents.
And as a favour to his boss – an Italian- American from New Jersey — he agrees to carry an important package to Don Vincenzo (another Don Vincenzo!) in his hometown. Once there, the family shares meals, goes to the beach and meets old friends. And while the in-laws are busy adjusting to the clash of cultures, the naïve Nino doesn’t realize he’s about to face a different problem. As a teenager, before he moved north, he worked as an errand boy for Don Vincenzo (the “mafioso” of the title). And now he’s calling in a favour. How much can a man’s life change in a 12 day visit back home? This is an excellent dark comedy exposing the sinister presence of organized crime in Sicilian life.
Irrational Man
Dir: Woody Allen
Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a new philosophy prof at a college in Rhode Island. He specializes in existentialism, frequently dropping quotes by Kierkegard, Nietsche and Heideggar. It’s his first term there, but his reputation precedes him. His tales of derring-do and personal loss – concerning his best friend who was killed by a land mine, and his wife – give him an almost mythical status. He’s an existential nihilist, always ready for an impromptu round of Russian roulette. He goes by what his guts tell him. And by “guts” he means his prominent potbelly that he frequently rubs when 
pondering questions of morality and ethics.
Women seem to find him romantic and attractive. Rita (Parker Posey) is a sexy and sultry chemistry prof. The fact that she’s married doesn’t even slow her down – she wants to bed him. Eventually she hopes to ditch her husband altogether and move somewhere romantic with Abe – like Spain. Then there’s Jill (Emma Stone). She’s an undergrad in a committed relationship. Her boyfriend is nice, but 
a bit dull. She wants to spend time with Abe, but she keeps their relationship platonic. They both know it’s against the rules for students and profs to sleep together.
Unfortunately, Abe is depressed and brooding, his life at a standstill. Despite his reputation as a ladies’ man, he’s useless in bed. This isn’t help by the fact he’s an alcoholic, constantly swigging bourbon from a pocket flask. But one day, at a local diner with Jill overhear a conversation. A divorced woman at the next booth is in tears because she is about to lose custody over her kid. Why? It’s all because of the machinations of a horrible judge.
Something clicks in Abe’s brain: he makes a decision. He will murder a stranger (the judge) for the sake of another stranger (the woman). This will lead to a better
world, he thinks. Now he has a reason for living, and his sexual drive and exuberance come back. But will he actually commit this “perfect crime”?
I have mixed feelings about this strange movie. On the one hand, its gripping story held my attention to the very (abrupt) end. But it also feels oddly hollow. It’s not a bad movie, just not as deep as it pretends to be.
Irrational Man opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; and The Summer in Italy series is on now at TIFF Cinematheque through September 5. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Fish out of Water. Films Reviewed: What Happened Miss Simone?, The Overnight
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With the Pan Am / Parapan Am Games coming to Toronto (one field is a pebble’s throw from this station) the city is welcoming strangers from across this hemisphere. There’s a celebration of Panamerican culture in documentaries screening at the Bloor Cinema, as well as short documentaries about Everyday Ambassadors playing as part of PanAmMania and screening at Nathan Phillips Square on July 11th.
This week I’m looking at Fish Out of Water: a documentary about a would-be concert pianist tossed into the worlds of jazz and soul; and a comedy about a young couple from the Pacific Northwest floundering in LA culture.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Dir: Liz Garbus
Nina Simone, the “High Priestess of Soul” is revered today in Europe and North America as one of the great singers of the 20th century. Her rich low voice is saturated with emotion and musicality. But her life and fame had its ups and downs. How did she go from star to political activist to skid-row torch singer and back to legendary diva? This fantastic bio-documentary traces her uneven path.
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon into a family of poor black preachers in North Carolina in 1933. By the age of three, she is already playing piano at her mom’s church, and her musical talent catches the eye of many parishioners. One, a white woman, sets up a scholarship fund and
private lessons with a Miss Massinovitch, a strict piano teacher with a Russian-sounding name (she’s actually English). Her goal is to become the first black concert pianist, and her teacher instills in her a love of Bach. She goes on to study at Julliard in New York, but her dreams are crushed when she is refused entry into the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia – probably because she is black. (This is before integration.)
To earn money, she starts playing piano in Atlantic City bars. And, so her mother doesn’t find out, she plays under the stage name Nina Simone (Niña is Spanish for girl, Simone after French actress Simone Signoret). And when she becomes known for her voice, she is funneled into the slot of “jazz singer” – a popular genre but not something she is 
trained in, nor particularly likes. But with so few career choices available, she can’t pick and choose.
In the 1960s, she starts to tour and marries Andrew Stroud, a former cop who doubles as her manager. He’s hardboiled and conservative, and wants her to stick to hits to bring in the bucks. But Simone is shaken by the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four little girls. She gravitates toward the civil rights movement and performs at Martin Luther King’s historic march at Selma. Later she writes and performs the song Mississippi Goddamn to show her anger and frustration at the violence and discrimination faced by African Americans across the country..
By the 70s, she is firmly established as a member of the black arts elite. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York state, and her daughter is best friends with their neighbours the Shabazz family, the kids of Malcolm X. But as her fame begins to fade, she divorces her violent husband and her money starts to run out. She flees, first to Liberia with her daughter, and later ends up performing alone in seedy French bars for a handful of francs.
There’s much, much more to her story, and this amazing movie covers it all. Director Liz Garbus takes you right into her life with interviews with her family and close friends. Like in her documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011), she explores the fine lines between genius, fame and madness. Using period footage, photos, and most of all her music, you get a real taste of Nina Simone as a perfectionist diva and incredible singer and pianist, as well as a troubled, lonely woman losing her grip. I strongly recommend this documentary.
The Overnight
Wri/Dir: Patrick Brice
Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) are a young couple with a little son, RJ. Alex is a stay-at-home dad, both optimistic and insecure, with a bad goatee and shlumpy clothes. Emily is a smartly-dressed careerist with little tolerance for her husband’s B.S. They recently moved down to LA from Seattle so Emily can pursue her career. She’s always busy, but Alex is bored. They don’t have any friends and it’s hard to meet new people. And while the two are deeply in love they don’t a great sex life: Alex has body issues. (He thinks his penis is too 
small.)
One day Alex meets Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) at a picnic in the park when they catch their two sons playing together. Seeing a potential friend, they say eagerly yes to a pizza party at Kurt and Charlotte (Judith Godrèche)’s home. They are an older couple, rich successful and privy to the ways of LA. Kurt is a semi-hipster who indulges in odd paintings – he sees himself as the Georgia O’Keefe of anuses. And French Charlotte is an amateur actress, known on the web for a peculiar practice involving her breasts.
But the party takes on a strange turn when the kids are put to bed. Kurt and Charlotte initiate a series of games unknown to the naive out-of-towners. Like fish out of water, they’re unsure whether 
this is how normal people in L.A. behave or if they’re being seduced by a couple of swingers. Will they succumb to the older couple’s seedy charms? Or will they flee the house screaming?
The Overnight is a very funny comedy with a great small cast. It’s almost like a classic drawing room comedy, though bedroom comedy is more accurate. Its humour doesn’t rely on clever lines or pratfalls; it’s the characters and the uncomfortable sexual/social situations they find themselves in that makes it funny.
Though written and directed by Patrick Brice, The Overnight is produced by the Duplass Brothers and has their hallmarks — sexual situations, weirdness, social comedy — all over it. It also has the feel of improvisation within a structured plot. This is a great comedy with an indie feel.
The Overnight opens today in Toronto; check your local listings; and What Happened, Miss Simone is now playing on Netflix.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Disses. Movies reviewed: (Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies, Hungry Hearts, Love & Mercy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
We’re all tired of being dissed, but there are a lot of disses that just can’t be avoided. This week I’m looking at three “dis” movies. A biopic about a renowned musician diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, an Italian drama about a dysfunctional couple, and a documentary about dishonesty. 
(Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies
Dir: Yael Melamede
We are all liars. And we all lie about the same things in the same way. Or so says a new documentary about lying. It focuses on the work of Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics and psychology at Duke University and MIT. In an experiment repeated thousands of times all around the world, Ariely tested students in groups asked to self-mark their tests, drop them into a shredder and report to
an official. And they were paid $1 for each correct answer. What they didn’t know was that the tests weren’t actually shredded.
Afterwards, Ariely compared the actual answers on the pages with the fake scores the people had told them. And he found that most people do lie, to the same extent, about the same things all around the world. The movie says a lot more, and also interviews real people, like politicians who cheat on their wives or insider traders on Wall Street, to look at their rationales for dishonesty. This is a very slick, fascinating and easy-to-understand documentary. Excellent film! 
Hungry Hearts
Dir: Saverio Costanzo
Jude (Adam Driver) is an engineer, a tall, well-dressed young man in New York City. Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) is a beautiful, petite Italian woman with pale skin and fiery red hair who works at the Embassy. Somehow the two strangers find themselves locked inside a tiny, grungy basement toilet in Chinatown. Jude is to blame for the horrible stench, and Mina for the constant complaining. The two of them are trapped in a claustrophobic and unhealthy situation.
So what do they do next? They have sex, fall in love, get married and have a baby. If 
only they had followed their first impressions and never met. They soon discovered they are different in every way. Jude likes science, doctors and hospitals. Mina is into fortune tellers, vegetarianism, naturopathy, and instincts. Not a big problem until the baby (known only as “Baby”) comes into the picture. Jude, (the big American) prone to anger and violence, thinks the kid is sick and starving and is not growing big enough or fast enough. Frequently depressed Mina (the cultivated European) thinks the problems are all on Jude’s side. Add Jude’s mother Anne, a real buttinsky, to the picture (played by the venerable Roberta Maxwell) and things quickly escalate. Will they survive the stink, decay and claustrophobia of their dysfunctional life?
While Hungry Hearts has its good points, this is a real drudge of a movie filled with endless bickering, crying, hitting and altogether awfulness. The honeymoon lasts about 90 seconds and the rest of the movie is less torrid sex, more horrid fights. 
Love & Mercy
Dir: Bill Pohlad
It’s the mid 1960s. The Beach Boys is a cheesy pop band known for its catchy tunes, tight harmonies, and its formulaic California sound: all about 
girls, surfing, and roadsters. Most of the members are brothers or cousins, and they’re getting ready for their triumphal tour of Japan, when something happens. Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) has a panic attack on a plane and decides to stay home in L.A. 
While they’re touring, he’s composing, arranging and producing an incredible album.
LA’s famous studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew provide the music and Brian goes wild. He tosses paper clips onto piano strings to make a plinkier sound. He brings dogs into the studio to bark. He even has them play in two separate keys… at the same time. The result is Pet Sounds, one of the most highly-praised pop albums ever recorded – and rightly so. It even inspired the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper” album.
This is Brian Wilson in the sixties. The movie’s also about 
Brian Wilson in the 80s (John Cusack). We see him enter a Cadillac showroom where he meets the saleswoman Melinda (Elizabeth Banks), a blue-eyed blonde. It’s the 80s so she has big hair and enormous aquamarine shoulder pads. Brian talks to her slowly and hesitantly, as if he’s never seen a woman before and isn’t used to speaking out loud. They gradually become close, but face a formidable obstacle in the form a man.
Dr. Gene (Paul Giamatti) is a psychiatric Svengali who has taken complete control over 
Brian’s life. What he eats, where he goes, even whom he’s allowed to talk to. He diagnosed Brian as paranoid schizophrenic and has him pumped full of toxic amounts of meds. (That’s why he walks around with his mouth half-open staring off into space.) Can the 1960s Brian bring all his musical dreams to fruition? And can the 1980s Brian ever re-emerge from his medically induced haze?
Love & Mercy is long, detailed and sometimes slow. Its two parts are told chronologically, but the story jumps back and forth between the 60s and the 80s, so you follow both the of them throughout the film. I was left only half-satisfied by the story, but the music…! The music seduced me into listening to Beach Boys music – which I had never taken seriously before — obsessively for about a week afterwards. See it for the music.
Hungry Hearts and Love & Mercy, and (Dis)honesty (at the Bloor Cinema) all open today in Toronto, check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker John Pirozzi about his new documentary Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll premiering at Toronto’s ReelAsian Film Festival
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for cultural mining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM
In April, 1975, Pnomh Penh went silent. Cambodia — a small nation in Southeast Asia — has a centuries-old rich musical heritage. Influenced over a hundred years as a French colony by Western music, Pnomh Penh’s teenagers were swept off their feet by the introduction of rock and roll. Despite US bombing, a military coup and an intense civil war, the Cambodian pop music scene flourished for 
three decades… until the Khmer Rouge took over.
Have thirty years of music disappeared forever? Has it all been forgotten amidst the genocidal horrors of the Killing Fields?
A new film that documents modern Cambodias musical history from the 1950s to the 1970s says “no”. The 
film’s called DON’T THINK I’VE FORGOTTEN: Cambodia’s lost Rock and Roll, and it’s having its Toronto premiere at the ReelAsian film festival on Saturday, November 8th at 4:00 pm at the Royal Cinema. Using archival photos, vintage film clips, music recordings, and new interviews with key figures, the film brings a history of Cambodian music to Western screens for the first time.
Director John Pirozzi is known for his previous work in Cambodia, and as a cinematographer on films by Patti Smith and Matt Dillon. I reached John in New York City by telephone.
culturalmining.com 
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