Numerical titles. Films reviewed: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, One More Shot
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
When you watch hundreds of movies a year, you start to notice certain trends, like avoid movies with numbers in their titles, especially sequels. But it doesn’t always work. Some people say The Godfather 2, Toy Story 3 or Rocky IV, are the best of their series.
So this week I’m looking at a couple more movies with numerical titles. There’s an Aussie who can travel in time using a swig of magic tequila, and an American who can bring automatons to life in a defunct pizzeria.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
Dir: Emma Tammi
(Based on the game by Scott Cawthon)
It’s some time in the not-so-distant past, somewhere in Middle America. Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is a guy in his twenties who takes care of his 11-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Abby is lonely because no one at school believes the stories she tells. Mike is a lonely former security guard. He used to work in the ruins of former family restaurant Frank Fazbear’s Pizza. In its heyday, the place was wildly popular with children because of its giant, grinning animal-puppets who performed mechanically on a small stage. But the chain was shuttered for good 20 years ago when the animatronics went rogue and killed some kids. Then, one year ago, Mike and Abby barely escaped with their lives when the animals came back to life. Now, if Mike never sees another animatronic monster in his life, it will be too soon. But Abby holds a special affection for them; she considers them her only real friends. They talk to her, understand her problems and look out for her. And it’s hard to get away from them in this town, since everybody knows about them: there’s a festival devoted to Freddy Fazbear and a robotics contest both just around the corner. Meanwhile, Mike is flirting with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a former cop who helped save Mike and Abby in last year’s bloodbath. She also happens to be the daughter of a deranged megalomaniacal 
serial killer who built the original automatons, and who was personally responsible for the hideous crimes they committed. And it goes without saying that Vanessa hates her psychotic father.
But despite all their precautions, Abby is hellbent on returning to the the crumbling restaurant, and in the mayhem that follows , the creatures are set loose to seek vengeance on their perceived enemies in the town. Can Mike, Abby and Vanessa fight them off and save the city? Or will the robots win out in the end?
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is the sequel to last years hit movie based on a video game by the same name, about an evil Chucky Cheese-style restaurant. It has some cool special effects, a few scary moments, especially involving a spooky villain known as the marionette. And I love the old 90s computers and the restaurant-gone-to-ruins motif. The main actors reprising their roles are all good. The problem with this movie is its meandering pointlessness, just a series of random episodes that have virtually no affect on what follows or precedes it. So an important character might be brutally murdered by animatronic creatures in one scene, and then 
they drop out of the movie and are never referred to again.
This happens over and over, which makes you wonder is their any coherence or point to this movie, other than chase scenes, brutal killings and jump scares? I went to a screening packed with fans dressed in cos-play cheering and shouting whenever a familiar character from the game appeared on the screen. They seemed to like it. But for the average viewer, like you or me, who’s never played the game, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is just another schlocky knock-off.
One More Shot
Dir: Nicholas Clifford
It’s New Year’s Eve, 1999, in Melbourne, Australia. Minnie (Emily Browning) is invited to a costume party to usher in the new millennium. She’s a doctor in her thirties, single and attractive. Many of her friends — and ex-lovers — will be at that party. She even has the words “party time” tattooed on her skin. But for some reason, she’s not in a partying mood. Her past relationships all went sour, and she’s been alone, and celibate, for far too long. At least her go-to sex buddy Joe (Sean Keenan) is back in town, so at the very least she’ll get some (Joe sports a matching tattoo which bonds them as sex partners forever.)
But when she arrives at the party, everything seems to go wrong. Joe has a new lover — an American bartender or “mixologist” as she calls herself (Aisha Dee) — and it looks serious. The hosts, Rodney and Pia (Ashley Zukerman, Pallavi Sharda) have a beautiful house and young kid, but they seem somehow at odds all the time; Flick and Max (Anna McGahan, Contessa Treffone), whose apartment she’s sharing want to 
kick her out; and the only stranger at the party is a douchey OB-GYN (Hamish Michael) who is also a coke-head. And at midnight, everyone anticipates a computer crash due to the Y2K. Can things possibly get worse?
Oh yes they can. Minnie keeps messing everything up, and alienating all her friends just for a chance to get laid. But then she discovers she has the solution: the ancient bottle of Tequila she’s brought to the gathering. For some reason, each gulp brings her back again to the first time she tried it, right at the door to the party. Can she right all her wrongs and erase all her mistakes before the bottle is empty? Or will she just end up as a drooling hot mess on someone else’s couch?
One More Shot is a very light social comedy about Australian millennials at play. It’s a cute, somewhat funny riff on the Groundhog Day theme. Which makes it more than a little 
repetitive. The cast is attractive and mildly clever, though I couldn’t really sympathize with any of them. But I do like time- travel comedies however they happen, and this version is pretty original. Kept me interested till the end.
While clearly no masterpiece, I enjoyed watching this one.
5 Nights at Freddy’s 2 opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. One More Shot is now available on VOD.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Parts of history. Films reviewed: Fanon, Train Dreams, Christy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s Fall Film Festival season continue with two series on right now. Reelasian features films from Asia and its diaspora, including two great ones from Canada: Min Sook Lee’s heart-wrenching doc There are No Words, and Koala Kid’s whimsical, animated Space Cadet. Cinefranco has movies in French from Europe, Africa, and Quebec, including many Toronto premieres: look out for la Venue de l’Avenir by Cedric Klapisch (Ma Part du Gateau), and le Dernier Souffle by the legendary Costa-Gavras.
But this week, I’m looking at three new films set in historical eras. There’s a lumberjack at the turn of the previous century, a psychiatrist in Algeria in the 1950s, and a female boxer from West Virginia in the 1990s.
Fanon
Co-Wri/Dir: Jean-Claude Flamand-Barny
It’s the early 1950s in Algeria. Frantz Fanon (Alexandre Bouyer) is a renowned psychiatrist from the French Island of Martinique. He is starting his new job at a mental hospital. But he’s shocked at how Algerian patients are treated there. In contrast to Europeans, the “savage” north Africans are kept shackled in filthy cells, because of their “barbarous and dangerous” nature. Fanon (who is black) insists his North African patients be treated like any others. He lets them walk in the garden, plant vegetables, play soccer and make friends. Their mental health quickly improves. He’s assisted by diverse Algerian interns and staff: Hocine (Mehdi Senoussi) Jacques (Arthur Dupont) and Alice (Salomé Partouche), all followers of his techniques. But he’s strongly opposed by traditionalists and the French military, who are increasingly violent in their tactics. (Algeria was annexed by France but most of the locals are not considered full citizens.) He and his wife Josie (Déborah François) are upper-middle-class French citizens playing their role supporting the sprawling Empire. Fanon fought the Nazis in WWII. He likes Sartre, elegant suits and and fine wine. But his views are changing. He now writes 
books (dictated to his wife) about the effect of colonization on the mental health of the colonized in Algeria. Their own self-image is denigrated by their oppressors, he writes, when they internally accept their status as “the other”. Word gets out and he’s invited to join the FLN, (considered terrorists by the French). But the threat of violence reaches his hospital, as personified by Sergeant Rolland (Stanislas Merhar), a particularly violent soldier who checks in as a patient. How can Frantz Fanon simultaneously balance his various roles — as a husband and father, as a Black man serving the French empire, as an innovative psychiatrist, and as an intellectual joining the Algerian struggle for independence?
Fanon is a vibrant biopic about a decade in the life of the renowned author. I find it gripping and fascinating. Alexandre Bouyer is strong and statesman-like in the title role. I’ve known of Fanon for many years — as the author of books like The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks — but never knew about his background in psychiatry. Though occasionally heavy-handed and hagiographic, this movie opened my eyes to the exciting and intellectually stimulating story of his life in Algeria and the history that surrounded it.
I like this one a lot.
Train Dreams
Co-Wri/Dir: Clint Bentley (Jockey)
It’s the early twentieth century in the US Northwest. Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is a bearded lumberjack who rarely speaks. He earns his living chopping down trees at migrant lumber camps and building the railroad. He meets a woman named Gladys (Felicity Jones), they fall in love and build a homestead in a grassy patchl near a flowing river. He cuts all of the wood by hand. Gladys is good with a rifle and shoots foul and deer to eat. The rest they buy in town at a general store owned by Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand).
He spends lonely months away earning money, but always returns home in the end. He makes friends with a Chinese labourer named Fu Sheng — they don’t talk but that’s fine with Rainier who never has much to stay. But he is shocked when a crowd decides to murder Fu Sheng just because he’s a celestial. He later makes friends with an old-timer named Peebles (William H. Macy) who handles the dynamite explosions. He loves their new baby girl but his home and family are threatened when a wildfire sweeps through the forest while he’s away. What will Grainier do?
Train Dreams is a series of events in one unremarkable man’s life set along the early 20th century northwestern frontier. A folksy omniscient voice narrates the story, hoping to add profundity; it doesn’t work. The film is meandering, pointless and stupid. It gives token nods toward environmentalism and against racism but they’re not really part of the plot. I hated this movie from the first few seconds, with its over-produced images and inappropriate soundtrack. We see a guy sawing wood until the camera pulls back revealing…? Nothing, just more trees, as if we’re supposed to applaud the scenery! At times it’s twee, like a Wes Anderson film, but without the 
humour or intellect. The men all look like they’re posing for a Carhartt fashion shoot. I try to feel sympathy toward Rainier but he’s deliberately opaque. Worst of all are the Train Dreams of the title — we keep seeing the same montages of flashbacks from previous scenes… but the original ones are as short-lived as his memories of them.
You might enjoy the pretty pictures in Train Dreams, but I can’t see any other reason to watch this annoying blunderbuss of a film.
Christy
Co-Wri/Dir: David Michôd (The Rover)
It’s 1989 in West Virginia. Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney) is a high school kid, and a star player on the girls’ basketball team. She’s also in love with her girlfriend Rosie (Jess Gabor), a relationship her mom (Merritt Wever) doesn’t approve. She ends up trying out as a novelty act at a boxing match, and, though she has zero training, she scores a KO on her first try. She’s a natural. She catches the eye of a middle-aged boxing entrepreneur named Jim Martin (Ben Foster). He reluctantly takes her on and lets her train at his gym, but he will not allow her to see — or even talk to — Rosie. He sets her up in a trailer park where he can keep an eye on her. Though a great fighter, she’s isolated and unprotected outside of the ring.
Christy is a powerhouse. Her career takes off, including a new hairstyle and a trademark pink silk hooded robe to make her look more “feminine”. She knocks out all contenders and after much pressure, the 22-year-old Christy sleeps with the middle- aged Jim… and they eventually marry.
Her career soars, she meets Don King (hilariously played by Chad Coleman) and is signed to Mike Tyson’s slate. She gains fans worldwide, but her life is micromanaged by her Svengali husband. She may be a professional fighter but he’s twice her size, unstable, and increasingly violent. And he tries matching her up with boxers way above her weight class; that’s just dangerous. Is there any way to escape this oppressive relationship?
Christy is a biopic about the first prizewinning female boxer, who paved the way for a new professional women’s sport. I was hesitant about this one — ugh, yet another boxing movie — but Christy is as good as Rocky. It’s exciting, thrilling and 
moving, and despite her flaws, Christy Martin’s life is super-sympathetic. Sydney Sweeney is amazing. Yes, it’s Oscar-bait (you can tell by the prosthetic teeth and mullet haircuts, playing down her image as a sex-object) but she totally gets into this role. And Ben Foster is superbly hate-able as Jim — I seriously didn’t realize it was him till the credits rolled; he’s that skillful.
Christy is a good, old-fashioned biopic and a hell of a great boxing movie.
Train Dreams and Christy both played at TIFF and are opening in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings. And Fanon is premiering today at Cinefranco, 4 pm at the Carlton Cinema.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
More Cabins in the Woods. Films reviewed: Anemone, Queen of Bones, Bone Lake
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
From Goldilocks to Hansel and Gretel, we’ve all grown up with an innate fear and fascination of cabins in the woods. They’re isolated, mysterious and possibly dangerous. And that goes for movies, too, with cabins in the woods a common recurring theme, especially in horror movies. So this week, I’m looking at three such movies all opening this weekend.
There’s a fugitive in a house made of stone, a pair of twins looking for the Queen of Bones, and a young couple renting a place beside Bone Lake.
Anemone
Co-Wri/Dir: Ronan Day-Lewis
Jem and Nessa (Sean Bean, Samantha Morton) are a comfortably couple raising their 19 year old son Brian (Samuel Bottomley). So why is Brian at home in his room? He got in a fight and nearly beat the other guy to death. He’s depressed and frustrated, and desperately needs the help that they can’t provide. So Nessa asks Jem to do something he’s sworn never to do: find a man who disappeared 20 years ago. So Jem, armed with only a cryptic piece of paper with longitudinal measurements and a sealed letter from Nessa, sets out for a journey into a forest somewhere in the UK.
His clues lead him to a stone hut, literally in the middle of nowhere. As he approaches, a grizzled old man almost blows his head off with a rifle, but, just in time, he recognizes the sound of a clicking, childhood toy. It’s Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) a fugitive from justice, who has been hidden away all this time. He is somehow connected to a killing that occurred during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Not only that, he’s Jem’s big brother. What happened all those years back, what is Ray’s connection to Nessa and Brian, and will he agree to come out of hiding?
Anemone is a passionate and personal story about brothers, fathers and family history. Along the way, there’s lots of whiskey spilt and dirty jokes told, along with hiking and camping, punch-outs and wrestling. Lots of guy stuff, a Man’s-Own story. And it’s filmed among spectacular scenery, a stone beach, a glowing moon, distant hills and mountains. Just 
gorgeous. Daniel Day- Lewis — who retires every 5-10 years, then makes another movie — puts a lot into his role, and Sean Bean is excellent as his foil. Samuel Bottomley seems like another Barry Keoghan. And there are some cool dreamlike sequences, and I even shed a tear near the end. But the movie as a whole just doesn’t seem quite right. It’s too contrived, too set up. I got a lot out of it aesthetically, but found it hard to connect emotionally. It’s directed by Daniel’s son Ronan and they wrote it together, but it’s just OK, not great.
Maybe it’s too weak a script and too strong an actor for a first-time directors to handle.
Queen of Bones
Dir: Robert Budreau
It’s the 1930s in a small house deep in the woods outside Portland, Oregon. Fraternal twins Lily and Sam are in their early teens. They were raised together by their single dad, a devout Christian (Martin Freeman). He’s a craftsman who makes exquisite violins to order. Lily (Julia Butters) takes after her mom, a violin virtuoso, while Sam (Jacob Tremblay) is more interested in trains and cars — he wants to be a mechanic, though his family still rides a horse and buggy. Their father has always said their mother died before they were born and it’s a miracle they came out alive, but they still wonder about what happened to her. And around this time, when they both reach puberty, Lily starts seeing strange cryptic signs carved into trees in the woods. What could they mean? She has dreams about wolves, and, if she concentrates hard enough, she thinks she can control the weather.
One day, Ida-May (Taylor Schilling) a local shopkeeper, drops by their home. She flirts with their dad, as they’re both widowed. But she also leaves behind a trunk of the twins’ mother’s possessions they inherited from their late grandfather. It’s full of shawls and dresses. But hidden at the bottom is a book of spells and incantations written by her mom. Lily hopes they can explain the mysteries surrounding her mother. But they have to keep it hidden from their dad, who abhors anything related to witchcraft, and keeps the 
twins separated from anyone but him. Who is the Queen of the Bones? Was their mom a witch?Did Lily inherit her powers? And is there someone out there who can answer all these questions?
The Queen of Bones is a fairytale about a pair of twins trying to find a witch while evading their over-protective father. It’s low-budget, and simple, but kinda neat. It’s told in a series of short chapters, leading inexorably toward a dramatic end. Though set in Oregon, the locations and some of the cast is Canadian, from Jacob Tremblay (he was the little boy in Room) to the great stage actor Clare Coulter. Julia Butters is excellent as Lily.
I like witches and fairytales and cabins in the woods so, while not a terrific movie, I enjoyed it anyway.
Bone Lake
Dir: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Sage and Diego are a professional couple heading for a luxury weekend in the country. Diego (Marco Pigossi) teaches creative writing at a community college but wants to write a novel. Sage (Maddie Hasson) is a freelance journalist known for her provocative features about sex toys. They are at a turning point in their relationship. Sage has agreed to take a desk job — an editing position — so Diego can pursue his dream for a year. And unbeknownst to her, he plans to propose to her, with his late grandmother’s ring. But when they get there, The BnB they rented is far from the rustic cabin they expected. It’s an enormous, elegant mansion on a huge lot overlooking a lake. It seems way too fancy for what they payed, but they decide not to look a gift horse in the mouth. They settle quite nicely in their new digs. Until another couple shows up claiming they rented the house for the weekend, too!
Sage and Diego decide to go with the flow, and let them share the place — it’s a huge mansion, remember. And the other couple happens to be younger, better-looking and scantily dressed. The appropriately-named Cin, short for Cinnamon (Andra Nechita), looks like a model, and so does her boyfriend, Will (Alex Roe). While Sage and Diego are looking for some alone time, Can and Will prefer games, both sexual
and psychological. Together they explore the locked rooms in the house, one quite sexual, another occult. Cin and Will proceed to ingratiate themselves into Sage and Diego’s lives, splitting them apart for intimate talks… and possible seductions. But as the games turn serious, no one knows who to trust. Who is behind this weird house, and what do they want?
Bone Lake is a psychological thriller about the relations between two couples in an isolated house in the woods. What starts out as a sex comedy, gradually shifts into a violent thriller/horror. There are hints from the start — the opening scene involves a naked couple pursued by unknown assailants carrying crossbows — but it’s left ambiguous whether it’s just 
a scene from Diego’s novel or an actual event within the movie. While not entirely original, there’s more than enough enough sex and violence to keep you interested. The acting’s good and the tension is palpable.
All in all, Bone Lake is pretty good horror.
Anemone and Bone Lake both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. And Queen of Bones is now available digitally and on demand.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Outstanding, great… or just ugly? Films reviewed: Eleanor the Great, Out Standing, The Ugly
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto Palestine Film Festival is on right now, with movies, shorts and docs by and about Palestinians, as well music, cuisine and art to share with other Canadians. This is it’s 17th year and it’s never been more relevant, so check it out.
But this week, I’m looking at three new movies that premiered at TIFF and are all opening theatrically this weekend. There’s an elderly woman who tells a lie, a woman with an “ugly” face who disappears without a trace, and a female officer in the Canadian Army who wishes a certain photo would just go away.
Eleanor the Great
Dir: Scarlett Johansson
Eleanor Morganstein (June Squibb) is a grandmother in her 90s. Since her husband died ten years back, she has shared her Florida condo with her best friend Bessie whom she’s known for 70 years. They do everything together, and work well as a team. Where Bessie is timid, Eleanor is brash and outspoken. If there’s something Bessie wants, Eleanor knows how to get it, even if it involves telling a few fibs. She has chutzpah to spare. But when Bessie suddenly dies, she realizes there’s no reason to stick around, so she packs up her stuff and flies back to New York for the first time in decades. She’s staying with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and her grandson Max (Will Price). She’s hoping for some quality time but Lisa’s a worrywart and Max is always busy at school. So she takes up her daughter’s offer to attend some classes at the JCC she signed her up for; maybe she’ll make some friends. The first class is a washout — broadway musicals — so she wanders into another group almost by accident. It’s a support group for Holocaust survivors, and the members urge Eleanor — as a newcomer — to tell her story. She’s not a holocaust survivor, but her best friend Bessie was… and she knows all her memories, especially the death of her brother. So, in deference to Bessie, she tells them to the group as if they’re her own. Why not, right? It goes over well… a bit too well, actually. A teenaged college student Nina (Erin Kellyman) is auditing the group and soon bonds with Eleanor (her mom recently died and her dad is distant and 
withdrawn.) The two women bond and start sharing intimate stories.
Nina is in a journalism class, and wants to make a video of her telling her holocaust memories as part of an assignment. Then things get really out of hand: Nina’s dad (Chiwetel Ejiofor) happens to be a popular TV news journalist… and he wants to make Eleanor his next feature. But what will happen to her friendship with Nina — never mind her own family — once the truth inevitably comes out?
Eleanor the Great is a nice, light movie-of-the-week-type drama about death, mourning, and inter-generational relations. It’s a very simple and easy movie, part comedy, part weeper. What’s good about it is the acting. June Squibb — who really is in her 90s — is great as the energetic, down-home Eleanor. (She played another rebellious granny in last year’s hit Thelma.) This is Scarlett Johansson’s first time as a director, and luckily she doesn’t bite off more than she can chew. She concentrates on characters — Squibb and Kellyman are both great in their roles — more than the basic story. And you know what? That’s good enough.
I wouldn’t call Eleanor the Great great, but it’s worth the watch.
Out Standing
Co-Wri/Dir: Mélanie Charbonneau
It’s the 1990s, and Captain Perron is leading a troop of UN peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia. Why is this unusual? Sandra Perron (Nina Kiri) is a Canadian woman, the first to lead a squad of infantry soldiers in combat, and the first female to serve in the prestigious 22nd division, known as the Van Doos. Raised as an army brat in bases across Canada, she comes from a long line of soldiers, so it makes sense that she is following in her father’s vocation. She trained as a cadet and received commendations while still a teenager. And she’s the first woman to survive the brutal training that squadron demands. But there’s a photo circulating from her past that’s threatening to derail her military career. It’s a picture of her tied to a tree, barefoot, in the snow and semiconscious.
It was part of her training in a Prisoner of War exercise that went far beyond the normal treatment soldiers are forced to endure. A Canadian woman facing treatment tantamount to torture at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick. But Captain Perron isn’t the one who released the photo, one fact she didn’t want the photo circulated. She had endured years of hazing bullying, harassment, obscene phone calls, sabotage to her kit, and a hidden campaign by certain officers to get rid of her. They detest the idea of serving alongside or under the command of a woman. And unlike the other women who 
attempted to to join the Van Doos, she alone managed to survive and not quit.
Out Standing is a biopic about a trailblazing woman in the Canadian Armed Forces. It’s both moving and disturbing. The title, based on her memoirs, refers both to her achievements and to the notorious photo of her standing tied to a tree. (That pic was eventually published by the press, triggering a wave of shock and disgust across the country, and, one hopes, an improvement in how women are treated in the military.) Nina Kiri gives an excellent performance, totally believable as Perron.
While Hollywood churns out dozens of war movies each year, showcasing the latest weapons and fighter planes, you rarely see a Canadian one. This one is full of details carefully chosen to distinguish how soldiers behave here. The military culture is quite different. Unlike in the US there’s no Sir-yes-sir! And instead of saluting a Canadian soldier stand sharply at attention. I never knew this because you never see it in movies. For this alone it’s a eye-opener. The film is not perfect — there’s a particularly clumsy scene near the end — but altogether it’s a compelling and disturbing look at a Canadian woman’s life in the military.
The Ugly
Wri/Dir: Yeon Sang-ho (Peninsula, Train to Busan)
Lim Yeon-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo) is a well-known carver of dojang, the name stamps used in Korea like a signature on official documents. He built up his business from scratch while raising his son as a single parent. (His wife ran away soon after the baby was born.) He trained his son Lim Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min) in every aspect of the craft. Now an adult he is taking over the family business. At this moment, a documentary filmmaker (HAN Ji-hyeon) is celebrating this dad’s life as a national treasure. Why did she choose this man for her documentary? He’s been blind since birth, which makes his many accomplishments even more impressive. But filming is put on hold when a surprise announcement arrives. They’ve found Dong-hwan’s mother decades after she disappeared. Turns out she’s been dead all that time and only her bones remain. This comes as a total shock to Dong-hwan, and it just gets worse.
First his mother’s long lost relatives arrive for the funeral but they’re despicable people who just want to make sure he doesn’t claim any family inheritance.They bullied and beat his mother, a veritable Cinderella raised by this cruel family. It’s also the first time he hears his mother described as ugly. Ugly how? He longs to see a photo of her, something to display at the funeral, but there are no photos anywhere. Of course his blind father doesn’t have one. While Dong-hwan is trying to process all this new information, the filmmaker leaps on it as a great story and insists on continuing the documentary but with a new twist: who killed his mom and why? Together, over a series of interviews with hidden cameras, they uncover 
events and people from her past as the tragic puzzle gradually falls into place.
The Ugly is a mystery about a kind-hearted woman — the main character’s mother — and how she is horribly treated because of her looks. It’s a heart wrenching story, a dark, bleak view of humanity with only Dong-hwan (and his mother) as redeeming characters. The story is told as a series of interviews with the various characters and extended flashbacks to what actually happened (The actor who plays Dong-hwa also plays his blind father as a young man in the flashbacks, while Jung Young-hee plays his mother, but always from behind or from the side, without ever revealing her face). In Yeon Sang-ho’s previous movies (Peninsula, Train to Busan) the action hero is surrounded by mutants or zombies or killers. The Ugly is about normal people but they’re just as hideous.
The Ugly is a powerful and dark look at human cruelty and physical beauty.
Eleanor the Great, Out Standing and the Ugly all 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.
Daniel Garber talks with Seth and Peter Scriver about Endless Cookie
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
It’s the 2010s in the Shamatawa First Nation in an isolated part of Northern Manitoba. Seth, who comes from Toronto’s Kensington Market, is visiting his half-brother Peter, so they can make a documentary together. But he’s armed with a voice recorder not a camera. Peter is telling stories about their 
histories on the reserve and in the big city — the images of the people involved will be added later. But that still doesn’t explain why the people we’re watching look like tube socks, rubber bands or giant cookies?
Endless Cookie is a brightly-coloured animated documentary that uses wild and grotesque illustrations and verite recorded 
voices to present an oral history of two very different parts of Canada: Shamatawa and Toronto. It focuses on the lives, histories, and stories, of the filmmakers Seth and Peter Scriver, their friends and families. It’s hilarious, visceral and chaotic, and not like anything you’ve ever seen before. Seth is a Toronto-based writer, sculptor, carpenter, comic book artist and 
animator, whose first film Asphalt Watches won best Canadian first feature at TIFF in 2013. Peter is a storyteller, writer and woodcarver, who has served as Chief and Magistrate of 
the Shamattawa First Nation in Northern Manitoba. He lived in Toronto as a teen. A skilled hunter and trapper, he now works as a Canadian Ranger while he raises his nine amazing kids. Their film, Endless Cookie, was the opening night feature at ImagineNative and won the Hot Docs Rogers Audience award for Best Canadian Doc.
Endless Cookie is now playing at the TIFF Lightbox.
I spoke with Peter and Seth Scriver in-person at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Big and small. Films Reviewed: Bad Shabbos, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning PLUS Inside-Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movies tend to fall into two categories: big-budget blockbusters there to provide spectacles on enormous screens, and small, low budget indie films that tell an intimate story. This week, I’m looking at one of each: An action thriller about a secret agent protecting the planet from evil AI; and a dark comedy about an extended family trying to have dinner. But before that, I’m talking a bit about some new movies opening at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival.
Inside Out
This year marks the 35th Anniversary of Inside Out, Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival showing features and shorts from Canada and around the world. The Festival runs from May 23-June 1st. Here are a few of the films there that caught my attention.
Move Ya Body: The Birth of House
…is a new doc by Elegance Bratton (The Inspection: 2022) that uses historic footage and music tracks along with interviews with the pioneers of house music to trace the development of dance music in the 1990s from a single club in Chicago called The Warehouse to nightclubs in London, Tokyo and around the world. The doc concentrates on the lives of musicians DJs, producers and entrepreneurs who were mainly black and gay who treated House as an expression of race and sexuality in a segregated Chicago.
Starwalker
Co-Wri/Dir: Corey Payette
Star, a 2-spirited, Oji-Cree falls for Levi, a guy he meets in a Vancouver park who introduces him to a drag sanctuary called House of Borealis, ruled by Mother. It’s there that Star, who grew up in foster homes, comes out of his shell as an Anishnaabe princess. A musical dramatic romance Starwalker tells its story with all-original songs belted out by powerful voices in solos, duets and choruses, both onstage and off.
Lucky, Apartment
Co-Wri/Dir Garam Kangyu
A young lesbian couple in Seoul buy a condo together but are troubled by the bad smells rising from the apartment beneath them. While one is more concerned about her career, her lover wants to preserve something from the old woman who died there. A true tearjerker, about women in the workplace, queer invisibility, families and lost lives, Lucky Apartment is a deeply moving film.
These are just three of the films now playing at Inside Out.
Bad Shabbos
Co-Wri/Dir: Daniel Robbins
It’s Friday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and, like every Friday night a family is getting together for dinner. David (Jon Bass) is there with his fiancé, Meg (Meghan Leathers); Abby (Milana Vayntrub) with her boyfriend Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), and Adam (Theo Taplitz) the youngest who still lives at home. They’re there to see their parents Ellen and Richard (Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer). The candles are set, the brisket’s in the oven. But this is a special night, a look-who’s-coming-to-dinner night, because the meal is for the Jewish sabbath, but the guests, Meg’s devout Catholics parents, are driving in from Milwaukee. The future in-laws are going to meet for the first time, and David and Meg are worried about everything that could go wrong. You see, her parents don’t like arguments at the dinner table… but Abby and Ben are fighting, Adam (who’s on meds) sometimes explodes, Dad likes forcing his pop-psychology theories on everyone and there’s more than a bit of friction between Mom and Meg. Luckily, they all love their building’s doorman Jordan (Cliff Smith, Method Man in the Wu-tang Clan), who assures them he’ll drop by at an appropriate time to smooth the waters.
Meg’s parents are running late, but could arrive any moment, when… something terrible happens, leaving one of the dinner party guests dead… possibly even killed. And as each of the guests discovers what has happened, and who might be held responsible they decide to get the body out of the building before Meg’s parents arrive. But the longer it takes, the less possible it becomes.
Bad Shabbos is dark, drawing room comedy with personality 
conflicts, mistaken identities, and lotos secrets. It’s cute and funny, with excellent comic timing, good acting and enough quirky original characters that play against stereotypes to keep it interesting. I’s very much an ensemble, with each character getting their moment in the sun and no one hogging the camera, but a few stand out: Kyra Sedgwick and David Paymer as the parents, Catherine Curtin as Meg’s mom, Theo Taplitz as the coddled and neurotic youngest son, Adam, and of course Method Man as Jordan. Bad Shabbos is a good social comedy.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Co-Wri/Dir: Christopher McQuarrie
The world is on the brink: an aggressive AI program (known as the Entity) is taking over everything. And that everything includes the controls behind all atomic bombs. The entity doesn’t care if every human disintegrates. So it’s up to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission team — on direct orders from the US President — to stop it. His mission involves entering a defunct Soviet submarine where the AI programs was once kept, to locate a small but crucial piece of machinery that can stop it. His team includes Grace (Hayley Atwell) a notorious pickpocket and Paris, a cold-blooded assassin; plus most of his usual buddies, like Luther and Benji. But a mysterious supervillain villain named Gabriel (Esai Morales) is doing everything he can to stop him, so he can take control of the Entity for his own nefarious ways. And the entity itself has brainwashed millions to form an invisible army, ready to pop out of nowhere to stop Ethan’s mission. Can Ethan and his Scooby gang save the planet from nuclear destruction?
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is an action/thriller about big things like saving the world. It has atrocious dialogue and a ridiculous plot that makes absolutely no sense. The scenes with American politicians and generals are unintentionally hilarious. It’s about 3 hours long — they could easily have made it in 2. And like many contemporary movies, it doesn’t know how to deal with abstract, digital or AI 
weapons, so they replace it with something physical, a McGuffin the hero can hold in his hand. Which, again, makes no sense — you can’t stop a rogue computer program with just a special device, but, hey— it’s a movie.
So, putting all that aside, is it a good movie? Yes, it is. Not in the normal sense, but as entertainment. It’s spectacular, exciting and engrossing. I mentioned the corny dialogue, but the movie also has two very long sequences with no dialogue whatsoever. One has Ethan Hunt inside an abandoned Soviet nuclear submarine on the ocean’s floor in the arctic, that’s filled with seawater and is gradually rolling to greater depths. This scene is as eerie as it is spectacular, feeling as if you’re trapped inside a 1970s Tarkovsky movie. There’s also a scene straight out of a WWI movie, with two pilots aboard propeller planes have fistfights… in midair! Again, no dialogue but lots of exciting action. And I gotta admit, seeing it on a ginormous IMAX screen doesn’t hurt either.
So if you’re in the mood to travel from the north pole to South Africa, in every sort of strange transportation, check out Mission Imposisble.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and Bad Shabbos both open in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings. And go to insideout.ca for information and tickets.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
A coup, a cult and a cry. Films reviewed: The Penguin Lessons, AUM: the cult at the end of the world, Bob Trevino Likes It
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In these times of extreme uncertainty, many people feel there’s something missing in their lives but they’re not sure what. Some turn to new religions for spiritual fulfillment, others to pets they can love, or to chosen families to replace their inadequate biological ones.
So this week, I’m looking at three new movies, two dramas and a documentary about people trying to replace something missing. There’s an English teacher in Argentina who talks to a penguin, a caregiver in Kentucky looking for a replacement dad, and a religious cult in Japan trying to bring about the end of the world.
The Penguin Lessons
Dir: Peter Cattaneo
(Based on a true story)
It’s March, 1976 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) is a newly-hired English teacher at a boys’ prep school for rich kids. It’s run by the strictly by-the-book Headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce). No pets and no politics. Divorced, middle-aged and jaded, Michell cares little about morals. He describes himself as like Hemingway but without money and who never wrote anything. The boys in his class are spoiled and unruly; they don’t listen to a word he says. But bombs and rifles can be heard even within the walls of this elite academy. There’s a US-backed coup d’etat going on out there to install a military dictatorship! When the school closes for a week, Michell and fellow-teacher Tapio, a hapless Finn (Björn Gustafsson) head out to the Punta del Este in Uruguay to sit out the coup. But a romantic seaside stroll with a woman Michell meets turns — much to his chagrin — into a mission to save a flock of birds caught in an oil spill. They clean a penguin’s feathers, but by morning, the woman’s gone, and the penguin won’t leave him alone. He reluctantly takes him back to the school, in the hopes of donating him to a zoo. But the school kids adore him, and actually start to pay attention as long as the bird is around. But all is not well. Plainclothes police are disappearing anyone who disagrees with the government, including the beautiful but opinionated Sofia (Vivian El 
Jaber), the school’s cleaning woman.
Can a little penguin bring peace to the school and pull them all together? What will happen if Headmaster catches him with the bird? And will Michell ever stick his neck out to challenge the status quo?
The Penguin Lessons is a touching, cute, nostalgic and easily digestible story set during a dark and sinister era. Director Cattaneo brought us similar English crowd-pleasers like The Full Monty. And I’ll see anything with Steve Coogan in it. This movie is full all the cliched crowd pleasers: kids, animals, history, and a wise-cracking cynic who might have a soul. But I don’t care. That penguin is just soooo cute.
OK, I admit it, I’ve been played, I’m a sucker of a critic who fell for a bird… but so will you.
I liked this movie.
AUM: The Cult at the End of the World
Wri/Dir: Ben Braun, Chiaki Yanagimoto
It’s March, 1995 in Tokyo when something unexpected and terrifying happens. Someone lets loose poison gas at Kasumigaseki station, where three train lines converge. 5,800 people are injured and 13 of them killed. And this is a planned attack, not an accident. Who is responsible and why did they do it?
Decades early, a child named Chizuo is born into a post-WWII family with visual disabilities. Years later he opens a yoga school to attract paying customers. Somewhere along the way, it changes first into a religious sect, and later into a bonafide cult with tens of thousands of members. The group is called Aum Shinrikyo, and they set up headquarters on the banks of the sacred Mt Fuji. Their guru, now known as Shoko Asahara, with long hair and beard and flowing pink robes, convinces his worshippers that he is a god with supernatural powers. 
Popular music and anime videos extolling Asahara attract lots of favourable media attention, and detached young Japanese join in droves to experience miracles like levitation. These followers drink his bathwater or take tiny transfusions of his blood, even as he drains their bank accounts dry. Others have wires attached to their brains. Only bland food is permitted, no sex, no free-thinking. The cult expands internationally, migrating to Moscow once the Soviet Union falls, converting countless Russians to their cause. And while they’re there, they get ahold of military-grade artillery, chemical and biological weapons which they ship back to Japan. And eventually this leads to the horrific Sarin gas killings, in Tokyo and Matsumoto.
AUM: The Cult at the End of the World is an extensive, shocking and at terrifying documentary about this bizarre and dangerous cult. It covers the story throughout Asahara’s life and beyond, using period footage and new talking-head interviews. It goes right to the source — its victims, innocent people wrongly blamed for Aum’s crimes, journalists who follow the story, and advocates who — long before the sarin attacks — were trying to free friends and relatives from their clutches. Perhaps most chilling of all are the interviews with Joyu the high-ranked Aum Shinrikyo member who was allegedly behind some of its most heinous chemicals weapons.
I found this documentary extremely engrossing and well researched, narrated in the form of an oral history by those most affected by these atrocities. I couldn’t stop watching this one. I wonder why there have been loads of movies about the Manson Family, but relatively few on Aum Shinrikyo. This one helps fill that gap.
Bob Trevino Likes It
Wri/Dir: Tracie Laymon
(Based on a true story)
It’s present-day northern Kentucky. Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira) is young woman who works as a caregiver for Dapne (Laureen “Lolo” Spencer) a woman with a degenerative condition. Lily has no friends, and
her boyfriend dumped her using texts. Robert Trevino, her dad (French Stewart) is a flippantly cruel and self-centred man-boy responsible for most of Lily’s neuroses. He blames her for ruining his life (her mom died as an addict when she was a child). But things hit rock-bottom when her dad cuts off all communication with her. In a desperate search on Facebook to see what he’s up to, she ends up “liking” a different Bob Trevino. This Bob (John Leguizamo) is everything her own father is not. He’s kind, honest and giving, someone who pays attention to her texts. Bob works as a contractor out of his trailer. He has few hobbies — he likes gazing at the shooting stars, while his wife Jeanie (Rachel Bay Jones) is into making scrap books. When childless Bob and parentless Lily finally meet face to face, they feel a familial warmth they can’t quite explain. Jeanie thinks Lily’s a grifter or an aspiring catfish, trying to get his money. While insecure Lily is afraid of messing things up. Can two people, who live in different states ever have a real friendship? And is this new friendship superficial or deep?
Bob Trevino Likes It is a very cute, very sweet tear-jerker of a movie about friendship, kinship and chosen families. Much of the story is told through text messages and Facebook posts. 
Barbie Ferreira plays Lily as a non-stop faucet. She weeps in the opening, she cries in the middle and bawls at the end. And as the viewer, I cried along with her. John Leguizamo — once known for his over-the-top comedy — is at his most restrained in this one. But despite all the tears, it’s told in a light, humorous way.
This is a really nice indie movie.
Bob Trevino Likes It is now playing across Canada, with The Penguin Lessons opening this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. And Aum is now available on VOD.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Bobby, Robbie and Tom. Films reviewed: A Complete Unknown, Better Man, Nosferatu
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Christmas is coming in just a few days, so this week I’m looking at three new movies — two musical biopics and a gothic horror — all opening on the 25th. There’s a young man named Bobby who hails from Minnesota, another named Robbie who looks like a gorilla, and a third named Tom who is headed for Transylvania.
A Complete Unknown
Co-Wri/Dir:James Mangold (Indiana Jones…)
It’s 1961 in Greenwich Village. Bobby Dylan (Timothée Chalamet: Dune, The French Dispatch, Call Me by Your Name, ) is a 19 year old boy from Minnesota, who arrives penniless with just a guitar on his back. The Village is the centre of the folk revival sweeping across America, alongside the civil rights and anti-war movements. Bobby is looking for his hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), and tracks him down at a Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. Guthrie is suffering from a debilitating case of Hunnington’s disease. He communicates using grunts and gestures, but clearly likes Bobby’s songs. Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) — the folk giant and political activist — is there too, visiting Woody. He takes Bob under his wing and later introduces him at an open mic show at the Gaslight Cafe. There he meets the beautiful and talented Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), a wildly popular folksinger and activist in her own right.
Bob’s still broke and prone to couch surfing, but soon settles into a casual relationship with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning: Somewhere, Super 8, Ginger and Rosa, Neon Demon, Twentieth Century Women, The Beguiled, The Roads Not Taken, Mary Shelley). Is it love? And despite his unconventional voice, he quickly attracts fans — including stars like Johnny Cash — and his recording career takes off. Joan Baez adapts some of his songs with great success, and the two of them go on tour together — where they become intimate on and off stage. But Bob feels constrained by the folk community and wants to forge new 
musical pathways. What will happen when Bob Dylan goes electric?
A Complete Unknown: The Ballad of a True Original is a biopic about Bob Dylan. It spans a relatively short period of his life and music from his arrival in New York until the Newport Folk Festival of 1965. Chalamet is excellent as the young Bob Dylan, portraying him both as kind and self centred, ambitious and indifferent… usually sitting around in his underwear strumming a guitar. Norton is surprisingly believable as Pete Seeger. Elle Fanning, as Dylan’s neglected lover, seems less real, more of a cinematic concoction to add a romantic undertone to the story. Indeed, much of the plot and characters are invented out of whole cloth— with Dylan’s approval.
What’s really good though is the music. 75% of the movie is 
just singing and playing instruments, performed by the actors themselves. Maybe it’s me, but those songs, those joyful songs… they made me sing along and literally brought tears to my eyes. Live concerts, jams, hootenannies, jamborees, recording gigs… this movie includes everything. Whatever its false notes or historical inaccuracies, the music makes it.
I enjoyed this movie so much.
Better Man
Co-Wri/Dir: Michael Gracey
It’s the 1980s in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Robbie Williams (Jonno Davies) is a boy who lives with his dad, mum and grandmother (Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvany, and Alison Steadman). He goes to Catholic school where he’s the class clown. He loves singing, acting and telling jokes. He’s not particularly talented but he is charming and cheeky, always ready with a smile, a wink, and a wiggle. He longs for approval from his neglectful father, but rarely gets it. So he vows to become famous some day to prove his worth. Unfortunately he’s the only one who thinks he can make it. Still, somehow he passes the auditions and is invited to join a new boy band called Take That.
Robbie doesn’t mind performing semi-clad at gay bars; their popularity is growing, and their catchy tunes are being listened to. And when they finally make it big, he is dazzled by the adoration of countless fans. He falls for the allure of alcohol, drugs and willing sex partners. But why isn’t he making much money? It’s because he doesn’t write the songs, he just performs them.His drug use is getting out of hand. When he quits the band for a solo career, thing look rough. Will his own talent ever be recognized? Will his father ever be 
proud of him? And can he overcome the self doubt that plagues his career?
Better Man is a music biopic about the rise, fall and rise again of the pop singer and performer. The music and plot of this film are both pretty basic. What’s interesting is how he is portrayed. Through the use of CGI, Robbie Williams looks like a human but with the features and fur of a chimpanzee. No one ever mentions it, he doesn’t eat bananas or climb trees, but throughout the movie, he looks like an ape. It represents the self-doubt and insecurity that drives him.
Director Michael Gracey had his start as an animator who learned special effects from the ground up, which leaves him with a vast supply of techniques to dazzle audiences. He has no fear of green screens and embraces CGI whole heartedly. Most of the movie feels like a non-stop, never-ending music video, expertly made. I’m not a fan of boy-band pop, but the sparkling presentation makes Better Man fun to watch.
Nosferatu
Co-Wri/Dir: Robert Eggers (Lighthouse Eggers interview, The Northman, The VVitch Reviews)
It’s the 1830s in a small port city in Northern Germany. Thomas and Ellen Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp) are a young couple, passionately in love. To support their family and any future kids, Tom has a new position at a financial firm, run by the eccentric Mr Knock. Tom is a Bob Cratchit, always trying to please his boss. His first assignment: to visit a fabulously wealthy noble, have him sign a contract, and accompany him back to the city. It seems like a simple task. But Ellen is dead-set against it. Count Orlov cannot be trusted — he will kill you, Tom, she says. How does she know? The nightmares she’s had since adolescence predict it.
But, despite her warnings, Tom heads off to Transylvania. Count Orlov’s (Bill Skarsgård) castle is intimidating, set amongst the stark Carpathian mountain, and none of the local villagers dare to go with him, even draped in ropes of garlic. Tom braves it on his own, but finds the Count mysterious and oppressive. The castle is filled of vicious wolves and with rats.
Tom wakes up each morning feeling drained, with teeth marks on his torso.
Meanwhile, back in Germany, Ellen is tormented with nightmares, driving her toward insanity, despite help from her friends Friedrich and Anna (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin). Tom disappears and, when the Count arrives in the German town, unaccompanied, people start dropping dead from the plague. Can Tom and Ellen free themselves of Count Orlov’s treachery? And what are this vampire’s real motives?
Nosferatu is a remake of Murnau’s 1922 silent film, which in turn was an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But far from being just another vampire movie, this one is totally original. It’s sexualized, scary, funny and grotesque. I saw it in IMAX in all its gothic glory.
Murnau’s Nosferatu was a masterpiece of German expressionism, both modern and iconoclastic; Ironically, this one, made a century later, is deeply rooted in the distant past. Robert Eggers loves this old stuff, and pays meticulous attention to every word of the script and every frame of the film. It’s full of unnecessary but delightful scenes, like Roma singers and Magyar slap dancers, and rat infested canals. Eggers went to Transylvania just to capture that castle on film. He gives us a new Dracula, no Bela Lugosi accent or widow’s peak. This Nosferatu is a burly, imposing man, draped in fur robes, with a grand Hungarian moustache. His skin and muscles are rotting away, putrid with decay. He is driven not by an insatiable thirst for human blood but by lust: he covets a woman.
If you’re into new explorations in horror, I think you’ll love Nosferatu.
Better Man, A Complete Unknown, and Nosferatu all open on Christmas Day 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.
Daniel Garber talks with Sook-Yin Lee and Dan Beirne about Paying for It
Photographs by Jeff Harris
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the late 1990s in Toronto.
Sunny and Chester — a VJ and a cartoonist — live together in a house in Kensington Market. Up to now, they’ve been in a loving, monogamous relationship but their sex-life is kaput. So Sunny suggests they broaden their sexual outlook, and seek new partners.
This leaves a void in Chester’s life: sex. Finding a new girlfriend is out of the question. Dating is costly, time-consuming and rarely leads to sex. So he decides to try a different path. What will happen to Chester’s and Sunny’s lives when he starts “paying for it”?
Paying for It is a new film about sex work and relationships, told from the point of view of the John. It’s brilliant, shocking, hilarious and touching. Based on Chester Brown’s graphic novel by the same name, it’s directed and co-written by Sook-Yin Lee. The film stars Dan Beirne as Chester and Emily Lê as Sunny. Dan is a prolific Canadian TV and film actor who is also one of the funniest and most underrated actors working today. Dan has starred in countless TV shows and movies including Great Great Great and The Twentieth Century. The multi-talented Sook-Yin is a producer, director, actor, and musician who began as a VJ on MuchMusic, and went on to direct films like Octavio is Dead, and starring in pictures like Shortbus.
Paying for It is having its world premiere at TIFF on Friday, September 6th at 930 PM.
I spoke with Sook-Yin Lee and Dan Beirne in-person and in-studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Bad destinations. Films reviewed: Borderlands, Only Flows the River, Cuckoo
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Looking for fun and adventure? Look no further. This week I have three new movies from around the world: a supernatural thriller set in Bavaria, a dark mystery in northwestern China, and an action comedy that takes place…in outer space!
Borderlands
Co-Wri/Dir: Eli Roth
It’s outer space in a post-apocalyptic future dominated by a multi planetary corporation known as Atlas. The worst place in the universe is the planet Pandora, once prosperous, but now decrepit and desolate. That’s where Atlas CEO’s daughter still lives. Pandora is a mecca for treasure hunters looking for a legendary vault, one that will provide limitless wealth to its discoverer. Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) Atlas’s teenaged daughter, still lives there. But when she is kidnapped by Roland, an ex-soldier (Kevin Hart) and Krieg, a deranged, masked muscleman (Florian Munteanu) Atlas is furious, not least because his daughter may hold the key to that vault. So Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) approaches Lilith (Cate Blanchett) to bring her home. Lilith is a hard-boiled bounty hunter, notorious for her ruthlessness; she’ll shoot anyone who gets in her way. And she hates Pandora more than most, having lived a traumatic childhood there. But business is business, so when Atlas offers an enormous sum of money to compete this “simple” job, she flies off to rescue Tiny Tina.
Problem is it’s anything but simple. Tiny Tina doesn’t want to be rescued. She’s also dangerous: the cute teddy bears she carries are lethal explosives. Eventually they form a truce: Lilith, Roland Tina, and Krieg, along with Claptrap — a wise-cracking R2D2 — and Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) an academic with a sketchy past. But can they fight off all those dangerous treasure hunters? And who in this group can be trusted?
Borderlands is a science fiction action/comedy based on a video game. It’s filled with strangely shaped vehicles, scary monsters and cool weapons. It has pretty good special effects and a stellar cast. Unfortunately, the movie kinda sucks. It’s like a third-rate Mad Max. Eli Roth, is a competent, though gory, horror director, but he totally missed the boat with this one. The story stays close to the original game, but who wants to watch characters advancing to higher levels in a game you’re not playing? It just doesn’t translate into a movie plot: Cross a bridge before it 
collapses. Enter the elevator before the bad guys attack… Boooring. The jokes are not funny, the script is awful, the CGI is relentless, and the characters are shamelessly stolen from movies like Blade Runner, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Tank Girl.
Perhaps fans of the game will enjoy seeing their favourite characters on the big screen, but otherwise I can’t see any reason to watch this.
Only the River Flows
Co-Wri/Dir: Wei Shujun
It’s the early 1990’s in China. Detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is a recent arrival to Banpo, a rundown small town on the Yellow River. HIs wife is pregnant with their one child, He was an award winning cop back in Yunnan before transferring here and the ambitious Police Chief (Hou Tianlai) has high hopes. He wants to move the police HQ to an abandoned cinema. But first, Ma’s team must prove its crime-solving talent. Lucky for Ma a kid finds a dead body by the riverbank. It’s an old lady who tends her geese but rarely interacts with anybody else. She lives with a formerly homeless drifter she adopted, who people in the village call Mad Man. However any evidence was washed away with the flowing river. A similar killing is discovered a few days later by the river; a local poet, whose writing ties him to a single woman.
There are a lot of seemingly unconnected clues. A cassette tape found near a crime contains crucial information recorded on it. One interrogated witness admits his guilt —- but is he telling the truth? The more clues they find, the less sure Ma is. And the longer he takes to close the file, the more agitated his ping-pong-playing Police Chief becomes. Eventually, truth merges with fantasy until Ma can’t tell his dreams from reality. Can he regain his clear 
head and catch the real killer (or killers)? Or will this case be his last?
Only the River Flows is a policier portraying an earlier China that’s dirty and poor. Though it involves a series of killings, the mystery is less important than the mood: dark, wet and crumbling. There are some surprisingly memorable scenes: like a primitive CSI where they strike a hog carcass to determine which knife was used in the killing. The film manages to be cynical and satirical, without being out-and-out depressing, poking fun at things like the PRCs obsession with official banners and awards. The acting is good, but the camerawork and art direction is great, infusing the film with a miserable nostalgia. I’ve never seen a film by Wei Shujun before, but his reputation precedes him. And he was born after the film takes place.
Not bad at all.
Cuckoo
Wri/Dir: Tillman Singer
It’s the forests of Bavaria, in the not-so-distant past. Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is a depressed and angry 17-year-old who carries a switchblade in her pocket. She likes scowling and playing goth music on her electric guitar. She was sent to Germany to stay with her divorced dad, his second wife and their kid Alma (Mila Lieu) after her mom died. They live in a modern house near a seedy, isolated resort — named after the cuckoo — that they want to develop. The hotel is owned and run by a slimy control freak named Herr König (Dan Stevens), who hires Gretchen to work at the front desk; We need more English speakers, he says.
But she soon discovers this guesthouse is no picnic. Female visitors are prone to vomiting and keeling over in the lobby. Strange noises and powerful invisible waves, coming from nowhere, wreak havoc with their brains. And when Gretchen rides her bike home one night — over Herr Konig’s objections — she is closely followed and nearly killed by a terrifying hooded woman — with round glasses and grasping claws — running all the way. She narrowly escapes by seeking refuge inside the local hospital. But the police dismiss her scary experiences as a prank by local kids. Her family and their friends (except her mute half-sister Alma, and a bearded detective named Henry) seem to have turned against her. The longer Gretchen stays there, the more beaten up she gets, with an arm in a sling and gauze across her forehead. But every attempt to escape is thwarted by invisible forces, fueled by time gaps in her memory. Can she ever get away from this godforsaken place? And who are the scary people here: Demons? Vampires? Werewolves?
Cuckoo is a highly-original story of a sensitive teenaged girl 
trapped in a bizarre situation. It’s a fantasy thriller/horror but different from anything I’ve seen. It’s not set in any particular era but probably the 1990s. (Picture older hospital rooms, endless rows of filing cabinets) Writer-Director Tillman Singer also composed some of the songs. The acting is excellent, and more than that, the actors really seem to enjoy their strange characters, especially Hunter Schafer (Euphoria) and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey). Cuckoo is funny, sexy, scary, totally unpredictable and weird as all get-out.
I loved this one.
Borderlands, Only the River Flows, and Cuckoo all 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.
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