Daniel Garber talks with director Warren P. Sonoda and actor/musicians Max and Theo Aoki about Things I Do For Money
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Nick and Eli Yaguchi are brothers who play the cello together. They’re working toward a joint audition for the Banff Arts Centre. They live in an industrial neighbourhood in Hamilton. Eli is a naïve highschool nerd who is crushing on a figure-skating girl named Laura. Nick is older, self-confident and chill – he plays in a band and works at a dive bar. As their audition date approaches, Eli finally meets Laura and things are going well, until… they witness a crime and find a satchel of cash that could
solve all their problems. But it turns out both Laura’s and Eli’s families have ties to organized crime! Can they pursue their artistic goals without breaking the law or getting killed? And what things will they do for money?
Things I Do For Money is a new Canadian crime-dramedy about family ties and dark secrets, music and art. It stars the real-life cellists Max and Theo Aoki, and is co-written and directed by Warren P. Sonoda. Theo and Max are prize-winning musicians known on stage as VersaCello. They play Max and Eli, and wrote and performed the music that’s used in this film. Warren is a multi-award winner in TV and film, directing episodes of Trailer Park Boys, Murdoch Mysteries and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
I spoke with Warren, Max and Theo via Zoom.
Things I Do for Money is now playing digitally across Canada.
Secrets and Lies. Films reviewed: The Secret Garden, She Dies Tomorrow, The Burnt Orange Heresy
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 about secrets and lies. There’s a little girl with a secret garden, an art critic with a secret past, and a woman whose future night be ending tomorrow.
Dir: Marc Munden
Based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett
It’s 1947. Mary (Dixie Egerickx) is a little English girl raised by servants in India. They dress her, feed her and bring her whatever she wants. She likes telling stories and playing with dolls. But when her parents both die, she’s shipped back to England to live in the stately Misselthwaite Manor. It’s a huge mansion with secret rooms and passageways, haunted each night by scary voices eachoing in the halls. It’s owned Mary’s uncle, the reclusive Lord Craven (Colin Firth) and strictly supervised by the housekeeper Mrs Medlock (Julie Walters). who warns Mary, keep quiet, eat your porridge, and stay away from forbidden rooms or Lord Craven will send you off to boarding school! Needless to say Mary hates it there.
But things take a turn when she discovers she’s not the only kid there. Colin (Edan Hayhurst) is the source of the wailing cries she hears each night. He’s pale and bedridden and never leaves his room – he’s her first cousin. And there’s young Dickon (Amir Wilson) who knows his way around the estate grounds and the misty moors beyond. When a little bird leads Mary to an ivy covered gate, she‘s delighted to find a walled garden, full of sunlight, flowers, butterflies and a bit of magic. It’s a wonderful place where she can play with Dickon, and tell stories. Can Mary keep her beloved garden? Will Colin ever leave his room? Will Lord Craven come out of his shell? And what other secrets does Misselthwaite Manor hold?
The Secret Garden is a new adaptation of the famous children’s book written more than a hundred years ago. It’s definitely a kids’ movie, but the children aren’t cutesy they’re interesting, argumentative and rude… and their characters develop over the course of the film. The acting is good all around. It deals with issues like death, loss and depression within the exciting adventure story. I wasn’t crazy about the excessive use of CGIs reflecting Mary’s internal thoughts, but, like I said, it’s a kids’ movie. And its multi-racial cast provides a nice break from the traditional, lily-white British historical dramas.
I enjoyed this movie.
Wri/Dir: Amy Seimetz
Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a young woman who has it all: a lover, a devoted friend, and her first house – she just moved in today. She’s happy, healthy and financially secure, and hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol for months. So why is she so depressed? Because she just found out she’s going to die. Really soon. And there’s nothing she can do about it. There’s no medical report, or threatening letter or anything… she just knows, deep down inside. How should she spend her last 24 hours? Making love? Saying goodbye?
Instead, Amy grabs a bottle of liquor, puts on her favourite sequined gown, and goes into the backyard to do some gardening. That’s where her best friend Jane (Jane Adams) finds her a few hours later. She tries to understand Amy’s feelings of fear and dread and calm her down, talk some sense into her. But a few hours later, it’s Jane who is sure she’s going to die. And she passes it on to her brother at a birthday party where it spreads to others throughout the building. Is this mass delusion? A psychological virus? And can it be stopped?
She Dies Tomorrow is an uncategorizable movie, with equal parts dark comedy, horror, fantasy and satirical social drama. It’s about a highly contagious virus that makes people believe they’re about to die and then (maybe) kills them. It’s also about what we choose to do in our last 24 hours. It dramatizes the infection using a series of intensely coloured flashes of light – red, blue, green – accompanied by murmuring voices inside characters’ heads. And it alternates the scary parts with inane conversations about the sex lives of dolphins and dune-buggy rides, all set in a southwestern American desert town. Although She Dies Tomrrow was made before the current pandemic, its surreal and impressionistic feel perfectly captures the current malaise infecting everyone right now.
Dir: Giuseppe Capotondi
Based on the novel by Charles Willford
James (Claes Bang) is a handsome but cynical art critic who lives in northern Italy. He earns his living selling his books and giving lectures to American tourists. His theme? it’s not the artists who make art great it’s the critics. Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki) is a strikingly beautiful woman with an acid tongue. She mysteriously appears at one of his lectures and calls his bluff. It’s art, truth and beauty that’s important, not criticism and spin. They end up making passionate love in his apartment.
James invites her on a trip to Lac Como, to visit Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) a dilletente who married into money and is famous as an art collector. Cassidy supports eccentric artist Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) who lives on his estate, with the hope he will someday create a masterpiece. Although critically acclaimed, all of his paintings were destroyed in a series of fires, and he allows no one, not even his benefactor to look at his work. Cassidy offers James a deal – you can have an exclusive interview with Debney if you bring me one of his paintings… And I don’t care how you get it. Will James get the painting? Will
his relentless ambition lead to unforeseen ends? And what is Berenice’s role in all this?
The Burnt Orange Heresy is a taut, tense noir thriller about deceit and lies within the rotten world of fine art. It’s full of twists and surprises throughout the film. The beautiful settings, clever dialogue and attractive cast stand in sharp contrast to its dark – and sometimes violent – theme. Debicki and Bang are fantastic, like a modern day Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, shifting from lovers to friends to potential rivals. I liked this one a lot, but beware: it’s anything but a romantic comedy.
The Secret Garden, She Dies Tomorrow, and The Burnt Orange Heresy, all open today in Toronto, theatrically or VOD – check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Make up and dance. Films Reviewed: Like a Boss, Cunningham
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Sometimes I wonder if I should be talking about movies when the planet is on fire as we head toward environmental catastrophe, even as an erratic leader — like a James Bond villain — is carrying out drone assassinations willy-nilly and pushing us all to the brink of war and back again, depending on his mood.
Are we fiddling while Rome burns?
Luckilly, the United States is still full of innovative and creative people. So this week I’m looking at two new American movies, a comedy and a performance/doc. There are two women entrepreneurs who challenge contemporary makeup; and a man who challenged the makeup of contemporary dance.
Dir: Miguel Arteta
Mia and Mel (Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne) are single girlfriends who live in Atlanta Georgia. They have been besties since junior high. They go to bars together to pick up younger guys (I don’t care if they can’t read, butthey better still have their teeth, says Mia). They live in the same house – Mia’s mom left it to the two of them in her will. And they even work together. They founded a cosmetics company that they jointly run – Mia is the creative side while Mel handles the finances.
They specialize in innovative goods, like their best selling One Night Stand packs for a woman on the go. And tell all types of women to use makeup to embrace their own good looks rather than trying to change or hide them. And they work closely with their two employees: a flamboyant gay man in the workshop (Billy Porter) and a quirky woman handling the front (Jennifer Coolidge). Everything seems to be going well, but behind the scenes they are facing serious financial trouble. Luckilly, a stranger arrives with an offer they can’t refuse. His boss, he says, wants to buy their business.
The offer comes from Claire Luna (Salma Hayek) a ruthless business mogul. Claire has dramatic orange hair, platform shoes and impossibly white teeth. Her office looks like the Guggenheim but with small killer drones flying around everywhere. She is the head of a huge cosmetics empire and she covets their niche market. Mel and Mia are intimidated by her, but stand firm – they want to keep majority interest – 51% -in their own company. Claire Luna agrees… but with a catch. If either of them leaves the company, she takes over the company. Can Mel and Mia stay best friends with a new boss in the picture? Or will they fight and lose their friendship, their home and their company?
Like a Boss is an extremely simple — I would even say simplistic — movie about female best friends. It spoonfeeds you all the expected plot turns as it moves to its totally predictable conclusion. I love Haddish and Byrne, and their sidekicks Porter and Coolidge are even funnier. Hayek is a cartoon villain — she’d be twirling her moustache if she had one. I like the female-centred story, and the sexually- and racially-diverse cast. It’s also short… under 90 minutes, so it’s never boring.
The problem is the script: it’s mediocre at best, forcing talented comic actors to make do with crappy material. A real shame. The funny parts are used up in the first half, as the movie dwells on the babyish plot through the second half.
Like a Boss is not awful, it just isn’t as good as it should be.
Dir: Alla Kovgan
Merce Cunningham is born in 1919 in Washington state and begins dancing at a young age. He joins Martha Graham’s dance company as a principal dancer in the 1940s, originating many roles before turning to choreography. He leaves Graham to set up a studio in a New York tenament, with a room at the back to live in. Working with composer John Cage (the two are lovers) he pioneers a new form of experimental dance. It combines how ballet uses feet with how modern dance handles the torso. Instead of playing music with dancers moving in synch with the notes and rhythms, Cunningham decides dancers should move independent of the sound, the two art forms coexisting. He rejects the autocratic culture of traditional dance — a dictator ordering around his puppet-like dancers, while they claw their way to the top as Prima Ballerina — to a more democractic and cooperative company. He likes to call himself a dancer not a choreographer, though that is what he does. The dancers move as individual units coexiting in the same space, but often without interacting in traditional ways.
He combines music and dance to create works of art. He works with visual artists, like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol to design the costumes and sets, incorporating things like pointillism backdrops and mylar balloons with designed the complimentary costumes and backdrops so a dancer could almost disappear into the set, as in Robert Rauschenberg’s pointillist designs. The dance company drives across a country not quite ready to accept their advances in dance. A European tour leads to terrible reviews until he starts to build appreciative audiences in the UK.
I have to admit, before seeing this film I was only vaguely aware of Merce Cunningham’s work, as opposed to his more famous collaborators – Rauschenberg, Cage, and Andy Warhol. But having watched it, I can say I get him now. It’s like a “best of” version, showcasing segments of some of his most famous works. And it’s done in 3D. You might ask, who needs 3D for dance? Well, the use of innovative filming and staging techniques gives you – in the theatre – a chance to see aspects and angles of his work previously unexplored. For example, one excerpt is shot on the roof of a skyscraper lit by searchlights projected from a nearby building… and it’s filmed using drone cameras cruising up the side of the roof and hovering overhead looking down as the dancers across the elevated stage. Just spectacular!
So if you’re one of those people who’s heard about opera, dance or Shakespearean plays, but are squeamish about actually watching a live performance (because you’re afraid you might fall asleep or squirm in your seat) this movie makes modern dance accessible. Sequences are short, varied, and beautifully done, while staying true to Cunningham’s aesthetic ideals. The movie also uses classic photos, scripts and footage of his early work to make it part documentary and part performance.
Cunningham is a beautiful movie, a tribute to an underapppreciated artist and a joy to watch.
Cunningham and Like a Boss both open today in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Matthew Rankin about The Twentieth Century
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
It’s the end of the 19th Century, and Canada is still an Imperial backwater. Sir Wilfrid Laurier says “The 20th Century shall be the century of Canada.”
And a young William Lyon Mackenzie King thinks he should be the one to lead it. He visits girls dying of consumption, tends to his blonde-tressed mother, and pines for a heroic, harp-playing Valkyrie. A pity though, he’s quite nuts.
The Twentieth Century is a new, partially animated and highly stylized film about the history of Canada as seen through the deranged eyes of a young Mackenzie King. Powered with the glow of fluorescent light, modernist architecture with actors gliding past on roller skates, it reimagines the country as a den of corruption controlled by evil royalists and their puppets.
The feature is written and directed by Winnipeg-born, avant-garde filmmaker Matthew Rankin.
I spoke with Matthew on location at TIFF19.
The Twentieth Century won the Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF and has been selected for Canada’s Top Tem Films of 2019. It is now playing in Toronto.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Robert Eggers about The Lighthouse
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo of Robert Eggers by Jeff Harris
It’s the 19th century on a rocky Atlantic island. An old salt and a young jack tar share threadbare lodgings. Their job? Keep a lighthouse burning to warn all passing boats of potential danger. The old man is there for the long haul, while the younger one seems to be a temporary replacement. But as the isolation grows they become increasingly unhinged as they try to keep their senses… in the lighthouse.
The Lighthouse is a new film about life in a lighthouse as seen through the fantastical minds of the two men living there. It’s written and directed by Robert Eggers, his second feature after The VVitch.
This interview was recorded onsite during TIFF 19.
The Lighthouse opens next Friday (Oct 25, 2019) in Toronto.
Stolen. Films reviewed: Hustlers, The Goldfinch, The Vigil at #TIFF19!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, winds up this weekend, so if you haven’t had a chnce to see anything yet, or maybe can’t afford to buy tickets, you should know theres a number of free screenings of the most popular film at TIFF, juried film winners, Midnight Madness and more on Sunday. This means you should go to tiff.net online on Sunday morning at 10 am, and you’ll have a good chance of getting a free ticket for later the same day.
This week I’m looking at three movie that premiered at TIFF: a horror story, and two dramas. There’s a boy who protects a priceless stolen painting, a group of women who steal from unconcscious men, and a man who sits beside a corpse… to make sure it doesn’t move.
Wri/Dir: Lorene Scafaria
Dorothy (Constance Wu) is a single mom with financial troubles who lives with her grandma in New York. She works as a dancer in strip bars under the stage name Destiny. When she lands a spot at bar that caters to wall street big shots she thinks her luck has changed. No dice, still struggling. That is until she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). When Ramona’s on stage it rains money. She dances in high heels and fur coats. She’s intimidating and a bit scary, but Destiny reaches it to her for help. They hit it off as friend and Ramona takes Destiny under her wing. She learns how to shimmy down a pole upside down, how to conduct a proper lap dance, and howto keep the clients wanting. Life’s good but she’s still not earning the real big bucks. Until they think up a fool proof plan. Treat the biggest spenders to a serious party in a back room, drop some powder in their drinks, and then let yourself go wild on his company card. The client wakes up the next day with a hangover and $15 thou in charges, none the wiser. It works like a charm, and soon Destiny is swimming in furs. But how long will their good luck last?
The Hustlers, (based on a New York Magazine article by Jessica Pressler), is an engaging drama about BFFs in the world of stripbars, and how they attempt to take back control. Constance Wu is nice as the main character, with J-Lo believable as the iconoclastic Ramona. The other characters, played by Cardi B, Lizzo, Keke Palmer and others keep the largely all-female cast interesting. I liked it but I didn’t love it. The problem is it’s too long, and doesn’t really know where it’s going. It sets up a rivalry between Destiny and Ramona that doesn’t pan out in the plot. And it unnecessarily frames the whole story within the context of a magazine article. Why? In Hustlers, the New York Magazine journalist is just a cipher, a sounding board for what you really want to see. But the rest of the story – while not the shocking expose it pretends to be – is still good as a realistic, inside look at sex workers’ private lives.
Dir: John Crowleyn (Based on the novel by Donna Tarte)
Theo (Oakes Fegley) is a precocious prepschool boy in New York. His life is turned upside down when he survives a terrorist bomb attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That fateful explosion leaves him a penniless orphan holding a priceless painting that the world thinks was destroyed. It also points him to a small shop that restores antique furniture, and Pippa, the mysterious red-headed girl who was standing beside him when the bomb went off. When he bonds with a school friend he is taken under the wing of a one-percenter family headed by old-money matriarch Mrs Barbour (Nicole Kidman). Will he end up one of the family?
Later, he finds himself living in Las Vegas, in an eerily deserted neighbourhood with his actor Dad who abandoned him as a child. There he meets an over-the-top Russian kid named Boris (Finn Wolfhard) who leads him into a world of drugs and petty crime, but also pulls him out of his shell. But can that friendship endure?
Later still, as a young adult back in Manhattan (Ansel Elgort), Theo is on the verge of entersing high society when he rejoins friends from his childhood. And through it all, he is kept sane and grounded by the knowledge that he, and only he, possesses that priceless wooden painting of a little bird. But what would happen if the secret gets out?
I read and enjoyed the book, so I was worried it would ruin it somehow. It doesn’t. It’s true to the story, and even though I knew, more or less, what was going to happen, it still kept me glued to the screen for most of the movie. It’s like running into an old friend: they feel familiar, an important part of your life, even though they don’t live up to your expectations. That said, it didn’t tug at my heartstrings nearly as much as I thought it would, and left me feeling vaguely empty at the end. But the great acting, lush images and music, and fascinating plot did what it’s supposed to do. This won’t win any awards but it’s still a pleasure to watch.
Wri/Dir: Keith Thomas
It’s late at night in Brooklyn New York. Jacob (Dave Davis) is broke, depressed and suffering from PTSD. He’s meeting with a support group of men and women. They are all former Chassids, ultra-orthodox Jews, who have left the insular communities they were born in. That’s why Jacob is disturbed to see a man in black standing by a streetlight outside. Why can’t they leave him alone? Turns out the man is there to offer Jacob a job: one that’s quick, easy, and well-paid. The catch? He has to start working immediately as a “Shomer” or (vigil. This means watching over a newly dead body until undertakers arrive at dawn to pick it up. Easier said than done.
The widow, Mrs Litvack, says he’s not the right one for the job… but she doesn’t say why. It soon becomes clearer to Jacob that this is not a good place to spend the night. The old house is full of shadows that seem to move, lightbulbs that frazzle and pop, and creaky sounds in the floorboards. The corpse is covered with a simple sheet, but Jacob keeps checking that it didn’t move. And as the minutes tick past, things start to get even weirder. A video he watches says there’s an ancient Mazzik there, an evil Jewish demon that can manipulate thoughts and dreams. It will play tricks on your mind, and shape shift into people you know and trust. And it can take human form. Is Jacob having a psychotic episode – he’s not taking his meds – or is the place really haunted? And will he survive until dawn?
The Vigil is a terrifyingly-good horror movie that scared the pants off me. You experience everything Jacob sees, as he sees it, without always knowing if they’re hallucinations or the truth. Dave Davis is fantastic as Jacob, sharing through his facial expressions his fears, misgivings and guilt for past actions. This movie had me spontaneously shouting at the screen in terror at least three times, coming up with ever more scary surprises. This is Keith Thomas’s first film which manages to convey absolute terror in a small set, with a tiny cast, using minimal visual effects and great sound. This is definitely the scariest thing I’ve seen all year.
Hustlers and The Goldfinch both open today in Toronto, check your local listings; And The Vigil has its last screening this Sunday at TIFF.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Jamie Kastner about There Are No Fakes
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris
Norval Morrisseau was one of Canada’s most celebrated painters, whose brightly-coloured images, surrounded by thick, black outlines are instantly recognizeable. An Ojibwe shaman from an area north of Thunder Bay, Morrisseau incorporated Anishinaabe culture and storytelling into his work. His paintings hang in top galleries and are highly prized by art collectors. So musician Kevin Hearn, of the group Barenaked Ladies, was pleased to buy a large green Morrisseau canvas from a Toronto Gallery. Until, that is, he discovers it’s a fake.
There Are No Fakes is a new documentary that looks at the roots of Canada’s biggest case of art fraud ever uncovered. It also looks in depth at the dark underworld of fine art, filled with deception, organized crime, money laundering, and terrible
violence.
It’s written and directed by award-winning Toronto filmmaker Jamie Kastner and is having its world premier at Toronto’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. He’s known for his quirky, funny, shocking and highly original documentaries on a wide range of topics. I’ve spoken to Jamie twice before on this show, once about the Great Disco Revolution (2012) and again, in 2016, about the Highjacker’s Tale.
I talked with Jamie Kastner in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
There Are No Fakes will have its world premier on April 29th at 6:00 pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Eccentric. Films reviewed: Ruben Brandt Collector, Greta, A Bread Factory
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s March and Toronto’s spring film festival season has begun. The Irish Film Fest is on this weekend, and the WTF Fest starts showing “eccentric movies” at the Royal Cinema today. In this case, WTF stands for What the Film – great stuff. Also opening is What Walaa Wants, the NFB doc about a young Palestinian woman who wants to be a cop. Also opening is Gaspar Noe’s amazing film Climax, a movie that includes a fantastic dance performance and a stunning title sequence… followed by a horrific panoply of drug-addled sex and violence.
Keeping with the theme of the strange and unusual, this week I’m looking at offbeat movies with eccentric characters. There’s a a French widow with a yen for pocketbooks, a psychotherapist keeps fine art front and centre; and a two older women who want to save their arts centre from falling apart.
Wri/Dir: Milorad Krstic
Dr Ruben Brandt is a psychoanalyst obsessed by art. He lives and works in an isolated alpine chalet where he treats his rich but troubled clients, including a banker with an eating problem, and a former bodyguard.
Meanwhile Mike Kowalsky, a private detective from Washington DC, is in Paris chasing Mimi, a notorious cat burglar down the city streets. She’s carrying a priceless Egyptian artifact. But he can’t catch her; the
former circus acrobat is just too fast. Mimi tracks down Dr Brandt and visits his clinic. She wants to get rid of her kleptomania, She can’t stop stealing. But in a strange turn of events, patients turn to doc tors and doctors to patients. You see, Dr Brandt is plagued with halucinations of people in famous
paintings. Is Venus in Boticelli’s painting trying to kill him? How about Warhol’s double Elvis? Brandt’s patients, including Mimi, decide the only way to
save their doctor is to steal all the paintings that obsess him. They begin a series of elaborate heists of the world’s best known paintings from the most famous galleries. Can Kowalsky solve the puzzle and catch the culprits? Or will Ruben Brandt, the art collector, triumph?
Ruben Brandt Collector is a simple, silly story told with amazing animated images. It feels like a cartoon guide to Janson’s History of Art… on acid. Characters are portrayed as cubists, as two-faced januses, or as two-dimensional pieces of paper. The plot may be flat and inconsequential but the animated art and psychedelic imagery sticks with you.
Wri/Dir: Neil Jordan (The Crying Game)
Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) is depressed. She’s a recent college grad who works as a server in a fancy Manhattan restaurant. She shares a spacious condo with her best friend Erica (Maika Monroe) whose dad gave it to her as a gift. Ever since her mom died, Frances can’t have fun; she never seems to go out anymore. But her attitude changes when she finds a designer purse that someone left on a subway. Finally, she can do a good deed. Using the ID, she
takes it to its owner’s home. Greta (Isabelle Huppert), is an older woman, a widow, who lives in an isolated cottage. Her home is like a piece of France right in the middle of NY city. She plays Chopin and bakes cookies.
It’s like at first sight. Greta needs someone to spend time with since her daughter moved away and Frances misses her mother terribly. They go for walks in Central Park, share intimate meals at her home, and even adopt a dog to keep Greta company. Greta worries Frances will go away, just like her daughter. Don’t worry Greta, I’m like chewing gum – I’ll stick around. Imagine, such good friends meeting at random.
But… everything changes when Frances discovers Greta’s secret. That “lost purse” wasn’t actually lost! Greta placed it there so they would meet. Is Greta just desperately lonely? A con artist? Or is she a psychopath? Even when Frances cuts off all contact with her Greta keeps showing up wherever she goes. She’s a stalker who can’t be stopped. Will Frances ever forgive her? And will Greta leave her alone?
Greta starts as a conventional drama but turns into an unexpected psychological thriller. It feels like a classic Grimm’s fairytale, with an innocent girl lured into a witch’s lair. Though not her best performance, Isabelle Huppert is credible as the (potential) villain, though Chloe Grace Moretz is wasted as the victim. It’s hard to picture Moretz as a helpless scaredycat. Greta is OK as a run of the mill, cat-and-mouse thriller, but it could have been so much more.
Wri/Dir: Patrick Wang (I interviewed him in 2012)
The Bread Factory is an arts centre in a small town on the Hudson Valley. Formerly an industrial bakery, it’s where the post-industrial townfolks go to see a movie, put on a play or attend a poetry reading. It’s been run by Dorothea and Greta (Tyne Daly, Elizabeth Henry) for more than 40 years. At the moment there are filmmaking lessons for little kids by an auteur (Janeane Garofalo); a greek tragedy starring an elderly shakesperean actor, and a Chekhov-like drama in production. It’s a hotbed of creativity and community life.
But everything is put at risk when a strange new group arrives in town. They are a pair of performers/conceptual artists known as May + Ray (Janet Hsieh, George Young), a sort of a Blue Man Group. They are vaguely associated with China, have a large
international following, their videos are on youtube, and they even have a catchy logo on the T-shirts and totebags they sell. The problem is their work is shallow and pointless. And more important, the town school board is thinking of transfering all arts spending from The Bread Factory to May + Ray.
Can the town artists and performers save the bread factory? Or will corporate interests triumph?
A Bread Factory sounds ordinary but it’s actually a great movie. I really liked it. Dozens of characters and a complex, twisted plot manages to keep you interested but not distracted, with each storyline and character carefully constructed and allowed to develop. There’s a teenager (Zachary Sayle) interning at the town paper, a kid who functions as the projectionist (Keaton Nigel Cooke), a critic and an actor who hold a 50 year grudge… and many more. It feels like a great John Sayles movie.
I’ve only seen the first two hours (Part 1) so far but now I can’t wait to see Part 2.
A Bread Factory is a delightful treat.
Greta and Ruben Brandt Collector both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. A Bread Factory is playing this weekend at the WTF Festival at the Royal Cinema.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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