Halloween-y. Films reviewed: Sew Torn, Kryptic
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Rarely have I seen two movies by the same director playing simultaneously, but that’s what’s happening right now. Richard Linklater (known for classics like Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, and Before Sunrise) is releasing two pictures. Blue Moon is a theatrical-style drama about the night when Rogers & Hart are replaced by Rogers & Hammerstein as the ruling 
Broadway musical pair (starring Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley). And Nouvelle Vague is a tribute to the French New Wave, and in particular, the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal film Breathless (À bout de souffle) in 1960. The movie’s in French, shot in beautiful B&W, and stars Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Adrien Rouyard as Truffaut, and Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg.
Together they make a perfect double-feature.
But it is Hallowe’en, so this week, I’m looking at two first-time features, a couple of Hallowe’en-y movies to watch at home this weekend. There’s a seamstress who witnesses a crime, and a zoologist who thinks she’s seen a mythical beast.
Sew Torn
Co-Wri/Dir: Freddy Macdonald
Barbara (Eve Connolly) is depressed. Up till now, she’s led a simple life. She lives in a remote village in the Swiss alps — a land of schnitzels and yodels — sleeps above her mom’s sewing shop. Barbara lives a cartoonish life carrying a flip phone, and driving a tiny, blue putt-putt car with a giant spool of thread and needle mounted on the back. She calls herself the Travelling Seamstress, and makes house-calls even for the tiniest job. Problem is her mom died recently, and she doesn’t know what to do now. Her work and life seem meaningless without her mother’s guidance. Though technically a grown up, she still feels and acts like a child. But life goes on.
Today’s appointment? Sewing a single button onto a wedding dress worn by a strident, middle-aged woman on her way to the ceremony (Caroline Goodall). But on the road she interrupts a shocking accident involving two armed criminals. Both men — a young guy (Calum Worthy) and a motorcyclist 
— lie bleeding on the tarmac, surrounded by plastic packages of white powder, and a suitcase full of Swiss francs. A drug deal gone wrong. But the criminals are strangers, and with all that money up for grabs… should she commit a perfect crime? Or call the police? Or just drive away, like it never happened? Each choice holds potential pitfalls. And what she doesn’t realize is the crime boss behind the whole operation (John Lynch) is cruel, ruthless and headed her way. Which path should Barbara take, and how will they change her future?
Sew Torn is an ingenious, crime/thriller, about a clever seamstress confronting dangerous killers. It’s also a mother- 
daughter / father- son coming of age story, with each of the young characters dealing with the legacy of their parents. The story is told and retold, as Barbara experience her various choices. The characters are cute, and the scenery appropriately incongruous. What’s really great are the intricate Rube Goldberg devices Barbara creates to fight off the criminals. All her schemes involve spools of thread, sharp needles and the ubiquitous sewing machines… adding still more surprises to this delightfully violent crime thriller.
Sew Torn is so good.
Kryptic
Dir: Kourtney Roy
Kay Hall (Chloe Pirrie) is a tall, gaunt woman with lanky hair and an intense gaze. She’s part of an afternoon hiking club walking through the hills and mountains of southern BC. Their tour guide tells them they’re in an area teeming with mythical creatures: The Ogopogos, the Sasquatch, the Windigo. In fact, a woman named Barbara Valentine disappeared a few years ago, so it’s important to stick together. Hearing this, Kay promptly veers away from the group into a nearby ravine in the hopes of catching a photo of the local monster. You see, she’s a veterinarian but also a cryptozoologist, in search of the unknown. And then she sees him, on a nearby hill: tall, hairy, stinky and dangerous… and headed her way. She wakes up dazed and confused, covered with a viscous white fluid… and no idea who she is. She has to use her driver’s license to find her name, her car and her home. And she’s haunted by sexually violent visions of her encounter with the creature.
The next day, she sets out on a journey through southwestern BC, in search of the beast… by tracing the steps of the missing Barbara Valentine. She follows the clues through rustic 
motels, sleazy roadhouses and trailer parks teeming with drug-fuelled swinger parties. And as she gets closer to finding out the truth, she discovers her own crucial role in all this. What dangerous secrets will her search reveal? Who is she…and what is her attraction to the cryptic beast?
Kryptic is a low-budget, monster/body horror flick set in rural BC, about a woman’s memory, identity and sexual attraction. There’s a fair amount of nudity, pervy sex and gory violence within a haze of alcohol and cannabis smoke. The story is OK (occasionally verging on the ridiculous) but it really takes off 
with all the strange characters — mainly women — she meets along the way. Like a faded glamour star running a motel, a die-hard monster hunter dressed like the beast, a barfly with crucial info, and a woman who claims to have had carnal encounters with the monster. Chloe Pirrie is great as Kay, wavering between naive and brazen, whenever her eyes glow green. Kamantha Naidoo is tough but sympathetic. Also notable are Pam Kearns, Jennifer Copping and Patti Allan. I also like the softly threatening and surreal feel of much of the film.
Though far from perfect, Kryptic still has lots of unexpected images to look at on a cold Hallowe’en night.
Sew Torn is now streaming on Shudder while Kryptic is available on Hollywood Suite. And the two Linklater movies — Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague — are both playing at the TIFF Lightbox 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.
Canadian sex and violence. Films Reviewed: Hollow in the Land, Birdland, Badsville PLUS Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Who said Canada is “nice but dull”? I’ve got three new indie Canadian movies this week, chock full of sex and violence. There’s torrid sex among the towers of Toronto, a bludgeoned body in the mountains of BC, and a gang war in the steamy southwest. …plus a UK romance set in Liverpool.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Dir: Paul McGuigan
It’s 1980 in Liverpool. Peter (Jamie Bell) is an aspiring actor who gets a surprise call from an older actress. She’s in the UK performing on stage in The Glass Menagerie and wonders if she can come by. Gloria Graham (Annette Bening) is a former movie star who won an Oscar in the 1950s. She talks like Marilyn Monroe and looks like Gloria Swanson. She was once known for “playing the tart” 
in Hollywood dramas. Now she wears large sunglasses and silk scarves over her hair.
Peter is surprised to hear from her again. He met her a year ago at a London rooming house which led to a torrid affair spanning two continents. He visited her at her beach house in California and followed her to New York. But she dumped him unceremoniously at her Manhattan apartment and he never understood why. And now she’s back again 
asking to stay with him in his working class home with his dowdy mother Bella (Julie Walters). Is it because film stars don’t die in Liverpool?
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is a wonderful romance based on Peter Turner’s memoirs about his encounters with a once famous actress twice his age. Bening is 
perfect as an over-the-hill diva who still sees herself as a Shakespearean teenaged Juliet while rejecting aging and her own mortality. And Bell is endearing as the starstruck Peter.
The story is straightforward but the director experiments with style. Peter has flashbacks while walking through a door signalled by a subtle change in lighting and music. And surprising results come from identical scenes which are shown twice but with very different points of view.
Definitely worth seeing.
Hollow in the Land
Wri/Dir: Scooter Corkle
It’s nowadays in the BC interior, a land of mountains, pulp mills and grow-ops. Ally (Dianna Agron) is a pretty but tough woman in her twenties, blonde hair beneath her hardhat. By day, she works at the town pulp mill, and at night looks after her 17-year-old brother Brandon (Jared Abrahamson). And every so often she spends the night with her lover Char (Rachelle Lefevre). Ally may be Brandon’s sister but she acts like his mother, warning him to stay out of trouble with the cops – or they’ll throw him in jail, just like their dad. He’s in prison for running down a teenager while drunk. And the kid he killed happenis to be the son of the family that owns the pulp mill. Which is very bad news in a company town.
The two cops – friendly Darryll (Shawn Ashmore) and hard-ass Chief (Michael Rogers) –
never let them forget it. So when a dead body turns up, and Brandon is the chief suspect, only Ally believes in her brother. It’s up to her to play detective, follow the clues, uncover the motive, track down the killer and find her brother who ran away into he woods. And she has to do all this before the killer kills her.
Hollow in the Land is a pretty good detective mystery/thriller, but with a few problems. I get that it’s noir so most of the scenes are at night, but you’d think they’d light up people’s faces properly so you can see who’s who. But the BC locations are amazing. The movie starts out very confusing, with dozens of characters and a foggy plot, but as it develops, it gets much more interesting. And Diana Agron is great as Ally – tough but tender — who carries it through to a satisfying end.
Birdland
Dir: Peter Lynch
It’s present-day Toronto. Shiela (Kathleen Munroe) is a tough as nails former cop with her own security firm. She’s a whiz with surveillance cameras and disguises. Her mild-mannered husband Tom (David Alpay) works at a museum cataloguing bird carcasses. But when she discovers he’s having an affair with a mysterious woman in a blue kimono, she decided to investigate. But when the affair leads to murder she realizes 
it’s all much bigger than she suspects. And someone is trying to cover it up. There’s an oil magnate pulling strings, a protester, a femme fatale, a nightclub entrepreneur, and a cop — her ex-partner — investigating the crime. And they all seem to share the same hobby — 
BDSM sex parties. Who is the killer? Who is having sex with whom? And who’s behind the conspiracy?
Birdland is full of politics, Big Oil, the police, museums, nightclubs, detectives, and kinky sex. And everything is projected against a fabricated bird metaphor: there’s a man named Starling, an ornithologist, a nightclub with a bird concept, characters who sing Lullaby in Birdland, a bird rescue team… But what’s the point? The “bird” themes don’t come from the characters, it’s superimposed on them. There are some cool concepts and images in Birdland, but it just doesn’t work. I was never sure if I was watching a messy story to justify the not-so-sexy, softcore porn, or if the sex was there to justify an extremely confusing plot. It might work as a miniseries but it packs in too much stuff for a single movie.
Badsville
Dir: April Mullen (Written by Benjamin Barrett and Ian McLaren)
It’s a dead-end town in the southwest in the 1950s (or 60s?). Wink and Benny (Ian McLaren and Benjamin Barrett) are lifelong friends and members of the Kings, a local gang. Wink works in a greasy spoon and hangs with his buddies in the seedy bar or bowling alley. He serves as a mentor for Lil’ Cat (Gregory Kasyan), a local kid with a junkie for a mom. Wink wants him to “stay gold”. The Kings are mainly Latino while their rivals, the Aces, are white. They regularly meet to 
rumble, meaning big fistfights supplemented with metal pipes and pieces of wood, all lit up by blazing oil drums.
Sounds like fun.
But when he falls for Suzy (Tamara Duarte) a newcomer with a secret past, it looks like things are going to change. Wink might finally achieve his dream – escaping Badsville for a better life in Colorado. And this is what pushes Benny over the edge. He loves Daddio – that’s what he calls Wink – and not just as a friend. So he sets in 
motion a series of events that he hopes will stop Wink from leaving, but that end up putting all their lives in jeopardy.
Badsville is a new take on classic exploitation gang movies and SE Hinton novels. We’re talking Jets and Sharks here, not Crips and Bloods. And they’re not in high school either, they’re much older. The film looks at masculinity and friendship with a bit of racial politics in the mix. Directed by April Mullen, it’s a first effort by the two non-actors who play Benny and Wink, and also wrote the script. It’s low budget and not perfect – but it works.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Hollow in the Land, Birdland and Badsville all start today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Caleb Behn about Fractured Land premiering at Hot Docs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Centuries of treaties — legal documents all — between First Nations and the Crown set aside land in perpetuity along with promises to protect and provide for its peoples. But what about the minerals, and the oil, gas and shale just beneath the surface? What about the forests that grow on their land, the rivers that run 
through them, and the fish and animals that live there and that they eat? Can the government and corporations be trusted to look out for the best interests of indigenous groups? Or are they better off with one of their own making sure their rights aren’t abrogated, their water despoiled and their land sequestered? Pipelines, fracking, clear cutting, 
export terminals, climate change… is there still time to stop their water, land and people from being torn apart?
Fractured Land is the title of a new documentary, by first-time directors Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis, that premiered at Hot Docs, Toronto’s international documentary film festival. It tells the story of a young, native man from Northern BC, who can throw a hatchet and skin a bear, but is 
also lawyer bound to uphold her majesty’s laws. His name is Caleb Behn from the Fort Nelson and West Moberley First Nations, lawyer, activist, and spokesman.
He told me about learning from his family, being an advocate for his people, the future impact of fracking, environmental and aboriginal law, protests, long-term strategies, his mother and father, post-colonial perspectives, language and ceremony; residential schools and the truth and reconciliation commission; respectful hunting; how fracking affects aquifers… and more!
For more information, go to keepersofthewater.ca.
culturalmining.com 
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