Exposing secrets. Films reviewed: John Wick: Chapter 4, The Five Devils, Ithaka
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies — an action film, a mysterious drama, and a documentary— from the US, France and Australia. There’s an assassin battling a secret organization, a little girl sticking her nose into hidden places, and a journalist jailed for bringing secret war crimes into the light.
John Wick: Chapter 4
Dir: Chad Stahelski
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a Belorussian assassin, under the control of a powerful, international cabal known as The High Table. He’s infamous for his relentless killing skills; he can wipe out an entire squadron with a just a pair of nunchucks. Wick wants out, but to do that he needs to be free. So he embarks on a complex series of tasks to complete before the Table frees him. In the meantime, The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård), the head honcho, wants him dead… so he gets Wick’s former best friend and partner to kill him.
Caine (Donnie Yen) is an expert martial arts fighter and shooter who happens to be blind. So Wick turns to another old friend, Shimazu 
(Sanada Hiroyuki) a hotelier in Osaka. Even though he could lose everything, he still agrees to hide Wick from the Marquis’ agents. Meanwhile, the marquis has put a multimillion dollar mark on Wick’s head, a reward that its steadily rising, letting loose an army of killers out for a quick buck, including a man with a dog known as the tracker 
(Shamier Anderson). Can Wick survive this army of killers? Or will this be his final showdown?
John Wick: Chapter 4 is nearly three hours of non-stop violence. The characters and storyline is strictly cookie-cutter, but the settings — in New York, Osaka, Paris, Berlin and Jordan — is vast and opulent. Every chamber has cathedral ceilings and gaudy rococo elegance. And the fight choreography is spectacularly orchestrated. The cast — including Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick — are fun to watch. No one will call this a great movie, but if you enjoy endless fight scenes with hundreds of extras whether among the writhing bodies of a Berlin nightclub or in a traffic jam around the Arc de Triomphe, John Wick 4 will satisfy.
The Five Devils (Les cinq diables)
Co-Wri/Dir: Léa Mysius
Vicki (Sally Dramé) is a bright young girl who lives in a small village in the French alps. Joanne, her mom (Adèle Exarchopoulos) teaches aqua fitness, while Jimmy, her dad (Moustapha Mbengue) is a fireman. But Vicki has no friends, and is constantly bullied at school, perhaps because she’s mixed-race in a mainly white town (her mom is white, her dad’s from Senegal.) Vicki has a unique skill no one else knows about: she can identify anything or anyone purely by its scent. If she picks up a leaf she instantly knows what kind of animal bit it, and its size, age, even its feelings. And she can recognize people at twenty paces, blindfolded, just by their smell. Vicki starts finding things, and like an alchemist, puts them into jars, carefully labelling each one.
But when a surprise visit by her aunt Julia, her father’s sister (Swala
Emati), things start to change. There’s something in Julia’s past that has turned the whole village against her. When Vicki discovers how to harness her power of smell to travel, temporarily, back in time, she finds that she may have played a role in Julia’s younger life. But can she influence what already happened?
The Five Devils is a very cool French mystery/drama with a hint of the supernatural and a sapphic twist. The alps may be majestic but they hide a sinister past, and a stultifyingly provincial and xenophobic culture. This is conveyed in the large, tacky murals and oddly dated architecture that pops up everywhere. The three female leads Exarchopoulos, Dramé and Emati are amazing (with full points on the Bechdel test). Mysius is an accomplished 
scriptwriter who has worked with such luminaries as Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard. You can tell. And an unexpected twist at the very end will have you leaving the theatre with an extra jolt.
I like this movie.
Ithaka
Wri/Dir: Ben Lawrence
Twenty years ago this month, US- and British-led forces invades Iraq under the pretence of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly threatening the west. Nothing is ever found and over 200,000 civilians are killed, 4 million displaced, and the entire middle east thrown into disarray, leading to the rise of fundamentalists like ISIS, unrest and civil war from which, 20 years later, it has yet to recover. In 2010, army specialistChelsea Manning anonymously releases a huge trove of secret military files to Wikileaks, a website founded specifically to expose things like war crimes and corruption, without endangering news sources and reporters who cover them.
It’s founded by Australian journalist and hactivist Julian Assange. That’s when Wikileaks catches the world’s attention by exposing, 
on video, the US military gunning down innocent civilians in Iraq in cold blood, including Reuters journalists. None of the perpetrators of these — and countless other war crimes — ever served time, but Manning is arrested and jailed, while Assange is forced to seek refuge in the Ecuador Embassy in London. He is afraid that travelling to Sweden for questioning will lead to him being extradited to the US. His fears are correct, and he is later jailed in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison in London, awaiting deportation to the US on charges of espionage. He remains there today.
Ithaka is a personal and intimate documentary about Assange in jail in London during the trial, and the events that led up to it. Using original interviews and contemporary news reports, it fills in the blanks you may have missed. It also reveals the CIA’s involvement, including plots to murder him. The doc follows two people: John Shipton, Assange’s dad, and Stella Moris, his wife and the mother of their two sons. Shipton is an Australian house builder and peace activist. Moris is the Johannesburg-born daughter of Swedish and 
Spanish parents who were active in the anti-Apartheid movement. She also serves as his lawyer. Assange is off camera, but his cel phone voice is often present.
For a man like Assange, who has done more to expose government and corporate corruption than almost any other journalist today, to be charged with espionage and threatened with life in prison is a travesty of justice. His suffering and deterioration in solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. If you want to learn more about him, or to show your support, Ithaka is a good place to start.
John Wick Chapter 4 and The Five Devils open in Toronto this weekend; check you local listings. Ithaka is now playing at the Hot Docs cinema.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
January movies. Films reviewed: Plane, Adult Adoption
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at two new movies opening this weekend: an action/thriller and a dramedy. There’s an airline pilot trying to escape from a tropical island; and an adult orphan trying to find new parents.
Plane
Dir: Jean-François Richet
Brodie (Gerard Butler) is an airline pilot based in Singapore. With two decades of experience you’d think he’d be helming jumbo jets by now, but ever since his wife died, his uncontrollable anger has relegated him to shorter flights for a cut-rate airline. Today he’s heading to Honolulu to visit his daughter, working with a rookie co-pilot, Dele (Boson An) and his usual crew, headed by Bonnie (Daniella Pineda).
There are supposed to be only 14 passengers on board but two surprise guests show up at the last moment: an armed policeman and a man in handcuffs. Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) is being extradited to Toronto to stand trial for an unknown crime. He looks very strong… is he dangerous? But Brodie has bigger fish to fry– they’re heading into an electrical storm because the cheap-ass airline won’t buy enough jetfuel 
to keep them above the clouds.
Then comes the turbulence. Wires blow and all communication is lost. He’s forced to make an emergency landing on the only visible island in the vast Pacific Ocean, without a runway or ground crew to help him out. The good news is Brodie manages to land safely. The bad news is the cop guarding the alleged criminal was killed in the turbulence. The worse news is they landed in Mindanao on an island held by Moro rebels, a place where the Philippine government dare not go. And even worse the local warlords plan to hold them for ransom and kill them, one by one. Can Brodie get them out of this mess? And who can he turn to for help?
Plane is a credible, international action thriller , filled with disaster scenes, fist fights, and last-minute escapes. Butler plays his usual grizzled action hero in the mold of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies — he takes the hits but keeps on fighting. Blood seems to be dripping down his unshaven face at every possible opportunity. Pure cheese. And who ever heard of an airline pilot with stubble? Butler is teamed with the other 
big star in this movie Mike Colter, who you may have seen as Luke Cage. Two action heroes vs the bad guys.
Despite the cheese, Plane is fast-moving and generally fun to watch. It’s made by a credible French director who proved his chops with some real crime flics, like Mesrine, Public Enemy No. 1. This one shares its rough-hewn quality. And, with its international cast and setting, it manages to avoid the one of the worst Hollywood afflictions; I’m talking about obligatory “patriotism”. You’ll find no flag-waving here.
Yes, Plane is a B-movie, nothing deep, but still enjoyable to watch.
Adult Adoption
Dir: Karen Knox
Rosie (Ellie Moon) is a 25 year old woman who works in a bank office in Toronto’s financial district. She’s efficient, hardworking and diligent and never takes a day off. Her boss is like a mother to her and her coworkers are her family. In her spare time she tries to have sex with a guy she meets on an online dating site (Donald McClean, Jr). But her comfortable life is shaken when a new boss — a guy about her age — takes over. Her surrogate mother is gone and she doesn’t know what to do. Things get worse when Helen (Leah Doz), her workmate and closest friend, keeps telling her not to worry, just ask her real parents for advice. The thing is, Rosie doesn’t have any parents. She’s been an orphan since she was three and was never adopted. Now that she’s aged out of the foster program, she has no one left to turn to for help, or love or support. No one to ask about her day or just brush her hair. What’s an adult orphan supposed to do?
Rosie decides to take a different approach using an online site 
for adult kids seeking new parents. She meets two possibilities at the site, a middle aged man and a woman named Jane (Rebecca Northan) who has estranged relations with her daughter. While things seem to be going well, but will she ever find a new family that works? And by doing so, can she emerge as a normal person?
Adult Adoption is comedy drama about a neurotic woman trying to create the family she never had, and the indifferent or exploitative people she encounters along the way. It concentrates on the quirky main character Rosie as envisioned by Elie Moon who not only plays her but who also wrote the 
screenplay. She’s really great. She wears little-girl clothes with pink polkadots and knitted strawberries. And alternates between an independent, sexually-active woman with grown-up desires, and that of a clinging, naive child. While Adult Adoption deals with serious topics like loneliness and depression, it manages to stay funny enough never to become depressing itself.
I liked this one.
Plane and Adult Adoption both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Journeys to redemption. Films reviewed: Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon, Bullet Train, We Are Living Things
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF is back on track again, after two makeshift years, bringing you the world’s best movies, showing only in theatres. King street will be open for celebrity spotting once again, along with free concerts and other spectacles. And the discount ticket packages are on sale only till Sunday, that’s tomorrow, with individual tickets starting as low as eleven dollars each if you’re 25 or younger.
This week I’m looking at three new movies about desperate journeys toward redemption. There’s one girl on a quest to save her Amazon village; two alienated migrants in America on a search for the truth behind alien abductions; and a half-dozen killers on a bullet train trying to kill all the other killers… before they get killed themselves.
Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon
Dir: Richard Claus, Jose Zelada
It’s present-day in the Kundamo nation of the Amazon. Ainbo is a 12 year old girl who calls herself a legendary hunter but hasn’t quite mastered the bow and arrow. She’s an orphan who lives with her best friend, Zumi, who is next in line for chief. But a dark shadow has fallen on her community, with fish dying and people turning ill. So she sets out on a quest: to talk to the giant mama turtle for direction, discover a powerful weapon, find the source of the poison, and defeat the evil demon Yakaruna.
Fortunately, two odd-looking animals appear beside her to help her on her way. Strangely enough, she can understand 
everything they say. Dillo and Vaca are her spirit guides but also tricksters, who can only be believed some of the time. Meanwhile, Attak, a mighty hunter, blames the disease on Ainbo, and chases her through the jungle to keep her away. Can Ainbo summon enough inner strength to realize her spiritual goals? Or will her people all die from this mysterious ailment?
Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon is a delightful, high-quality animated kids movie about a 12 year old girl’s attempt to save her people from destruction. Its told in the manner of a classic folktale, but with modern twists: perhaps their problems come from European developers trying to usurp their land. This is clearly aimed for little kids but I found it totally watchable, including a scene with day-glo psychedelia. I like this one.
Bullet Train
Dir: David Leitch
Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is a freelance criminal who carries out complex thefts around the world. But somehow bad things happen to people around him. Dying of poison, falling off rooves — there seems to be no end to the misery all around him. Luckily, his current job, is a piece of cake: board a bullet train in Tokyo, steal a briefcase full of cash, and get off at the next stop before anyone notices. Simple, right? Not quite.
He doesn’t realize he’s not the only criminal on board. A well-dressed pair of twins, code-named Tangerine and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry), are professional hitmen and the holders of said briefcase. Prince (Joey King) is a ruthless and mysterious young woman dressed in a pink, snug-fitting school uniform, with her own agenda. Then there’s Kimura and his dad, both of a yakuza clan, a mysterious killer named The Hornet, and a man named Wolf (Bad Bunny) with 
vengeance on his mind. And of course the ruler of the underworld himself, White Death. Who will survive this fatal journey?
Bullet Train is a fast-paced, violent action comedy set aboard a Japanese high-speed train. It has a punchy soundtrack and an A-list cast, including Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, with cameos by Michael Shannon and Sandra Bullock. And it’s 
based on a book by critically-acclaimed Japanese novelist Kôtarô Isaka. Unfortunately, this big budget movie feels like a third-rate Tarantino knock-off. The screenplay is crap, filled with unfunny jokes and two-dimensional caricatures. It feels like the director has never been to Japan or set foot on a bullet train — he doesn’t even know they’re on raised platforms not normal tracks, or that Japanese vending machines never malfunction. Even the sound recording is poor — I couldn’t make out some of the dialogue in the first scene. While not bad enough to put you to sleep, Bullet Train never rises above the mediocre.
We Are Living Things
Co-Wri/Dir: Antonio Tibaldi
It’s present-day New York, where two immigrants live very different lives. Solomon (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) lives completely off the grid. Born in Mexico, he crossed the Arizona border as a young man in search of his mother. She completely disappeared and Solomon believes she was abducted by aliens. Now he works as a jack-of-all- trades, good at plumbing, wiring and carpentry. He likes non-digital devices, like metal detectors and industrial dryers and stays away from computers and cel phones. He rents a hidden space inside a recycling plant, where no one can find him; he’s undocumented and knows how to make himself invisible. His main objective is to listen to aliens — the ones in outer space — through their radio waves, using a complex device made of a satellite dish and a piece of a magnetic meteorite.
Chuyao (Lü Xingchen) works in a mani-pedi salon. She holds a legal ID, its just not hers. She has cut her hair short and changed her name in an attempt to match the ID, but she looks nothing like the photo. It doesn’t matter, says Tiger (Wang Zao), the man who got it for her; white people think we all look the same. Tiger is a sleazy criminal and her de facto boyfriend, but behaves more like her pimp. He makes her attend private 
parties for rich clients, sometimes just singing karaoke, but often leading to sketchy or even dangerous after-hour meetings. Worse than that, Tiger has implanted a chip in her neck so he always knows exactly where she is. After a chance meeting, where Solomon discovers Chuyao shares his obsession (she was abducted by aliens back in China), he begins to follow her around, a guardian angel to protect her when she’s in trouble. Eventually they end up fleeing the city together in an attempt to uncover aliens in Arizona… and perhaps discover each other.
We Are Living Things is a bitter-sweet, art-house drama about the lives of two alienated migrants in America, trying to regain their sense of self-worth. It’s filled with dreams and 
surveillance footage woven into the narrative. And while there is an undercurrent of sci-fi themes, the real dangers they face are the omnipresent police and ICE agents who permeate their lives. The cinematography is strikingly beautiful, capturing Chuyao’s louche glamour, Solomon’s low-tech machinery, and the glory of the American west. And Guerrero and Lü both have cinematic faces that look great on the screen. Strange and impressionistic, this film will stay in your mind long after it’s over.
You can catch We Are Living Things at the Carlton cinema in Toronto; check your local listings. Ainbo opens in theatres this weekend; and Bullet Train is now playing across North America.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Still looking. Films reviewed: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, The Gray Man, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Summer is here and so is TOPS, Toronto Outdoor Picture Show. This festival lets you watch new or classic films for free, sitting on the cool grass on a warm dark night in a city park. Locations include Christie Pits, the Corktown Commons and Bell Manor Park, showing open-air movies weekly through July and August. Or if you’d rather stay home or watch things on your phone you should check out this year’s Prism Prize winners, a collection of cinematic music videos by and about Canadian artists. Surprisingly good.
This week I’m looking at three new, big-screen movies. There’s a woman in Paris looking for a dress, a hitman in Bangkok looking for a way out, and a talking sea shell looking for his family.
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris
Dir: Anthony Fabian
It’s London in the 1960s. Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) is a hardworking house cleaner, who always goes out of her way to help other people. But her employers, including an aspiring movie star and an extremely rich family, don’t seem to appreciate what she does, often forgetting to pay her wages. Her husband was shot down in WWII so she has supported herself ever since waiting in vain for him to come home. On her free time she goes to the pub or bets on dog races with her best friend Vi (Ellen Thomas) and her bookie Archie (Jason Isaacs). But everything changes when she spots a beautifully flowered dress in her employer’s wardrobe. It’s a Christian Dior, and it cost £500 in Paris. Five hundred pounds…!
Suddenly, Ada has a goal: save up all her money and spend it on a dress like that one. And, through a series of fortuitous events she finds herself in Paris quicker than she thought. But buying the gown is another matter entirely. She faces roadblocks at every turn — the idea of
a cleaning woman buying such a dress. It’s Haut couture, but Mrs Harris is neither haut nor a part of their couture. We sell to princesses and heiresses not to the likes of you, says Mme Colbert (Isabelle Huppert). Are Ada’s hopes and dreams nothing but a fantasy? Or will her optimistic nature win out in the end?
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a wonderful bitter-sweet drama about a working-class woman in the mid-20th century. Based on the novel by Paul Gallico, it shows how an ordinary woman — through the power of will, sincerity and common sense — can open the tightest doors, but can never transcend her class. The 
movie’s not just about her — there’s a Marquis (Christopher Lambert); a shy young executive (Lucas Bravo — you may recognize him from the dreadful Emily in Paris); and Natasha (Alba Baptista), an existentialist model — but Lesley Manville as Mrs Harris is really the star. She manages to convey, perfectly and subtly, Ada’s innermost thoughts and emotions. Parts of the movie did seem like a non-stop ad for Christian Dior, but, other than that, it was a pleasure to watch.
The Gray Man
Dir: Anthony and Joe Russo
It’s a night-club in Bangkok. 6 (Ryan Gosling) is there for a job: murder. He’s a hitman who works undercover for the CIA in the top secret Sierra division. Recruited as a young man doing hard time for murder, he’s been a loyal member for two decades, eliminating with precision whatever bad guys (no women or children) they assign him to kill. He chases the target into a dark alley, and after a violent confrontation, on his deathbed, the guy says, Wait! I have something to tell you! You’re 6, right? I’m 4. You’re killing a member of your own unit… they’re getting rid of Sierra, and you’re next. He hands him a tiny memory disc drive, and says, They’ve gone bad, and this proves it. Hold onto it and get the hell out of here. Then the guy expires.
So begins an intercontinental chase, with 6 vs the entire CIA, and a team of mercenary 
assassins bankrolled by the Agency under the guidance of Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans). He’s a ruthless, sadistic contractor who will kidnap, torture and kill anyone who gets in his way. The whole world is potential collateral damage… including a little girl with a heart condition that 6 had promised always to protect. (Giving 6 a reason to pursue Lloyd.) Who will triumph? 6, a regular-guy hitman in a track suit with a heart of gold? Or Lloyd, an evil elitist with a douchey moustache and an expensive gold watch?
The Gray Man is a fast-moving action/thriller made for the big screen. It follows 6 from Thailand to Turkey, from Vienna and Prague to an isolated castle in Croatia, complete with a 
convenient hedge maze. There are some spectacular fights — like a battle in mid-air as a cargo plane blows up; fistfights in a hospital and shootouts aboard a a rolling streetcar. On the negative side, there is absolutely nothing original in this action movie — it’s all been done a thousand times before. And there’s product placement for a brand of gum in the first lines of the script. That said, it’s great to see Ryan Gosling again — he’s always worth watching; and Chris Evans is a nicely hateable villain. Ana de Armas, though, is wasted as a dull CIA agent. The good lines all went to other characters. And there are some clever ones. Like You can’t make an omelette without killing people. Is the Gray Man a good movie? I won’t say it’s “good” but I actually like watching good actors in pretty settings with lots of buildings blowing up.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Dir: Dean Fleischer-Camp
Marcel (Jenny Slate) is a naive, inquisitive little boy who lives in a large deserted house with just his grandma to keep him company. The rest of his family mysteriously disappeared one day, and he hasn’t seen them since. He likes listening to Brahms on a record player and watching 60 Minutes. But he’s not human — he’s actually a tiny seashell with one big eye, two legs with pink running shoes and a little mouth. He gets around using Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions, powered by an electric blender blender attached to pieces of string. And he can move quickly on the floor by climbing into a tennis ball and rolling around. But everything changes when a filmmaker named Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp) moves in. He’s fascinated by the strange little talking shell, so he starts to film Marcel — with his permission — and puts the clips on YouTube, which, of course, eventually go viral. Soon he’s in the NY Times, and people on TikTok are copying his funniest phrases and moves. He’s a minor celebrity, but still hasn’t found his 
family. And Nana (Isabella Rosselini) is getting old. She loves gardening and can talk to insects but she’s having trouble remembering things, and her shell is pock-marked and cracked. Will his new-found fame bring Marcel a better life?
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a totally delightful treat of a movie made in the form of a live-action documentary. Marcel is portrayed using stop-motion photography incorporating his (or actually Jenny Slate’s) hilarious, improvised comedy. It’s 90 minutes long, but flies by in a second, despite its simple style. It’s full of wisdom and humour and speaks to both kids and adults (a lot of the funniest lines appeal to grown ups with Marcel’s unintentionally hilarious observations.) You may be familiar with him from Youtube, and when I first saw the poster, I thought, why in hell would anyone want to watch this? But, view it and you’ll understand why it’s so good.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is now playing all across Canada, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris opens this weekend; check your local listings; The Gray Man is playing in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Science or fiction? Films reviewed: Jurassic World Dominion, Brian and Charles
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring film festival season continues with many more movies coming your way. The Toronto Jewish Film Festival is on now, with a wide range of movies and docs. Coming soon are Focus on Film, specializing in short subjects; The Toronto Japanese Film Festival with brand new movies from Japan; and the Italian Contemporary Film Fest and the Lavazza Inclucity festival set in the distillery district, both indoors and out, featuring Italian and international movies.
But this week, I’m looking at two new movies — one big budget, the other a shoestring indie — about the intersection of science and fiction. There’s an action thriller about a Big Agro conspiracy set among giant dinosaurs; and a quaint comedy about an inventor set among the rolling hills of Wales.
Jurassic World Dominion
Co-Wri/Dir: Colin Trevorrow
It’s present day on a rapidly-changing earth, earth. Ever since a dinosaur-based theme park was destroyed by a volcano, dinosaurs have been showing up everywhere scaring or even killing people. But governments are keeping them in check. And a multinational big agro corporation called Syntech, has donated an isolated nature reserve in an Italian mountain range surrounding their headquarters, where the big dinosaurs can live in peace, with no risk to the outside world. Meanwhile, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) an animal rights activists is freeing small dinosaurs enslaved by cruel owners. She lives in the rockies with Owen (Chris Pratt) a man who can train and domesticate Raptors, and 14 year old Maisie (Isabella Sermon) an Australian whom they protcect from the outside world. Maisie has no friend for schoolmates so she, cautiously plays with a young raptor named Beta. She’s kept isolated because they’re afraid certain
criminals want to kidnap Maisie and Beta for unknown purposes. Their fears prove correct.
But that’s not all. A plague of locusts are wreaking havoc across American wheat fields plunging the world into a food crisis. And these are no ordinary locusts; they are the size of small dogs. Strangely, the only things they don’t eat are genetically modified grains. Ellie, a scientist (Laura Dern) suspects Big Agro, specifically SynTech. Are they trying to wipe out all competing grains so they can control the world? Ellie aims to find out, so she sets off with archaeologist Alan (Sam Neill) to visit the company’s HQ to collect a sample that will prove they’re behind the plague. They’re invited by Ian (Jeff Goldblum) who works there now and suspects Ellie is right. Turns out, the corporation may also be involved in Maisie’s kidnapping… but why? It’s up to the three 
scientists plus Claire and Owen to get what they need from the lab without getting eaten by the giant dinosaurs that surround them.
Jurassic World Dominion is a rollickingly good, non-stop action/adventure/thriller that keeps you interested the whole time. It borrows liberally from past Jurassic movies — Ellie, Alan and Ian were in the Jurassic Park, while Claire and Owen were in Jurassic World — as well as Star Wars and Indiana Jones flicks. There are great chase scenes set in Malta — an entrepôt for trade in exotic dinosaurs — where stars like Omar Sy and Dewanda Wise (as a kick-ass pilot), join the gang. It also has a good dose of humour, with funny “news” clips, and constant gags from Jeff Goldblum. There are some questionable storylines: Is the CIA really a kindly agency dedicated to helping animal rights activists? And why is there so much glorification of American assault weapons, fighter jets, and bazookas? But that aside, I really enjoyed this entertaining, big-budget movie.
Brian and Charles
Dir: Jim Archer
Wri: David Earl, Chris Hayward
Brian (David Earl) lives in a remote, ramshackle cottage in Wales. He subsists solely on a diet of cabbages and butter. He’s also a jack-of-all-trades, called into the village to unclog a pipe are fix a wire. But his real profession is inventor — he constantly invents new things that never quite work. Like an egg-belt (to carry raw eggs in your belt, of course) or a combination water bottle and toilet plunger so you can take a sip while you do your plumbing. But one day, he has a revelation. It starts with finding a mannequin head at the village dump. He combines it with a washing machine, some crossed wires and a glowing electrical ball. He’s created a robot to help him do his chores! Of course it doesn’t work, until… a severe thunderstorm strikes the house, and th enext morning, the robot is walking around, tearing things apart, and most surprising of all, it can talk!Like another eccentric British inventor, Caractacus Potts, Brian has created his own Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He names him Charles.
Charles is seven feet tall with a glowing blue eye who wears a bowtie and a deerstalker hat. He has AI — artificial intelligence — and is soon smarter than Brian, but with the temper of a five-
year-old. He wants to go to the village — are we there yet? — he wants to eat more cabbages, and he loves to dance. Brian likes going into town to visit Hazel (Louise Brealey) a shy woman he likes. But he insists Charles stay hidden, or something bad might happen. The bad thing is Eddie (Jamie Michie) (pronounced Mickey) the town bully, who with his suspicious wife and his spoiled twin daughters, shoves around everyone he doesn’t like. Can Brian stand up to the bully? Can he save Charles from destruction? And what about Hazel?
Brian and Charles is an adorably charming comedy about friendship, set among the sheep fields of Wales. Charles talks like a robot — Danger! Danger! — while the rest of the cast members (almost everyone is middle aged or elderly) behave like kids on a school playground. It’s done documentary style, with the camera as the fourth wall, following Brian around wherever he goes. Brian and Charles are not set in any particular period, but neither is it contemporary — no cel phones, computers or flashy cars. This low-budget, indie movie is simplistic, even child-like at times, but all-around delightful.
Jurassic World Dominion just opened in Toronto; check your local listings; and look out for Brian and Charles next Friday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Leaving a mark. Films reviewed: Charlotte, Marvellous and the Black Hole, The Bad Guys
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring festival season is on now, with Hot Docs, Toronto’s international documentary film festival, right around the corner.
But this week, I’m looking at three new movies, one live and two animated, about people trying to leave a mark on society. There’s a gang of criminal animals offered a chance to go straight; an angry 13-year-old girl who looks for solace in magic tricks; and a young artist who decides to chronicle her life in Nazi Germany in the form of hundreds of paintings.
Charlotte
Dir: Tahir Rana, Éric Warin
It’s the 1930s in Nazi Berlin. Charlotte Salomon , known as Lotte, is a young woman living with her father and stepmother. On a trip to Rome with her grandparents she meets a a kindly American heiress named Ottlie. She liked Lotte’s drawings and invites her to stay in her expansive villa in Cote D’zur in southern France. But Lotte is accepted at the prestigious art academy, despite the fact she is Jewish, so doesn’t want to leave Berlin. But under the harsh rules, only symmetry and precision are acceptable in art, while “deviant artistic expression”, like Charlotte’s, was considered degenerate. She is eventually expelled, and when her father is arrested and tortured by the Gestapo she decides it’s time to leave her home. She joins her grandparents at Ottlie’s mansion. And she’s delighted to learn there is a studio set up for her so she can create her paintings. She also finds love, in the form of Alexander, a refugee from Austria who works as a 
groundskeeper on the estate. But she has to put up with her deeply disapproving and domineering grandfather, who has become bitter in his old age. But as the Nazi’s encircle southern France, she knows her time is limited. So she starts to document her life in a series of hundreds of gouache paintings on paper. Will Lotte and her lover survive the war? And what about her art?
Charlotte is an exquisitely made animated historical drama, based primarily on the stories told in the actual paintings of Charlotte Salomon, titled Life or Theatre, that included both 
memories she witnessed and things she thought about. Some describe her art as the first graphic novel, since her paintings (there were over a thousand) often include words and ideas. The movie is quite troubling in parts, as people are forced to do terrible things under the stress of war. But it’s set in such beautiful locations — the Vatican in Rome, her home in Berlin, swimming in lakes, or nestled among the rolling hills of southern France — that its beauty mitigates its tension. And the paintings themselves appear on the screen in blobs of coloured paint that gradually transform into her own art. Keira Knightly provides Charlotte’s voice, with Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent as her grandparents. I’ve seen it twice now, and still find it moving, tragic, and inspiring, and visually very pleasing.
Marvellous and the Black Hole
Wri/Dir: Kate Tsang
Sammy (Miya Cech) is a moody and truculent 13 year old girl who lives with her domineering father and computer geek sister. Ever since her mother died she lashes out at anyone who comes near her. She smokes cigarettes, talks back, and uses a needle to secretly tattoo herself. But her busy father gets tired of her anger and attitude, and tells her if she doesn’t pass a class in entrepreneurship at the local community college he’ll send her off to summer camp (which Sammy considers a fate worse than death.) So she takes the course which she hates. One day, while sneaking a smoke in the college washroom, she meets Margot the Marvellous (Rhea Perlman), a professional magician with a hidden past. She press-gangs Sammy into serving as her assistant at a kids’ birthday party. She is secretly impressed by Margot’s ability to make flowers bloom on her sleeves, and somehow can grab a real, live white rabbit out of thin air. So they make a pact: Sammy will help Margot with her show in exchange for teaching her magic tricks and helping her pass the course. But will Sammy ever learn to control her anger and escape from the black hole she’s been stuck in since the death of her mother?
Marvellous and the Black Hole is an excellent coming-of-age story about a troubled girl taken under the wing of a sympathetic magician. Miya Cech is terrific as tough-girl Sammy, and Rhea Perlman (best known for playing Carla, the surly barmaid on 
Cheers) shows a softer side here. There’s a real beauty to this film — from the integration of classic silent film, to the jerky stop-motion animation used for special effects, to the nicely compact sets used in class, at home, and on a stage — that gives it an extra oomph you don’t find in your usual teen drama. This is a good, indie YA movie.
The Bad Guys
Dir: Pierre Perifel
It’s a time like the present in a city like Los Angeles where a criminal gang (known as the “Bad Guys”) runs rampant, robbing banks, wreaking havoc and scaring the hell out of locals. The group consists of five members: Wolf, their charismatic leader; Snake, his second in command; Shark, a master of disguises; Piranha, a crazed tough guy; and Tarantula, a computer geek who can break into anything. Together they’re unbeatable. But they’re finally caught when a difficult heist at a gala event goes wrong. The police want to send them to prison, but a local pundit and inventor — a guinea pig named Prof Marmalade — says he can turn them from bad guys into good guys using his powers of persuasion. But can a leopard change its spots?
The Bad Guys is a very cute and enjoyable animated crowd-pleaser, aimed primarily at kids, but interesting enough that grown-ups can enjoy it, too. It’s also a feel-good movie about the value of friendship and the pleasure we can get from doing good things for others. And there are cool subplots involving a meteorite, lab tests, computer-operated zombies, and much more. But mainly, it’s an 
action-packed comedy thriller, with lots of chase scenes, twists and turns, and a fair amount of suspense.
One quibble: all the main characters (except the chief of police) are animals — including fish and insects — and have all the best lines. Most of the humans rarely speak. But there are also pets — like cats and guinea pigs — that don’t talk either. Which makes the logic a bit confusing, but enjoyable nonetheless. It stars the voices of Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Zazie Beetz, Alex Borstein, and the inimitable Richard Ayoade as Prof Marmalade.
The Bad Guys is a very cute, fun movie that’ll leave you smiling.
The Bad Guys and Charlotte both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. And Marvellous and the Black Hole is opening in select cities; look out for it.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Class divide. Films reviewed: Sundown, Ambulance, Mothering Sunday
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three new movies — from the UK, Hollywood and Mexico — about the class divide. There’s a penniless orphan having a passionate affair with an upper-class Englishman; a London billionaire who intentionally disappears in Acapulco; and a bank robber who commandeers an ambulance on the streets of LA to protect 16 million dollars.
Sundown
Wri/Dir: Michel Franco
Neil (Tim Roth) is an Englishman on holiday in Acapulco with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two teenaged kids. They’re staying at a luxury resort , the kind of place where you never have to leave your private infinity pool, as waiters will bring martinis directly to your suite. They can watch locals diving off the cliffs in exchange for small tips — let them eat cake! Neil and Alice are the heirs to a vast fortune worth billions. But a shocking telephone call upsets their plans, forcing them to fly back to London immediately. But Neil, claiming he left his passport at the hotel, doesn’t get on the plane. Instead, he disappears, checking into a cheap local guesthouse. His days are spent drinking beer on Mexican beaches, and he soon hooks up with a beautiful woman named Berenice (Iazua Larios). But all is not well. Acapulco is a dangerous city with drive-by killings invading even his beachfront. His hotel room is robbed and he finds himself surrounded by petty criminals. Meanwhile his sister is frantic with worry. Why has he not returned to London? What sort of a game is he playing? Is he 
trying to bilk her out of her share of the family fortune? Or, as he says, he has no interest in money at all? And why is he withdrawing from life?
Sundown is a disturbing Mexican film about the class divide and how one man deals with it in his own way. Tim Roth plays Neil as an introverted trying to escape from everything. He barely speaks or makes decisions as his world collapses all around him. He endures crime, violence, and even jail with barely a reaction. But internally he is plagued with bizarre hallucinations, with giant hogs invading his mind-space. While not nearly as upsetting as his previous film, New Order, in Sundown Michel Franco once again probes the fear, corruption and violence permeating the class divide in contemporary Mexico.
Ambulance
Dir: Michael Bay
Danny and Will Sharpe are best friends and brothers (Will was adopted). They group up together on the streets of LA, but took different paths as adults. Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) stuck to the straight and narrow, joining the military and is now married with a small child. Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) took after their dad, a notorious bank robber who left many dead bodies in his wake. But good guys seem to finish last. Will’s wife needs complex surgery something he can’t afford — he van barely feed his family. So he goes to Danny, cap in hand, asking for help. Danny agrees as long as he participates in what he calls a simple bank robbery that’ll leave them both rich beyond their wildest dreams. But the robbery goes south, and they are forced to flee in an ambulance with a wounded cop and a paramedic named Cam (Eliza González) trying to keep him alive. Can they escape with the money without killing the cop?
Ambulance is a two hour chase scene disguised as a movie. As they race through the streets of LA they 
are pursued by helicopters, police cars and the FBI, trying to kill the bank robbers without killing the cop. Michael Bay is known for his trademark enormous explosions and spectacular car crashes, and he doesn’t disappoint. There are also some cool new camera tricks, like a drone camera hugging the side of a police station as it plunges many storeys straight down to the sidewalk (it almost made me carsick!). But fancy camerawork and lots of crashes does not a movie make. And with cookie-cutter characters and ultra-simplistic storylines like this, why go to a movie when you can find the same thing on a game like GTO?
Ambulance is not boring, it’s just totally pointless.
Mothering Sunday
Dir: Eva Husson
It’s England between the wars. Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is a teen orphan who earns her living as a maid. As her name shows, she was abandoned by her mother as a child. Her upper-class employer (Colin Firth and Olivia Coleman) give her a a holiday on Sundays every so often when they go for a picnic with their friends. This gives Jane the chance to sneak away to spend time with her secret boyfriend Paul (Josh O’Connor) whose maid is also given the day off. It’s a passionate relationship full of unbridled sex all around the family mansion. Is this love or infatuation? Either way it’s no coincidence Jane and Paul both have free time on the same day. Paul’s parents and Jane’s employers are meeting at the same picnic, where Paul is heading too, to make an important announcement. But something shocking happens on the way.
Mothering Sunday is a beautiful film about a woman whose status gradually rises as she makes her way 
from house servant to independent writer. It’s also about the lovers and partners she meets along her way. Although it starts slowly the film becomes more and more interesting as details and secrets of her life are gradually revealed. Odessa Young is amazing as Jane Fairchild, someone you can really identify with. Eva Husson is French director and this is the first thing I’ve seen by her, but she’s really good — she knows how to subtly set up a scene, and then turn it on its head with a shocking revelation. This is a relatively simple, low-budget movie, but something about it out really grabbed me, and left me thinking about months after I saw it.
I really like this one.
Ambulance and Mothering Sunday both open this weekend; check your local listings. Sundown is now playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Female saviours. Films reviewed: The 355, The King’s Daughter, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movie theatres are re-opening on Monday, at 50% capacity. That means the movies they’ve been banking are all coming out in the next little while — brace yourselves. So this week, I’m looking at three new movies about women: an action-thriller, a historical romance, and a social satire. There’s a teacher who wants to save her job, a princess who wants to save a mermaid, and a group of spies who want to save the planet.
The 355
Co-Wri/Dir: Simon Kinberg
In a Colombian jungle a drug lord is handing off a major sale to an international criminals, when something goes wrong. In the scuffle a computer drive disappears. It’s the hard drive, not the drugs that’s so valuable. It holds the ultimate hack: a device that can penetrate and control any computer or system in the world. So Mace (Jessica Chastain) a CIA agent flies to Paris with. Her partner, in and out of bed, to purchase the program. She enlists a former colleague named Khadija (Lupita Nyong’o), a British Mi6 agent to help her out. Khadija doesn’t want to spy anymore. She’s an academic now, with a lover. But she grudgingly agrees. Meanwhile a Colombian desk agent named Graciela (Penelope Cruz) with no fieldwork experience, is flown in to make sure the hand-off goes as planned. But it doesn’t, partly because of a clash with an unknown woman, named Marie (Diane Kruger). Turns out she’s not a criminal, she an allied spy who works for the German government. And Mace’s erstwhile lover – and partner – is killed.
So now we have four agents, none of whom trust one another, but are forced to work together when they are all declared rogue by their respective agencies. Meanwhile, jet planes are crashing, systems are imploding — just a taste of what the master criminals can do with this hard drive. It’s cyber warfare and the bad guys hold all the cards. So it’s up to them to find the device, save the world, restore their tarnished reputations and be taken off the most wanted list.
The 355 is a typical, run-of-the-mill action movie. Lots of fights, chases, narrow escapes and shootouts, against exotic locations in Europe, Morocco and Shanghai. I was worried at first that Jessica Chastain would pull another disgusting Zero Dark Thirty glorifying CIA torture in the so-called War on Terror. But that’s not what this movie is about at all. It’s a classic James Bond-style movie, but with four agents not one. What’s good about it is the incredible cast — these aren’t female Sylvester Stallone or Vin Diesels. They’re top tier actors — Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave, Us, and Queen of Katwe; Diane Kruger is a major European actor (In the Fade, The Host, Unknown) best known in North America for Inglourious Basterds, Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz (Pain and Glory, Zoolander 2, To Rome with Love) and everyone knows Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Fae, The Zookeeper’s Wife, Crimson Peak, The Martian, Mama, Lawless, Take Shelter,, etc). Plus top Chinese star Fan Bingbing (Buddha Mountain, Wheat,) appears in the movie, too (no spoilers). Take it for what it is, great female actors playing kick-ass roles in an enjoyable (through totally forgettable) action flick.
The King’s Daughter
Dir: Sean McNamara
It’s the 17th century in Versailles. Louis XIV, the Sun King (Pierce Brosnan) lives a life of luxury confessing his excesses to priest and confident Père Lachaise (William Hurt). But he realizes his mortality when he is wounded by a bullet. And France itself is deeply in debt following a long expensive war. So on the advice of an evil doctor (Pablo Schreiber), he orders the dashing Captain Yves (Benjamin Walker) to search for the lost continent of Atlantis and to capture a mermaid there. If he kills the mermaid during a total eclipse he will become the king of France forever — immortal. Meanwhile, Marie Josephe (Kaya Scodelario) has lived since birth in a remote convent, cloistered by nuns. She still manages to learn music, sneaking outside to hone her horseriding and ocean swimming skills. She is suddenly called back to Versailles. Why? Of course, she is the King’s daughter, but only the king knows this. She soon makes friends with the mermaid (Fan Bingbing), communicating telepathically and using music to bring them together. She also falls for to the handsome sailor Yves. But 
the king has other ideas — to marry her off to a rich duke. Can Marie Josephe marry the man she loves? Will the King ever listen to his daughter? And will he kill the innocent mermaid for his own glory?
The King’s Daughter is a second-rate Disney- princess-type movie, set in a gilded royal palace. It borrows liberally from Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and virtually any of princess-centric fairytales (its narrated by Julie Andrews.) Lots of CGI — generally mediocre, though I like the underwater scenes — and way too much gilded ornate settings. This is Louis Quatorze, but you wouldn’t know it from the sets. The makeup and costumes don’t even attempt to look like Versailles. We’re talking the era of the Three Musketeers but you wouldn’t know it; it’s so sterilized and dumbed down that it ends up as a gold-leaf bowl of pablum. Which isn’t surprising from a director of such masterpieces as 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain and Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite. I liked Kaya Scodelario she’s very good, but the script and direction are uninspired. If you are a little girl or boy into supernatural princess romances, you just might love this movie, otherwise, for the rest of you, the movie’s not terrible, it’s bearable, it’s just not very good.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Dir: Radu Jude
Emi (Katia Pascariu) is a teacher at a prestigious school in Bucharest, Romania. She’s well respected in her profession, and dresses in a conservative grey skirt and jacket. But when her husband takes their laptop into the shop for repairs, some of their private footage is leaked online. And that’s when everything falls apart. They made a sex video for private viewing only, but now it’s everywhere, on tabloid news sites, Facebook and her students’ smartphones. Even after it’s been taken down by Pornhub, copies still circulate. And the parents are angry. She asks the schoolmistress (Claudia Ieremia) to take her side but to no avail. She’s forced to attend a humiliating parent/teacher meeting, held out of doors, to defend her reputation, and explain that a sex tape made by consenting adults in the privacy of their own home is not a crime. But the mob at the meeting disagrees. They insist on showing the tape again right in front of her at the meeting, complete with lewd 
commentary from some, and pillorying by the rest. Will she lose her job, or can she emerge from this ordeal unscathed?
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scathing indictment of contemporary Romania, in the form of an absurdist comical farce. The movie is divided into three sections. The first part follows Emi on a walk around Bucharest , as she tries to fathom what happened. On the sway she observes random street conversations ranging from obscene to mundane. The camera lingers on signs, billboards and shopwindow, emphasizing the omnipresence of sex there. The second part is a long montage of a series of images — ranging from century old porn, to wartime photos, fascist memorabilia, Patriotic songs, kitschy poetry, nationalistic quotes, Holocaust denial, the persecution of the Roma, and much more. Each image is accompanied by 
unspoken comments in the form of subtitles. The third part is the outdoor tribunal as Emi is put on the stand before angry parents who want her fired.
The whole film is set within the current pandemic, with everyone in masks for the entire film, whether indoors or out. (This includes the absolutely explicit sex tape, where Emi’s face is sometimes covered but never her or her husband’s rampant genitalia. If you are bothered by explicit sex, do not watch this movie.) That said, it’s hard to watch a movie where people’s faces are covered. That’s a drawback, no matter how you look at it. On the other hand its funny, shocking and eye-opening. And it’s presented as a darkly satirical comedy. I would have liked to have seen more faces; I expect to see lips move when I watch a movie. But at least the middle montage section helps break up the Covid protocols into more digestible parts.
The 355 and the King’s Daughter open in theatres in Toronto on Monday; check your local listings. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is now playing at the Digital Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Potential explosions. Films reviewed: House of Gucci, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Drive My Car
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With all the stress in people’s lives these days, movies are a good place to purge personal tensions by watching other people’s explosive disasters. This week I’m looking at three new movies about potential explosions.
There’s a zombie-infested city about to be bombed to oblivion, a Hiroshima theatre festival facing an explosive personal conflict; and a bombshell in Italy who threatens a powerful family.
House of Gucci
Wri/Dir: Ridley Scott
It’s the 1970s in northern Italy. Gucci is a major luxury brand specializing in leather goods. Founded 50 years earlier, it is now in the hands of the second generation. Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), an ailing but piss-elegant man who surrounds himself with priceless art, works behind the scenes, He is grooming his smart but nerdish son Maurizio (Adam Driver) to take over. But the law school student shows little interest in the company or the family. The other half is headed by Aldo (Al Pacino) a hands-on guy who heads the company’s American branch, and wants to expand into the Asian market. But he considers his hapless son Paolo (Jared Leto) an idiot. Enter Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). She’s an accountant at her dad’s trucking business, but has greater ambitions. She meets Maurizio at a party, when she 
mistakes him for the bartender, but when she hears the name Gucci, her ears perk up. She wants in. After a few dates it’s true love, but Rodolfo doesn’t want his family name besmirched by a trucker’s daughter (forgetting that his own father who founded the company was not a rich man.) So Maurizzio marries into her family gives up his inheritance, and starts hosing down trucks — the best job he’s ever had, he says. But not for long. Following her TV psychic’s instructions Patricia manipulates and manoeuvres Maurizzio’s family to bring him back into the fold (with her at his side) to claw his way back to the top. And she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants. But can they survive the troubles yet to come?
House of Gucci is a true crime/corporate family drama about the rise and fall of a rich family… which isn’t that interesting on its own. And I can’t stand an entire movie of American actors putting on vaguely foreign euro accents — we’re supposed to imagine them speaking their native Italian — why the awful accents? 
But that’s not why the movie is so much fun. What makes this movie work are two things. One is the amazing fashion and design of the whole movie. Everyone is constantly dressing up— more dresses and purses and tuxes and jewelry than you can shake a stick at.. Even more than this are all the campy, over-the-top characters, chewing the scenery as each one tries to out-do the others. Effete Jeremy Irons, a dazed Salma Hayek, a wonderful Al Pacino, and best of all, Jared Leto, as the hilarious Paolo. Lady Gaga is OK, but can’t compare to the masterful performers all around her. And Adam Driver is the dull straight man who steps back and lets the others shine. House of Gucci is a very enjoyable feast of high-fashion schlock.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Wri/Dir: Johannes Roberts
It’s the 1990s, somewhere in the US. Chris and Claire Redfield are an estranged brother and sister. They grew up in the Racoon City Orphanage, a creepy place filled with weird dolls and strange creatures that appear late at night. It is run by the Umbrella corporation the worlds largest pharmaceutical company. But Claire (Kaya Scodelario) runs away when she sees something terrible, while Chris (Robbie Amell) joins the local police force. But now she’s back… to warn Chris that something terrible is about to happen. A leak at the lab has let loose a horrible epidemic infecting nearly everyone in the town. But rather than getting sick, this virus 
makes your eyes bleed, your hair fall out and you turn into a flesh eating zombie. Or worse (no spoilers). They have until 6 am to fight off these monsters and escape from this hell-hole, or else they, and the rest of the town will be wiped off the face of the earth. They split up; Chris, and fellow cops Wesker and Valentine (Tom Hopper, Hannah John-
Kamen) investigate the Spencer mansion, while Claire, the Police Chief, and Leon, a newby on his first day of work (Avan Jogia) set out from the police station. Will they ever get together? Who will live and who will die? And what secrets do these labs hold?
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a movie based on a video game, plain and simple. There are some good laughs, and a threadbare plot line, but it’s mainly reenacting the game, from the long dark hallways where zombies run towards you, to the dark and scary Spencer mansion. Even some of the camera angles and pans duplicate the game itself. But it’s very cool to see on the big screen scary pitch-black scenes lit only by a lighter and the flash of gunfire revealing zombie faces. That said, it’s more eerie than scary, more action than horror. Not bad, but not much to it.
Drive My Car
Dir: Hamaguchi Ryusuke
Kafuku and Oto are a happily married couple in Tokyo. Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an actor and director in theatres, while Oto (Reika Kirishima) is a famous scriptwriter for TV and film. Oto’s ideas come to her at an unexpected time — while they’re having sex. Her bizarre stories are generated in the throws of orgasmic bliss, recited aloud to her husband, so it’s up to him to listen and remind her the next morning of what she said. But everything changes one day when he comes back early from a cancelled flight to Vladivostok. He catches sight of her making love to another, much younger, man in their bedroom. He sneaks
away instead of barging in, but before they have a chance to talk about it, she dies of an unexpected cerebral hemorrhage.
Years later he’s invited to direct a play — Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya — for a festival in Hiroshima. Kafuku’s trademark method is to cast his plays with actors who speak other languages and can’t understand each other. In this one the actors speak Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and even signs language. So they practice under his exacting direction, forced to keep each line perfectly timed. But there’s a twist: the most famous actor in the play is Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) a handsome and arrogant star who says he idolizes Kafuku and his late wife Oto. And he’s the one Kafuku thinks he saw having sex with his wife before she died. 
Meanwhile, in line with the theatre company’s rules, all directors must be driven to and from the theatre each day. So Kafuku gets to know the introverted Misaki (Tôko Miura), a young female driver from Hokkaido with a strange story. But as the production nears its premier date something terrible happens, forcing all the main players to reevaluate their priorities.
Drive My Car is a beautiful drama about love, loss, jealousy, and guilt. The movie builds slowly in an exacting manner, as the director and the various actors get to know one another. And the excerpts from Uncle Vanya we see as they rehearse exactly mirror the feelings and thoughts of the characters in the movie. That’s not the only story. There’s also Oto’s own stories she told her husband, and the personal confessions from the driver herself about her dark past. The acting is superb, and the panoramic views, ranging from drives on causeways and through tunnels to footage of a vast municipal incinerator, are breathtaking. The film is based on a Murakami story, with all the weird quirky fantasy combined with mundane realism you’d expect from him. Drive My Car is a long movie but one that is deeply, emotionally satisfying.
House of Gucci and Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City are now playing theatrically in Toronto; check your local listings; and Drive My Car has just opened at the Tiff Bell Lightbox.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Berlin, Los Alamos, London. Films reviewed: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Adventures of a Mathematician, No Time to Die
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies, all from Europe. There’s a Polish mathematician in WWII New Mexico, a refugee turned gangster in present-day Berlin, and a retired secret agent returning to his office in London.
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Co-Wri/ Dir: Burhan Qurbani
Francis (Welket Bungué) is a young refugee from Guinea-Bissau who washes ashore on a beach near Berlin (leaving his lover drowned at the bottom of the sea). He’s young, intelligent, strong and ambitious, a handsome man with striking features. He wants to get ahead and live a good life as a good man. Easier said than done. He lives in a temporary housing bloc for refugees and carries no papers. He doesn’t exist in Germany., and is horribly exploited and demeaned at his job. So he leaves honest Labour and is seduced into a life of crime through a twisted friendship with Reinhold (Albrecht Schuch) a psychotic gangster who traffics in women and drugs. Francis — renamed Franz by Reinhold — learns German, and works his way up the ladder under kingpin gangster Pums. But he is betrayed by his so-called friend Reinhold who attempts to kill him. He is nursed 
back to help by Mieze (Jella Haase) a beautiful, no-nonsense sex worker, leaving his life of organized crime behind. Eventually they fall in love, and plan to have a family… but can they stay together? Can he resist the allure of treacherous Renihold’s world? And torn apart in two directions — between love and morality on one side and success, wealth and power on the other — which path will he choose?
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a fantastic contemporary reboot of the classic 1929 German book by Alfred Döblin, sometimes described as one of the first modernist novels. And like any great novel it has a huge cast with tons of side characters and a nicely twisting plot. But also loads of ambiguity — Francis who is persecuted and abused always rises again from the ashes, declaring himself Deutschland – he is Germany. The story is told in five chapters, a cautionary tale narrated by Mieze, even 
though she doesn’t appear until halfway through. It’s a long movie — almost three hours — but it holds you captive till the end. It’s amazingly photographed by Yoshi Heimrath with images that will remain long after seeing them.
If you want a taste of contemporary German cinema, you should not miss this one.
Adventures of a Mathematician
Wri/Dir: Thor Klein
It’s the late 1930s in America. Stan Ulam (Philippe Tlokinski) is a mathematician who lives with his younger brother Adam at an ivy league university. Their family is well off, and still living in Lvov Poland, despite the troubling rise of totalitarian regimes all around them. He likes gambling, debating and telling jokes with his best friend, the physicist Johnnie Von Neumann (Fabien Kociecku). It’s all about the odds, Stan says, and house always wins. His life is comfortable but precarious. Then he meets an outspoken young writer named Francoise (Esther Garrel), another refugee from Europe, and sparks fly. But before he has taken their relationship any further, Johnnie invites him to join a highly secretive government enterprise in the rocky plateaus of Los Alamos New Mexico. Siblings are not allowed, just spouses and kids. Giving a tearful goodby to his needy brother, proposed marriage to Francoise, so they could stay together. It’s the Manhattan Project, and he’s there to on a
team including Edward Teller (Joel Basman) to build the hydrogen bomb. But shocking news leads to a cerebral swelling treated with a drill into his skull. Will he ever recover?
Adventures of a Mathematician, based on Ulam’s biography of the same name, is not an action thriller or a passionate romance. It’s a straightforward telling of the highs and lows of a lesser-known genius’s life. He was instrumental in the creation of the hydrogen bomb, something he did not want to make. But he was also responsible for crucial mathematic advances, including his “Monte Carlo Method” (named after the 
famed casino) still essential in computer and statistical projects. He also came up with amazing theories of space exploration not yet tested. Though mainly in English, this is a Polish movie, which perhaps explains the odd accents of some of the characters (For example Edward Teller, the Hungarian physicist speaks with a heavy French accent). And story is told at a very slow pace. Still, I found Ulam’s story (someone I’d never heard of before) and the ideas behind his tale, intriguing.
No Time to Die
Co-Wri/Dir:Cary Joji Fukunaga
His name is Bond…James Bond (Daniel Craig) and he’s retired as a British spy. Now he enjoys sitting around fishing in a lakeside cabin. Five years earlier he said farewell to his one true love, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), after — he believes — she betrayed him. What he doesn’t know is she’s the daughter of an infamous hitman who once killed a supervillain’s family. But his peace and quiet is interrupted by an urgent call from the CIA. Sceptre, the evil international criminal organization is having a meeting, and if he’s not there, maybe the world will end. Something known as The Heracles Project — the creation of a DNA-linked poison — is in danger of being released. But it’s not as simple as that. It seems both the CIA and MI6 including M (Ralph Fiennes) himself, might be involved in a conspiracy. Should he return to his old job? Who can he trust? And will he 
ever see Madeleine again?
I’ve been watching James Bond movies since I was a kid, and to tell the truth, they bore me silly with their formulaic storylines, tedious characters and repetitious conventions. So I was very surprised to find how good No Time to Die really is. This is the best 007 I’ve seen in decades. It feels like a real movie, not just a franchise. No spoilers but I can say this one has a black, female 007 (Lashana 
Lynch) a Q (Ben Whishaw) coming out as gay (more or less) and a marvelous trio of supervillains, played by Rami Malek, Christoph Waltz, and Dali Benssalah. Also great are the hero (Daniel Craig), and his erstwhile lover, the mysterious Madeleine (Léa Seydoux). It has the usual cars, gadgets, fights, beautiful women and exotic scenery, but it also has characters you actually care about. If you’re willing to go back to a movie theatre, and you want something fun, I think you should see No Time to Die.
Adventures of a Mathematician is available on VOD and digital platforms this weekend, No Time to Die opens in theatres next week — check your local listings. And Berlin Alexanderplatz is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for the Canadian Premier, one screening only, on October 7th, 6.30PM as part of the Goethe Films series History Now: Past as Prologue.
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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