Daniel Garber talks to Elisa Paloschi about her new documentary Driving with Selvi premiering at the ReelAsian Film Festival
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for cultural mining,com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Selvi was a 14-year-old child bride in Southern India. Her husband was so abusive she contemplated suicide, but instead ran away. She made her way to
home for young women where she learned to be a driver, and after a ten-year journey, she became South India’s first female taxi driver. How did she reach that stage? And what’s it like to go driving with Selvi?
Driving with Selvi is also the name of a new Canadian documentary that tells her story. It’s directed by Toronto-based filmmaker Elisa Paloschi, known for her documentaries dealing with social issues around the world. Her film is having its premier at 
Toronto’s ReelAsian film festival. I spoke with Elisa in studio about visiting India as a tourist, how she first met Selvi, 10 years of shooting the film, making a film in a developing nation, why Indian women in smaller cities rarely drive, Selvi’s motivation, human trafficking, child brides, poverty, feminism, women as second-class citizens, dowries, divorce, motivation, how to share her story …and more! The film has its Toronto premier on November 5, 2015, at the ReelAsian Film Festival.
Politics. Movies reviewed: He Named Me Malala, This Changes Everything, 99 Homes
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A movie can be political as much for what it includes as for what it leaves out. Take Zero Dark Thirty, which said that torture is what helped catch Osama bin Laden. What it left out (according to Vice media) was that their source of these “facts” was the CIA. This week I’m looking at three movies with overt political themes. Two are documentaries: one about how a girl’s education affected her life; another about how climate change affects economics and politics; and a drama about how real estate speculation affects the “99 percent”.
He Named Me Malala
Dir: Davis Guggenheim
Malala Yousefzai grew up in the Swat valley of Pakistan, in an idyllic but isolated village near the Afghan border. This is also when a local Taliban begins preaching on the radio. At first they are welcomed — Mullah Fazlullah speaks their language. But the Taliban begins to restrict, and eventually to ban all girls from schools. Malala is a devout Muslim but opposes anything that might hold back women’s rights. She is unequivocal on this: men and women must have equal rights and opportunities.
A precocious student and the daughter of a teacher, she decides to do someone thing about it. 
First, at age 11, she shares her experiences with the world anonymously via a BBC blog. Then she comes out publicly as the face of all the girls their being denied an education. But the Taliban is not just a radio show. Their rhetoric escalates to bombing schools and physical attacking girls who disobey. And one night Malala and two friends are shot by a would-be assassin.
She falls into a coma, her family flees to England and the Taliban says if she ever comes back 
they’ll kill her. But she survives and becomes an international activist.
This movie shows three things. It illustrates her history in a series of lovely animated sequences using colourful paintings. It follows her travels as an activist in Kenya and among Syrian refugees. In Nigeria she appeals to Boko Haram to release the 100 schoolgirls they kidnapped. And in the US she explains to Obama that drones attacks are inspiring, not stopping, would-be terrorists. Finally, the movie shows the life of an ordinary girl who does her homework, fights with her brothers and ogles pics of star cricketeers online. It lets us know that she’s not a victim, nor a saint, but a committed activist who deserves to be listened to.
This Changes Everything
Dir: Avi Lewis
Wri: Naomi Klein, based on her book
Climate change is a huge problem, maybe our biggest. But Naomi Klein says polar bears just don’t do it for her. And turning off light bulbs is not the answer. So what can we do? To address this, the film takes it to the people, the ones immediately affected by environmental disasters. It follows their plight and how they fight back. A first nations
activist living right beside the oil patch in Northern Alberta, protests the effects of tailings on their water supply. Farmers in Montana suffer from an oil leak. Then there’s the mining industry moving into northern Greece… right at the moment the country faces economic austerity. The economy desperately 
needs investment, they’re told, stop worrying about little things like the environment! It’s the “shock doctrine” at work, using a crisis as an excuse for economic exploitation. And in India where tens of thousands could lose their livelihood if they build a coal plant.
The movie is beautiful shot, with vast Burtynsky-like vistas of massive oil fields. It’s not just about people you already agree with – it includes many of the fiercest opponents to environmentalism. And it’s narrated by Naomi Klein herself, who pulls it all together. This highly watchable film is a good guide on how to think globally while acting locally.
99 Homes
Dir: Ramin Bahrani
Dennis (Andrew Garfield) is a single dad who lives with his Mom Lynn (Laura Dern) and his son Conner (Noah Lomax). Times are tough, but Dennis works, Conner goes to school, and they live in Lynn’s house where two generations were born and brought up. They miss some mortgage payments, but it doesn’t seem that important. Then comes the big shock. Seemingly out of nowhere there’s a knock on the door – a real estate broker flanked by police. His homes is being repossessed, and 
he and his family are given a couple of minutes to grab their valuables and vacate the premises. They kick him out and padlock the front door shut.
Dennis is desperate, so he takes on odd jobs. He needs to earn enough money to get his family home back. His new boss Rick (Michael Shannon) flips homes for a living and offers him a cash income doing minor repairs. The catch? This is the guy who stole his house! But if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Rick is an odd character, a mini Donald Trump. He doesn’t have time for losers – he’s a winner, 
and he got there by stomping on the little people the way. You can’t be sentimental or nostalgic if you want to succeed. And he’s determined to make it to the top of the heap.
Rick lives in a spacious (repossessed) mansion complete with swimming pool, swank car and beautiful girlfriend. But he has high hopes for Dennis, and soon enough Dennis is kicking families out of their homes. He wants to get hold of a big block of land – the 99 homes of the title – so he can become a big player in the game. Dennis finds himself turning into his own enemy… even while his family is still camping out in a cheap motel room. Which direction will he choose: wealth or happiness?
This is a movie about a very real problem: homelessness and the US housing bubble, which turned family homes into a negotiable commodity. The title – 99 Homes – is meant to evoke how regular people, the 99%, fare under the rule of the super-rich. I like one of Bahrani’s earlier movies (Chop Shop) for its improvisational, documentary feel but another one (At Any Price) didn’t work. 99 Homes has its realistic elements, but it also has big name stars (all excellent) and a strict plot and script. It may harken back to the age of silent movies with its old-fashioned heroes and villains twisting their mustaches, (you must pay the rent – but I can’t pay the rent!) but it’s still worth watching.
This Changes Everything, He Named Me Malala, and 99 Homes all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Also opening is Labyrinth of Lies, a German historical drama set in the 1960s about a courageous lawyer who dares to prosecute Nazi war criminals; and Guy Maddin’s wonderful The Forbidden Room.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Zhang Yimou about his new film Coming Home at #TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s China’s cultural revolution. A jailed intellectual escapes from prison to see his wife, but they are prevented from meeting by a political bargain set up by someone he should trust. And in the scuffle his wife suffers a brain injury. Years later, after the cultural revolution, he returns home… only to find his wife doesn’t 
recognize him, and his daughter, a ballet student, has been kicked out of their home. So a family has been split in three as a result of his coming home.
COMING HOME is also the name of a film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars 
Gong Li as the mother. It was directed by Chinese master filmmaker Zhang Yimou, known, over the past three decades, for movies like Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, and Hero. As a Chinese director he is rare indeed as one who is commercially successful, critically acclaimed and acceptable to the government. I spoke to him at TIFF in September, 2014. Coming Home opens today in Toronto.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
Big Ticket TIFF. Movies reviewed: Sicario, The Martian
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall festival season is gearing up right now. Toronto’s Russian Film Festival is featuring actor Alexey Serebryakov, who starred in last year’s stunning Leviathan. Now’s your chance to see him on the big screen and in person. ImagineNATIVE, the international 
indigenous film and media arts festival is showing award-winning, Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s newest movie Angirattut (Coming Home). 
EstDocs – the Estonian film festival — has amazing animation, documentaries and short films from that tiny Baltic nation. Next comes Planet in Focus looking at environmental films. And 
Toronto After Dark brings horror, action and science fiction 
movies to get you ready for Halloween. This week I’m looking at films that played at TIFF that are opening today across the country. Ones about a female cop pushed into the war in drugs; the other’s about a male astronaut who wants to be pulled out of his life on Mars.
Sicario
Dir: Denis Villeneuve
Kate (Emily Blunt) is an FBI agent investigating a kidnapping near the Mexican border. She shoots the bad guys, but uncovers a grisly scene: countless murder- victims’ bodies packed into the walls of a drug-smuggler’s house in the desert. Shocking and revolting. So she agrees to join Matt (Josh Brolin) and his special team of agents (not part of the FBI) in order to bring down the Mexican kingpin responsible for all these deaths.
They fly her out to El Paso Texas where she meets the rest of the team, including a mysterious man named Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Soon she’s being ferried across the border into Juarez, playing a small part in a big confusing raid. She used to save kidnap victims, now she’s helping kidnap people (albeit accused
criminals)? What’s going on?
She tries to piece it all together. What’s her role in this exactly? Is this above board or is she being pulled into a nasty scheme run by crooked cops? Why are they doing this and who’s really in charge. She stays with the group, but finds herself involved in or witnessing a world of robbery, murder, drug smuggling, and undocumented migrants. Is she stopping it or part of it?
What’s going on is a total shift in the movie’s point of view. It’s not about Kate at all, it’s actually about Alejandro, his role and his goals. Huh? What? Wait a minute…
Sicario is a beautifully shot, suspense drama set in the world of organized crime around Juarez. It’s also a total mess. It starts like a horror/ police investigation, but turns into something completely different. It’s hard to follow, hard to understand, and really boring in parts. There are exciting chase scenes, but there are also driving scenes: long sequences just about people driving along highways. (Zzzzz….). Characters are introduced with long build-ups… and then prove to be unimportant. Even Kate, the ostensible star of the movie, seems peripheral to most of the plot. And Mexicans seem to be there just to die. Denis Villeneuve is usually an excellent director (Incendie, Polytechnique) and the movie does make sense in the end (no spoilers), but even so, at two hours, Sicario is just not very interesting.
The Martian
Dir: Ridley Scott
Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is an astronaut collecting soil samples on Mars, the windy and dusty red planet. He’s a botanist, part of a NASA team. When a storm hits the planet, the crew all rush for shelter in the space ship. But Mark gets struck down by a satellite dish and presumed dead. The rest of the team, headed by Mellissa (Jessica Chastain), fly off on their long trip back to earth. But wait… he’s not dead, just hurt. He patches himself up and takes stock of his situation, recording it all on a video log. Limited oxygen, water, and food, and no way to communicate with earth, and no way to get off the planet, with the next space ship coming four years down the road. And only 70s disco music to keep him company. So he makes do with what he has: rusty soil, a shovel, some potatoes and his own excrement. Can he grow enough to feed himself?
Meanwhile back on earth, a woman at NASA spots movement on Mars. How can that be? It’s him – he’s alive! The various players spring into action. Teddy (Jeff Daniels) the stuffed-shirt head of NASA, is more concerned about budgets and public image than saving Mark’s life. Vince (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants things to work, Mitch (Sean Bean) wants to save him, and Annie (Kristen Wiig)
wants the news to be released in the best possible way. And a whole bunch of others trying to build things, and calculate the math. Now Mark can communicate with earth… but how will he ever make it back?
I liked the Martian. It’s about pluck, ingenuity, improvisation and perseverance, with lots of science, math and IT geekiness thrown in along the way. One goofy guy (Matt Damon is totally likeable in this role) with thousands of people rooting for him. It’s not 
really a science fiction movie, though. No space battles, no aliens, no Klingons. It’s also far from the pristine, antiseptic world of space travel – instead Mars is plastic tarps, dirt, duct tape and shovels. This is a movie for guys who like tinkering in their toolsheds. Making do with what you’ve got. Remember, this is a Ridley Scott movie – the guy who made Blade Runner and Alien.
And while this one is much more mainstream, with absolutely no sex – the only kiss is through a glass space helmet — it’s still got dirt, blood, 4-letter words.
The Martian and Sicario both open today in Toronto. Also opening is Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home; and a weird and wonderful documentary about mould – yes, mould, slime mould to be exact – called the Creeping Garden.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Latin America at #TIFF15. Movies reviewed: Colonia, Desde Allá, The Clan
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF featured a number of notable South American films this year, so this week, I’m going to look at three of them. Two – an escape drama and a true crime drama — are set in the south, Argentina and Chile, under their rightwing, military dictators in the 70s. And one in the north, a drama set in modern-day Venezuela.
Colonia
Dir: Florian Gallenberger
It’s 1973 in Santiago Chile. Daniel (Daniel Brühl) is a German photographer who was drawn there by the excitement around the newly-elected socialist premier Salvador Allende. He is deeply in love with his girlfriend Lena (Emma Watson: Hermione in the Harry Potter series), a flight attendant for Lufthansa, who touches down regularly in Santiago. But when the government collapses with a CIA-backed military coup, the streets become dangerous. Thousands of people – including Daniel and Lena — are herded into the Santiago Football Stadium. Some are shot on the spot, others taken away in vans.
Lena is safe, but Daniel is horribly tortured, nearly to death, by Pinochet’s forces. Afterwards, he is comforted by a strange man with long gray hair who says Daniel will be safe under his protection.
Lena takes a week off work and tracks him down to an isolated farm in central Chile known as 
Colonia Dignidad, run by a German, fundamentalist Christian cult. Her plan? To pretend to join the sect, unite with Daniel, and quickly escape Chile forever.
But she soon finds herself trapped there. It’s a strange farm surrounded by electrified barbed wire filled with people who have never seen the world outside. Men, women and children are all kept completely separated. Little boys with Hitler-youth haircuts are forced to sing angelic choir songs before the nefarious Paul Schäfer (Michael Nyqvist) – known as “Pius” — who controls everything. The women are supervised by a stern female commandant named Gisele. By day, they pick potatoes like slaves; by night they are locked into their communal barracks. Any woman caught speaking of or even thinking about love or sex is punished at a “men’s council”, a ceremony where men are free to kick and punch accused girls or women. Lena searches for Daniel but he is nowhere to be seen. When she finally spots him, he appears to be feeble-minded from all the torture he endured. Can Lena ever contact him? Will he even recognize her? And can the two of them escape from the hell-hole known as Colonia?
Colonia Dignidad and Paul Schäfer were real. This film is actually a German movie, in English, not a South American one. If you’re looking for a political drama about Chile under Pinochet, you won’t find it here. This is more of an exciting escape drama, a prison break movie, with the politics kept low-key. Chile is the setting, with Pinochet a super villain, but it’s mainly about the notorious German settlement there. Bruhl and Watson are good as the heroes, but best of all is the realistic, slimy cult leader. I watched the whole movie without realizing he was played by Nykvist, the same actor who was the hero of the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series!
Desde allá (From Afar)
Dir: Lorenzo Vigas
Armando (Alfredo Castro) is an odd, middle-aged man with a good income who lives alone in downtown Caracas. He has a creepy-looking job: his business is constructing and repairing dentures, inserting false teeth into intricate moulds. Occasionally, he visits his sister to talk about the horrible things their father did to them when they were growing up. What exactly happened is never said.
In his free time Armando has an unusual hobby. He approaches young, working class men on 
the street and offers them money in exchange for sexual favours. But the favours consist merely of Armando asking the guy to face away from him while partially undressed. That’s it.
But things start to change when he picks up an angry young man named Elder (Luis Silva). Elder is a violent, selfish thug whose father is in prison for murder. He’s the kind of guy who would lead his gang to attack his own girlfriend’s brother 
with steel pipes in a pool hall for no apparent reason. Despite this – and the vicious sneer permanently etched on Elder’s face – Armando approaches him on the street and hires him. But in his apartment Elder turns on him, beats him up and steals his wallet and some of his things.
Despite this (or perhaps because of this?) Armando approaches him again, not asking for his things back, but instead offering him even more money. And later — when a rival gang fights back and Elder needs a safe haven – Armando welcomes him back into his apartment. Far from being a sexual predator, Armando shies away from any
and all physical contact with Elder. Instead he behaves like a father-figure, teaching him moral lessons, feeding and clothing him. And the situation changes: now Elder starts feeling attached – perhaps even sexually – to Armando, who coldly turns him away. What is going on? And where will it lead?
Desde Allá is a strange and disturbing film, even more so at the end. Its shocking conclusion will make you rethink the entire movie. The acting of both the main characters is fantastic – and the film won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.
The Clan
Dir: Pablo Trapero
It’s Buenos Aeries in the late 1970s. Alejandro Pucci (Peter Lanzani) is a handsome young rugby player on the Argentinian Pumas. His father (Guillermo Francella) is a successful businessman with ties to the military regime .Alex has it all. He’s a popular student, a national sports hero and owns a surfing store in downtown Buenos Aries. And he is in love with his girlfriend. But when the military government falls they are forced to lie low. His dad is a member of the Argentinian CIA, and partly responsible for the notorious Disappeared, the countless people missing or murdered by the military junta.
But the Puccis depend on these kidnappings to keep up their lifestyle and have turned it into a very profitable business. Most of the family is either involved in or aware of the kidnappings, since the victims are kept inside their home. But can any of them resist their dad’s orders?
This Argentinian drama is based on a true crime story out of Argentina that shocked the nation when it was uncovered. It’s also the most popular Argentinian movie ever. It’s a scary, dark and gruesome story. The movie reveals the downfall of the family in the very first scenes, but for me – never having heard of this case before – I would have preferred if those scenes were left till later. Still, there is such a dramatic scene at the end of the movie that it retains its ability to shock.
Colonia, Desde allá and The Clan all played at TIFF15; keep your eye out for these films. Opening today is Toronto’s Palestine Film Festival — go to tpff.ca for details; also opening is the delightful Grandma, a comedy-drama starring Lily Tomlin as a feminist grandmother on a quest.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Sudden changes. Films reviewed: Mountain, Girls Lost, Demolition, My Big Night. #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival is winding to a close but there are still many movies left to see this weekend. With the change of times, I’m going to talk about movies sudden changes. Four very good movies. A woman who lives in an Israeli cemetery discovers a change in her surroundings; three teenage Swedish girls who discover they can temporarily change their sex; a Wall Street investment banker who is left dumfounded by a sudden change in his life; and a group of people locked into a TV studio where nothing ever seems to change.
Mountain
Dir: Yaelle Kayam
Zvia (Shani Klein) is an orthodox Jewish woman who lives with her husband and children in a stone house on a hillside. But not just any hillside, it’s the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the hill that divides east and west. It overlooks the Dome of the Rock, but it’s also a graveyard filled with stone markers. Zvia, who wraps her head in a white- cloth turban, is alone all day when her husband is praying and kids in school. And alone again at night when everyone sleeps. She occasionally talks with the Palestinian grounds keeper, or 
mourners looking for a grave, but otherwise she is all alone, So she ventures out onto the side of the mountain, only to find a different nighttime population. In the bible, the Mount of Olives is where the idolators worshipped the gods Chemosh and Molek. And she looks with wonder and awe at the prostitutes having sex on the gravestones, the drug dealers and homeless lying desolate on tombs. Where she once came to visit a poet’s gravesite, now everything somehow seems defiled. But is she more at home here on the hill or back with her dysfunctional family?
Shani Klein is amazing as Zvia in this dark and troubling first feature. It leaves the viewer with many questions, but little sense of hope.
Girls Lost
Dir: Alexandra-Therese Keening
Sweden, present day. 14-year-old girls Momo, Bella and Kim (Louise Nyvall, Vilgot Ostwald Vesterlund, Tuva Jagell) are best friends, like the three musketeers. Momo has long brown hair, Bella is a redhead with glasses, and Kim has a dark, boyish haircut. They are bullied relentlessly for being non-conformists. Almost everyday they are attacked in the hallways, the playground and in gym class. Big crowds of people shout nasty 
names at them. But they, and their teachers, do little to fight back. Then a odd-looking seed arrives by mail. And when it grows, overnight, into a sticky, black orchid, the girls are intrigued. They decide, as a group, to taste the sap to see what happens. What happens is something big. The three girls, by the light of the moon, become three boys. Though they still have the same coloured hair and eyes, their faces, bodies and voices morph. And the same kids who rejected them as girls welcome them as 
boys.
They turn back into girls in the morning, but with a difference: now they have the confidence to fight back. But for Kim, the change was even more important. As girl-Kim she always feels awkward, but as boy-Kim everything suddenly works. If only he can stay like that forever. But as he asserts his male identity he falls into a troubled relationship with a rebel named Tony, confusing his gender and sexuality even more. Can the three musketeers stay true to one another? Or will the plant and its effects destroy the friendship they once had?
Girls Lost is a very cool look at gender and identity combined with a fantastical body-shift plot.
Demolition
Dir: Jean Marc Vallee
Davis (Jake Gyllenhall) is a rich investment banker who works at his father-in-law’s office (Chris Cooper). But after his wife dies in a car accident (he escapes with barely a scratch) things get strange. He starts compulsively taking things apart — his fridge, bathroom doors at his office — but lacking the compulsion to put things back together. At the same time, little things start to bug him, specifically the fact that the vending machine at the hospital where his wife died, took his money but didn’t drop the candy. So he begins to send 12 page handwritten letters to customer service, pouring out all his troubles and worries. TO his surprise, he gets a response from a real, living person, Karen (Naomi Watts) a single mom with a troubled teenage son (Judah Lewis). They eventually meet, even as his compulsions escalate. Get ready for lots of long scenes of him smashing and demolishing things on an ever bigger scale. Will he ever work through his loss before he destroys everything in his path?
This movie is pretty good, with a few surprises and unusual characters. And lots of breaking glass. The adventures of a rich middle-aged white guy getting to act like a self destructive adolescent with impunity was less palatable. While occasionally irritating, this movie is definitely worth seeing.
My Big Night (Mi Gran Noche)
Dir: Alex de la Iglesia
It’s New Year’s Eve in Madrid and there’s excitement in the air. On stage a chorus line whirls in unison, while the audience, in evening gowns and tuxes, sip champaign with uproarious laughter. Heading soon toward the stage are Spain’s biggest stars: Adanne (Mario Casas) a teen idol dressed like a fireman, and superstar singer Alphonse, (played by superstar singer Raphael). Unfortunately, the champagne is plastic, the 
viewers are all paid extras, and it’s not even New Years, it’s mid October! They’re shooting a glitzy, kitschy TV show. Meanwhile, they’re rioting on the streets outside, the set is collapsing inside, with one audience extra already dead; there are two groupies attempting to steal the idol’s sperm… and a psychotic with a gun 
— and the lover of Yuri (Carlos Areces) the son of the sadistic superstar — is preparing to assassinate the singer. And yet, the new years fun goes on, with love, sex, injury and death happening all around.
This movie is hilarious, with a high level of excitement. If I were Spanish, the pop songs would mean more to me, but… I get it. And director de la Iglesias doesn’t disappoint — there are enough shocks, gross-outs and over-the-top gags to keep you laughing. I loved this goofy, kitschy, slapstick comedy.
Mountain, Girls Lost, Demolition and My Big Night are all playing at TIFF. Go to tiff.net for details. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Sentimental. Films Reviewed: Summertime, Brooklyn, Room at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Guys aren’t supposed to like sentimental movies – they’re not tough enough. But a sentimental tear-jerker that’s done right makes for a great movie. This week I’m looking at sentimental films I like that are playing at TIFF — Toronto International Film Festival — right now. There’s a French woman tied to her family farm, an Irish emigree tied to her hometown, and a young mother (involuntarily) tied to her home.
Summertime (La Belle Saison)
Dir: Catherine Corsini
It’s 1972. Delphine (played by rock star Izïa Higelin) is a fresh, young, but naïve farm girl in northern France. She milks cows and bales hay, and hangs out with Antoine, her childhood friend (who has a crush on her). She’s vibrant and full of life. When her secret, long-time female lover dumps her, she packs up and moves to Paris. Right away she witnesses a feminist action: young women running down a street while pinching the bums of all the men
they pass.
She is surprised by what she sees, but likes it. When a man reacts violently, she steps in to fight back. She’s a heroine to the group. She’s found a home, a cause and new friends. Soon enough she’s joining raids on a mental hospital to liberate a young gay man locked up by his family; and participating in a flash-mob action to disrupt an anti-abortion meeting. She loves it 
all – it’s totally different from her life on the family farm. She becomes close friends with one woman in particular: the tall, beautiful and educated Carole (Cécile De France). Carole teaches Spanish and lives with her boyfriend. Delphine is crushed when her advances are rebuffed. Was it all in her mind? Doesn’t Carole loved her…? Soon enough, though, Carole comes around and lets loose. They visit 
Delphine’s farm when her parents are away, for a passionate weekend of splendor in the grass.
Back in Paris they live blissful lives. But when Delphine’s dad has a stroke, she has to rush home or lose the family farm. And Carole follows her there like a puppy, expecting many more rolls in the hay. But the open and uninhibited Delphine of Paris turns into the tense and secretive Delphine of the farm. Can their love prevail under the watchful gaze of a conservative village? Or will they flee, together, back to the city?
Summertime is a wonderful coming-of-age movie about how two women try to extend a season of love. I like this one a lot – it’s sexy, surprising and sad all at once.
Brooklyn
Dir: John Crowley
It’s post-WWII small town Ireland and there are no jobs. Eilis (Saorise Ronan) lives with her widowed mother and sister Rose. She works part time in a general store under a cruel and vindictive boss with no chance of advancement. So her sister talks with a local priest who pulls strings and helps her emigrate to America; Brooklyn to be exact. She lives in a rooming house filled with gossipy young Irishwomen trying to become more American, all under the eagle eye of their opinionated landlady Mrs 
Kehoe (wonderfully played by Julie Walters). Giddiness is the eighth deadly sin! she warns the girls. Eilis works as a clerk in a high-end department store (complete with pneumatic tubes), and takes classes at Brooklyn College at night. Almost everyone in her life is Irish. It’s almost like she never left home. But one night 
at a dance she meets a real live Brooklynite, Tony (Emory Cohen). Sparks fly when he admits he’s not Irish, he’s Italian. Eilis is fine with that. True love blossoms in Brooklyn, and they privately vow to stay together for life. But Eilis is called back to Ireland after a tragic event.
And things there aren’t as bad as she 
remembers. She’s offered work as a bookkeeper, and a rich young man named Jim (Domhnall Gleeson) sets out to woo her. Will she honour her agreement with Tony and return to America? Or stay with Jim in Ireland for good?
On the surface, Brooklyn is a conventional, sentimental look at love, seen through the immigrant experience. Big deal. What makes the movie really good are the dozens of eccentric characters, pithy dialogue (written by Nick Hornby based on Colm Toibin’s novel), the beautiful cinematography, period costumes… the whole deal. And Saorise Ronan who carries the entire film.
Room
Dir: Lenny Abrahamson
Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is a happy five-year-old who lives in a small but comfy room. He has long hair like his mom. He runs, plays, has an imaginary dog, watches TV, reads and talks with his Ma (Brie Larson). This is his world and he likes it, but he’s never been outside of it. You see his mom was abducted as a teenager 7 years ago, and she still lives in the windowless 
cell. The kidnapper uses her sexually once a week – and that’s where Jack came from. He was born in Room. But Ma made a deal. She doesn’t fight off her tormenter and in exchange he’s allowed no contact with her son; during the weekly visits Jack waits quietly in the wardrobe.
What for Ma is a cell, for Jack it’s his entire universe. She told him there is nothing but outer space outside Room. Everything he sees on TV is just for fun – it’s not real. But when their lives drastically change – and Jack sees the outside world for the first time – he is overwhelmed. Can he ever adjust to life outside Room?
Room is not a psychological thriller – though it has thrilling parts – and not a horror movie. It’s a mind-blowing drama about a boy, his mom, kinship, coping and privacy. The screenplay is by Canadian writer Emma Donoghue based on her own novel – and it’s superb. Brie Larsen and Jacob Tremblay (I hate to say it so early, but it’s true) are both Oscar material. Room is another fantastic movie by Irish director Lenny Abrahamson (who brought us Frank last year). Touching, strange and very surprising, I strongly recommend this one. I left the theatre emotionally drained.
Room, Brooklyn, and Summertime are all playing now at TIFF. For tickets and times go to tiff.net. Also look out for CTFF, RIFF and TUFF: Caribbean Tales Film Festival is featuring Queer Caribbean programming this year; RIFF is Real Indie Film Festival, coming in October; and TUFF, Toronto Urban Film Festival, shows one-minute movies in subways across the city.
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 Mina Shum about her documentary Ninth Floor, world premiering at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In the 1960s, Canada opened its gates to new Canadians from the British Commonwealth and around the world. And in 1967, the 100th anniversary of Confederation, the world looked to Canada, especially Montreal, home of Expo 67, as the epitome of tolerance, progressiveness and multiculturalism. But just beneath surface trouble brewed. At Sir George Williams University, (now Concordia) a group of Caribbean students complained of racist treatment by a faculty member. Unrest gradually grew into the biggest student uprising in Canadian history. Crowds led to riots and a sit-in at the computer department became a conflagration on the ninth floor.
Ninth Floor is also the name of a new documentary that looks at the 
politics and history of this period through the eyes of the participants. It is directed by Mina Shum, the renowned Vancouver-based filmmaker, famous for her family dramas like Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. Ninth Floor, her first documentary, revisits a partly forgotten but vital piece of Canadian history. It’s having its world premier at TIFF. I spoke to Mina Shum, by telephone from Vancouver. She told me about Sir George Williams College, the computer lab, the sit-in, the mob, agents provocateurs, polite racism, housing discrimination, immigration, Montreal in the 1960s, Caribbean students in Canada, the RCMP, how she made the documentary… and more!
Bro Movie Week. Movies reviewed: Before We Go, Meru, The Transporter: Refueled
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Summer is almost over, so this week is Bro Movie Week. There’s an action-thriller about a driver who wants to get from here to there; a documentary about three mountain climbers who want to get from the bottom to the top; and a romantic dramedy about a guy who wants to help a woman he meets to get home.
Before We Go
Dir: Chris Evans
Nick (Chris Evans) is a bearded busker who’s playing his trumpet in Grand Central Station. He’s in NY City for an important audition the next day – the chance of a lifetime to join a famous jazz band. But he’s dogged by memories of a long lost love. Brooke (Alice Eve) is a well-dressed woman in a hurry. She wants to get back to her home in New Haven as fast as she can. And if she doesn’t get there in time… big 
trouble.
The problem is she missed the last train, and is penniless and without any ID. Her purse got snatched in a bar that night. So as the station is closing, Nick goes out on a limb for her, and says he’ll help her get home. At first she’s cold and standoffish but soon realizes he’s her only chance. And so they step out into the scary streets of the city that never sleeps.
Over the course of the night, they find themselves in a dangerous den of thieves, performing on a stage at the wrong wedding, and running into lost 
loves at a party. Will Brook ever tell Nick why she has to get home? Will Nick find closure with his own relationship? And have the two of them forged a new friendship — or possibly a lasting romance — of their own?
Before We Go isn’t terrible, it’s just OK. More meh than anything else. The plot is uninteresting and predictable, and the characters are mediocre. Chris Evans is better known as Captain America so I guess this is his try at directing a movie. Nice try Chris, but try again. I’ve seen Alice Eve in lots of TV shows and movies, but she’s also unremarkable in this one. If you really need to watch a “Night in Manhattan” movie see Martin Scorsese’s After Hours instead.
Meru
Dir: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Renan Ozturk, Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker are three American mountain climbers. They’re not ordinary hobbyists. These are the guys with weather-beaten faces you see staring sternly at a cloud on the cover of Outside magazine; or dangling from a sheer face of rock in National Geographic. Climbing is their life. Profession, too. They make a living partly from taking the pictures and videotape of the mountains they’re climbing. But their white whale, their unconquerable peak, is a mountain 
called Meru.
Meru is a formidable, bare, sheer peak of rock on a snow-covered mountain in the Himalayas. Its top is known as the Shark’s Fin. In comparison, Mt Everest is a popular tourist spot with plenty of sherpas there to help would-be climbers. Meru – at the source of the river Ganges in northern India – is a do-it-yourself climb. Basically, you carry, on your back 
everything you need to eat, wear or use. You’re on your own. This movie chronicles the two attempts made by these driven climbers to get to the top of the un-climbable Meru.
The photography in this movie is quite spectacular. And some of the incidents caught on film – like an avalanche on a mountain side, or shots of the climbers inside a tent pinned near the top of a peak – is amazing. So if you’re into outdoor or extreme sports, or chronicles of guys who risk their lives climbing mountains just because they’re there, then you’ll love this movie. Otherwise… I think it only has niche appeal.
The Transporter: Refueled
Dir: Camille Delamarre
Frank (Ed Skrein) is a driver in Monte Carlo. He’s known for his unmatched skills in a car. He can get anyone anywhere they want to go, no questions asked. Cops or robbers can’t stop him. So when he’s hired for a large
But there’s more to the story than that. They hire Frank again for another job, and just to make sure he comes through, they kidnap his dad, Frank Senior (Ray Stephenson). And give him a time-release poison to which they hold the only antidote. They want to take down the mob, including Karasov (Serbian actor Radivoje Bukvic). But can Frank’s lightning-fast fighting and driving skills teamed with the vengeance-driven sex-workers defeat the worst gangster-pimps of Monaco?
This is the latest installment in an endless action movie franchise, that 
starred Jason Statham as the Transporter in earlier versions. It’s dumb and ridiculous, and sexist of course, and riddled with logical impossibilities and melodramatic acting. And the dialogue is atrocious: did they take an already bad French script and feed it into Google Translate? Still, I have to say I actually liked it. The chases, the fights, and the shootouts were all good, and Ed Skrein (Game of Thrones) is credible as the new, artfully-scarred driver. It’s a crime action thriller, a B movie (maybe a C movie), but I still enjoyed it.
Transporter: Refueled opened earlier this week and Meru and Before We Go both start today in Toronto and on V.O.D. Check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Adam Garnet Jones about Fire Song having its World Premier at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Shane lives on an isolated First Nations reserve in northwestern Ontario. He’s polite, smart, good-looking, hardworking and respectful – everything a teenage boy 
should be. He even has a pretty girlfriend, Tara. Shane’s moving to Toronto in the fall to start his first year at University. Everything seems perfect… but it’s not. His mother has been severely depressed since his sister’s suicide. And his family has money 
problems: they’re deeply in debt. Can he even afford to move to Toronto? And then there’s his relationship with another boy named David that he keeps on the down low. Sometimes Shane wishes it would all just go away.
I’m talking about Fire Song, a new film having its world premier at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. The powerful drama is written and directed by filmmaker Adam Garnet Jones, and this is his debut feature. I spoke to him at
CIUT. Adam talked about his background, hopelessness, suicide, coming out, the lives of gay youth in an isolated community, Native Child and Family Services, two-spirited people, traditional ideas, Christianity, life on a reserve vs. life in a city, talking circles, healing, his future work… and more!
UPDATE: Adam Garnet Jones’ Fire Song is the winner of imagineNATIVE’s 2015 Air Canada Audience Choice Award.
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